Hotlines and recruiters have little to offer out-of-work writers and editors. But then there's 8goodpeople.com and their 'reality TV' approach to life in the unemployment line.

Because I've lived in San Francisco working as a freelance writer and editor for most of the past 10 years, I had an inkling things weren't good for my fellow journalists in the Bay Area -- especially those weaned during the dot.com boom. After checking in with various job sources locally, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and talking to colleagues, I can now say with authority: The job market here really sucks.

For those people whose salaries and stock options bloated during the boom, the new reality is lower pay, no options and a muttered prayer you won't have to sell your house. One former freelance writer friend is working on opening a bookstore, and he listed others who were now teaching, giving massages, working for a veterinarian -- or worse still, moved away to New York.

As Hunter S. Thompson wrote: "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." For the eight desperate journalists who started 8goodpeople.com, the pros turned weird. Longtime technology journalist Connie Guglielmo had seen enough stupid reality TV programs, but the topping on the rotten cake was when Monica Lewinsky was hired to host a show. "I was appalled that a dubious celebrity can find work, while good journalists can't," she told me.

Rather than sit and fume about it, Guglielmo contacted other out-of-work journalists around the country and launched her version of (harsh) reality on the Web, 8goodpeople.com, wherein eight experienced, unemployed journos write brutally honest essays about unemployment and life in the slow lane. The goal is for all eight to get jobs in the 12-week "run" for the show.

The reality TV angle is a bit thin, but the essays are touching and addictive. Plus, Guglielmo scored write-ups in the San Jose Mercury News, San Francisco Chronicle (twice), and The Wall Street Journal within two weeks of launching the site. "PR people have been amazed at the publicity we got," she told me. "It's a weird thing, trying to get publicity for ourselves. But we really want to remain in journalism." Best of all, Guglielmo was heading off for a job interview -- scored through the site -- after our chat.

Clair Whitmer, another of the eight based in the Bay Area, quit her job at CNET News.com to focus on being a mother of two. The poor job market and her husband's recent layoff forced her to face the music and look for work in the tight market. Whitmer's essay on how she lost her (paper) dot.com million bucks is a bittersweet, yet humorous story. She's especially vexed at how people focus on her loss. "It turns out the most interesting thing about me is how a person who can spell her own name and balance a checkbook can be dumb enough to plain lose a million dollars." She was a victim of the depressed CNET stock price, bad investment advice and the alternative minimum tax.

Slicing and dicing the numbers

Whitmer said the 2000 merger of CNET and ZDNet was "disastrous" for journalism jobs in the Bay Area. But CNET is far from alone in cutting jobs and forcing Bay Area journos to flee the labor market. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that San Jose's unemployment rate last May was 8 percent, the second highest among the nation's major metropolitan areas. That's quadruple San Jose's unemployment rate in May 2000. And San Jose-San Francisco-Oakland combined for a 6.3 percent unemployment rate last May, up from 2.5 percent in 2000.

Digging down into the more specific "Information" industry category (including publishing, film/music, broadcast, newspapers, ISPs and Web portals) shows just how many people have lost jobs. The BLS reports that San Francisco peaked at 70,000 "Information" industry employees in January 2001; that number is now only 46,700, meaning 23,300 jobs no longer exist in that sector. San Jose saw the same sector drop from 47,000 jobs in December 2000 to 31,500 this past May -- a loss of 15,500 jobs. You can slice and dice the numbers yourself at this handy BLS site: http://data.bls.gov/labjava/outside.jsp?survey=sm

The Media Alliance, a nonprofit in San Francisco, has been a great source for media types in the Bay Area, and I remember finding freelance leads there in the mid-90s. Current job-file guru Ken Yoshida compiles job listings from various online sources, as well as from companies that list directly with Media Alliance. Lately, the jobs have been in Los Angeles and New York, he told me, but not much in San Francisco. "There have been reporting jobs in Fresno, or the Tahoe area, or in Sacramento," he said. "But here the jobs are more technical, or in accounting, marketing or sales. There are a lot of nonprofit jobs and graphic design jobs."

As for online jobs, Yoshida said he has run recent listings for Google and Yahoo -- but they, too, were for technical or marketing positions. So should writers and editors start thinking about joining the dark side, PR or marketing? Or maybe get a degree in programming? It might be a good idea to keep an open mind.

There's even the final indignity of technical writing jobs going overseas to people who speak English as a second language. That's the concern of many Bay Area technical writers, said Kenya Briggs, who runs the National Writers Union's Job Hotline. Briggs said many people have left the union because they're not getting freelance writing gigs, and one person she knows got a real estate license to augment their income.

What to do?

Dan Rohn, who runs the popular JournalismJobs.com site from Berkeley said that dot.com journalism jobs are "basically nonexistent." He said that media companies are hiring smarter than in 1999. "Many Net jobs have been streamlined," he told me via e-mail. "People are doing multiple tasks, whereas in 1999 you might have had two or three people sharing that work. That's one of the reasons why there are fewer jobs in online journalism. Another important aspect is there's not as much venture capital money floating around to start Web sites with original content."

But Rohn said that desperate folks should not get discouraged, and they consider taking media relations jobs at universities, city governments or large companies. He advises checking listings on company Web sites and contacting their editorial director. "Those jobs might be easier to get because less people know about them," he said. "Networking also is a very good tool. Get in contact with any old friends to see if their company is hiring or if they have any hot tips. A lot of jobs are gotten through networking, so make the most of your contacts."

Lauren Gonzalez, who formerly worked in San Francisco for GameSpot, moved to New York in May 2002 and got a job through mediabistro.com. She's now a freelancer, and is an apprentice with art photographer Gerald Marks. Gonzalez said she "had to lower my standards to an embarrassing degree" but it was worth it. "The days of suggesting a first-time feature via e-mail and landing the gig on first contact are well in the past," she e-mailed me. "I think another thing we need to remember is to crawl out from under our computers and start talking to 'real' people again. There are so many stories out there on the street; we just have to keep our ears open and start having conversations again."

The Museum Security Network responds

A quick follow-up on my last column on the libel ruling relating to online forums and Weblogs. I received the plaintiff's point of view, but hadn't heard from Ton Cremers, one of the defendants who runs the Museum Security Network site and e-mail newsletter. Cremers won at the appellate level, as the majority ruled that he should be treated as an "interactive computer service" (like a forum or chat room) despite his journalistic aspirations.

Cremers has since told me in an e-mail that he considered his newsletter a "moderated list" and admitted that he made a mistake by publishing an e-mail from Bob Smith about Ellen Batzel's alleged Nazi ties to the entire list. He said another mistake was including Batzel's full name and address in the e-mail. However, he said he erased the message from his site's archives, and offered Batzel an open forum on his site to address Smith's message, which she refused.

"What I really do not understand is that Batzel moved to another state, and started a lawsuit in her new hometown, thus attacting a lot of attention to a message she hated to be published," Cremers e-mailed me. "If I did her real harm -- of which I am not certain -- it was done unintentionally. After my mistake, she put a lot of effort in harming my interests intentionally. I lost my job [as security manager for the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam] because of her doing, and my life has never been as quiet again as it used to be before January 2000."

Still, Cremers agreed with my conclusion -- that no court ruling is going to take the place of basic journalistic checks if you want to run a reputable online publication.