ink-stained wretches

L.A. Times Reporters Should Think Twice About Going to Alaska

Apparently, the paper has made something of a hobby out of laying off staffers while they’re in the land of the midnight sun. The previous “worst layoff story, ” presumably from the pre-Internet days, belonged to a reporter whose company AmEx mysteriously stopped working while in the state reporting a story. Now comes the tale of an environmental reporter who was in Alaska on a two-week science journalism grant when higher-ups e-mailed her to say she was out of a job back in the lower 48. Why Alaska? Maybe it’s the sheer distance; maybe the paper’s management has decided that the extra daylight will make unemployment seem sunnier. Perhaps they figure out-of-work newspapermen can find a lucrative second career on the oil rigs up there — or just start covering the Palin clan, who themselves constitute a virtual employment stimulus for the media.

LAT writer learns of her layoff by email in the Arctic [LA Observed]

L.A. Times Reporters Should Think Twice About Going to Alaska