From Laid-Off Reporter To Accidental Web Entrepreneur
The death of a major daily newspaper in a city like Seattle leaves the public underserved and no small number of journalists underemployed.
Kery Murakami aims to help remedy both problems with a new online venture he started after the Post-Intelligencer folded its print edition last month. However, the transition from newsman to businessman is no easy task.
“I’m doing this mostly out of passion and belief for what we do, but also out of desperation, because you go to JournalismJobs.com and you look at the landscape, there are no jobs out there. In the old days, you’d think about selling your soul and going PR, but there are no PR jobs out there. There’s nothing out there.”
So Murakami, a 20-year-plus journalism veteran who covered city hall for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer right up until the daily newspaper folded in mid-March, is trying to create his next job out of thin air. That’s meant working with several of his fellow laid-off colleagues 10 to 12 hours a day, six to seven days a week, transforming himself into journalist-entrepreneur.
Luckily, he and his staff are working with local public broadcasting representatives KCTS-TV and KPLU-FM for what will be Seattlepostglobe.org, a news site which hopes to launch next Tuesday. KCTS is letting Murakami and company work out of their office space free for three months.
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Photo by SeattlePostGlobe.
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