- I'm the first to admit that you can get a little out
of touch working as a freelance writer, if you aren't careful. Here I am
up in my upstairs garret, surrounded by my books and computer paraphernalia,
my phones and two cats, and my sources of information tend to be the piles
of newspapers I have delivered, my wife, who works with other human beings
at a university, my son, who goes to an urban high school, and of course
the internet.
-
- When I get out, it's either to do solitary repair work
to rescue my barn, or to get a coffee at the local café.
-
- So when I read that housing prices are picking up, or
that the stock market is back over 10,000 again, it would be easy to start
imagining that things are starting to look up after the worst recession
since World War II.
-
- But then, I do have personal evidence that this is hardly
the case.
-
- Take my work. Business Week magazine, a publication for
which I have written for some 17 years, nearly folded and has been sold
for a song by McGraw-Hill to Bloomberg, where it will operate as a shadow
of its former self. One editor there wrote recently for advice because
his wife had been stiffed on a $3000 writing assignment for some company,
and he wanted to know how to pursue the case in small claims court. He
said they need that money, because his current income is precarious, given
the planned staff cuts Bloomberg will be making....
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- For the rest of this story, please go to:
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- www.thiscantbehappening.net
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