Recession Briefing: Flying the Private Skies Again

What you need to know today to survive and thrive in the recession.

Gingerly, some business travelers are venturing back into private aircraft after the battered economy — and a public outcry against that perk of fat cats, the corporate jet — walloped the general aviation industry starting in 2008. (New York Times)

The longest and deepest U.S. economic slump in seven decades has been dubbed the “Great Recession” by the Associated Press. The AP Stylebook Online notified subscribers this month it had added the term as a reference for the downturn that began in December 2007. (Bloomberg)

Nearly 20 percent of the U.S. workforce lacked adequate employment in January and struggled to make ends meet with reduced resources and bleak job prospects, according to a Gallup poll released on Tuesday. (Reuters)…

We’re Big in France. Seriously.

Finally, we can say we have something in common with supermodels — and all it took was losing our jobs.

Recessionwire was on a tear in the French press this fall, making it into French Elle (click for the whole shebang), business magazine Capital (download the PDF here), and onto Radio France Internationale (listen here). Along the way, we learned a few things:

1. The dot-com suffix hasn’t caught on in France. They use the word for “period” instead — point. So when you wear your French accent, we are Recessionwire-pwah-com.…

8 Things We’re Glad the Recession Killed

There have been many sad passings in the downturn, some the results of the economy (lots of jobs, Domino magazine) others not (John Hughes). But as always, there is an upside: The bust seems to have killed off some of the more distasteful boom trends, expressions of excess that just aren’t appropriate anymore.

McMansions
All around the country, sprawling new developments sit empty, oversized homes are being foreclosed on, and home buyers are choosing—for the first time in 15 years, more normal-sized properties. A double-height great room does not a happy (or financially sound) family make.

SUVs
The McMansions of cars also boomed in the boom, when we didn’t care how much we spent for gas and were happy to tower over pathetic hippie cyclists. Wired.com says that 60 percent of the cars that have been junked through the Cash for Clunkers program are gas-guzzling Ford Explorers…

Recession Lexicon: Lazylancing

n./ Just when we wondered whether we might be running out of new downturn words, we got a Tweet from adventurous polymath Christina Davidson: “They miss what all my laid off journo friends R doing now. We call ‘lazylancing’ a way to justify travel.”

Lazylancing is when you subsidize your travel with freelance work, as Davidson did last year after being laid off from her job. “I decided to take a couple of months and go backpacking through Turkey and Syria,” she says. A story she wrote for The Atlantic ended up covering a good part of her expenses for the three months. “You may be hard pressed to get anyone to admit to this,” she says—writers want you to think they’re working hard. At the same time, more people may be lazylancing; they might as well. “There are so few regular jobs out there, and it’s a lot cheaper in the third world…

Off the Page…and Into the Real World

I couldn’t help but laugh when, right as we were approaching the final stretch of the presidential campaign, the economy went off the deep end. I laughed because I sure as hell didn’t need the 24-hour news cycle to tell me how bad things were.

I’m a screenwriter, a card-carrying member of the Writers Guild of America, and though I have had nine movies made (credited and uncredited), business has been abysmal from about six months before the November ’07 writers strike to…oh, say, today. Tomorrow. Next week. The foreseeable future.

I weathered the strike, as I had weathered a previous career dry spell. But the weathering, ladies and gentlemen, is over. I’m looking for a real job. But as I awaken to the lifeless moonscape that is the present economy, I have to wonder: what was wrong with me that I didn’t start looking for one sooner?

I know most of the answer to that. I had it in my head from a young age that being “talent” was an end in and of itself – if you can make 100 percent of your living off said talent, you win. That’s how my grandfather did it as a commercial artist. That’s how my cousin Molly Picon, legend of the Yiddish stage, did it. That’s how my TV producer cousin Bruce has been doing it since the ‘80s.

A very short time ago, I wasn’t certain whether this notion of purely being a screenwriter was more important to me than my marriage. Two things changed that in a hurry. The first was news that a paying gig I had been counting on wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. The second was our checking account balance…

Recession Briefing 7.14

What you need to know today to survive and thrive in the recession.

In Japan, even robots are starting to feel the effects of the recession. (New York Times)

Is the recession bad for your health? A recent study from Yale University found that job losses can make the fat fatter and the drinkers drunkards. (Wall Street Journal)

U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner says that the American and world economies will be out of the recession in a matter of months. (Telegraph)

How to Get Cheap Newspaper and Magazine Subscriptions

Are you a papervore who is still reading newspapers and magazines? Good—we are too. And while searching for frugal ways to renew subscriptions that are expiring in the middle of a recession, we found two new ways to get our favorite publications.

Magazine resellers often give better deals than the publications themselves. Even lower prices can be had on eBay. Yes, eBay. We renewed New York Magazine for $15, versus the “bargain” $40 offered in a mailing. We spotted BusinessWeek for just $10. Hitch is, the selection is pretty random.

Frequent flyer programs are another good bet. For 500 Delta Skymiles points, we got a year’s worth of Fast Company. (Time, Sports Illustrated, W and People en Espanol were among the other titles.) United Airlines’ program offers the Wall Street Journal for just 3,300 miles. If you calculate the value of miles at one cent each, that means you can get a full year of WSJ for $33—which is basically amazing. The regular price right now is $441.

But don’t get mad at us if there are restrictions, like offers for new subscribers only, or delivery only to the continental U.S. As always, check the fine print before you buy.

Business Plan: Penthouse Scion Explains Recession

His father famously started a porn powerhouse. The son launched music mag Spin and now, he’s going after the rich. We missed this earlier this year, but Bob Guccione Jr. explained why the recession turned out to be a fine time to launch Prestige, a new high-end publication:

“Of course, it wasn’t the intention to launch Prestige in the recession,” he says. “Having said that, i still don’t think it’s a bad idea. The very rich will always be at least rich.”…

Listen Up, Old-School Journalists

It always makes my heart skip a little beat each time I see even a reference to “themediaisdying,” the Twitter feed that has tracked the steady, eerie erosion of the media industry. For 15 years or so, I’ve made my living as a journalist. And yet, now, people are writing stories for free and few full-time writing positions are left. Sure does sound like “dying” to me.

But after hearing a few of the folks at the Mediabistro Circus conference last week, I got a little hope back – journalism and writing jobs are not going away, but thanks to the recession, they’re undergoing a swift, head-spinning transformation, and the profession’s new iteration will take some hard work.

The changes underway aren’t simply in the domain of journalism, though. New work and new careers are emerging in the recession based on approaches that everyone needs to pick up in order to survive and thrive, and emerge from this downturn intact and better than ever…

Media Just Wants to Be Free

You’ve slashed your entertainment budget to the bone. No more Friday night movies for you and you’re cutting off the digital cable. But you still need your Mad Men fix and you don’t want to miss the next Batman blockbuster. Thanks to the abundance of the Internet, you can scrap that entertainment budget altogether and go all-free-all-the-time. We’ve rounded up several sources that will keep your media habits intact without burning a hole in your wallet.

TV & Movies

Hulu.com – Why it’s great: New shows, old shows, 144 movies and trailers. The hitch: The new shows expire and the movies are cut with ads.

YouTube.com – Now home to more than just viral videos of six-year-olds talking about Darth Vader, YouTube has a movies and a television section from “old media.”

Freemooviesonline.com – If you’re a fan of the good, the bad and the extra-cheesy this website is for you. Uninterrupted streaming video of all the rubber-suited monsters and spaghetti westerns you could want.

Guba.com – This site has a good selection of streaming movies, especially anime and foreign films of the Asian persuasion. However, like most of the Internet, this site is 90% porn by volume…