Life after the NYTimes for one business journalist

Jeremy Barr of Capital New York writes about how journalists who have left the New York Times have fared in finding jobs in the wake of the paper’s announcement that it wants to cut 100 more positions.

Pompeo writes, “Saul Hansell, a business and technology reporter for 17 years who left voluntarily in 2009, suggested that most Times journalists who take buyout offers (and are not in a position to retire from working completely) land somewhere, though not always in a dream job.

“‘Most people I know have found something to do, even if it’s not full and satisfying employment,’ he said.

“For Hansell himself, the buyout announcement couldn’t have come at a better time.

“‘It was like a double bonus for me,’ he said. Hansell described the buyout as ‘getting paid to do what I wanted to do anyway,’ which was to leave the Times for an opportunity at AOL.

“‘Literally they announced the buyouts and I was on the phone because I knew already [that I wanted to leave], and I had a job lined up before I had to sign the papers,’ he said. ‘This was the moment I needed to pull the trigger.’

“But that didn’t necessarily make the decision to leave an easy one for him.

“‘You don’t leave a place, that is a place that you really could stay for a career, lightly,’ Hansell said.”

Read more here.