I Left* Journalism And I Feel Free

The headline says I left journalism. There's an asterisk, though: I haven't left journalism entirely, but I have left pursuing it as a full-time job. I'm still doing some freelance writing, and the biggest project of my not-quite-dead, sort-of-former career is actually in progress. A grand finale, perhaps (or maybe not!).

Also, I "left" like Shane Gillis "left" Saturday Night Live: I was kicked out.

Uproxx hired me as a Music Staff Writer in 2017. Two years later, I was promoted to Music News Editor. At the site's functional peak in 2022 or so, I had ten writers under me. During this time, online publications were already in the process of drastically reducing headcounts or just shutting down. The Uproxx editorial team gradually shed weight, too. By the end of 2025, amid changes in the company's focus, I was the only person left doing writing as my primary role. I started editing videos for social media and doing some B2B writing, but that apparently wasn't enough: I was informed on April 22, 2026 that after nine years, I no longer worked at Uproxx.

This was the immediate personal aftermath, as I wrote in this excerpt from a post I shared on Instagram:

"There was crisp night air left over the morning June and I walked through the still woods, following Falmouth, Maine's gentle Presumpscot River to our left. Well, one-year-old June was strapped to my chest with a baby carrier and didn't do any walking, but her carefree babbling suggested she was having a nice time. I enjoyed listening to it and babbling back at her, except for the moments she groaned and resisted as I carefully freed strands of hair matted with now-dried banana.

It was 7:30 AM on August 12, 2026, a Wednesday. Most people were either just waking up or getting ready for work. Nearly four months earlier, after almost a decade at the same job, my position was a casualty of company restructuring. I was unemployed. Writers with better resumes and portfolios had been laid off as online journalism continued its ongoing collapse. It was finally my turn.

For weeks post-employment, I clung onto my old routine. I'd hop on the computer from 7 AM to 4 PM with an hour break for lunch, tending to some freelance writing gigs I still had and looking for a new job. Gradually, the schedule shifted: June wasn't sleeping much at night, so I took over mornings with her while my exhausted wife slept. (I'd help more in the wee hours if it wasn't for June wanting nothing to do with me after 8 PM.)

June would wake up at around 6 or 7. We'd play in the living room for about an hour, then have breakfast. With 90 minutes or so left before she needed to go down for her first nap, we'd leave the house and do something not far from our home in Portland. Walmart, which opens at 6, was a popular destination. If June had a later wake-up time, we'd have the opportunity to visit one of the four proximate Goodwill stores, which open at 9. We hunted for cheap books for her to chew (and sometimes even read), toys that were functional and complete enough to bring home, and anything else that was useful and inexpensive. We've been getting more mileage than expected from our $2.50 panini press.

When the weather was agreeable, we'd take a walk. We started in our neighborhood, but those streets became too familiar. The two of us ventured to nearby natural attractions, like Bug Light Park in South Portland and the Presumpscot River. Being strapped up with June made it easy to rest my chin on her head, or crane my neck down to kiss her cheek and tell her that I love her so much."

Personally, I was doing fantastic. I was spending a lot of time getting fresh air with my little girl and it was pretty great. I wouldn't say I had an identity crisis, but I did wonder what was next for me, considering my skills and experience are most directly relevant to an industry offering less opportunity by the day. Spend any time on the downer of an online space that is "unemployed writer LinkedIn" and you'll find others expressing similar uncertainty.

I did have a realization early on after getting laid off, though: I didn't miss what the work had become. I still loved music, but I mostly stopped following the news. In mid-August, a former co-worker mentioned Stella Lefty and I didn't know who they were talking about. I feel like an AI model whose training data cuts off in April 2026. I think I just intended to take a short break from keeping up, because eventually, I'd feel like I was missing out. I never felt an invisible hand trying to pull me back in. When I wasn't professionally compelled to read every post about the brutal clap-back so-and-so shared on Twitter and which artists are playing the 200th festival of the summer, it was refreshing. The internet was once again a home for things to enjoy as a consumer, not a mine for potential traffic sources where work was always in the back of my mind. I was more than happy to be in the know about every little thing as a job, but it seems to be fading as a personal interest. Maybe it just hasn't been long enough for me to miss it yet, or maybe I've changed. I'm not sure.

That's not to say I never liked the work. During that aforementioned 2022 era, I truly enjoyed marching forward with a large crew of motivated co-workers who still had twinkles in their eyes. I took pride in my work and doing it alongside others. It's what it has turned into that's not for me. I'm probably not cut out to be a social media personality. I don't want to churn out SEO junk and hope the AI search results like my phrasing the best. I don't want to write headlines that are just barely true enough, factual-but-not-honest headlines that I might not fully believe but am attaching my name to regardless because that's how it goes. Maybe elements of those annoyances have been there for more than the past few years, but at least there was the hope of getting to pursue stories and projects I found enjoyable, maybe even meaningful, on a semi-regular basis. Again, some lucky people still have those opportunities, but it's a rarer thing now. Jill Mapes, formerly of Pitchfork and now of Hearing Things, recently wrote about this topic more coherently and compellingly than I am right now.

I wonder about the future of journalism. Specifically, I'm thinking about the next generation. In high school and college, I wanted to be a writer because I'd read columns from Bill Simmons, quirky experiential features from Vice, and personality-filled Cracked listicles, imagining how fun it would be to make stuff like that as a job. What does a young potential online writer have to look forward to today? Gift guides? Sponsored content? The difficulty of getting any work in a business that already had a reputation of inconsistency, well before the ongoing layoff wave? From the outside, what about this profession looks compelling? It's tough to make it, but at least the pay sucks!

Why would anybody want to do this? Well, because they love to write and tell stories. That's why I wanted to. When done well, it's a valuable thing, or at least an entertaining one. The issue is the internet's relationship with writing has changed. Kegan Zema, my former editor at the University Of Maine student newspaper who now works in podcasting, recently summarized it well, in a piece for his Making Podcasts newsletter titled "Why Aren’t Media Companies Cool Anymore?":

He latter added:

I don't know how much I want to be an "individual creator," at least in terms of doing it in a way that attempts to generate a primary income. What I have discovered after losing my job is that I still like to write. Stuff like this, just for my own pleasure, to enjoy the process of creating something and be happy with the outcome. Before, that felt like a waste: Why would I write if I wasn't getting paid? Why would I write more when I just spent all day doing it? Now, writing is back to being essentially a hobby, and hobbies are more fun than jobs. I started a Pokémon newsletter and putting the weekly issue together fills my cup in a way that work hasn't for a while. It's just fun.

Will I ever be a full-time writer again? My clothes are too singed and lungs too full of smoke to think about running back into the burning building, even though it's where my professional skills are (were?) best used and it's what I know (knew?) best. The industry I left isn't the same one I entered. It's my understanding there probably isn't a place in it for me anymore, at least not one I want. That was tough for me to accept at first, but here I am.

My new job, by the way, is relevant to my past experience: I'm still an editor, but instead of online news posts, I'm dealing with client deliverables for an accounting and consulting firm. The pay and benefits (benefits: they exist!) are good and this job offers the stability my family and I need. I've been kicked out of journalism, but maybe I needed the push from the nest to find the greener, Shane-Gillis-post-SNL pastures ahead.