In your clinically insane Thursday media column: We reveal Julia Allison's freelance rate, Mark Whicker says more unfortunate things, laid-off journalists hustle, and Garrison Keillor suffers a stroke. Possibly after hearing Julia Allison's freelance rate.

How much would you pay for the dulcet writings of one Julia Allison, famous thinker of the internet? One editor asked JA about doing some freelance work, and here is the price she was quoted, via email:

Um ... you're going to have a heart attack :)

I'm at $4 / word, which works out to be about $ 2,500 - $3k for an
article / column.

I for one am having a heart attack, right now. Entrepreneurialism! Can this be true, on the actual planet, Earth? JA tells us via IM that yes, it is true. And that some unknown customers out there are in fact paying her this much money, for writing words for them. [Here is a thing JA is doing now, if you are really curious and masochistic.] So, you should be inspired that it's still possible to "make it," struggling writers. [Gunshot].


OC Register sports columnist Mark Whicker has used the "Let me fill in the victim of a tragedy on all the sports news they have missed" trope before! He tells Poynter: "In 1991 he followed up on journalist Terry Anderson's release after being held captive in Lebanon for close to seven years by writing about all the sports news he had missed." Also Whicker doesn't believe his column "mocked that woman" at all. Mark, just take a few days off from answering phone calls now.


Trendy! The latest addition to the growing canon of laid-off journalists writing about their new, non-journalism jobs: Jay Field, a former public radio journalist who now drives a taxi. And blogs about it! Man. Kind of sucks cause that would have made a good experiential public radio piece.


Folksy human Garrison Keillor is recovering after suffering a "minor stroke" yesterday Monday. He's reportedly up and working already, so hopefully it was, in fact, minor.