The Recession Diaries: Read all about it! Five tips for laid-off media pros

For those not familiar with the "The Recession Diaries" as it appeared on the Chicago Tribune's Web site, I used it to achieve two purposes: share tips for economic survival and thrift, and report my own stories from the home front as I wrestle with debt, financial choices and spending discipline. Those stories, so my readers told me, supplied both knowledge and encouragement, the comfort that we're not alone in this.

In that spirit, I begin my first Recession Diary entry on Walletpop by passing on five tips for a group of people very hard hit by the current recession -- media professionals.

By the end of 2009, the total job losses in the media since the beginning of 2001 will likely pass 14,000 -- roughly 25% of the industry's news workforce lost in nine years, according to the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism.