When Ashley Burns left his media job helping build a prominent platform covering the latest trends and topics in music and pop culture, he was ready for something new and began searching for a job in travel writing. He was recruited by another well-known publisher and jumped into what he had imagined was his dream journalism job in travel, only to find out that the company’s financials were somewhat questionable. Burns did his best to help keep the publication afloat through the pandemic, but travel journalism typically pays less than other jobs in media, thanks largely to the influencer effect–wherein unpaid influencers are given priority over journalists because of their reach. Covid-19 further undermined the entire media industry, and layoffs have been rampant in the business for the last few years.

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Since Burns saw the writing on the wall with his new employer, he kept an eye out for other opportunities. He found an editor position he was excited about at a travel outlet owned by a digital marketing company. He applied and, over the course of eight weeks, interviewed eight times with eight different people. “I had given them some of my best ideas. The ones I’d been sitting on that weren’t good enough for my employer,” Burns told Observer. But after the final round of interviews, he said he woke up one morning with a bad feeling. “Sure enough, I got an email from the recruiter saying that we will not be moving forward with hiring for this position at this time,” he said.

A few months later, as Burns was........

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