It's brutal out there at the moment, and any writer who isn't worried about it is delusional. Newspapers are sloughing off staff even faster than they are losing readership. Magazine feature holes are shrinking to nothing. The big altweeklies, which used to be almost recessionproof, are all owned by a tanking conglomerate. Word rates are lower. And the careers of even ASME-award-certified members of the $5-a-word club often have the shelf-lives of yogurt - the rise of blogs has amply proven that there are thousands of people eager to do our work, or at least some facsimile of our work, for free.