How do I start over after being laid off in my fifties?

You gave your life to journalism, and now you are laid off in your fifties into a trade that seems to have no seat left for you. That is a real loss, and a real fear, and you are allowed to feel both fully before you do anything else. Do not rush past the grief. It is earned. But do not mistake the industry's collapse for your own. What you actually have is not a job title. It is judgment, the ability to find the truth, to ask the sharp question, to make a complicated thing clear, to work under pressure and hit a deadline. Those are rare, and the world outside newsrooms needs them: communications, research, teaching, writing, strategy. Your skills did not expire. Their old container did. Start by separating who you are from where you worked. Write down what you can do, plainly, in words a person outside journalism would understand. Then have a few honest conversations with people who made a similar jump. At fifty-something you are not too late; you are experienced. The story is not over. You are just reporting a new beat now.