Laid Off: And Launching an Indie Magazine

"In my experience, traditional digital media roles aren’t super jump-back-intoable right now."

Nov 03, 2025

Laid Off is the coolest place on the internet to talk about being laid off. To keep weekly interviews free for all 4ever, you can buy me a coffee or buy readers a coffee (aka sponsor a weekly issue). Appreciate you <3

Before we dive in, a media friend texted me this afternoon about layoffs at Teen Vogue. For context, the publication is being folded into Vogue.com. Teen Vogue will remain “a distinct editorial property, with its own identity and mission.” I’m curious how former staffers feel about this new direction, and why it cost them their jobs. If that’s you… hit reply.

In today’s issue, I talk to former Dictionary.com editor Nick Norlen about launching a “fun, fascinating, uncynical, and human” indie magazine in 2025.

In May 2024, Nick Norlen was laid off from his role as Senior Editor at Dictionary.com, where he’d worked for nearly five years. The layoff came shortly after the company was acquired. The CEO said revenue had been in decline, something Nick said was obvious at that point. Nearly the entire staff was let go.

After that, Nick freelanced and, in his words, “rolled around like a tumbleweed in the dusty desert of the media job market.” Then he decided to launch his own magazine.

It’s called Paper Airplane, and it’s like a grown-up version of Highlights, inspired by the one he’d pitched to the actual Highlights team before they politely passed. The first issue dropped this summer, with 100% of proceeds going to the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants. “I’m hoping to hit $10k soon,” Nick said. The campaign is currently at just over $8,400.

He’ll then launch a crowdfunding campaign in the fall to fund the magazine as a quarterly.

What were some of the projects you worked on while you were at Dictionary.com?

I led a content team: a bunch of really talented and overachieving editors, writers, and content creators. We published daily content, oversaw a homepage redesign, launched video Word of the Day, and rebooted a daily email into a true newsletter. At the same time, I was the project leader for splashy campaigns like Word of the Year and fun stuff like writing contests and our March Madness word bracket.

How did they handle layoffs?

We received invites to a company-wide meeting, where it was announced that there would be layoffs, and that we would receive invites to a separate meeting depending on our status. Shortly after that, we heard from a lot of our coworkers that they had been laid off effective immediately. When another invite arrived with much of the remaining staff included, a lot of us assumed that we were in the “safe” group. But when that meeting started, it was explained that we would have staggered end dates, with some people, including me, working for another month or two on a “transition team.” Only a small handful of people kept their jobs.

You did a Q&A on Bluesky about your layoff with the editors’ group ACES. How did that go? What did people seem to be most curious about?

I titled the Q&A “How I spent my layoff sabbatical.” I got a lot of great questions about what that meant and how it led me to launch a magazine. People were especially curious about whether I’m going to do a print version, which I am.

Let’s talk about Paper Airplane. You’ve described it as a “grown-up version of Highlights magazine.” What made you want to create that kind of space?

I’ve always loved magazines, and what it feels like to sit with a good magazine. Just leafing through, or really poring over every little thing on every page. There are a lot of magazines I like, but no one magazine that I’ve found to be the ideal combination of what I want, which is high-quality, but low-stakes. I want something that makes me feel better after spending time with it, specifically without any of the darkness or cynicism that seems to creep into almost all the media we consume. And I want it to be really human: designed entirely around the reader and their enjoyment, and not just to fill some content hole.

Before launching it, you actually pitched the idea to Highlights — and they passed. Did that fuel you to do it your own way?

It did. It was really helpful that they were kind enough to hear me out. The best part of any personal passion project, I think, is the total freedom to make it exactly what you want it to be. So when I decided I was going to try to launch it on my own, it was thrilling to start making the thing that I had I wanted to exist, with all the weird stuff I wanted to include, and all the little details that get flattened out and discarded when working within corporate constraints.

You decided to donate 100% of the first issue’s proceeds to the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants. Why did you decide to start with a charitable model?

I like the idea of making something from nothing. There were a few times in my career where I was able to find ways to attach small charitable things to my work, but I always wanted to do something bigger. When I first started working on this, early in 2025, I looked around at the state of things and wanted to do something, anything, to help out the people who need it the most. I also knew that the charitable model would make it more likely for people who didn’t know me to collaborate with me on the project.

You’re close to hitting your $10k goal for USCRI. What have you learned from doing a fundraiser like this? Anything surprising about who’s supporting it or how people respond to that mission?

I’ve learned that promotion is everything. It’s crucial to get it in front of as many people as possible, in as many ways as possible, which I’m still learning how to do. So I’ve learned to accept it as a gradual process. One reader, one donor at a time. And in fact the majority of the money raised has been in the form of individual $25 donations. Of course, if anyone or their employer wants to top off the last $1,500 or so to reach the goal, I’d very much welcome that.

Now you’re planning to pivot to a crowdfunding campaign to fund Paper Airplane as a quarterly. What will that look like — and how are you thinking about the shift from a charity project to a for-profit creative venture?

The subscription campaign will be coming very soon. It will include different tiers, including both digital and print options, plus a few bonus surprises. Shifting to a for-profit venture is expensive, especially when offering a print product. And I’m not going to do it without being able to pay all my contributors at competitive rates. But I know there’s a big audience for what I’m offering, it’s just a matter of finding them one by one. So my hope is not only to grow subscribership enough to become sustainable, but also to eventually have the ability to regularly donate a portion of profits.

You’re launching an indie magazine in 2025... what made you want to double down on that path instead of jumping back into a more “traditional” media role?

In my experience, traditional digital media roles aren’t super jump-back-intoable right now. But, even if they were, my confidence in their long-term stability is low. And the more I work on the magazine, the more I see it as something that people actually want, and will continue to want, and will be willing to pay for, so that it can continue to exist, without being beholden to ads or algos or “scaling.”

If layoffs are the “villain origin story” for a lot of creative projects lately, what’s the lesson or energy you’d want to pass on to someone just entering that phase? Who might want to start their own thing post-layoff?

I think I’m going to mess with your metaphor a bit. Layoffs certainly often involve villains, but in my case, the origin story starts way before that. The magazine is an accumulation of a lifetime of tastes and interests. The layoff was a break in the timeline. It created a blank space that gave me some time to think about what it was that I really wanted to do. Of course, it’s also stressful, but you’ve got to let yourself embrace the blank space. That’s what I tell people entering the post-layoff phase. Give yourself some space every day to spend some time not looking for a job, not being productive. And if you decide you want to start your own thing, allow yourself to do it gradually, without making it perfect before you let someone see it. Get it out there into the world, and then see what happens.