Upstarts: Those That Can’t Do

An upside of the bottoming-out of journalism as a profession? Not one but two new non-profits modeled on Dave Eggers’s “826” tutoring-and-writing centers for kids are in the works here: Spells Writing Center, under Jill Schiller and former Philly Mag staffer Caroline Tiger, and Mighty Writers, brainchild of ex-Philadelphia Weekly editor Tim Whitaker. The Spells team — deep in fund-raising — has already snagged Jennifer Weiner, Elizabeth Gilbert, Tigre Hill and other literati as advisers. Isn’t Whitaker worried they’ll have cornered the market on local literacy by the time he gets going? “There’s room for a lot of these things,” he says sanguinely. And plenty of unemployed journalists to volunteer at them.