Bureau chief laid off by Reuters describes struggle as Uber driver in 'Trump's America'

A former Reuters bureau chief has described his desperate struggle to make ends meet and build a new life for his family as an Uber driver in the United States, after being laid off in a round of budget cuts.

In a powerful personal essay he posted on Substack, American Steven Scherer writes about his life and search for more permanent work -- in a U.S. job market he calls a war zone -- after Reuters eliminated his job as Ottawa Bureau Chief in 2024.

“In Canada, I made about $130,000 per year. Driving, I’m unlikely to exceed the $36,580 per year that is the federal poverty guideline, and it takes twice that much to live comfortably in Northern Virginia,” Scherer writes. “Before, I interviewed prime ministers and CEOs and documented humanitarian disasters for media organizations with a global reach. Now I provide a basic service, and I wait for my phone to beep.”

Scherer, who joined Reuters from Bloomberg in Rome in 2011, lost his right to remain in Canada last year after failing to find a new employer who would sponsor him. He had to sell his home and move his family to his wife’s native Italy. After months of living alone, he is raising his three teenage children in Virginia while his wife has stayed for now in Italy, where she has better access to healthcare than in the United States.

"Every time I think about having to drop my family at the Montreal airport, not knowing when I would see them again, I get tears in my eyes. Then I spent months alone in a basement apartment in Virginia, shooting job applications into cyberspace. By the time I wrote this essay, I had been through all that and I had my kids back with me, so I was able to make it an exercise in storytelling,” Scherer told The Baron.

Scherer’s previous reporting from Italy included distinguished coverage of immigrants who braved the deadly sea crossing from North Africa in search of a better life in Europe. In his essay, he recounts how returning to live in the United States after 28 years stripped him of the illusion that he was any different from the struggling migrants he had written about. 

“At the time I was documenting the contours of human displacement I didn’t really understand what would drive a person to attempt such a dangerous passage, especially with children in tow. Now I am closer to understanding that kind of desperation,” Scherer writes.

Scherer’s essay brought him a flood  of support on social media and at least a couple of potential job leads in comments on LinkedIn, many of them from current and former Reuters journalists.

The essay is highly critical of the aggressive targeting of immigrants by U.S. President Donald Trump, who Scherer writes has made them “scapegoats to distract from the seeping wound that is the relentless shrinking of America’s once-great middle class.”

Scherer told The Baron: “I hadn't written a personal essay since college. I wanted to see whether 30 years in journalism had made me a better storyteller. Obviously, I need a job, and I'd like to keep telling stories, but my goal for this piece was to write an essay that painted a picture of the alienation I feel amid the moral and economic drift in America today."

  ■