Posted on 08/09/2008 4:50:28 PM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
A good friend who is also a journalist is out of a job after 20 years. She was recently laid off and isn’t sure what to do next.
“I guess I’ll freelance or teach,” is what she told me. Frankly, she didn’t seem too excited about either possibility.
Another friend took a buyout from his employer even though he already had his dream job; he wrote opinions for a living.
He knew there was a possibility his job would be eliminated months ago and started considering his alternatives. He put a lot of energy into a job search but ended up realizing nothing gave him anywhere near as much satisfaction as what he was doing. By accepting the buyout offer, he managed to provide temporary security for his family, which includes two young children. The newspaper he works for (not the Journal Sentinel) made it clear that if enough people didn’t take the buyout, the next step would be involuntary layoffs.
“I saw the handwriting on the wall,” he told me.
Last month, I attended a convention of minority journalists in Chicago, which is usually a time to mingle and catch up with old friends and colleagues from over a 25-year career. It’s a time to socialize and reflect on our lives; this year, there was also an undercurrent of panic and anxiety.
When journalist friends get together to talk shop, it can often seem like a meeting of grizzled veterans trading war stories. The truth is, most of us had just reached middle age; we’ve reached a point that used to represent a well of institutional knowledge for our employers.
But the biggest buzz at the convention was about downsizing in the media industry, mainly the hundreds of people expelled in the last six months for financial reasons. All anybody wanted to talk about was the economic whirlwind currently reshaping our world.
“Are you guys laying people off?” was what I heard again and again at the convention, which ironically also featured a job fair where some newspapers recruited our much-younger replacements into less well-paying positions.
In some respects, it’s not a new story for any of us. In fact, most reporters have covered it at least once during their career.
It’s the story about the factory closing that will plunge a town into a recession. It’s a memo from corporate headquarters about downsizing that feels like a kick in the stomach. It’s Midwest Airlines or any Milwaukee company making a somber announcement about massive layoffs.
When it happens to someone else, most reporters know what to do.
Go talk to the people involved and get their stories. Don’t make it a story about numbers; help the readers understand the human pain behind the layoffs. Explain the connection between longtime workers who think of themselves as family because they spend so much time together.
It’s as easy to write as following a template. Until it happens to you.
Last week, a group of my colleagues took buyouts and left the company. The Journal Sentinel newsroom said goodbye to another group of talented people last year in a similar “voluntary separation” plan, which I swear is what they officially call it. It was a wrenching time for longtime employees; some of us never thought it would happen again so quickly.
One of the more annoying aspects of watching coverage of the Brett Favre saga was the fixation on a single millionaire professional athlete having trouble coming to grips with the idea that his longtime employer didn’t want him anymore.
As if football players are the only ones in society who have to come face to face with that kind of reality.
There are reporters, editors, feature writers, cartoonists and columnists at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel who did their jobs just as well as Favre and offered no complaint when it was time to leave. Like I said, we’ve all covered this story before and know the real deal.
Whenever I talk to young people, I make the distinction between having a job and having a career. In my mind, a job is something you do because somebody pays you to do it; a career is the kind of thing you would probably do for free because you enjoy it so much.
When you find a career that actually pays the bills, consider yourself blessed.
I’ve lost colleagues here and across the nation in the past few months who never thought their career would close this way.
I suspect many of those friends will find their way into a new career — but not without looking back fondly on their last one. I also suspect those of us still here will never look at another business story about downsizing the same.
We’ve seen the pain firsthand now.
If these hacks (including you) are so TALENTED, then write a novel or earn your living writing in some other vein. I did a quick web-search and there are TONS of writing-related jobs out there.
But if you're just a HACK, pushing a boiler-plate agenda for the LibTards, you're screwed. You don't have "talent" in the first place and should be flippin' burgers.
I will give you credit though...you didn't blame "race" for journalists losing their jobs. That's a FIRST for you, LOL!
The news business is in big trouble. Newspaper circulation and ad revenue is in free fall. They are in a changing business climate.
They will have to adapt, as does anyone who has gone through layoffs or downsizings of their employer or their industry.
If you can, do...
If you can’t, teach....
If you can’t teach, be a journalist.....
If you get canned...... Ha Ha Ha
I suggest they pick up a copy of Who Moved My Cheese.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Moved_My_Cheese
Maybe Eugene can get a job sweeping out the Palm Beach Post offices when it finally goes belly up...
Hello again, Diana, Packers fan.
Not mentioned here is the parallel story. The Drive By Media’s NOT reporting about Alpha Male Edwards. Or biased reporting of just about everything else, from the science on global warming to the war in Iraq?
If they don’t do the job they are supposed to do, what else could result?
OH ABB
“Cheese Station C” = “Ice Station Zebra?” LOL!
No, I know that book. It is good. I’ve always tried to have the mindset that I’m a “Free Agent” no matter who’s currently paying me to do what.
And sometimes I HAVE been paid in cheese when bartering. Yummy! :)
“Hello again, Diana, Packers fan.”
D@mn Skippy, I am! Thanks for remembering. Can’t WAIT for the first pre-season game Monday night. Cincinnati at hallowed Lambeau Field. (Been there once; one of Reggie’s last games. It was like being in heaven, I kid you not!)
I’m going to wear my Reggie White jersey. My #4 is in the back of the closet for the time being. Not sure when it’s coming back out...and I’m not ready to switch to #12 yet. Aaron needs to prove a few things to me first! ;)
When I went to college, I came this || close to being a journalism major. Went into electrical engineering instead, in order to get a ROTC scholarship. I never regretted that decision.
“freelance or teach.” Teach what?
The government should tax them to provide subscription support for your lofty egalitarian philosophy. Oh, wait, I forgot about PBS.
[...]
In some respects, it’s not a new story for any of us. In fact, most reporters have covered it at least once during their career.
When it happens to someone else, most reporters know what to do.
Go talk to the people involved and get their stories. Don’t make it a story about numbers; help the readers understand the human pain behind the layoffs. Explain the connection between longtime workers who think of themselves as family because they spend so much time together.
It’s as easy to write as following a template. Until it happens to you.
I guess they are finding out that 20 years of writing sob stories, while heartstring tugging, really wasn't all that useful, to the subjects of the articles, or now even themselves. If they had written about how jobs are created, about people pulling themselves up by their own bootstrapps, about people planning for adversity, and ceating their own jobs, they would be much better prepared right now.
““I guess I’ll freelance or teach,”
....best of luck...more and more young people are non readers these days...they were raised on MTV and have short attention spans....the concept of reading for pleasure is foreign to them.
Oh, the humanity!
(Obamessiah, save us from real work...)
Not one word as to why print MSM is fading into oblivion.
hmmmm
They need not worry. In Obamaland, all journalists will become government workers, paid by the taxpayers. They will toil away, at taxpayer expense, to write important stories informing the public of the wonders of Obamaland and the daily miracles performed by the Supreme and Beloved Leader. They will love the Supreme One as will we all and we will all live happily thereafter.
Go talk to the people involved and get their stories. Don’t make it a story about numbers; help the readers understand the human pain behind the layoffs. Explain the connection between longtime workers who think of themselves as family because they spend so much time together.
Exactly. Don't probe into the "numbers." Like were the jobs union so there could be no salary or benefit flexibility. What was the level of taxation that the company had to deal with? What kinds of regulations did the employer have to deal with in trying to keep the company viable? Just go for the sob stories to prove that employers are heartless and capitalism doesn't work for the poor, beleaguered worker.
Go talk to the people involved and get their stories. Don’t make it a story about numbers; help the readers understand the human pain behind the layoffs. Explain the connection between longtime workers who think of themselves as family because they spend so much time together.
Exactly. Don't probe into the "numbers." Like were the jobs union so there could be no salary or benefit flexibility. What was the level of taxation that the company had to deal with? What kinds of regulations did the employer have to deal with in trying to keep the company viable? Just go for the sob stories to prove that employers are heartless and capitalism doesn't work for the poor, beleaguered worker.
What else but journalism.
The problem is that the number of hate Bush, love Obama out of work hacks numbers in the tens of thousands.
Eugene Kane is a liberal black racist that continually makes excuses for his pet protected groups. If you’ve ever read any of his stuff, you know this.
What a whiner. Whiny Dancer.
The author didn’t seem to realize that the reason his job disappeared was that there wasn’t anything in the paper that was worth the time it took to read it. So he enjoyed writing opinion pieces, who cared what he thought? I certainly didn’t and do not now.
This latest thing with Edwards speaks volumes about what is wrong with today’s newspapers. Good riddance in most cases. They may represent the institutional knowledge of their organization, but so did the buggy whip makers.
Eugene Kane will be the last staffer left at the JS. Even then, he will claim racism as they tell him to turn out the lights when he leaves.
It kind of pales by comparison to the hundreds of thousands of us who lost jobs in the Oil and Gas Industry in the eighty’s and nineties. I was out of work for a year. Funny thing, though, none of these news folk or congress critters gave a damn. Now that we are back, we are greedy ‘Big Oil.”
That's a good thing, the problem is that the number is not in the hundreds of thousands.
It kind of pales by comparison to the hundreds of thousands of us who lost jobs in the Oil and Gas Industry in the eighty’s and nineties. I was out of work for a year. Funny thing, though, none of these news folk or congress critters gave a damn. Now that we are back, we are greedy ‘Big Oil.”
Well, there was a big retraining program a few years ago, for the loggers and miners out here in the west. Maybe there is a gubmint program to retrain “journalists” for jobs in the fast food industry. Some of them ought to be able to measure up.
Welcome to the real world where companies fire employees.
I am a fairly enthusiastic non-fiction book reader, and go through at least one or two a week, sometimes more. I am overjoyed when I happen to come across a new book with some "heft" to it that will translate into a couple of enjoyable evenings. A shopping trip today gave me the opportunity to go into a bookstore, and I made an impulse purchase on what I thought would be a good bit of colonial American military history.
To make a long story short, I did not thumb it through well enough, and disregarded items in the author's bio that I have learned are generally danger signs. Despite the absence of bullet-point plaudits from perennial fellow sphincters such as Howard Zinn or Eric Foner (such laurels automatically make me put the book back on the shelf before some sort of ink-borne collectivist mania infects me via skin contact), the author turned out to be another self-loathing American who actually resorts to using the term "bolshie" when describing an 18th Century American attitude.
(My Andy Rooneyesque moment: "Ever notice that a Christian viewpoint is invariably suspect, but everything from the invention of the wheel to bubonic plague is somehow better comprehended when run through the filter of Karl Marx?")
So tonight I am sitting here without reading material because within less than 50 pages, the writer has managed to be a leftist tool enough times to make the book absolutely unreadable to me, and I regret that I have somehow contributed to his bank account. This has been happening lately at too brisk a pace to ignore any more, and I am at the point where these overeducated scribblers can form their own red daisy chain and count me - and my depleted by Democrat energy policy bank account - out. History writers? Bulls**t! Propaganda writers, and I don't need 'em. They might as well follow the newspaper hacks in this story into teaching, as there aren't any public (government) school standards requiring truth or reality to get in the way of a good class/race/gender warfare manifesto.
(taking deep breaths)
Mr. niteowl77
They knew they went to work for a company that has an ideological agenda. They knew that ad revenue drives the company.
Companies that advertise spend their money in places that will get them the most exposure. Newspapers are driven by agenda and not real news.
Deal with it.
Smart talented and fair journalists will become freelancers or begin their own niche markets.
Just like the education industry which in another ten years will not be in the present form and the smart teachers will form their own schools and programs.
Journallist = Star of the story
Reporter = A witness
Who Moved My Cheese.
Good book.
Good advice.
I keep going back to “Men In Black” where Will Smith is taught by old hand agent Tommy Lee Jones to read the Weekly World News and other “trash” weeklys as their reporting was so much better than the “respected” papers... we’ve certainly seen thatthis week with silky pony...
I have news for them - there are plenty of people w/MAs and PhDs in communications/journalism who are looking for higher ed jobs. You don't get one because you want one.
I've been on a few search committees and have talked to others about this - just because you 1) 'love' something; 2) once did something; or 3) have read about something, doesn't make you a teacher or a scholar.
You'd be surprised at the people who apply for college jobs who have little or no background in the subject area, have no idea about teaching pedagogy, and have not read a journal or kept up with the discipline. In addition, they have no idea about the research required for professors in most schools.
Of course, we're talking journalists here - obviously research isn't their strong suit.
There’s always that Internet thingy these these out-of-work journos could work for ;-)
Yes, I'm sure that in the future, these journalists will REALLY portray the heartless corporations as TOTALLY evil, capitalistic pigs who destroy families. The days of sugar-coating that message are OVER!
I like to read the same type of books as you do and feel the same way. Thanks for expressing my thoughts in words.
P.S. Have you ever read "Wilderness at Dawn" by Ted Morgan? Excellent read.
Retraining programs? ? ?
Like the one Bill Clinton proposed upon hearing that several hundred cattle guards were no longer needed since the Park Service was taking all the land from the ranchers.
Said ‘Our Bill’, “Set up a program to retrain those cattle guards”.
8-)
“Our Bill” indeed!
Maybe these “jounalistes” should start reporting the news instead of trying to make it.
Two recent reads for me that weren't too bad: Walter Edgar's "Partisans and Redcoats" is a fairly good overview of militia activities Revolutionary War in the Carolinas, but it wasn't nearly long enough. M.H. Dunlop's "Sixty Miles to Contentment" was interesting in its vignettes of 19th-Century traveling America. Neither book subjects the reader to wildly over-the-top, holier-than-thou PC political posturing.
(The former has none, the latter not enough to bother me.)
Sometimes I stumble across - and enjoy - a little-known gem like David J. Peck's "Or Perish in the Attempt" (which is a D.O.'s thoughts on the medical aspects of the Lewis and Clark Expidition), but I more often bomb like I did yesterday. The days of new straight-up history books the caliber of Louis C. Hunter's "Steamboats on the Western Rivers" seem to be mostly gone. It's probably just as well, since really good, objective histories would only crowd out all the Che Guevara hagiographies and other assorted Better Red Than Read offerings at Borders or Barnes & Noble.
Mr. niteowl77
Oh, that is SO nice. Vince was ‘The One.’ What an awesome man!
“You will be fired with enthusiasm, or you will be FIRED with enthusiasm.” Love it! So many great quotes from that guy.
In my family, when you turn 40, you get an “old guy hat.” It’s one of those styles that Lombardi always wore. ;)
I’m looking ahead to better days. My Dad was a young man of 30 when the Packers won the FIRST Super Bowl ever played. I was a young woman of 30 when they next won. Our son is going on 22, so only 8 more years and we’ll have another one under our belts, LOL!
I post Eugene’s “deep, probing observations” here quite regularly. He always elicits lots of responses. He is totally transparent.
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