Thursday, May 07, 2009
Lamentations on the Future of our Business
A column from the WP's Dana Milbank about the Senate hearing on the future of Newspapers:And later:They came as if to their own funeral.
Reporters from Hearst, USA Today, McClatchy, the Dallas Morning News, The Washington Post, the Washington Times and the Boston Globe -- their employers in varying stages of decline or death -- took their places at the press table for a Senate subcommittee hearing yesterday titled "The Future of Journalism."
"I hope I get laid off," one of the reporters could be heard telling a Senate staffer, "so I can get the severance."
But it was (David) Simon, once a Baltimore Sun reporter, who struck the strongest blow for newspapers. Though scolding publishers for their "martyrology" and mismanagement, he spoke of how "aggregating Web sites and bloggers contribute little more than repetition, commentary and froth" and added: "The parasite is slowly killing the host."
Go read it.
So, I'm procrastinating on writing a story (that got held anyway) and I stumble across this column in the Boston Globe by Kevin Cullen.
As a journalist, I got pulled in by his lede (even if it is a rehash of what was drilled into us in j-school) because really, don't we all think our jobs are more noble than that of those we cover?
If you ask anybody why they got into this business and they say it was for the money, they are either certifiably insane or no longer in the business.
Few in journalism call it a business. We like to think we forfeited bigger paychecks to pursue something that is essential: speaking truth to power, comforting the afflicted, afflicting the comfortable.
I'm here in New England watching as the Globe struggles with wage cuts and other concessions in an effort to stay afloat. I have to say as a newspaper snob myself, I always thought the Times was better than this. I had this notion that if any paper would understand the value of journalists, it would be the Times. And they would do what it took to make sure they continued supporting great journalism. But as Cullen said, the Globe relationship with the Times wasn't a marriage, it was a business deal. And, really, I think we all knew that if it came down to the Times and anything else, the Times was going to take care of home first. Shoot, I was told by Times employees not to go to a Times regional paper expecting the same treatment as I would in New York. Only The New York Times is The New York Times. Cullen continues:
It would be easier to get worked up if there were shining examples of an enlightened newspaper company figuring all this out. The Times has made lots of mistakes. I wish they didn't build the Taj Mahal on Eighth Avenue. I wish they'd close the International Herald Tribune before they gut the Globe. And, at the very least, the bigshots at the Times should have climbed aboard the Acela and come up here to explain to us, and to you, their threat to close the Globe. When an essential element of your business is demanding transparency of others, it looks pretty shoddy when you expect none from yourself.
But hating The New York Times is like hating the Yankees: It might make you feel better, but it means nothing in the standings.
Labels: dismay, dying newsroom, fear, frustration, industry analysis, media ownership, the industry, union, Washington
continue...Monday, April 06, 2009
It’s getting kinda hectic around here.
All around us, we’re seeing the ruins of papers gone. Bye Bye
At my paper, the company is proposing to guild members to take a 2.5 percent pay cut. The Guild put out a newsletter detailing the cut and asking for our feedback. On the back, lists a few options of things we could ask for in exchange for the cut.
As my coworkers looked at the paper, they all but exploded with outrage that they were being asked to make yet another cut (the company has laid off at least 100 guild members in the last 6 months, stopped our 401k match and delayed a contribution for the pension phase out plan already). They indignantly marked “there are no circumstances under which I would accept a pay cut.”
I stared at the paper and twirled my pen in my hand. I didn’t know what option to choose.
Here’s my problem: I have a job. And I’m grateful for it. Especially as I see friends up the road dealing with the prospect of being unemployed very soon. Do I want to take a pay cut? Hell no. Do I want to keep my job? Hell yes.
I was talking to a friend in
Labels: business practices, dismay, dying newsroom, fear, layoffs, media ownership, the industry, union
continue...Thursday, December 11, 2008
Grazed by the Axe
The worst part is watching the names trickle in.Management refused to disclose the names of who was let go, for good reason, I suppose. But on some level, I'd rather just know, not because I want to be in people's business, but because these are my friends, my colleagues -- in some cases, what I consider my family -- being shown the door.
Instead, I have to read names in the paper or on the blogs.
And my heart is broken all over again.
Some of you know I spent a long time trying to get into the place where I work today. And it hasn't been easy staying -- no place is when you're the kid and the minority. But I've been blessed with what I called a "workplace family" -- folks who encouraged me, challenged me, gave me a swift kick in the butt when needed, and quite literally saved my ass when something was about to go down. They encouraged me and protected me, all because they knew, too, the difficulties of being the odd man out.
But now I'm reading their names. On blogs. In the paper.
And now my support system is shattered.
Suddenly I feel like I'm standing alone. And I can't help but to feel a little shattered too.
Labels: broadcasting, dying newsroom, layoffs, mentorship
continue...Friday, September 26, 2008
Layoff Blues
I just got really scared.I’m sitting in my car in the parking lot outside my job with the car running and Raphael Saadiq playing on the stereo and I feel like I’m about to hyperventilate.
I just left one coworker in my office while she was printing out her resume to potentially shop around at a job fair this weekend. My boss skipped out early. She was laid off yesterday and has been mentally checked out since. The guy in our office who got laid off kept plugging away at stories today, just like always, except that his flow was constantly interrupted with phone calls he’d take in the hallway. My guess is job offers and financial matters.
This is what it feels like to be in a dying industry, I suppose.
At first, I was angry. Angry that all 30 of our cuts had to be borne by the news department. Angry at management for refusing to acknowledge the value we add. That without us, the paper will be nothing but a multi-page advertisement. But they don’t listen to me.
In two weeks, my job will change. They told us that the bureau system as we know it will be gone as of Oct. 10. I turn 25 two days later and return to work that Monday to a newsroom full of uncertainty and trepidation. Happy Birthday to me.
I was talking to a photographer when the first layoffs were announced. He asked me if I’d been shopping my resume around. I had, I told him, but there was a problem. The places I’d been shopping it to were having hiring freezes or worse – the people I’d been cultivating relationships with for years had taken buyouts. He told me I’d be fine. I told him I have no marketable skills. He laughed and tried to reassure me that I did.
I don’t.
I’m a newspaper reporter in a world that increasingly is telling us that they don’t want to read newspapers. I’m a newspaper reporter in a business where management feels it’s more prudent to cut news staff than advertising or production. I’m an average news reporter in an economy where I’m competing for the few available jobs with people much more experienced and way more talented than I.
Thank God that for now, at least, I’m safe. I know that when the next round of layoffs comes, I’ll be in the class that gets cut. And I have no idea where I’d go. What do you do when the industry you fell in love with as a kid doesn’t want you anymore?
I have some management experience, filling in as bureau chief when my boss was out. Maybe I can manage a coffee shop. I call in updates and write breaking news for the blog sometimes. Maybe I can be a telemarketer. I have years of practice taking things that people say and do and rehashing them for a new audience. Maybe I can be a history teacher.
I was talking to one of my old competitors the other day. She left the local paper and went to go work for the local theatre company in the marketing department. She gave me comp tickets to a show the other night. Says she loves her job. Maybe she has the right idea.
What scared me most as I packed up my things and walked to my car, what has me writing this blog on my laptop in my Cavalier, is that it’s not so much that I can’t do anything else. It’s that I don’t want to. But I’m coming to realize increasingly that wanting something doesn’t make it so.
Labels: dismay, dying newsroom, layoffs, the industry
continue...Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Layoffs
I'm not really sure how to start this post. So I just will.Today, the company announced that they are laying off 30 people from the news department.
We knew the layoffs were coming. We knew they'd happen by mid October, but that's all they told us. We didn't know how the cuts were coming, who would be affected, or anything.
I knew something was wrong as I walked up to the building this afternoon. I'd just come from a water rate hike hearing and was coming to the newsroom for the first time today. I saw a photographer standing outside on his cell phone, clutching a Guild newsletter. I knew we'd gotten some news about the layoffs. I just didn't know what.
As I made my way up to my office, I got a text from a friend in the main newsroom.
When were you hired? I just lost my job.
I rushed downstairs to her hangout spot -- a place behind the building she often goes to smoke handrolled cigarettes -- to make sure she was okay. She seemed fine, and I didn't really know what else to do. She wanted to get back into the newsroom to finish the day. So I let her. Upstairs in my office, I learned that one of my newly-married, soon-to-be a father, coworkers had been laid off.
I was hired in January 2006 officially. The cut off date for layoffs was May 30, 2006. Just a few months seperated me from unemployment. They took all of the part-timers firts, and a handful of full-timers got caught in the mix as well.
I've never felt so bad about having a job.
Labels: dismay, dying newsroom, layoffs, writer's guild
continue...Friday, September 12, 2008
It took a lot not to cry today
It was as quiet as one can expect any newsroom to be.Phones went unanswered and for about an hour today, all of our attention was focused.
Today, we said good luck to some of our colleagues who took the buyout my paper offered last month. As editors read the departing reporters bios and shared anecdotes of their time here, I realized most of them had been here longer than I'd been alive.
There was cake. There were speeches. There were lots and lots of jokes and funny stories. And there were tears. And lots and lots of hugs.
Everyone seemed happy to go. They'll spend their time writing books. Or at Red Sox games. Or just living their lives greatly. They said so. But for us who will show up to work on Monday without them, there's a void.
I went downstairs earlier to say goodbye to a few of my favorite reporters who are taking the buyout. Someone asked what the mood was in the bureaus. My paper announced buyouts in August, and come October, we will have layoffs. No one knows how many, nor the method that will be used to make the cuts. I told them that right now, we weren't uneasy just because there were too many variables to worry about. We'll be concerned when we have more information.
But when I went upstairs, I couldn't help looking at the classified ads that show up on the various listserves I belong to. I wanted to at least know what was out there. Because if I go, it won't be by choice, like these guys.
Labels: buyouts, dying newsroom, layoffs, quitting time, the industry
continue...Thursday, August 21, 2008
Say that, say that! Part Duex
(*queues the church organist)Somebody find the person who wrote this comment, get them together with a venture capitalist -- and fast!
(*does a "Halleluah" stomp)
GO!
Labels: dying newsroom, frustration, rebirth, the industry
continue...It's always darkest before dawn
For some reason, I thought I was safe.My paper had gone through buyouts in the years before I came to call it home. Our staff was already so thin, I knew that really, there was no fat to trim.
At Unity, as I went booth to booth hearing tales of recruiters who wanted to hire, but couldn't, I had a little bit of satisfaction in the fact that I had a job and for the moment, my newsroom was remaining in tact.
Not so much anymore.
Midnight was the deadline for employees willing to take the buyout that the company offered days after I left UNITY. I got the call that we'd be trimming some lean while I was at a court reporting conference in Reno.
I stepped out of the session to have my boss read me details on my buyout offer. I don't remember the details, but I think it was something like $4,000 and maybe another $4,000 in medical coverage.
Peanuts, even by industry standards.
So I chalked it up and readied myself for whatever would come. I had good clips and contacts, so I'd milk them dry if I got laid off. Until then, I was going to go back to my job and work like nothing had changed.
But things are changing.
Come Sept. 12 or so, the 22 people who took the buyout across the company (here, Dallas and Riverside, Calif.) will be gone. Among them will be my friends, Scotty and Mark. And I almost think I'm more sad about seeing them go than anything. I would barely make it past the cubicle pod they shared when I went down to visit the newsroom because I'd be wrapped up in conversations with them, laughing and joking and somehow learning at the same time. I'm going to miss that.
The 22 people who took the buyout may not be enough, as the company hoped for 10 more to take the offer. We'll find out in the coming days if we'll resort to layoffs. If so, part-timers will go first, and then jobs will be taken by seniority.
Mark spoke with The Providence Phoenix and offered these thoughts on the buyout. Says The Phoenix: He described how a previous buyout opened fresh paths for him, including the chance to cover the State House, and in terms of younger staffers, he says, "Now it's going to be their opportunity."
My God, I hope he's right.
Labels: buyouts, dismay, dying newsroom, layoffs, the industry, union, writer's guild
continue...Thursday, July 03, 2008
Did the Wire Service kill the Newspaper Star?
I have nothing against wire services.You know, Reuters. Associated Press. All those news services.
I respect them immensely. The reporters who work there are some of the best in the business and I've been scooped by them at least once (I know you all have, too). Shoot, some of my best friends work for wire services. I was thisclose to applying for a job at one of them myself.
I'm trying really hard not to hate on them because they don't deserve it. It's just, lately, everywhere I look, I see another collegue leaving a newspaper to go to a wire service. If the trend continues, there may not be much of a newspaper for wire services to put their copy into.
Maybe it's the money (I hear they do pay well). Maybe it's the exposure (you get run in papers across the country and online and broadcast!). Maybe it's the fast pace of the deadlines and the ability to make everything a national story and get out of the hyper-local crack newspapers have been on for the last decade.
But as I see some of the best and brightest move to wire services I can't help but think: who's going to be left to write for the newspaper?
Yes, I know the industry is "dying." Many people greater than me have eulogized my dear industry more times than I care to count. Yes, I know everything is going online and people want news now, now now. I got that. But am I the only one saddened even a bit by this trend?
I was talking to a friend of mine who has applied for a job at the AP. The wire service, she says, is the only way to get her out of the small market she's in and into the NYC metro area. The paper she's at, she says, is not longer challenging and the internal politics are wearing on her.
For her, the wire represents a way out.
Here's what I wish would happen:
I wish that all of the great writers everywhere would go to their local newspaper and write the hell out of a beat. When they do that, I wish they would be paid for what they're worth. I wish that everyone -- old newsroom curmudgeons, jaded journos and everyone in between -- would take ownership of the dead trees that land on their doorstep every morning and commit to making it better. I wish that companies would invest more money into the newsroom so the journalists there could have the money to tell the stories they need to tell, the ones they are more than capable of doing.
This is not to knock the hustle of anyone who goes to a wire service because it's a good fit for them, because it's a great opportunity covering something you love, or just because you work there. That's not what this is about.
I want great papers to go to from Providence, and great reporters to learn from while I'm there. And I just wish I didn't feel that the only way to survive in the newspaper business is to jump ship.
Labels: dying newsroom, frustration, inspiration, the industry
continue...Tuesday, July 01, 2008
Say that, say that!
Found this on Romenesko:A morning paper should have a busy newsroom at 11 p.m.
Hartford Courant Colin McEnroe says nobody has ever suggested it would be a good idea if he ran a newspaper. Still, he has some ideas for the "new" Hartford Courant. "The building should be damn near empty until 2 p.m. and full until 11," he writes. "Somewhere a long the way, newspaper jobs gradually started to resemble other white collar jobs. We all wanted to go home to the suburbs, have a glass of wine, interact with our spouses and kids. ... If the news staff is going to be an elite strike force, it had better include a lot of workaholics and night owls."
(*speaks in tongues)
Some of Colin's tips to journalists in dying newsrooms:
1. REGAIN YOUR SENSE OF URGENCY.
4. GET SMARTER ABOUT THE WEB.
5. BRACE YOURSELF. (Love that one!)
Read the full blog post, here.
Labels: buyouts, dying newsroom, journalism, layoffs
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