D-day At My Place

I knew this was coming, but my place got hit by the axe this morning and my sports position was eliminated. Out of all the incompetent people in our newsroom to swipe, I didn't think it would be me.

However, they threw me a lifeline.

Because I applied for an editor's job a few months back, they offered to move me to a news beat and a Saturday night editor position. The choice should be easy, but I'm conflicted.

I hate it here and so does my wife and a big part of me thinks I should just cut my losses, move back to my parents' house with my wife, get off the journalism ship and go back to school to get a real job.

Thoughts anyone?

 

I'm very sorry you are in this position.

Only you know what's best for you, but if you have a chance to move back into your parents' house and save up some money to retrain, I'd do it. The axe is coming for all of us, sooner than later.

 

I think you should consider taking the job and re-training while doing it.

If you wife and parents are cool with the other, though ...

 

If I didn't love the town I live in and if my wife hadn't made the good friends she did in the short time we've been here, I'd have took my small severance and gone back to school in my hometown and got out of Dodge and the business.

Instead, I'm still working at the paper - in news. But it's not bad. I still think I'll be out of work by 2011.

 

Working in news isn't all bad — it's the only way you're going to advance in this biz short of going to a bigger paper, and good luck with that. Our EE has a sports background, but he went to news in the interim.

 

Yes and yes.

Take the new role for as long as you need it, but take all the steps necessary to beginning school for a new career track. Move just in time to begin the school program (are we talking fall semester?), if that's what it takes. Maybe you find, in the next few months, that the new role is OK or at least the job market improves by a hair and you have new options. Maybe your suspicions are confirmed and you want out more than ever. Maybe your current employer makes your next decision for you, at which point you're at least prepared with a Plan B.

 

Take the news position and look for other avenues during the coming months. Check the local PR jobs at businesses, universities, the hospital or through the Public Relations Council of America.

At least it's a paycheck and, as you said, they threw you a bone.

Good luck.

 

Do you have a bachelor's degree already? If not, go back to school.

I would say don't move in with your parents. Find a way to go back to school without moving in with your folks.

 

Trust me, I don't want to do that. Yes, I do have a bachelor's in journalism...for all the good that's doing me now.

The other problem is that this really is a dead area and the nearest school that has a decent program is 2 hours away, 45 min from where I lived as a teenager. I just don't see how I can make going to school and doing that job work.

 

Take the newsside job, stay employed. Best of luck.

 

Having been laid off recently as well, please trust I'm not being insensitve. You're the only one who can know what the best step is for you right now. Everyone here is going to see the decision through the prism of his/her own situation. My feeling is it's almost always better to be employed than unemployed, but that doesn't mean you should feel that way.

 

Take the job until you find something else.

Cause if you leave, you will still need something else.

This way you can at least make some coin.