Exit strategy

we're mucking up a thread about 3,000 folks who will be asked to leave their jobs while "talking" about leaving the industry. i thought maybe the topic needed it's own thread.

anyone want to continue and give those folks their own thread? ...

 

lookit tom the kind! it's almost like catching a leprechaun.

 

My exit strategy is A) find a new job, B) go to graduate school, C) hang myself.

 

I'm just jumping straight to C.

 

Let's not even joke about that. I already know of one person who did that shortly after being canned.

The majority of the people on this board will be out of journalism within the next year or so. Given the state of the business, almost all of those people will be better off.

 

For those shops that have the ability to work out a severance package, I would suggest having them agree to pay for some portion of the graduate school many people might be looking into soon.

When the steel mills collapsed around my father in the 1980s and 1970s, many of the workers, who had no post-high school schooling, had the ability to attended college on the dime of the steel mill.

Too few took advantage of their opportunity.

 

Unfortunately, that will never happen with newspapers.

The place where there is the most room for negotiation is on benefits. A lot of places, if you ask, you may be able to get an extra month or two of medical. If your whole family is covered, that could be several hundred a month.

 

My night classes end Nov. 17 and I will need only take the state exam to be a full-fledged, alternatively-certified school teacher.
I am excited. If I had followed through with my plan as a freshman, to be a history teacher and a basketball coach, I'd be in my 20th year now.
The second semester, I changed to broadcast journalism.
And here I sit. It's been a hell of a ride, though. Lots of cool people and lots of cool events.
(LSU pressbox bread pudding might have been the all-time best food served up)
Just enough money to subsist, though I never "graduated" to the big-market paper which would have helped, salary-wise.

 

There's always COBRA laws, which allow you to maintain your company health plan option for 18 months -- but you've got to pick up the whole premium, both your share and the company's share, which probably was handled on a 20/80 or 25/75 basis. There's usually a small administrative fee on top of that, so your costs will quadruple or quintuple.

Beats forking over savings to cover a broken leg, though, if you don't have a better alternative.

 

If you work for one of the bigger chains, it will cost them a lot less to keep you on benefits than it would cost you to get COBRA. Tell them you know of someone else at another paper in that chain who was able to extend his benefits. If you have a nice HR person, they might help you out. If not, it never hurts to ask.

 

Grad school, maybe, though my shop, after promising my roommate during his interview they'd take care of his school, told him as fall classes were about to start that the money wasn't there.

And somehow I don't think they'd foot the bill for a welding certificate.

 

This week has done it for me.

Before this week, I was optimistic. I kept telling myself "There will always be a need for a good reporter and/or editor. No metro of 200,000 is without a paper. We'll survive."

Now I'm not so sure. Specifically, I'm not sure I'll survive even if the paper does.

I'll begin "exploring my options" shortly. Problem is, with the overall economy tanking, there aren't many around here.