For those who've left the biz

I had a rough departure from my first out-of-college gig and there was a six-month gap between working for them and getting hired at their direct (and only) competitor.
For those six months, I had friends who still worked there who would occasionally let me know how bad things were but I wasn't in the circulation area so I never saw the paper.
Then, when I got hired at their competitor, I got a GIGANTIC chip on my shoulder to kick their ass every week in every area of the paper. I immediately came in with redesign ideas and my boss said "Run with it." We redesigned the entire paper three months after I got hired and just started mercilessly killing them.
This isn't hyperbole either. When the circulation numbers came out this year, their main papers were down across the board and our papers were up ... by almost the exact amount.
I won't say we're perfect but I'm glad I ended up where I ended up and now there's not a week that goes by that I don't obsessively look over their product but I chalk it up as 50% bitterness at the way things ended there, 30% being their competitor and needing to know what the competition is doing and 20% laughing to myself at how truly awful they are now.
We hired a new sports editor a couple weeks ago from outside of the area and when I asked him what he thought of the competition, he said he wasn't too familiar with it (Hence no bias) but to him it looked like a high school paper. It was such a telling take and so spot-on that I can't look at it any other way now.
So to answer the question posed here, yes, I look at the paper from the place I left but I do think it's mostly because I'm still in the area. Otherwise I'd never see it as part of my daily life and would have no reason to ever look at it.

 

For those who have left and are still looking for the next thing, marketing firms are always in need of writers.

And some in marketing recognize how valuable our skills are.

http://www.kunocreative.com/blog/bid/72221/Best-Move-for-Content-Marketing-Hire-a-Journalist

There are also three other links in there to similar articles, including one from the Poynter Institute's Jill Geisler that is basically a letter of recommendation.

If you do apply for anything at a marketing company, make sure they see and read those links. And don't just send them in an email, make sure they get in front of their eyes.

 

I'll read stuff on the website, but I can't even remember the last time I bought a printed copy. Pathetic, I know.

I wonder if my local car mechanic does car stuff on his days off.

 

I took a four-day subscription to the local paper because it's so damn cheap, the only way they possibly can fill, print and deliver it to my home is by losing money on the arrangement. The coupons in the Sunday edition make up for my actual cash outlay. I consider that a W for me vs. the jackasses who have run newspapers into the ground and this joint in particular that jerked me around. Way I figure it, if I live long enough, I'll bleed them of their last dollar.

 

I'm four years gone and NEVER look at the local paper, which is now printed in another city.

I still string for it, though, but only at one of the three high schools within 5 miles of my house. I'll look online to see much they screwed up my copy.

 

I do read the old rag, quite often. Mostly just for the people I still know there, though.

 

This thread is full of awesome stories.

 

Beyond the failed business model, I do wonder if television, radio and the internet have made newspapers obsolete in many places. It's just so much damn easier to get a newspaper job than a decent-paying job in broadcast.

 

Speaking of leaving the biz, looks like some at NY Times soon will walk with more 80, 90, 100+ weeks of pay.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/01/business/media/when-the-forces-of-disruption-hit-home.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0

 

It really sounds like the Orange County Register is a disaster. Wow.

 

Let's assume for a moment that no layoffs occurred, no cutbacks, and the newspapers printed today are of the same robust quality they were in the late 1990s.

For those who do not read them now because it's free online and/or more timely and/or because that's just the way you prefer to read your news in these times . . . would you read the print products if they were as good as before?

If the answer is no --- why would you, after all, since there will never be "more" in the print edition --- then how can you blame publishers, CEOs and all these "shortsighted" people for the demise of the industry? It was an inexorable decline, pushed to the edge of the cliff by the demise of classifieds and sent to its death because the business model simply doesn't work. Not much different than vinyl records.

 

I don't "blame" anyone for the decline of newspapers. It was very much inevitable.

I don't envy anyone whom remains, obviously. But it was never about the "suits" as much as the industry itself being unsustainable.