It's called thinning the herd

What Bru wrote hit home. It has rarely been mentioned here about the health insurance factor. I'm in the same age bracket as Bru.
We have one guy (also in this age bracket) who, for at least the past five years, has said that if they ever offered buyouts, he was going to take it and go back to the East Coast where he is from.
There have since been three buyouts and he's still here. So I asked him. He said that he crunched the numbers and this is where he stood: Getting the buyout and selling his condo for a reasonable price, he'd be back east with about $200,000, no place to live, no job and no health insurance. And the health insurance issue was the key factor.

 

So why do we have new threads going up about "thinning the herd," Wicked? Nothing new there. Probably 20 percent of the theads here relate to the declining industry in ruins. Same old, same old. And gee, am I prohibited from posting? You make that call? I wasn't aware.

I'm bringing three decades of experience in this biz across a half dozen papers (four in big league cities), both on the front lines and in management. There might be a few folks on this board who welcome that sort of perspective. Maybe there aren't. Maybe you don't. So just skip my posts, bud. If denial works for you, stick with it. Hope you're not spending all your time scolding those of us who no longer trust this profession. Or feel we gave better than we got.

 

I am not in denial.

I know there are problems going on. Have I looked at my other options? I'd be an idiot if I didn't. (And I haven't found many better, to be honest.)

But the one-trick pony negativism gets under my skin.

Look, there are those of us who are relatively young who HAVE to make this work. I am not gonna go flip burgers at McDonald's for 30 years. For you to say that our business is dead is a little insulting.

P.S. It wasn't meant as a personal attack. I respect your credentials, trust me. You seem to know a lot about the challenges we face. But all you do is tear things down. I'd really love for you to share some of your other knowledge of newspapering and the media -- that's just my personal opinion, I'm no arbiter of what belongs on this board -- because you seem like a very bright guy.

 

I'm at such a small shop that any time we have someone who's dead weight, it gets noticed.

The dead wood usually finds its way off at our shop by hook or by crook.