Journalist Hopeful Looking For Advice

I dunno. There's a certain demand for classified advertising and legal advertising that keep newspapers afloat. In the weeks before my last layoff, I picked up a copy of our paper with like four entire papers of foreclosure notices and such and said to a colleague "how can we be losing money with all this crap taking away our space?"

I'm just wondering, as I said in another thread, how much of this is management not being willing to settle for a smaller profit margin in the short term? Is making a 10 percent profit --- as opposed to, say, 30 percent --- worse than having to gut large numbers of people from your staff?

 

Do we?

Personally, I get a little tired of being big-timed and big-leagued all the time by everyone from control-freak football coaches to 17-year-old recruiting prodigies to meathead position coaches, all for barely enough money to fill my gas tank. I don't think I'd go back to covering a daily sports beat if you paid me six figures to do it.

 

None of this is mutually exclusive from attending a really good school. I get it that everyone on here has worked with a Northwestern graduate who didn't even know AP style, but the fact is that there are schools that give you more of a fighting chance, whether that is a blow to your ego to hear or not.

Go to the best school with the best brand name that you can.

 

Well, yeah. But what about charging for your local stuff. ESPN simply does not have the resources to cover your local team -- whether it is pro, major college, D-II, JUCO or high school -- as well as the local paper.

What if we charged for that online?

I don't know if it would work. I'm just spitballing here. By I do know I get emails from all over the world with people asking questions about stuff I write on my beat. I've got regulars from the Phillippines who say it's part of their daily routine. Their only access to my stuff is via the Internet. What would happen if that suddenly went away? You think they might be willing to pony up a couple of bucks a month to keep up with their routine?

Again, don't know if it would work ... but since nothing else seems to be, either, wouldn't it be worth a shot?

 

You're asking the powers that be to hold off purchasing their fourth home or downsize the corporate luxury suite at the stadium to help Loyal Joe who's been with the company 20 years insure his kids get fed? You ought to be ashamed of yourself.