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Leaving the business -- second thoughts

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by OtterGrad, Jan 6, 2009.

  1. OtterGrad

    OtterGrad Member

    Well, I definitely miss the camaraderie on the desk. It's probably the thing I miss most (especially where I am alone on the copy desk).

    On a copy desk, you get to know people differently than you would in a normal office setting. For one thing, it's at night, when people are instinctively less guarded. And you're on the same team, working toward the same goal, racing against the same clock, fighting the same obstacles. Agreed that excitement is often overrated. Satisfaction -- especially shared -- is often underrated.

    But you're right, Waylon. I should be careful not to romanticize it. For a single dad with weekend visitation, nothing beats having weekends off for the first time in forever.
     
  2. Ace

    Ace Well-Known Member

    You're not alone, Otter. You have your SportsJournalists.com family.
     
  3. OtterGrad

    OtterGrad Member

    Ace:

    That might be the most comforting thing I've heard in 2009. Thanks so much. :)
     
  4. spaceman

    spaceman Active Member

    Otter, I thought you were pre-med.
     
  5. Sam Mills 51

    Sam Mills 51 Well-Known Member

    I left the biz 18 months ago for non-professional reasons and thought I was done. I missed it.

    I was fortunate enough to be hired on a part-time basis a few months back in addition to a non-biz gig, then dumped three months later for budgetary reasons. Luckily, I had an acceptable fallback.

    Dunno if I'll get back in. I'd like to, but that last experience will make me think twice before not having a better professional safety net should the opportunity somehow present itself somewhere.
     
  6. PCLoadLetter

    PCLoadLetter Well-Known Member

    What's the difference?
     
  7. OtterGrad

    OtterGrad Member

    Well, I don't think Sanjay Gupta doesn't have to worry about any competition from this neck of the woods...

    Although my handwriting is bad enough, to be sure. I'm certainly an illegible bachelor.
     
  8. Well, sure, all of that. But part of the fun is all the different personalities and motives and skills, all kind of thrown together.

    Maybe I was lucky and ended up on a beat with a bunch of great guys who were also true professionals in every sense of the word. Hell, even the Rivals and Scout guys, persona no grata around these parts, were pro's pros.
     
  9. NDub

    NDub Guest

    I'm trying to get out of the biz and hope I don't have second thoughts about getting back in (maybe some freelance on the side).

    Was talking with my barber yesterday about getting out and he was like "You know, it'll probably come calling back to you in a few years down the road. Because you love it and you're good at it." I quickly responded, "I don't think so. And I hope it doesn't." I'm a yung'un and I've already learned that this is a business, a faltering one, and I need to stay out when no I leave. No matter how much I enjoy it.
     
  10. forever_town

    forever_town Well-Known Member

    My former shop was a community weekly located in a big city suburb. However, I still managed to manufacture some of that daily deadline pressure with Web exclusive stories, which I'd rework for the print edition.

    I did that when I covered a murder trial last year. I'd do daily updates on the Web site, then do somewhat of a recap for the print edition. And actually, when I started covering a team in the Cal Ripken Sr. Collegiate Baseball League, one of the teams it faced asked me for my story that night. That gave me the equivalent of a daily shop's deadline in my mind.

    There are some things I miss about my job. One of them is the camaraderie I felt with my co-workers, employees and interns. One of them was the weekly rush of seeing the fruits of our labor every Wednesday morning. The other part was basically getting to do the thing I loved most for a living.

    However, there are a lot of things I won't miss, some of which I've already detailed in my thread Ask not for whom the bell tolls ... on Anything Goes.
     
  11. I'll get back into it, if I ever really leave it totally, but only on my own terms. No more desk duties. No more being a slave to "availability periods." And so on and so forth.

    That might make me one of the prima donnas of the newsroom talked about in another thread. But you know what? I don't care.
     
  12. Joe Williams

    Joe Williams Well-Known Member

    Fair enough. You were indeed fortunate, Waylon. I had something like that for a spell at one place, where the competition also were good people, and it sure did elevate the grind into something almost resembling fun!
     
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