Life after journalism

Corporate writing

I had a staffer who left us to do that and he said people who can write well are viewed with a certain awe by many business types.
As he said, "They think its magic."

It is a skill and can be monetized outside newspapers

 

Yeah that approach works great until you tear your ACL playing basketball.

 

interviewed this morning for a p.r. job and the skills i developed in running a small newsroom seem perfect for what they're looking for. and while my fingers and toes are crossed about getting the gig, it'd still feel weird for a while. but the better pay and long-term prospects would make up for that.

 

For me the timing could not possibly be worse.

Zell hammer waiting to drop in the next few weeks (or days).

Fiancee has late August interview at the US Embassy for her visa, at which time she will need to present an Affidavit of Support from her petitioner (me). No job = no visa = no marriage.

 

That is horrible. I wish you two the best of luck.

Ugly, ugly, ugly time in the business.

 

That sucks, BTEx. Best of luck to you both.

 

Just explain to the feds that you work in the newspaper industry and this is just part of the corporate master plan of "rightsizing" to move into a brave new world of Interwebs journalism. They'll understand.

Either that, or go grab the first available barrista job you can find, just to keep a stream of income and have an employer to write down under "Employer: __________" Good luck. Remember, jobs come and go but a marriage is (supposed to be, anyway) forever.

 

I worry about this, too, since the rumors are swirling at our place.

As a white male somewhere on the yonder side of mid-50 but not quite to the big 6-0, I worry about being employable at something I'd enjoy doing. Hell, I don't even know what that would be. Guess I could take early retirement but am not sure if I'm financially or emotionally ready for that.

This really bites. Through the years I never dreamed I'd be heading down the homestretch worried about things like this.

 

I've thought a lot about starting a photography business ... it's hard to make the money work in my head just yet but i've already got one freelance gig lined up that pays $100 an hour ... I took prom pics a month ago for a friend (six couples) and we grossed close to $600 on one night of work ... after expenses and making prints I still may bring in $400 or so, but not bad for an evening of shooting and maybe another 8-10 hours of processing photos and bagging prints ...

I've still got lots to learn and I don't have enough steady clients yet to go solo, but I've thought long and hard about reversing my thinking -- photography is the job and newspapers become the hobby ...

like Moddy above, I would have told you a couple years ago that thinking was nuts and that I'd be in newspapers forever... alas, that has changed -- even today, all our publisher raved about in a staff meeting was how we were going to use stringers more and more, thus not filling that open reporter position ... we're only staff of three in the newsroom as it is, covering three counties ...

 

Just throwing the site indeed.com into the mix. I think it's the best job search site there is.

 

I don't think you understood what he said.

 

Part of me thinks web design/site management would be the best route. Maybe brush up on Photoshop, learn Dreamweaver. Maybe start up on a freelance basis for smaller businesses, on days when they don't need me at the car wash.

But I don't want to get sucked into that without a game plan -- much like the newspaper industry did.

Again, like many here I'm sure, one thing that has never failed to perplex me is this industry's unrelenting willingness to unconditionally embrace the medium that is proving to accelerate its downfall. I understand the advantages of real-time news delivery; what I never could figure out is why over the past decade no one in the corner offices came to realize that the relevance of the newspaper in relation to the Internet presence had to be part of the larger equation. That there had to be a game plan justifying the existence of both elements. In not doing so, we forced readers and advertisers to choose between them.

Our newspaper was one of the late bloomers in terms of a web site presence, and even still they fell into the same trap. First the newspaper was the mainstay and the web site, a necessary novelty. Now the scale has tipped the other way, even as a dependable means of securing significant online advertising continues to elude us. In the newsroom, it increasingly feels like putting the paper out is simply the end-of-the-night ritual that separates two long days' worth of blogging.