McClatchy to eliminate 1,600 jobs

Once worked with an older fellow -- he'd been the ME of the paper at one point a decade or so before, but was spending the last few years of his career on the sports desk. I asked him once what he thought, looking back. "I went to work one day when my daughter was 5," he said, "and when I came home, she was 14."

 

TP, I can only speak for myself. I enjoy writing sports and putting out a sports section. Yeah, there's stuff to put up with but I knew that going into it.

 

Because almost every job requires time. That's why it's a job. Almost the entire world has to work, unless you're rich or you physically cannot. I don't work 70 hours a week and get paid for 40. But those 40 hours are worked while the rest of the world is home with their family, asleep, or out having fun. And I tell myself, it could be worse. I'm generally on the desk, so I don't travel. I don't have to work two jobs to make ends meet (yet, anyways, give it some time).

Working nights and weekends had its benefits when I was younger. I cared for my kids during the day, my wife did at night. We never had to use daycare, and I got to see my kids take their first steps and all that.

Problem now is, the kids are in school, and they have activities on weekends, and that leaves very little time for us together. At the same time, food has to be bought, and a roof has to be provided. That means having a job.

Five days a week, one or both my kids will ask me if I have to work when they get home from school. When I tell them that I have to, there's disappointment on their faces. It breaks my heart, but I tell myself that at least they have food in their stomachs. I try the best I can to make their soccer games. Sometimes, I have to miss them. And I hate that.

My parents worked tons of hours, both to provide for them and me. My dad, in his 60s, still works 12 hour days in a good unionized job. My mom had worked two jobs, one of which wasn't physically pleasant, to help get me through college. I hope I don't have to make the same sacrifice to get my kids through school.

At the same time, I can definitely emphasize the resentment of journalists who have worked their entire lives only to have it tossed aside because some beancounters, who made a heckuva lot more money than us, decided not to save their 30 percent profit margins for a rainy day.

Ultimately, almost everybody works. If it were up to me, I'd take Mark2010's crystal ball and bet on lottery numbers. Then I wouldn't have to work. Unfortunately, I have to.

 

When I was a baseball writer, I noticed that most of the other baseball writers were either single, divorced or had the kind of marriage where a lot of distance and time apart were good things. You know, half their time spent in different cities for eight months of the year and a big portion of the rest with one at the ballpark, one somewhere else on many evenings.

Didn't like any of those options, without even factoring children into the equation.

That cured me of my initial sportswriting goal of being a baseball beat writer.

This, however, has little to do with McClatchy eliminating 1,600 jobs.

 

that's preposterous

 

We are a dying breed. Hope it all works out well for my friends at Lexington Herald-Leader, a great newspaper!

 

good point, joe.

if anyone wants to continue that discussion, maybe they should start a new thread.