San Antonio/Hearst buyouts offered

This paragraph from the memo just haunts me:

It is not lost on us as journalists in this difficult moment that we have built an audience of readers, in print and online, that is larger and more diverse than at any time in our century and half of publishing. We have done that at the Express-News through a commitment to excellence and public service. Now we must find ways to maintain these high levels of journalistic distinction even as valued colleagues depart. It is an unfortunate but undeniable fact that declining advertising revenues are insufficient to support our operations at current levels. At the same time, more and more people have become accustomed to reading us at no cost on the Internet. As a result, we are reducing the newsroom staff by some 75 positions, counting layoffs and open positions we are eliminating.

I know we've been over it a thousand times, but one sentence in that paragraph just keeps jumping out at me.

At the same time, more and more people have become accustomed to reading us at no cost on the Internet.

Tonight, reading that was like thinking you surely had found an answer to a riddle, only to realize there's no prize or payoff, and that the joke's on you anyway. It was like if I kept reading it again and again, the cosmic joke would start making sense to me, or I'd laugh, or I'd cry, or I'd find a way to focus so hard I could go back to 1998 and tell every newspaper publisher in the country not to give away the product for free, or I'd just let go and be at peace with the absurdity of it all.

But really, I just kept reading it over and over as if I'd solve a mystery, and it eventually just made me more numb, which I didn't think was possible.



My best wishes to those affected.

 

Good luck to all.
I just left Hearst and became a schoolteacher.
This was inevitable here in S.A. and elsewhere.
The industry is changed forever. Especially at the larger papers.

 

This is one of my former shops and it was a good one in so many ways. I wish everyone well.

 

You're exactly right. Soon there will be nothing but skeleton newsrooms all across the country.

The recipe of doing more with less will soon expire. With no other ideas, more and more newspapers will die.

Ultimately, we'll all get screwed, even if we leave newspapers. Where will we get our news if there are no reporters left?

 

That's the scary part. Not long ago, many of us were probably thinking, "Well, the newsrooms of the future will be 75 percent as big as they currently are, but good people still will be among that 75 percent -- and so will we."

Lately, it's been a hope that "the newsrooms of the future will be, OK, 50 percent as big as they were and maybe they'll still have good people employed there, including us."

But how such a diminished product can even support half of us, at incomes approaching anything we've been used to, when revenues will drop ever more quickly in tandem with quality, is becoming a complete mystery to me.

 

Blitz if you come back, can you tell us how you became a teacher? I've seriously considered that with my disdain for the business at an all time high.

 

Laid-off friend there in S.A. said the buyout package isn't much and the 75's last day is March 20.

Talking with my friend last night only furthered my desire to get out. Already made up my mind, but this motivates even more.

 

I went through a semester of night classes and earned an alternative teaching certificate.
Having passed the Texas teaching exam ---- TExES, I will shed my "probationary certification" once I complete two semesters as the teacher of record in a classroom.
I graduated the program in late November, so the pickings were slim for a job since it was in the middle of the academic year.
I am a full-time sub and work every day in the SAISD (they need subs every day and everywhere).
April thru August is when I will find the "real" teaching job and get my 2 semesters in.
It's a certainty, I'm told. Just gotta wait til then.
Subs, meanwhile, earn $85 a day. And I'm getting daily experience that will prep me for the real job in the fall.
Texas has about 10-15 alternative certification programs.
Google "alternative certification"
All you need is a desire to help young people and a degree from another field.
My college degree was in broadcast media.

 

Who else got cut besides K-Rod?

 

Are you serious? I am shocked. Bob handpicked him when he hired him a few years ago. wow.

 

Hearst-owned S.F. Chronicle getting ready for huge layoffs at any moment.

 

Subbing in general is a great way to hold yourself over if you're out of a job, depending on the state you're in. When I was looking for work in AZ, I considered it. Substitute teachers get paid $75 a day (in the Phoenix area, at least) and all you need is a bachelor's degree. What that says about AZ's education system, I won't think too hard about, but it ain't bad work if you can get it. The state department of ed web site typically has the requirements.

Heck, a buddy of mine back at my old paper (the agate guy) did substitute teaching during the day. It started as a way to make extra cash. Then the paper laid him off. He was fine because he was making more money as a substitute teacher than the paper was paying him, anyway.