Unbelievable happenings at the Star Ledger

For me, three and a half years out now, the question has become why is anyone still in? These are newspapers that deserve to die because every employee stood up one fine day and walked out never to return.

 

I would buy a commemorative mug of such an event.

 

There's a thread, but it's in Sports & News for some reason.

 

Newspapers folded and all I got was a lousy coffee mug!

 

c'mon, michael. i love ya, but how many of us can just walk out on a paycheck? three-and-a-half years out of the biz has perhaps numbed you to the harsh realities those of us hangin' on are facing. you're much better than that, my friend.

 

Shockey, it took me awhile to learn this, but newspaper people have skills that can be used in other, less craptacular fields of work. I don't make quite as much money, and I don't have nearly as much fun, but I work for a prosperous growing concern that treats employees with decency, and oddly, as if they value the work we do.
I believe that self-preservation should be leading newspaper people to look for work outside the business. I'm not asking for financial suicide. But why love a racket that, as we see on this thread, hates you, the worker?

 

This is what it has come to. Newspapers have cut so much they don't have any more beats to put someone out to pasture. No bureaus, no community news sections, no lifestyle writers.
It's clear that papers have ramped up their cuts in the last few weeks and are ready to accept their fate.

 

Mike I feel what you are saying. What are you doing now?

 

I edit sports medicine and sports business academic journals and media academic and business journals, to create databases for an electronic publishing firm. It's kind of a cross between copy editing and going to grad school for a living.

 

I'm wondering if management might consider it more valuable to deliver the mail than to write and edit stories. Kind of reporter = garbage; mail sorter = moderately useful.

 

Tonight I went to a book signing by some obscure punk rocker from the '70s. He runs a muckraking newspaper in Buffalo now and I asked him about the future of the business.

"You have to find a way to get paid, man. And they have to find a way to get paid for the stuff on the Internet."

Not the deep inspirational answer I was looking for, but he's right.

 

Are you hiring?