What old co-workers are up to

I found an old phone list from one of my stops. At the time, with part-timers, we had a staff with 50+ people. Now, it's in the low 20s.

 

You don't find it as much nowadays, but a lot of guys on the all news stations used to be former DJs.

A lot of talk radio hosts too.

 

They used to be former DJs? So, now they're DJs?

 

Ha. I went back and added "former". I then thought about further explaining it, but passed.

Most of the former DJ's are now retired as some of the big AM stations switched programming back in the '60's and '70's.

So, they used to employ lots of former DJs. Not so much now.

 

I work at a job where, out of the 115 people in my same department, I am one of maybe 10 college grads.

I love my job though.

I know I will probably never use my journalism skills again. I am fine with it.

 

Or the station is bought up by a monolithic corporation bent on excreting McMusic or pseudo-fascist paranoid political shrieking across the nation's airwaves.

 

I agree with YF. Newspapers are on the skids, but the information business in general is booming beyond belief. Most organizations cannot cope with the amount of information they're generating. I know at my own day job, we could use about 50 copy editors at the company (although senior management has yet to see this truth). Those of you who acquired Web skills at your papers are desirable employees for almost any business you care to name.
Nothing is as much fun as newspapers. But once you get past that awful truth, there are good jobs out there for people with newspaper-type skills.

 

I still put my newspaper skills to work, though. I'm probably in the top five percent of all Army writers.

 

At the company I work for there are at least 5 former journalists that I can name off the top of my head and probably a few more. What has been said here about the lack of writing and communication skills at the corporate level is accurate in my experience.

 

When I was at Continental, our head of Corporate Communications was a former TV reporter at KWGN in Denver, and our head of State & Civic relations was a former reporter & editor for the Houston Chronicle.

She's now the EVP of Communications and Government Affairs at United (post merger).

He's now the SVP & Chief Communications Officer at Delta.

Both are good people too:

http://news.delta.com/index.php?s=18&item=93

http://ir.united.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=83680&p=irol-govBio&ID=204727

 

Uh....sure.

 

I can name three all from the same stop, that when they die, I will fly back to the town, spit in their grave and fly back home.