Still A Newspaperman

Good afternoon,

There are several disadvantages that come with unemployment. But their are some great pleasures, too. Time, for instance.

A working newspaper editor has time for little more than the job, a 24/7 pressure cooker with no place to release the steam. It’s a daily battle for institutional and even personal survival. There is little time to think creatively, to read, to watch fun TV or to write, which is what I most missed while on the job.

Unemployment, whatever the cause, brings with it the gift of time. Admittedly, I have squandered too much, at least in terms of my intentions. The daily workouts, for example, lasted only a few weeks. On the other hand, I am cooking a great deal. You can imagine the consequences of that tradeoff.

I am thinking more. That is I am spending time reflecting on my career, on the paths I chose, the jobs I’ve held, the people I’ve known, the triumphs, tragedies, the smart decisions and the mistakes so obvious now I am mortified they were ever made. For better or worse, it has been a long career and so there is a great deal on which to reflect. Productive thinking, as opposed to nostalgic storytelling, ought to produce some sort of identifiable result, some mental outcome that has meaning to me, at least. But some days, I simply enjoy the nostalgic look back, leaving the meaningful outcomes for another time.

So I have been looking back, reflecting and writing. And I think it may be time to post some of those musings on this blog. I don’t pretend for a minute that there is any broader significance to any of this. Nostalgia or reflection? With so much time on my hands, it really doesn’t matter. And if it bores you, that’s OK, too. Hey, it’s my blog. Come back another time when I’m posting about cosmic issues of journalism.

I was asked in a recent job interview not just why I decided to become a journalist, but when. And why, the interviewer asked, did I set out from such an early age to become a community newspaper editor?

I’ve said in speeches or in presentations to college classes that the first influence was the old Saturday afternoon “Superman” TV show. For children of the early ’50s, Saturday morning was devoted to classic cartoons in the morning, followed by shows such as “Rin Tin Tin,” “Fury,” and “Superman.” Those first two instilled in me a love of horses that I’ve indulged for most of my adult life. But it was “Superman” that triggered the interest in journalism. Even a 6-year-old kid knows you can’t grow up to be super human. But Clark Kent was a reporter and that was something you could grow into. He had his own office. He had a nifty gray fedora just like dad’s. And he had a great girlfriend, even if she was legally blind and criminally reckless.

“Superman” made me want to be a reporter and that is no lie.

But it wasn’t until junior high school that the opportunity presented itself, sort of.

There was no school newspaper at Spencer Butte Junior High School when I began my seventh-grade year in 1962. But the world was heating up around us and even junior high students had to take note of life outside school walls. The Cuban Missile crisis. The Kennedy assassination. The presidential election of 1964. We were energized by events and somewhere within the school bureaucracy someone decided it was time to bring back some sort of school newspaper.

I can’t remember how it came about. I know I heard about the paper too late to apply for one of the lead editing positions. Instead, the editor title went to Loren, my bitterest rival, a sworn enemy of the sort that only young adolescents can conjure. He was Goldwater to my LBJ. Calculus to my basic math. My checkmate in the chess club. My unconquerable opponent on the school debate team. He was tall, lean, Linconseque if one can be that at 14. 

He was on the school cross country team. I could barely run a lap on the track.

Now he was the editor of “The Spartan Log” and I had to go to him to apply for a staff position. 

And he lived up to his sworn-enemy role. He made me “joke editor,” the kid responsible for typing out a few knock-knock or elephant jokes to use as filler on the mimeographed pages. Admittedly, I’ve been told more than once that as a newspaper editor, I am a joke. But this was the real thing, undeniable. It was right there in the title.

And I vowed bloody revenge. Loren, I told my friends, would one day pay dearly for the insult. One day, he would work for me.

My strategy developed later, in the summer of 1965, between junior high and high school. It was a mid-summer day, probably just about this time of year. My best friend, Martin, was hanging out with me in my room. As the neighborhood porn peddler he had stopped by with a few worn and misused magazines now hidden discreetly under the mattress. Clearly, Martin was another junior high geek, not a loser exactly, but another kid who just didn’t seem to fit in Loren-world. We were talking about our plans for high school and how we would make up for the slights and humiliations we had endured.

Martin would be student body president. Would wield limitless power. Shape the school to his vision. And he’d get the girls because we both figured student body presidents always got the girls.

I would be editor of The Axe, I told Martin, editor of a great school newspaper working for the legendary Alyce Sheetz. I would get girls, too, at least I hoped, though high school journalism clearly lacked the sex appeal of a political career. But more importantly, I would get Loren and I would crush his spirit, forcing him to write stories about the annual girls’ charity tea or the Spanish club or the Future Farmers of America sheep-shearing competition. I would be editor and my revenge would be total.

The path was clear. The goal in sight. But then my victim was nowhere to be seen.

When school started in the fall of 1965, Loren was gone. His family had moved, to Illinois as I recall. I heard later that this one-time Goldwater supporter had turned draft resister, had actually gone to jail for refusing induction. I don’t know if that is true or not. But as a future conscientious objector I think maybe Loren and I would have become friends had we grown up together.

With Loren gone, I had to find another reason to be editor of The Axe. And I did. First, it was a girl. But then it was a mission and a purpose and it came to me through Alyce Sheetz, “Sheetzie,” a teacher capable of shaping young lives and the teacher who shaped mine.

Good morning,

I have been cleaning out some old files and came across a speech I delivered in 2001, shortly after becoming editor in Salem, OR, and after six months of unemployment following my firing in Colorado Springs.

The speech was specific to its time in some ways but still works for me, still reflects my thinking, my hopes for our future. I was in an optimistic frame of mind in early 2001. Re-reading this speech, I find myself feeling the same optimism. Our future is not tied to practice but to values. And those values are worth the fight.

Here’s the speech, still current except for the line about “perpetual hiring.” 

Good evening,

Just returned from yet another quick trip to Sunriver, Oregon, near Bend.

I have been helping a good friend organize his 40-year book and magazine collection for liquidation. Heavy work but a lot of fun. He has prototype, premier, debut and No. 1 issues of hundreds of magazines dating back to the 1950s and including some amazing titles.  Several sealed USA Today first editions are in his newspaper collection. A box full of British titles. He is moving into smaller quarters, so figures it is time to liquidate.

If anyone out there is interested in debut editions, let me know and I’ll put you in touch.

Meanwhile, there have been a few developments in recent days I wanted to note.

1. The new owners of the Portland, Maine, Press Herald-Sunday Telegram have fired several executives including editor Jeannine Guttman. I have known Jeannine for years and I don’t know if there is an editor out there who loved her community more and gave more to her newspaper. Clearly the new owners want to install their own executive team. But  why fire an editor who knows ther community and her newspaper so well, who could help an out-of-state owner adapt to new challenges? It seems short-sighted to me. 

2. Down the road from Portland the unionized journalists at The Boston Globe are in an ongoing dispute with The New York Times Co. which owns the paper, for now. When the Newspaper Guild rejected the owners’ proposed concessions package, The Times declared an impasse and imposed a contract that calls for a 23 percent wage reduction.

There are reports a local group is negotiating to purchase The Globe. That is probably a good thing (all things being equal). But maybe the new owners ought to take a lesson from the new owners in Portland. Doing the right thing, the Portland ownership gave employees a share in the company to compensate for the serious wage reductions of recent months. If the Globe journalists can’t obtain relief from the 23 percent cut, maybe the new owners will give them a piece of the action.

3. I have been reading The Bend Bulletin lately and come away mightily impressed. Bend is in deep economic trouble. After a decade-plus of amazing growth, the city’s unemployment rate now is among the nation’s highest and the housing market collapse is epic. I’m certain the paper is hurting. Nevertheless, it is a fine local paper that really gives readers a sense of place. There is a lot of what we used to call chicken-noodle-soup news in the paper, but you have to believe the readership appreciates it. Credit editor John Costa with maintaining a quality paper in the face of serious obstacles. I hope he can keep up the good work.

4. You haven’t seen any announcements, but in the last few weeks, my former paper, The Spokesman-Review, has killed two significant multi-platform initiatives that I believe were essential experiments in our medium’s future.

The first to go was The Vox, a monthly newspaper produced by high school students for 30,000 high school students in the region. Erin Daniels, a certified high school journalism teacher, ran the program for three years.

Students could earn high school credit working for The Vox and if they put in 1,000 hours in a year, could also obtain scholarship help through a federal program. In its time, The Vox produced several really terrific journalism majors and its journalists won numerous writing and editing awards. It didn’t cost much to run the program. But it never was a management favorite.  The paper and its hugely successful blog died with the end-of-school-year issue.

Also, the newspaper’s AM radio initiative will die quietly at the end of this month. The radio staff had been moved to the marketing department after I left the paper. All will lose their jobs. We were on track to show real revenue potential with the project, but it failed to generate strong support from either the newspaper or its radio partner. Its demise signals the end of yet another important experiment in multi-platform delivery.

Dan Mitchinson, a broadcast veteran and the paper’s director of radio operations, is now out of a job. Dan gave the project everything he had. Somewhere, there is a managing editor job for him. He would be a real catch.

5. Also facing extreme economic problems, the family owners of The Register-Guard in Eugene, Oregon, initiated more staff cuts last week, cutting a couple dozen positions, but only three from the newsroom, according to friends.

The Guard has been able to maintain its quality following earlier staff reductions, focusing all of its energy on a strong local news report. The Guard was my first newspaper and I remain proud of my association. I am pulling for publisher Tony Baker and his team. If they can hang in there through this downturn, they are well positioned to recover — I hope.

Steve

Good morning,

I’m hearing more horror stories from newspaper people (journalists and non-journalists) about the cruel, inhumane ways they are being fired or laid off.

Romenesko has reported on numerous occasions that journalists at this paper or that have been notified of their layoff by phone or e-mail or through some other indirect way. Sometimes the news comes from an HR staffer, sometimes the top editor or even publisher. Still, there is no face-to-face communication. The person delivering the bad news is insulated from the painful and emotional reactions while the employee is denied the opportunity to ask questions, voice frustration or simply unload about the unfairness of it all. 

It’s a chickenshit approach, and there is no other word for it.

In the last few weeks, I’ve heard about newspaper people showing up at their offices only to find the door locked and the windows dark. Only when they try to discover the reason do they learn they have been terminated.

I have heard of a senior editor notified of his firing at noon while most of his staff was at lunch and then given 30 minutes to leave the building, under guard, as if he posed some sort of going-postal threat.

Recently, a former colleague told me of a round of layoffs announced via group e-mail.

What the hell is going on here? Times may be tough. Newspapers may be in the crapper and maybe for the long haul. But in such tough times, don’t we need to exercise more humanity, not less?

In the forced downsizings I implemented while in Salem and Spokane, I tried to deliver the news myself or if multiple messages had to be delivered simultaneously, have one of our other senior editors help break the news.

One of my first editors taught me that bad news of all sorts needs to be communicated face-to-face, straight up like a strong shot of Scotch. It is the only honest way to handle a difficult personnel problem. And nothing is as difficult as a layoff announcement.

It sure isn’t fun, not for the person losing the job or the person delivering the news. But I can’t remember an employee ever reacting to the news unprofessionally, though there were cases where emotions were high and all involved, including me, we crying.

Now, in the end, the editor who goes face-to-face with layoff news is no more appreciated than the editor who hides behind a phone. When you implement a layoff, even if it is not of your doing, you are an instant villain. That’s one price of senior leadership. The rank-and-file never will know how their boss might have gone to the wall for them or the sorts of back-room dealings that might have reduced the number of lost jobs. All editors understand that dynamic.

But I don’t know how the bosses who deliver the bad news from behind a phone line, via e-mail or with a locked and darkened office can look themselves in the mirror.

steve

Good afternoon,

I am going off topic for a few minutes to play the role of proud father.

My son, my oldest, graduates from the University of Denver this weekend. And today he accepted his first post-school job offer. Cap and gown and job!

Some of you can imagine my pride…and my relief.

Sam is quite a young man. He’s a big good-looking kid, a high school football player who has kept his ironman physique. But he was smart enough to pass on college ball and focus on studies and develop his leadership skills.

He majored in business at DU, specializing in commercial real estate development and management, what seemed to be a pretty good career path four years ago. But after actually finishing his coursework in March, he has been on a very difficult job search. DU business grads usually have their pick of jobs. But this year Sam tells me there have been very, very few corporate recruiters. Over and over again he was told to come back next year when things begin to open up again.

I can’t explain why he joined at fraternity at DU, not given his mother’s and my counter-culture backgrounds. But he joined Sigma Chi as a freshman and advanced steadily through a variety of local and regional leadership positions and honors. And now it pays off. His first post-school job will be with Sigma Chi national headquarters, working out of Chicago but traveling all over the country advising new and emerging chapters. He is thrilled. It may not be his expected career path, but it will carry him until the economy opens up and give him invaluable business connections.

Dad is thrilled too. Maybe the check I sent him to help with this month’s rent will be the last for awhile.

Friday night in Denver he and I will go out for a great steak dinner. We’ll down some Lagavulin and smoke a couple of victory cigars. And if I’m absent from this blog over the weekend, I hope you all will understand.

steve

Good morning,

One of my favorite surfing destinations is “Rotten Tomatoes,” a website that aggregates movie reviews and identifies the latest blockbusters as ripe or rotten.

Scanning the listings last night, it occurred to me that this summer’s blockbuster lineup is particularly relevant to newspaper people. And I’m not thinking of the true-to-life newspaper movies “The Soloist” or “State of Play.”

With apologies to our profession’s true humor writers, here is my list of newspaper-related summer blockbusters as developed over a few glasses of Lagavulin and a fine Cohiba. (And feel free to contribute your own.)

Night At The Museum: A flinty-eyed investigative reporter is downsized by his maniacal editor into a night security guard at the old printing plant. On his first night shift, the reporter is stunned to see the rusty linotype machines and mothballed printing press come alive, producing an amazing four-section street final on a 60-inch web. “My God,” the reporter screams above the noise of the press, “this page is big enough to read.”

Terminator Salvation: Circulation is plummeting. Revenues are down. The company’s stock price is lower than the newsroom’s morale. Yet the publisher responsible for the debacle (a CGI Wharton MBA) cannot die. Again and again, he rises from the ashes of his failing company to “terminate” the pesky human journalists around him, each termination more diabolical than the last. In a final confrontation with his flinty-eyed editor the terminator signs the journalist’s pink personnel action form and declares “I’ll be back — but you won’t.”

Angels & Demons: A dapper, mop-topped editor is certain the newspaper industry’s problems are the result of that never-ending battle between good, as embodied by a virtuous but hitherto secret Larry King granddaughter, and evil, a consortium of media conglomerates operating from an underground bunker outside Washington and led by the devil. Following clues left behind by a secret society of long-dead Guild organizers, the editor and his young companion discover an old California Case in the basement of the long-abandoned Philadelphia Press club. All it will take to vanquish the demons and restore newspapers to stunning profitability is one line of type, properly set. But what are the secret words?

Drag Me To Hell: Day after day a rumpled, out-of-shape, sunken-eyed editor returns to his office only to find fewer and fewer reporters available for work. Popping his third Prozac of the morning, the editor proofreads the latest company promotional ad touting a “leaner, greener, more flexible newspaper for the 21st Century.” In a moment of uncharacteristic vulnerability, the editor sobs in the arms of his assistant, “No one has to drag me to hell, I’m already there.”

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen: A team of mutant investigative reporters led by a secret Larry King grandson, launch a digital news site that transforms American journalism, producing stories of national importance, brilliantly reported and thoughtfully written. In an epic battle played out over the snow-capped Rockies, the digital-age warriors vanquish a team of NAA outsourcing specialists who had hoped to transform writers from Bangalore into community journalists from Des Moines.

17 Again: A successful young reporter is laid off by a tone-deaf  HR executioner hours before becoming vested in the company’s pension plan. Over a bottle of Lagavulin Reserve, the reporter curses the day she decided to go to journalism school and vows to the spirits of Hearst and Pulitzer that she would take another path given a second chance. The next morning, transformed into a 17-year-old high school senior, she signs up at ITT Technical Institute, passing on the dental assistant course to take computer training, intent on a career in digital journalism. But in the over-the-credits epilogue, the now veteran celebrity blogger is laid off again, a sign that time and space cannot be bent, that all journalists, in the end, can face that same cosmic pink slip.

Land Of The Lost: A massive earthquake sends the senior editorial team of a major metropolitan newspaper into a black-hole time warp, depositing them in a strange universe where their new boss is a retired TV anchor, a monkey boy with articulation issues, and their staff of journalists a vast army of silent lizard people incapable of reporting, writing or presenting the news. But they can mime it. “So I guess it isn’t all about numbers after all,” a chastened editor tells his team. “At least we’re green.”

My Life In Ruins: A true-life journalistic docudrama played out in Seattle, Denver, Tucson, Ann Arbor, Detroit, Miami, Chicago, Colorado Springs, Minneapolis and St. Paul, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, Baltimore…and a hundred other cities and towns. A cast of thousands, stunned and hurting, waits for the punch line that never comes.  Sequels assured.

steve

Good morning,

As I said in yesterday’s post, I was asked recently by a Presstime reporter how I would do things differently now that I’ve seen the newspaper world from the outside for the better part of a year.

Presented with the understanding that this is not a complete manifesto, just a series of ideas and nearly random observations, I herewith offer up my list — 10 things I would do differently if editing a local metro newspaper. 

1. I would stop trying so hard to bring younger readers (35 and below) into the mass-market print daily by tinkering with design and content, looking for the magic bullet to reverse a trend that cannot be reversed. Many of my colleagues reached this conclusion some years ago. But having been involved in several “young reader” projects from the late 1980s on, I clung to the hope perhaps longer than reasonable. The migration of young readers away from the big metro daily is an irreversible tide. Nothing we can do to the print newspaper will change that. And many of the changes we did make, as we have come to realize, alienated the core readership which is also on the decline. For now, for the mass-market print daily, the wisest course is to preserve the core.

2. Which is not to say that younger readers cannot be attracted to print. We have seen around the country a few successful efforts at creating niche products for young readers. In Spokane, we launched The Vox, a monthly paper for 30,000 area high school students produced by students under the direction of a certified journalism teacher. As an editorial product, it was a huge success over its three years. The Vox was killed by SR management this month, a failure of imagination at administrative and marketing levels but enormously popular and well-read by area students right up to the last issue. If I were an editor again, I would be more creative and assertive in developing alternative ways into print for a variety of differentiated audiences, but particularly at the middle and high school levels.

3. It;s time to stop listening to those who push stale old stories into print and online on the back of that old saw “we’re a newspaper of record.” The mass market daily, in most cities, stopped being a newspaper of record decades ago. Certainly in the present crisis, most newsrooms are not staffed to produce any thing close to a full record of a community’s life. Even knowing this, I would too often be persuaded to lead the paper with a day-old news story which was big news when it happened, but 24 hours old and long stale by the time it hit print. Preserving the core of what we do in terms of content mix and design is one thing. But presenting stale news “for the record” is simply arrogant we-know-best old think.

4. I would all but eliminate the national and wire report from print. Yes, there remains a place in print for some summary of the previous day’s national and international news. And there are events that occasionally require more than that. But it is stunningly clear that readers of all ages and inclinations are going elsewhere for that information, seeking it out as it happens online and on TV. The newspaper cannot compete and resources used in the effort — people and newshole — are largely wasted. As editor, I would devote more resources to providing a better live national/international news feed online. I would highlight more national/international video and multi-media on the main web page, making it easier for online users to access that content. Online, I think national/internartional content is as important as the local news report and an essential element in making a news organization’s online site a must-read, one-stop portal.

5. In allocating newsroom staff, I would focus on topical areas where we could produce content unavailable from any other source. More local government watchdog reporting (but not stenographic meeting coverage), less cops news (the local TV franchise), more on education, business and finance but less (God forgive me) sports and popular culture, areas covered best by others. Creative collaborations between newspapers, TV and radio news operations have the potential to fill the gaps for all parties. As editor, developing collaborations that actually fill content holes would be a much higher priority. Convergence, that old buzz word, would be more about content than technology.

6. Without stepping too far back from what is now “traditional” online, I would aim digital resources directly at mobile technology and news delivery. The traditional website, best accessed from a desk-top computer or large laptop, will go the way of the print newspaper as mobile technology continues to develop. We already know that the digital news report needs to be dynamic, a 24/7 feed of fresh news and information. Now it needs to be purposed for the mobile devices that range from small smart-phones to Kindle-type devices to the soon-to-be-released flexible flat panels. The traditional website was a transitional bridge between print and this new mobile world. In making that transition, we have broken some old habits. But too much of the old print mentality remains — posting stories that are too long, multi-media presentations that are too long and take too much band-width, visual and editorial junk that clutters our web pages and makes navigation difficult. To conquer mobile, we’ll have to move even farther from our print roots. But this is where we need to go.

7. I would stop wasting time arguing about paid content online and on mobile. I have said in this space before that the paid content horse is long out of the barn. The revenue necessary to support large newsrooms won’t come from trying to charge readers (along print models) for content they can get for free no matter how we try to firewall it. Instead of charging for our content, my goal, were I to be editor again, would be to get that content into as many hands (and heads) as possible, day after day, hour after hour, paid or free. We already know that multi-platform news delivery systems generate penetration levels  far higher than the best traditional print-only papers generated in their best years, ever. Why would we now, in our hour of peril, try to put up barriers (ineffective at that) to keep that content away from people? Penetration should be the goal and, at least, we already are experts in monetizing the mass audience.

8. Of course, as editor, I still would have to find ways to generate the revenue necessary to develop the 24/7 content required by consumers. Rather than talking about digital firewalls, I would focus more on content wholesaling, that is re-selling our content to other providers desperate for news and information they can no longer produce. My little battle against AP was, in part, about this notion of wholesaling. We were paying AP an enormous amount of money annually for content we mostly couldn’t use and giving them our content in return, for free. Why shouldn’t AP pay us for local, state and regional news and information they no longer generate but for which there is a market outside our region? If not AP, then sell it to someone else. Collaborations with regional radio and TV operations, commercial syndicates, even archive services can produce revenue. Editors who already think outside traditional routines and reflexes when it comes to content need to take their expertise, their willingness to experiment and innovate, more aggressively into the board rooms where imagination, sadly, is too often in short supply.

9. I would work more closely with regional colleges and universities, particularly those with strong, professional journalism programs. Even as the economy comes back publishers will not restore their newsrooms to previous levels. All of us will be resource deprived. But in visiting a number of journalism schools in the last year, I have found great interest in collaborations that give bright young students real-world experience in print and online. There is a way to serve both institutions in collaborations that give students experience while generating much needed content for their professional partners. As editor, I never turned down a chance to visit classrooms and spend time with students. Were I to be an editor again, I would spend more time, at the beginning at least, with their deans and directors forging productive relationships.

10. I would work harder than ever before to bring news and information consumers into the process. Readers/viewers/consumers expect and respond to unprecedented levels of interaction. As an editor, nearly all of my time was spent figuring out ways to push content through the pipeline in their direction and to maintain that flow even as the newsroom lost journalists. But we need to spend an equal amount of time and energy on systems that allow readers to push content toward us. A true two-way conversation not only gives readers the interaction they demand, it generates content that supplements the work of news professionals. That may come in the form of citizen journalism at the local-local-local level, it may come from collaborations on specific topics or stories, it may come from a simple give-and-take on issues of the day that can be repurposed online and in print.

This post already is too long. I have edited out another half-dozen bullets.

But I think the bottom line is this: As progressive as I thought I was as an editor, I was not progressive enough. I was not aggressive enough. I was not fast enough. If I were to do this again, I would work even harder to break out of old routines and reflexes, while holding on more tightly than ever to the values at the core of our profession.

At least that is what I tell myself I would do. The pull of tradition, routine and reflex is enormous. The old culture, the old ways of thinking keep pulling us back. I like to think i would be a different sort of editor next time around. The trick is actually making that happen.

Thanks,

steve

Good morning,

I spoke a few weeks ago with a reporter from Presstime who asked me about my current reading habits (where does a former editor go for news and information?) and how I might edit a newspaper differently now that I have been out of a newsroom for some months.

I didn’t have much time to provide thoughtful answers so I’m not sure what will appear in the magazine, if anything.

But the questions stuck and I have given them considerable thought since.

I’ll answer the first question in this space today, tackle the second tomorrow.

Where do I go now for my news and information?

My habits really have changed. I have more free time now so I can spend time online surfing for news and information that interests me. I changed my web home page to yahoo.com and use that site as a quick portal into national and international news stories from a variety of places, mostly AP. It is interesting to watch Yahoo customize my start page as my surfing habits are monitored. If I call up entertainment stories frequently for a few days, my home portal quickly becomes dominated by links to People  or Entertainment Tonight-style celeb stories. If I start with stories on President Obama’s Supreme Court selection or the General Motors bankruptcy, the links take a more serious turn.

Also on my surf list are CNN and USA Today websites. While I might go to the New York Times and Wall Street Journal sites for specific articles, they are not part of my routine surfing.

I check the industry websites regularly for news from our world. That means Romenesko a couple of times a day and Media Bistro (highly recommended).

Also on my daily checklist, though typically not more than once a day, is Facebook. I have been amazed how much news and information moves through Facebook. I knew it was great for social contact with friends. But so many people post links to news stories or videos that interest them that it has become an important portal to breaking news and information. Sometimes I’ll see an important story on Facebook before it hits my regular media sites.

I have friends who also use Twitter (or RSS feeds) for quick news updates delivered to their cell phones. But I found the amount of traffic truly irritating so have dropped those services for the moment.

Of course, I check in on The Spokesman-Review website several times during the day for my local news fix. Being out of the newsroom, I find myself spending almost no time on the site’s multi-media offerings or blogs. They just don’t provide enough real news to justify the time, something I would remember if I ever took over another newsroom. That’s not a comment on quality. They are interesting. But efficiency is everything when surfing for news online.

In some ways I appreciate the print newspaper more than ever. I have found the paper to be more efficient in delivering news than any other medium. Think about it…it goes with you to the couch. You scan headlines and stories, pick up interesting items through serendipitous scanning, and it only takes 15 or so minutes to get everything from national and international to sports and entertainment. As former USA Today Editor Ken Paulson said in a speech I heard a year ago, if we were inventing the paper today, it would be a marketer’s dream alternative to vertical net surfing.

Problems is, it is stale. Nothing can change that.

A confession, I don’t read the print Spokesman-Review any more. I know some will say that makes me a hypocrite. But former editors will know what I am saying. It just hurts too much. When the paper does something good — which is most of the time, it hurts not to be involved. When something goes awry, I admonish myself for not being there to fix it.

So I scan the website and catch up to specific articles from time to time. It’s not a comment on them.

Interestingly, I had the same reaction when i was fired in Colorado Springs. I don’t think I’ve picked up a copy of that paper since. But I didn’t have that reaction when I left The Statesman-Journal. I still read that paper in print and online every chance I get.

Tomorrow I’ll talk about what I have learned about editing and how I might do things differently now that I’ve seen the new, digital world from the other side.

Thanks,

steve

Good afternoon,

Well, nothing clears the head and opens the mind like a drive in the country on a warm, late-spring day. With the top down and Robert Mitchum croaking out “Thunder Road” — and Flatt & Scruggs whipping through “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” — it’s simply impossible to be glum.

The following e-mail makes a point worth noting, one that I shouldn’t lose sight of even though I do obviously focus on journalists and journalism.

Good morning,

I must have received a couple dozen responses to my blog post on being unemployed. Many of the notes related similar experiences. Most were positive, even upbeat. But I also heard from some very, very angry people.

Here are a few excerpts, typical of the comments, edited only to remove identifiers.

(The blog post) really struck a chord with me: not because I am unemployed–I am (still) working for (a university) foundation, where I do writing/editing/PR: though not the safest thing to be in fundraising communications these days, it seemed safer than daily journalism–but because of your points about your father. My father has also recently undergone a cutback at the late stages of his career, working in an industry in which he can’t possibly find anything else, now. I had always thought of him as invincible, career-wise.

Was touched by your undated “On Being Unemployed.”  You don’t know me…but we have one thing in common.  I lost a solid PR job…at age 57 after the company was taken over.  Like you, I was too young to retire and too old to have a compelling market value.  Rather than spending fruitless months trying to find a comparable position, I fell back on my high school shorthand (120 w.p.m. Gregg) and took a senior secretary position with (local government).  A foot in the door, I found and succeeded in a slot as a legal secretary in the City Attorney’s office, providing the most challenge I had known since I resigned from UPI.  I then took a civil service test for public relations director, came in first and ended up at (a local college) as director of PR and aide to the college president.  Bottom line:  My monthly retirement pay from the city exceeds that from (my old company) and I maintained my self-respect while nurturing what now is a 59-year marriage.  Things always get better. It just takes time.  

i quit a job that was wearing me out, trying to make something great out of a teeny-tiny alt-weekly…while working for two people who made every issue a struggle.  when i quit, i looked forward to a career break, a sabbatical, to take stock of things. travel a bit. think some. write. …there are days when i get pretty discouraged. i’d applied for a low-level civil service gig with state government just to get benefits and take away the pressure to unload the house — and didn’t get it and don’t know why. as a journalist, especially with a large paper, you get used to the idea that people respond to your requests quickly. you always have the hammer of — “he declined to comment” — which makes a person look unaccountable to a large number of people. very few people care about being accountable to a mere citizen/customer. it’s also discouraging — but revealing — to recognize just how irrelevant, or useless, most media is. i often wonder how it was possible to spend so much time in a profession that was producing such an inferior product. i think about that a lot, and it makes me angry, because so much of the decline started so long ago, and so many of us were complicit. anyway, i don’t count on a new job to validate my decision to quit — or legitimize my value as a journalist. a steady paycheck would be nice, but there are a few billion people on earth who can say the same thing. 

i appreciated your post on your father. losing one is hard, and the perspective during and especially afterward is bittersweet. i spent 22 years in newspapers; was fired in oct. 07 by hotshot new editor who basically didn’t like my politics. there’s no one, i mean no one, who writes the book on what men our age ought to do when they’re jobless. i landed well. free advice: your skills are more transferrable than they seem, but recast them for emphasis. project management. accomplished manager. training guru. adept at multiple platforms, and at collaborating across departments…truly, newspapers have had horrible leadership for years, with a few exceptions. the industry’s toast, for everyone but the youngest. all over but the shouting.

I don’t think I know you…but I wanted to say you’ve written an insightful, poignant column. The view does indeed change when we are forced to walk in someone else’s shoes — in your case now, your father’s. Our generation just wasn’t prepared for it, as the Depression generation was. I remember early in my own newspaper career once having a 7-month average tenure at half a dozen jobs. Look at me crosswise, I’d quit; find another job by the time my two weeks’ notice was up. No sweat. Once I gave notice as m.e. of a small daily on Friday afternoon … made a phone call to friends to confirm a previously arranged weekend skiing trip … and had a great job lined up before dinner. Without even trying. Those days are gone, alas, at least in print.  My own departure from the newspaper biz took place ten years ago: didn’t make the profit goal, was handed the pink slip after 25 years with the company. Realized then that it would be damn difficult to find another job … and didn’t want to move away from where my daughters were living … so called it a career, retired early, planned to live off the stock portfolio (who knew?) Only regret that decision occasionally — when big news breaks, or when my former paper becomes even more of a rag and my wife has to remind me, “It’s not your job anymore.” (One good thing came of it: My bitterness caused me to sell my company stock when it still brought dollars, not pennies. Schadenfreude is a comfort; fuck ‘em!)

I’m a financial journalist going through exactly what you’ve written about on your blog post. I’m 42 and my future in journalism sometimes feels just as bleak nearly a year after my layoff. With nearly 15 years of digital writing and editing experience…I thought finding a new job would be a snap, but senior editing/writing jobs are few and far between and there are just too many journalists (particularly financial journalists) chasing them. I’m doing what a number of my former colleagues have done – looking for a new “home” outside traditional financial journalism.  Please keep blogging about your experiences, and particularly your decision-making process as you weigh new opportunities. It helps to hear that others are going through similar struggles, and I’m sure your readers will provide some insights on overcoming their own challenges.