It’s hard not to get nervous when the industry you work in is cutting long-time, kick-ass journalists all around you for no good reason.
Every few days now I get a call or email from a colleague telling me they’ve lost their job or may be about to lose their job.
That’s why I’m fueling up my private jet and heading to Washington so I can plead the bailout case for journalists everywhere.
First it was the banking sector begging for tax dollars to shore up the industry. Now we have the auto executives and even home builders looking for some money to keep their firms going. Why can’t newspapers and other media outlets come a knockin’? The taxpayer portfolio needs to be diversified, no?
OK, I don’t have a private jet. I actually have a nine year old Passat that is now making a funny knocking noise and is pulling to the right.
And MSNBC.com hasn’t told me my career column will be ending any time soon.
But these are dire times in my industry. Not unlike many of your industries.
I’m not one of those journalists that believes the Internet killed newspapers. I think the Internet would have made newspapers even better, and actually boosted readership, but the bozos that run many of these newspapers panicked. Content is king on the Web and newspapers had plenty of that. But instead of using the seasoned reporters they had in their midst to provide great content and lure readers to their sites everyday, they started firing the very people they needed to keep them relevant.
Now, given the economic downturn, the layoffs of great journalists are reaching fever pitch.
Just today, a career blogger for the New York Times, Marci Alboher, announced that the paper was giving her the big heave-ho.
Her blog was one of the best career blogs around..thoughtful, insightful, well researched.
It’s hard to know what the Times editors were thinking, if they were thinking at all. Why would you cut a career blog in the midst of a recession when all anyone wants to read about, other than Jolie and Pitt, is the jobs’ market and how they can keep or find a new job?
One thing this situation proves is that there really is no rhyme or reason when it comes to pink slips. Everyone is trying to cut costs and sincere thought is rarely part of the equation.
Chances are the economy probably wouldn’t be in the mess it’s in today if people spent some time thinking about the ramifications for their actions. Subprime loans, gas guzzling cars, McMansions. All these things seem pretty stupid right about now. Surely someone in banking, autos or real estate suspected this.
So I’m putting out a plea to businesses everywhere right now. Don’t just slash and burn your workforces. A LITTLE FORETHOUGHT PEOPLE!
There also needs to be a public outcry over the destruction of our nation’s newsrooms. And I’m talking real journalism folks.
I know everyone and his brother has a website or a blog today talking about their relationship problems or what their cat ate for brunch. But real journalism is about uncovering information that will help people make better decisions in their lives, it’s about exposing corruption, about reporting on life’s injustices.
It seems ludicrous to be cutting reporters at a time when we need good journalism more than ever to help untangle the economic and political mess we find ourselves in.
November 24th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
Eve,
I hope you keep your job. Yours is a fresh, helpful, and honest voice. If something happens, let us know. Many thanks for all you do.
Pati
November 24th, 2008 at 1:52 pm
Eve,
Thanks for the rally of support both for me, and for others in my position. As I go through this time, I am thinking a lot of all the good advice you have given. Like when you told me to make sure to continue blogging on my own, in addition to what I was doing for the NYT. You are a wise woman.
Marci
November 24th, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Eve, should the axe fall (and I hope it doesn’t), I think you’ve got what it takes to turn your blog into a premier site for workplace discussion and links. That said, you’d need to find an advertising model that works for you (one that generates click revenues), and you’d need to do a bit of marketing on your own (to get your site noticed and frequented). I’d love to see you putting more feature-length writings on this site, in addition to the blog-side.
November 24th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
Oh HikingStick you must be reading my mind. I am in the process of revamping my blog to include more features and more bloggers. CareerDiva will be the source to come to if you’re a working stiff, or looking to become a working stiff, or wanting to give up being a working stiff. There will blogs on legal issues, healthcare, financial planning and even a blog by my mom, a great chef, who will give working parents great quick meals.
Hopefully it will be debuted in early 2009. Stay tuned.
Also looking for ideas for things you all want me to cover.
November 24th, 2008 at 8:09 pm
Whaaa..Say it aint so about Marci’s great work at NY Times. I just discovered it. Now I’m glad I bookmarked her blog. I fully agree with you there’s something terribly, fundamentally wrong that great journalists are losing jobs because their newspapers–the joining force and anchor of many communities large and small–are struggling to figure out how to incorporate the Internet as part of their presence.
This loss of journalists has been happening in many food sections in many papers all over America as well. Maybe that’s part of a tipping point as to why we’re not cooking as much as we did before, and why being a standout chef like your mom is one to be even more thankful for…
November 24th, 2008 at 8:43 pm
Marci’s column was super — and it is a loss for all of us (good you were prepared, Marci!).
I’ve never understood how the management teams at newspapers (especially) have not been able to get a digital business model that yields profits. And cutting reporters leaves you with people who reformat press releases and count it as news (habeous corpus is gone? OK, we’ll just print that…).
So much for the fourth estate. Hopefully, news will will be something that reporters investigate and not just given to them like lists.
November 25th, 2008 at 11:25 am
Eve,
Thousands of people are loosing their jobs. 53k in Citigroup alone. So, tell me, why does the media obsess over one reporter getting the axe?
Same thing applies when a reporter is brutally murdered in AR. Tragic indeed. But, lots of folks are brutally murdered every week. Why single her out?
I suspect I know the answer. Everything is more intense when it hits close to home.
Example, bad weather in Atlanta gets lots of play on the Weather Channel. Here in flyover country (MO), we get our butts handed to us by a series of tornados or ice storms with barely a mention.
(I must admit that I had little time to monitor the news during the 14 days my offices were closed in the Jan ‘07 ice storms in SW MO). The only time I was warm was when I was in my pickup moving from one cold spot to the next. LOL)
Not picking on you. Just pointing out the incongruity.
November 25th, 2008 at 11:29 am
You make a very good point sgeorge. The media does obsess sometimes on reporters getting canned.
I think it’s human nature to be concerned about what hits close to home but we have to keep that in check or risk alienating readers. I try hard to provide a cross section of the hell going on today for workers. But I’m always open to my readers setting me straight.
November 25th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
sgeorge (#7),
It probably gets more press for the same reason more techies talk about tech layoffs when gathered, why autoworkers talk about auto layoffs, and why bankers quake when they think about Citi. It’s particularistic comembership at its best. We see something happening to someone with whom we share a common thread, and suddenly it is as if it happend to us. Or, if you’re not the empathic type, it’s because people seeing people lose their jobs in their own field think “Yikes! I could be next!”
November 26th, 2008 at 2:48 am
The irony hasn’t escaped any of us - not only is Marci talented, she was writing about a topic of critical interest right now for many thousands of people throughout the nation. Amazing that, of everything that could have been cut, Marci’s insightful column was selected. I usually love the NYT, but they were very wrong on this.
November 27th, 2008 at 2:36 am
Alot can be said about jounalism today as far as the authenticity and the credentials of the jounalist. Frankly I am appalled by the biased written stories we read today from some very unusual sources. Your ability and your credentials are exceptional. You are truely more of a jounalist than the vast majority of articles and authors I read. And my news is exclusively coming from the net. Although I doubt you will have an involuntary departure, I will find you just as the many thousands of readers will.
Your blog is unlike most. You actually take the time to research and redo whole articles right within your story. That is much better for the reader to be focused rahter than follow the link, which can be quite a distraction. Your contributors, as an example, Hikingstick, are so well read and intelligent in their responses that I look forward to their input and ideas. All your contributors are such.
Personally, The idea of points and counterpoints being diabolically opposed is not a new concept. The tendency is most jounalistic endeavors go along a ‘popular’ line. In the 90’s, I read alot of gibberish that pointed out history as being the only salvation for our culture. As though the 40 somethings we are have nothing left to contribute. That is why I am so excited to see our nation by pass any human being born in the alleged stability of the 50’s, which spawned some pretty bad influences, and elected a man such as Barack Obama, a man born in the 60’s, just like me. I think just like you, however I am not sure. You look several years under 40. But anyway, coming from a conservative like myself, that is a bold statement. I’m talking Obama.
My interpretation is simply history has not been written yet. We are in an exciting and unprecedented era. The absolute truth is we are at the threshold of having our children create a wonderful world to be in. I beleive that strongly. They have all the tools and they have tremendous evidence not to make the mistakes of the past, and they have alot of it on film. I dare say we have to look toward their futures much better than the generations before us did not think of our future.
The past is the future, challenging us.