A pocketful of mumbles

It's been four years since I lost my last full-time, ass-in-the-chair job, which means I can chuckle instead of wince at today's Candorville.

These days, the question isn't "how long will I last in the job?" so much as "how long will the job last?"

Technically, I was canned a few weeks before the paper I edited went under, and I'd known for some time that I wasn't destined to be there much longer anyway.

But they had a cunning plan that started with replacing me with someone else and then that evolved into having the editor of their daily also handle the weekly I was editing and then it all didn't quite work out and so then they decided to pull the plug on the whole company.

This may be why, where others see evil conspiracies, I see greed, yes, but mostly just fumbling incompetence. Chalking up this sort of thing to a "conspiracy" is assuming a level of mastery and control at the top which simply isn't there.

When I had interviewed, being no fool and it being the fall of 2008 when all hell was breaking loose on Wall Street, I asked the boss straight out how the paper was doing, and he told me that, because the community's two main employers were a major medical center and an Ivy League college, we were pretty much recession-proof.

Which is to say, he didn't offer me a house on the moon, but he was sure willing to paint a black sky blue.

I still don't know how much he was jiving me and how much he was jiving himself, but from being recession-proof to being out of business should probably take more than eight months, and I kinda don't think he hired a new editor simply so he could prolong the pain and increase the financial losses for another three quarters.

One of the duties of my job included attending management meetings a couple of times a month, and the process of going from sitting there thinking "Well, I'm sure he knows what he's doing" to wondering "Doesn't anybody here know how to play this game?" was more fascinating than useful.

The checks continued to clear, however, and, if he hadn't told me three or four months into my seven-month tenure that they were going another direction, I wouldn't have looked around too actively.

Two things:

One is that the biggest joke in today's strip is not the promise of a house on the moon but the promise of a big paycheck. Journalism is the lowest paying career field that requires a degree.

People often respond to that statement by citing social work, but social work is a subset of psychology and there are areas of psychology that pay quite well.

In journalism, the only areas that pay well are Katie Couric's condo and Bob Woodward's beach house.

I used to tell kids at Career Fairs that the job was so much fun, we'd probably do it for nothing. I suspect, however, that this was something the publishers knew, and counted on.

As for all the brilliant alternatives to print being proposed, Ariana Huffington isn't the only one whose futuristic vision of journalism seems to include having reporters do it for nothing.

The other thing is that, outside of major metro areas, the job is, at least in the print sector, primarily defined by geography.

When I was out of work in television, there were two other stations in the market, and they weren't hiring, which ended any conversation that didn't involve a moving van. For newspapers, the odds of finding a job without moving aren't even that favorable.

Which makes that fourth panel downright hilarious.

A small-town person like me should have had a lot of choices when my last paper folded, since I was experienced, competent and happy to set down roots in a place where a more ambitious person might only stop for a cup of coffee.

But, to start with, I'd been interim publisher at a previous paper in rural paradise, and had hired an editor. I'd seen the resumes, and, while many of them were from people who could not possibly have done the job, there were plenty from people who were quite capable and even overqualified.

Granted, most of them faded away when they learned the payscale and duties. But I knew I wasn't going to be the only credible applicant.

And then there's that fourth panel.

Going out of business isn't even the issue. That's comedic exaggeration, except in the cases where it isn't.

In the real world, the paper doesn't have to shut down in order for you to get screwed.

I saw jobs in some delightful places like the Tetons, the south coast of Alaska, Mackinac Island ... paradise right out your back door and even out the front one!

But do you really want to move 1,500 or 2,000 miles or more just to be the low name on the seniority list when the next found of layoffs comes along?

That's a rhetorical question. I didn't.

Fortunately, I was free to be philosophical: The kids were long gone and the spouse considerably moreso, leaving just me and the dog, and, as I often said, the dog thought sleeping in the park and eating out of Dumpsters would be a blast.

I was also fortunate in having established a widely distributed base of professional colleagues, one of whom, after about eight months, hired me for a really fun gig that I can telecommute and that, if it doesn't pay $900k and include a house on the moon, at least pays the bills.

And, as of now, if it ended tomorrow, I'd only have to tap-dance for 18 months before I could start collecting Social Security at the default level.

Today's Candorville is funny because, after all, Lemont is young and footloose enough, even with a young son, to reinvent himself, and so we don't have to feel all that sorry for him.

Life is a banquet, even today, if you're young enough and brave enough.

But I've run into former colleagues in their 40s and 50s with kids about to enter college and with mortgages and with enough mileage that it would not only be very hard for them to redefine themselves now, but their financial obligations make it impossible to slow down for the shift in gears.

And, while gallows humor is a long-standing tradition in journalism, they seem to all be willing to let Candorville crack the jokes.

 

 

Comments

[Dann]

The local rag effectively closed. They re-branded but kept the same name. Just none of the old, knowledgeable folks.

I suspect that you know the chorus to that song as well as all the refrains.

The guy that replaced the old editorial page editor just moved on to being the flak for the local power company. Our corporate 900 lb gorilla.

They keep the malevolence down to a minimum, which is nice. And apparently they also serve as the next step up on the journalism ladder.

If one can count being the "shoveler" instead of the "recipient" as both being within the same "communications" field...

Regards,
Dann