Survivor’s remorse
I’ve heard it said that in combat, when a soldier sees a comrade killed, “better him than me” flashes through his mind for just a moment. Then he spends the rest of his life regretting that one-second urge for self-preservation.
What’s happening to the newspaper biz is nothing like a battlefield … people will walk away with their friends and body parts intact. Some are losing jobs but they are not losing their ability to earn a living.
Still, I can identify with better-he-than-me guilt. Today the Rocky Mountain News publishes its last edition. My employer, who also publishes the surviving Denver Post, will be in much better shape financially, and by extension my paper’s prospects have improved. So my job is probably 3.763 percent more secure than it was yesterday. I don’t feel the least bit good about it.
The Rocky paid good union wages to its newsroom of 230 or so. A few of the paper’s stars got hired on by the Post but the rest are in deep doo-doo, economically. There are no other newsroom jobs anywhere in the country that pay the kind of wages they earned at the Rocky. Really, none.
I figure they’ll do OK … getting a paper out every day requires resourcefulness that’s always in demand (except, perhaps, now). The economy will turn around eventually, though minus a few more newspapers.
I’ve been expecting this day for 15 years. I remember thinking in about 1995 that newspapers had about five years till Internet broadband rendered them obsolete. Here we are nine years later and I’m still working for one.
But my illusions are gone. The end is no longer near. It’s here.
What dies with the Rocky is the age of big-city newspapers that matter. Papers of some sort will probably always be around, but they won’t be able to attract big-time talent until they can offer something better than more work for less pay. Maybe in a generation, after all the trapped-in-the-old-era farts like yours truly have been shunted aside by new blood, young newsies will be content to earn their stripes on starvation pay like cub reporters always had to do in previous golden ages of newspaper journalism. It’ll probably be good for the craft.
It’s not much consolation to the folks in Denver, I realize, but endings always lead to beginnings. Something newer, cooler, smarter, etc. will come of all this in a few years. And if it doesn’t I will still have successfully delayed getting a real job until I had to.
February 27th, 2009 at 6:03 pm
Tom,
Who would have thought when we were pounding down the margaritas at Tres Hombres in 1985 that within three decades the industry we all loved and were eager to enter would be teetering on the brink? Like you, I am one of the lucky ones who remains employed at a newspaper, although now only 50 weeks a year thanks to mandated furloughs through the next three quarters. While I would like to be filled with righteous anger at losing two weeks’ pay, I am thankful that’s all I am losing.
Bryan
February 27th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
I think I knew newspapers were doomed from the start but I was born with a face for radio so TV was out of the question.
March 1st, 2009 at 9:48 pm
Dear Tom (a.k.a., Dom Thomas,The Angry Copy Desk Editor):
Well said old man.
Watching the newspaper industry go through multiple organ failure, hemorrhaging ad revenues and grasping for some life saving Frankenstein web adaptation is sometimes too much. Doing the freelance gig, magazines are in the same boat and I have lost a lot of clients to closings, consolidations and cutbacks. A past client, CK Media, is currently paying 25ยข on the dollar for invoices pending. It’s bad all over.
Oh how I love the smell of newsprint in the morning…
SHEP.
March 2nd, 2009 at 1:18 am
I have a good friend who was walked out the door last week at our paper; more grieving to be done while the work keeps piling up at the same time. It’s hard, real hard, to work within a newsroom these days, to see friends and colleagues walked to the door. We’re all realizing, more and more, with each passing day that the privilege of working in a newsroom is not to be taken for granted. It’s a gift to be cherished. None of us know how many more we will have. I have noticed that though we are fewer after 2 buyouts and 1 round of layoffs, conditions have served to bring those of us who remain, closer together and has actually strengthened our relationships because we are sharing these burdens together, encouraging one another to keep going even though it looks bad, really, really bad. Newspaper people have a special spirit and for that, I am very thankful. So let’s see what’s beyond the storm; it will pass as all storms do. And when the skies clear and the winds die down, there will be stories to tell. Stories that connect us, inspire us and keep us safe will need to be told, demand to be told, for they must be told. I don’t know how to save newspapers, but I do know that I’ve been prepared to keep going through this storm with those of my brothers and sisters who still remain. We’re going to get through this together.
That’s all I know.
March 2nd, 2009 at 1:34 am
Wow, it’s like I’m back in the old Journal Star graphics department!
Michael, I agree with your sentiment. There’s much more excitement to getting the paper out these days with such a greatly reduced staff. We all work together much better than we ever did before, because everybody has to help out or the paper will never make it to the press.
March 5th, 2009 at 3:00 am
Nice piece.
March 5th, 2009 at 9:12 am
Hi
I was in Viet Nam for two years as a combat infantryman,,,,,When ever we took
casualities (KIA,WIA,MIA) my thoughts were,,,”That could be me”…as for the idea of regretting it…….I suppose thats true.
Ted