3.20.2009

Rough seas

There’s no easy way to say it.

Six more people lost their jobs at my company this week, including one of my editors and my good friend Raechel …

That’s on top of six writers who were laid off last fall …

And that’s on top of two more good friends in the biz who were laid off from their respective entities in the last two months.

I’ve rarely been so uncertain of my standing than I am right now. Honestly, I’m terrified.

As the subscriptions fall, the bankruptcies are filed and the presses shut down, the voice in my head seems to get louder: Get out while you still can! ... One of my college mentors, Erica, has done some wonderful work chronicling the cuts.

The signs have been all over the place for me … Our pastor has preached about it. I also got a fortune cookie with a fortune that told me now is “a good time to start something new.”

There’s also that CareerBuilder commercial where the man walks into a copy place and confronts a mirror image of himself. The guy throws his mirror image over his shoulder and leaves the copy place. Then the tag reads “Help you, help you -- CareerBuilder.com.”

Amid all of it, this story and the scene it paints has been engrained in my head since I read it a couple weeks ago.

It’s not so easy for our breed to just pick up and try something else. There’s a reason we got into this business. It’s a passion; it gets into your blood. A lot of us are of the mind set that we don’t sail until the ship is sunk. We stay true to our mission.

I’m not ready to sail yet.

Good reads ...
a How to save your newspaper
a The 10 Most Endangered Newspapers in America
a Frayed Thread in a Free Society
a Seattle Times still standing, but for how long?

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