Newscoma

Umm, all righty then.

From College Humor

The cell phone rang about 30 minutes ago but I just didn’t have the strength to pick it up. It was one of those calls asking me to come help with a project. I knew who it was. It’s one that I won’t get paid for, and I’ve already had the caller reschedule it twice. He calls, reschedules, calls, tells me his busy. I’m busy myself right now.

I’m home. Thinking and not thinking at the same time.

I guess you would say I’m in the zone, that place I go when I’m tired and needing to decompress.

It happens. I’m human.

I just need to sit with my dog in my lap and listen to the rain as it is beating down on the metal roof as if Buddy Rich was banging his drums on the overhead clouds. I left for a few hours to head to work and caught up on things. Mundane it might seem, but I’m paid to read and make decisions which isn’t a bad life at all.

When I entered the office, I was sopping wet, water running down the front of my shirt settling into in the hollow of my chest and streams of rain running off each strand of my curly hair. There is a mirror in the bathroom when you walk into the newspaper which is an old bank and you can see yourself if the door is open.

It was open.

My face was covered in droplets of water and streaking down my glasses.

I shook my mop of hair and headed down the hallway that leads into the insert room.

“You are wet,” one member of the insert crew said. I could tell they were laughing. Spirits were high and I was secretly pleased. I like to hear pleasure in a person’s voice.

I just smiled and nodded, hopping not to slip on the 50-year-old tile which is as slick as ice when it’s wet. I walked carefully. I’m clumsy. I have to take care. I tend to not pay attention but I did today.

Yes, I was drenched.

I put down the two bags I always carry and tried to squeeze out the water from my shirt in a trash can. It didn’t help and I made a mess. The phone rang and I picked it up but missed the call. I was given the number by the receptionist and I called it back. It was a cheerleader call, the local girls had won a national competition.

It’s part of what happens at a small bi-weekly.

One call after another, asking questions that I could fortunately answer. The same chatter I hear everyday.

Sometimes I feel like the old newspaper office breathes and is alive. People laughing, phones ringing, a proof thrown on my desk. Salaries diminishing.

Me wondering where I will be next.

I picked up the proof. Thin.

My hands, still wet, smeared the ink on the front page leaving a surreal image of three prisoners in court. One of them is a man I’ve known forever, sentenced for a crime he admitted committing. I should be sad.

I’m not.

I went through emails, made small talk about a lady who has lung cancer. She ran the competing newspaper during WWII while the men were at war. I’ve spent hours reading the archives that she worked on, the pages tightly bound in a huge leather book, when women weren’t given this opportunity. When the men returned from the hardship of war, the owners of that time relieved her of her duties. A new hardship then begun for her.

That’s always bothered me. She was eliminated because she wasn’t a man. This was nearly 70 years ago and she has written for the paper writing a local “people” column I work at until she got sick a few months ago.

My mind is on her today. She’s always been on my mind.

Always.

My head is exploding from the sinus everyone has. No one is unique here although my teeth feel like they are sitting on raw nerves. I’m dry now, curled up in a recliner with a blanket on my legs but I still feel the chill of the wet morning.

There are times that you have to decompress. There are times that you have to take stock of those little, tiny moments that only last as long until the next moment begins.

Sometimes it hits me I’m 43-years-old. And, occasionally, I need a moment.

It’s not a bad time in the least. It’s just a time of rest.

I’m waiting for my Shuffle to charge. I will then read a book and just breathe.

From the you can’t make this sort of stuff up file:

Oh dear.

UPDATE: Snopes disproves it. See the comments. If it had of been real, I would have hated to cover that story. I need to stick with goat murder.

Image Credit

We are changing in news. The bottom line has always been the same though. It comes down to money. There are some of us who still like putting on the symbolic invisible fedora and talking to the people over a coffee or a beer about what they think is important. I take it back, news hasn’t changed really. News is about emotion and passion. It’s about being informed. In many ways, it’s about life.

If you follow me on Twitter, I put an A.P.B. out today looking for new employment. Mine is shaky at the moment and that’s why I’ve been on edge even here at this blog for several months now. I don’t know where I’m headed but I have come to the conclusion that I can’t sacrifice my health and my spirit anymore. Salaries, including mine, have been cut to the point that when your quality of life is in jeopardy, you have to know when to move on. As I’ve said before, my ideas have been dismissed. I guess that’s why I blog.

And I read this post this morning and I have to tell you, I cried. Cried like a baby. Tears rolled down my cheeks mainly for the reason that I knew for the first time in a long time, I wasn’t alone. Howard Weaver hit so many things on the head that I can’t even begin to give his lovely post justice.

There’s no denying we have been gravely wounded by the end of our industry’s monopoly advantages, and those wounds are deeper still on account of the devastating condition of the national economy today. I certainly have not always reacted correctly or with due speed to the nature of the changes, and our whole industry has – to varying degrees – been overtaken by the speed and scope of changing consumer habits; we need to move faster in reshaping some of what we do.

And while it’s true that ensuring our future requires sophisticated selling, steadfast, adaptive management and steely resolve, the future is really all about the newsrooms.
Nothing else we do as a company means much if we fail to sustain our public service journalism. The McClatchy family has not persevered into the seventh generation in order to publish successful brides magazines, or websites with comprehensive nightclub listings. We labor not to ensure we can create new blogs for pet owners, or rich vertical online sites devoted to vacation properties. All of these and much more are essential, of course, because public service journalism is an expensive proposition, but we must not take for granted the capacity or elasticity of our newsrooms.

Let me close and say farewell in gratitude.

You see, you really can’t have news without your newsroom. You can’t overtax your reporters to where they hate coming to work. That one line: ” … we must not take for granted the capacity or elasticity of our newsrooms.”

My job search has gone public today although it’s been going on for several months. Resumes have been put online. I do not know what the future holds for me but I also am going to walk into the fear of the unknown. I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I’m going to plow through it like I do everything else. I don’t know if it will be in news. I also know that it most likely won’t be in Hoots, which is also sad.

Farewell Howard. You aren’t alone.

Xarkgirl calls out the newspaper industry.

As happens so often, the blogosphere — which newspapers STILL think is nothing but a collection of kitty photos and grammatically flawed rants  — has been so far ahead of the curve, that I, for one, can’t stand talking about it anymore. It’s like a freshman who just discovered existentialism and makes a black-and-white film about death.

So many “leaders” are standing on the shoulders of giants, discussing these ideas has if they thought of them, as if they are now the insightful experts who will lead the way. To what, exactly?

Dave Winer posted this comment on the Outing piece :

These people are only thinking about themselves, they need to start thinking about the function they perform.

Bingo. All they are thinking about, as they enter truly epic financial woes, is how they can save themselves. Not how they can reconstruct tattered journalism,or participate in reinventing media or contribute to technology. And certainly not how they can empower people.

This post hits on a lot of great points about how frustrating the issue of so many news conglomerates just don’t get it. And how some of us actually are watching as the revolution is upon us.

There is a good example though of newspapers thinking out side of the box here though as the Knoxville News Sentinel blogs are pretty darn hopping.

I keep waiting to see what will happen next.

I also continue to practice “Do you want fries with that?”

We live in a world that is changing right before our very eyes.

No it’s not real and is an elaborate hoax but still …

Here’s what happened:

In an elaborate operation six months in the planning, 1.2 million papers were printed at six different presses and driven to prearranged pickup locations, where thousands of volunteers stood ready to pass them out on the street.

Articles in the paper announce dozens of new initiatives including the establishment of national health care, the abolition of corporate lobbying, a maximum wage for C.E.O.s, and, of course, the end of the war.

The paper, an exact replica of The New York Times, includes International, National, New York, and Business sections, as well as editorials, corrections, and a number of advertisements, including a recall notice for all cars that run on gasoline. There is also a timeline describing the gains brought about by eight months of progressive support and pressure, culminating in President Obama’s “Yes we REALLY can” speech. (The paper is post-dated July 4, 2009.)

Read the rest here. And here’s the online version of the “special edition”

H/T to Bob.

Take three minutes and see what’s going on in the world of communication all around us.

From Andy Dickinson

Xark writes a list about how newspapers are not keeping up with their audience.

10. Finally: Newspaper companies hate modern journalism. Yes, that’s an enormously over-broad tarbrush, but this is a message I want to deliver via 2×4: Newspapers companies will not survive the transition to the multimedia future so long as the people within those companies oppose the rules, conventions and culture of that future. You’ll never successfully reinvent your company if you’re punishing the innovators, killing the messengers, rewarding the political infighters and sneering down your noses at the “pajamas-clad rabble” you blame for your troubles.

There are nine more. Go get ‘em.

Encouraging news about newspapers on this warm Fall day. Not. Folks don’t need their heads in the sand either. The Recovering Journalist breaks the deadwood business down.

Hastened by the economic and credit crisis, we are moving ever closer to a moment of catastrophe for one or more major daily newspapers. Sometime in the next few months, we’re going to lose one–or it’s going to be changed so radically as to be barely recognizable under the current definition of daily newspaper. And given the lemming-like tendencies of the newspaper industry, once one newspaper goes, others will quickly follow.

Call it the End of Days–or of Dailies.

I don’t work for a daily. I’m not as gloom and doom about this as some but the entire article is insightful on how the author thinks it might go down.

Also, go here.

I had to recuse myself from a story yesterday. Just like the judge and the district attorney, I had to say no to a story and I’m going to have to stay away from it.

Editor Bates will do just fine with it. It has to run. She’s a rock star anyway, although I don’t think she knows it. She’s amazing.

And I’m dealing with the emotions that go along with seeing someone that I know, that I grew up with and that is part of my family behave, how do I say it, absolutely awful.

Why, you may be asking? A distant family member was arrested. If he did what he’s accused of doing, then he will go to jail. For a long time, I might add. What did he do? Well, and the reporter is coming out in me, he allegedly beat the hell out of his girlfriend and held her captive. How bad was it?

Let’s just say the TBI is involved.

And the nieces found out about it at school. We knew over the weekend but we waited for the details. We didn’t tell them because we didn’t know the extent of what was happening. We knew it was bad. We didn’t know how bad it was. Some kid spilled the beans in all of it’s horribly glory to the oldest niece.

It’s bad. It’s heinous.

I talked to the oldest niece this morning. I told her I went to court and watched the arraignment, let those folks know that because of the family connection, I was out of it. Yesterday, she cried, according to Homer. I asked to speak to her which Homer said might be a good idea.

I own that this morning, as I talked to this 7th grader, I told the truth and another brick out of the wall of her innocence I personally knocked out. I’m not a mother, but we needed for her to know that Mister Right died a long time ago. I explained that it wasn’t a reflection of her but sometimes we get hit by emotional shrapnel. Being an adult in the life of a young person whom I adore is not always fun, but it’s necessary for her to know the realities.

Damn.

Note to young journalists in small town news, sometimes you have to just go look people in the eye because sometimes you will run things that are going to hurt feelings including your own. Own it and move forward. If you don’t make people mad, then you aren’t doing your job. It’s best to make both sides of an issue mad, because then you know you are doing your job well.

But it’s news. And despite the personal connections you might have, you HAVE to run these things because if you didn’t, then you become part of the problem.

There are no favors in news. There can’t be.

And, my dear friends, these things are the downside of working in small town news. I have put relatives on the front page and it’s never fun. With a writing staff of two and a half people, you can’t run from these things. And, although it can be painful and everyone thinks reporters are barracudas, we really aren’t. We are human and in the coming days,  I will see the hurt look on the faces of people I care about. Sometimes the news biz is amazingly wonderful, but there is always a flip side. This is a social business, a business where trust is crucial. We have to maintain that trust by reporting things we might want to hide our heads in the sand about but we can’t. Journalists just can’t.

And, although I recused myself, I’m still the editor and my name is all over that newspaper.

I say again, there are no favors in news and no one is above the law.

Is this person guilty? I am not a judge but I will say that the evidence thus far is overwhelming. And the sad fact that it’s not the first time.

I have put him on the front page before.

My day yesterday was one of the busiest I’ve had since I rejoined the news biz. And last night, I had to put on my Mary Sunshine face and go to a local event.

It took everything I had in me as I found out a friend had died just moments before I went.

I’m not a robot and there is a hole in the pit of my stomach this morning.

Sorry about the rambling. One week from today, I turn 43-years-old and I feel every bit of it this morning.

And we move forward.

Killa writes a thoughtful piece on the economy and how as a young newlywed, still in grad school, that what is happening on Wall Street is somewhat out of reach for her, although she’s trying to wrap her mind around it all.

People in their early 20s have always been a generation of wealth. We’re a generation of advancements in technology and medicine. We don’t remember life before computers or elective plastic surgery. We didn’t grow up on board games, because video games have been around virtually all our lives. We’re the generation of $500 jeans, $5 cup of coffee and MTV.

Sure, our generation can read up on the numbers, research history, and spout off technical terms fed to them by FoxNews and CNN, but we don’t KNOW.

And that was where the moment at work sprung from. I knew that shit was getting serious and had been serious, but I wouldn’t know how serious it was until hit it rock bottom. I can’t see the outcome, because this is a new experience to me. I can’t wrap my mind around how a bank fails. Banks don’t fail. Never in our lifetime has a bank fell.

But not only is the economy hurting our bank account, it’s hurting our dreams. We rode though the rich part of town (Scenic Hills here) and think, “I will never live in a house like that.” We know that we will never own a Mercedes.

There is a lot more over there and you should read the whole thing.