Why stay after the beatings?
Working for a newspaper in today’s economy is like being in an abusive relationship.
It has its brilliant highs — experimenting with new technologies, connecting with readers like never before, getting the story first and right, building lasting relationships with sources and colleagues and becoming the articulate, hard-hitting reporter you always knew you could be.
And the devastating lows — watching a colleague who you thought was safe get laid off, having your own hours cut or furloughed, seeing an ever shrinking newshole, hearing the words “we don’t have space/time for that,” and watching a long-standing newspapers close.
Through it all, you believe it will get better. Each time you are struck with a round of layoffs you hope it will be the last. Each time a furlough announcement beats your spirits you tell yourself it’s temporary. Each time you feel the pain of too much responsibility and not enough time you tell yourself that you can get better, stronger, faster. You can change. You can be the journalist who does it all, who reinvents the industry and does it in less than 40 hours as to avoid overtime.
I have a numb place inside me. I go to it each time I hear about layoffs, papers closing or furloughs. There, I’m safe from all the beatings and I can focus on producing what I love — journalism.
Because through every single tough thing that has happened at my media group and media groups across the country, I hold on to the idea that people value what we produce — even if they don’t pay for it (or if we don’t make them).
I have seen many mothers ecstatic about a story on their daughter’s brownie group (oh the joys of community papers), overheard too many conversations in the supermarket of people discussing a story I wrote, read too many angry and happy letters to the editor. We do matter. Our work matters. Journalism, in all its forms, matters.
I know “You’re gonna miss us when we’re gone!” has never been much of a business model.” And that repeating that won’t keep readers. But, it does soothe my wounds a little.
Someday the economy will get better. Someday we will find “the answer,” or more like many answers as I’m coming to think. I know journalism will never look the way it did when I was a fresh-eyed sophomore in high school, writing my very first newspaper article. I may never write for a big metro paper. I may never tell stories about the glory-day stories of high profits. I may never experience the luxury of being just a writer.
But I have to believe that somehow I will make a living conveying information that makes someone’s life a little bit better. I have to believe that my future as a journalist will be bright and exciting, filled with challenges to be met and tamed.
And that’s why I stick it out, through each beating — the hopes of a better tomorrow.