A Little Ditty About an Out-of-Work Sportswriter

Business to business marketing.

Another legitimate avenue for journalists: I worked in SEO/internet marketing for a while. It was dry, but it was kinda interesting, too, in how I ended up utilizing the skills I'd learned in journalism. There's a certain art to SEO writing--use too few keywords and your page won't show up high on a Google search. Use too many and Google will automatically drop you down in the rankings. It's like placing quotes in a story. It's better to judiciously place them throughout the piece, and surround the quotes with good prose, than to just throw up a giant text block of quotes.

Best of all, from what I hear, we're still a ways off from computers being able to figure out SEO on their own, so there should be plenty of work for the foreseeable future.

 

Well, yeah, but what is that? A fancy word for trade magazine? Or simply business communications?

 

This is kind of hard to believe. Bradley is a very good writer. Don't read The Mag all the time, but what I've read they don't have a current baseball writer who is better than him. He also has brothers who are very well-respected coaches in two sports. I guess he doesn't want a job because of who he knows, but he is very talented and it has to make people kind of cynical to know a guy like that can't find a job.

 

When my weekly closed last year, I went a stressful week without a job until I was hired by a factory in town.
The hours are weird (usually 10-hour days, starting at 4:30 a.m.), but the pay is better and I get overtime (a first!). I made more in the first nine months at my new job than I did in a full year at the paper, and since I kept my part-time job, I'm not living paycheck to paycheck any more.

 

ESPN: The Magazine moved its operations from NYC to Bristol. If I recall correctly, Jeff Bradley was one of the staffers who was told to move or leave.

I forwarded his post to another now-former journalist, who said many of her so-called friends in the business vanished when she lost her job. A lot of people are trying to protect their own jobs, not reach out to help others.

But only applying online for one job a day? Trying to find a job is a job, and needs to be treated as such. Also, advice I was given at a networking session for highly skilled recent immigrants: one doesn't get paid by being picky. It's about earning money while you're also earning experience -- and hopefully respect -- in a different field.

 

I don't think he is only applying for one job a day, think he was saying he does at least that much. I could see what your saying about a recent immigrant or some kid just out of grad school, but this guy has a good amount of experience. In a way it makes me think I'm glad I've moved on. But in a way it is sad because if it takes someone as talented as him that long to find work it doesn't give much hope to those looking to break into the business.

 

This is a helpful post, probably for a lot of people, EStoess. Thanks for adding it to the thread.

 

I agree with Paper Doll that you can't be too picky. But that's if you really need/want to work. That's the key. Bradley probably doesn't have to work quite enough yet.

And, after being out of work long enough, but not long enough for it to have forced you to want to take just anything, it gets pretty easy to not really want to work or feel like doing it if you don't actually have to.

Also, after being out of work long enough, it gets really hard to keep on keeping on looking for jobs. The line about looking for a job being a job is certainly true. But it is also very easy to spout when you are not the one in the position of actually having to do it for months/years at a time.

That's part of the reason why, since I got hired at Walmart, and it turned into a full-time position, I've had very little desire to job-hunt, even though I'm sure there are better-paid things out there. The other part of the reason is that I've found that I actually like the business world and am enjoying my time at Walmart, and succeeding there, so that is feeding some new career aspirations.

But until you find that again, you get so you just can hardly stomach any more job searching after a while.

 

I'd imagine that if you succeed in an entry-level position at Walmart or a similar organization, there'll be plenty of opportunities to advance if that is what you want. One of the discouraging things where I work -- and probably at many other newspapers these days -- is that there's not much opportunity for promotion (and when such jobs do open up, there's usually already a "preferred candidate.")

 

There is opportunity -- lots of it. I just got promoted to an inventory supervisor position and am the department manager of the fast-growing online-merchandising department -- a job I've been interested in because I believe/know that it is probably the way of the future -- and it's probably among the top hourly jobs in a Walmart store, both in terms of pay (at the upper end of the range) and the many and varied responsibilities.

Ultimately, though, I have aspirations of becoming a salaried assistant manager, and, after that, perhaps, a regional marketing assistant. It could happen, the first maybe even within the next year or so. We'll see.

 

Worse, it seems that it's only news reporters getting those PR/communications jobs.

 

He could get a job in the business. He just can't get a job he actually wants, which is to sit around and write one feature every couple weeks and get paid $80,000 a year. I'd bet anything he'd turn his nose up at my job because he's too good for it.