But no, really, what's the future of this profession?

I'm 59 years old. Three weeks after I got the pink slip after 25 years as a sportswriter/columnist at a major daily in Canada, I was on a plane to Beijing, where I've been very happily employed for the past four years as an editor and "writing mentor" at Asia's largest English publication. I've also managed to have a couple of books published back in the Great White North, so between a decent salary in China and book royalties generated back home, I've totally eliminated $25,000 in debt. My employer provides a free apartment, medical insurance and 30 days annual paid vacation. My point is, think outside the box. Just because North American papers are going down the toilet doesn't mean it's the end of the road. Being able to speak and write English is the single most marketable skill in more than 70% of the countries on this planet -- you just have to take the plunge.

 

Your work speaking for itself is great and all and that's how I prefer to roll. But I never would have been hired in my current role if I didn't have an in and meet with the bosses hiring for a position directly. I actually had applied for the job online a month before and never made it through HR.

Some networking ideas: Connect or re-connect with professers at your college. Lots of papers might pick the brain of a journalism professor when trying to fille a role. Maybe you could help speak to a class or judge something.

If you can get to an APSE meeting or judging or regional meeting, it's a great place. You soak in some great knowledge and meet sports editors from all over.

Have lunch with SIDs, people in areas you might be interested in. Don't say you want to talk about ideas you have. You just want to have lunch. Maybe you meet with the head of a small college conference, visitor's bureau, whatever.

Also, some youngsters on here have reached out to ask editors to look at their stuff and created a network that way.

Don't make it about you. You are picking their brain, learning, getting insights, getting to know them. Then you kinda slide your pitch in at the end. "If you hear of any openings" "Your organization sounds great, have you thought this?" Etc.

 

Not just that they can afford it; many (like myself) can also expense it.

 

As other's have posted, there are jobs out there, but you're limiting yourself for various reasons. More opportunity if you can literally move anywhere.

 

This is not a comment on Rhody and specific his situation but if a sportswriter has a family and a spouse with a good, stable job I don't think said writer can risk moving. Revenues continue to decline for virtually all print media and If revenues declines headcounts do also.

 

I learned as publisher that the three P's are first to go: People, Paper and Postage. Trim staff, trim the paper in both page count and width, and slash postage spending

 

So does the publisher go next as the fourth P?

 

Understand that, but people in those situations shouldn't claim there aren't jobs out there.

 

It was obvious even when newspapers were thriving that publishers or the publisher's main bean counters sweated the cost of newsprint big time. My take is that when the internet came along, all bean counters jumped for joy just thrilled they could cut newsprint orders in half. It was very misguided. The free Internet has been the opposite of a savior to newspapers and the slashing of good people has exposed the industry as a total sham. Really smart for newspapers to get rid of their best and brightest people just because they are over 40 and making a buck. Really smart business model: get rid of popular writers and columnists and replace them with kids who can't write. It's always amazed me how newspaper owners, publishers and bean counters have always devalued the work of top notch writers.

 

It is fascinating to think while local papers were doubling down on what made them unique (local news) on the web - they didn't realize that some of their local folks were able to draw clicks from far beyond the area because of their unique status of being close to a story. You've seen this with college beats, political beats, etc. It was just dumb.

 

The most revealing event about newspapers' decline is a non-event: the lack of debate over the surrender of ethics, code, etc. in the face of an existential crisis. I get it: We have to eat, be sheltered, take care of our kids. But when flush with 25% profit margins and a monopoly on classified ads, we newspapers and journalists puffed ourselves into thinking ourselves more than workers; we were part of a calling, semi-religious for the non-religious, and maintained certain standards because of the public-servicey, high-minded, watchdoggy, watergate-infused sense of ourselves. There was a "wall" between editorial and publishing, an ethical way to report that included not paying sources, a sense that you couldn't publish unless the story was rock-solid and didn't think much about chasing readers.

Much of this was self-important drivel, a luxury allowed by fuck-you revenues -- and could seem so even at the time. But that attitude was IN THE AIR, everywhere, baked into the mindset for a good three decades.

Then digital hit the industry like a tsumani, and the surrender to profit -- any profit, God, please -- washed all that talk away. A bang? There wasn't even a whimper. There was no choice, of course, so maybe it's just a waste of time and energy. But it's still striking that one of the more craft-obsessed, endlessly jabbering class of naval-gazers willfully ignored a wholesale shift in identity. We threw up our hands, flipped from "Follow the money" to "Greed is good". We scurried to expand our "brand" -- and all but ignored the complete overhaul of our self-image. It's as if we didn't want -- for the first time -- to look too closely in the mirror and ask, "What, truly, are we about? Who are am I now?"

Enough. Gotta try and gin up five more Twitter followers....

 

Outstanding analysis.