What's the dream job now?

Define good writing. Command of the language? Turns of phrase? Humor? Authority? Elements of style? What?

 

I'm a firm believer that you should never aspire to anything. If you take care of business, do good work, and keep yourself relevant, happiness will find you.

In my case, happiness is a multimedia gig at a stable mid-size daily in a sleepy Florida beach town that is the perfect place to raise my new family an hour or so from my family and the sleepy Florida beach town I grew up in, covering spring training baseball and outdoors, writing long-form features, cutting prep football video packages and occasionally indulging in my photography hobby. In a previous life, I was able to cover a Super Bowl, a World Series, a handful of major Bowl Games, and everything in between.

If it all came crashing down tomorrow, I could honestly say that I hit that zenith, move on, use that dormant masters degree to teach some classes at the local college, coach some high school baseball and start a scuba diving charter, knowing that I accomplished everything i wanted in this profession It's all a matter of perspective.

 

Communist.

 

Moderator, SportsJournalists.com

 

Interesting thread, and I didn't have anything to add ... until last night, when we had another shouting match/"let's take it outside"/"good because I'm going to fucking rip someone's head off" event at my shop.

(I was not involved ... and my head's still attached )

Besides no pay raises and no new employees over the last four years, what's really killed the morale in our newsroom is the end of the "dream job" for our younger reporters and photographer. (The ones who aren't married and/or are younger than 35).

We have a couple really talented people who had the misfortune to be young and ambitious in the dying days of the newspaper industry. At any other time in my nearly 20-year career, these folks would have long since moved on to bigger papers and more challenging jobs.

Instead, they're stuck with me in Podunk -- albeit a beautiful, scenic, outdoorsy Podunk -- covering the same government meetings, fundraisers and homecoming parades for a third or fourth straight year. For people with ambition, who got into this business to maybe make a difference in society or at least cover challenging news, it can be soul-crushing.

So the rats lash out against each other as the Titanic continues to sink.

 

We should probably keep in touch.

 

I kind of like what I've done, and what I'm doing now, most of the time. There aren't many I'd trade places with - I'm on my third decade of working at home, almost every day.

No price on that.

 

You have some pretty good gigs, Glenn.