Blood in the streets of Hartford and Baltimore

[Moderator1]

I understand the "sellout" feeling quite well.
I felt that way when I left and still do. Even though all signs beforehand pointed to it being the right move and they've all been magnified many times since.
Newspapers are all I had done, I love newspapers and I loved the work. I have many, many friends still there.

It didn't bother me to the point where I stayed, obviously. But I do understand the feeling.

That said, I'm happy as a muvva that I left.

 

[Ace]

If I leave, it's because the newspapers have sold out underneath me.

I understand economy being tough and business models changing but I see really crappy leadership across the board. Ford and GM at least have unions and plants that take years to refit to blame.

What's our excuse?

 

[WriteThinking]

If I leave, it's because the newspapers have sold out underneath me.

I understand economy being tough and business models changing but I see really crappy leadership across the board. Ford and GM at least have unions and plants that take years to refit to blame.

What's our excuse?

We don't have one. Not really -- besides the greed of people who are nothing like us, don't understand us or what we do, and don't care to learn, either.

Indeed, that is largely why we're so upset, and why there's even more angst about it all than there would be otherwise.

And whatever way anyone decides to go in this situation, it has nothing to do with selling out. All involved will have to make decisions, and we can only make the best ones we can at the time.

The problem for many us is not that we couldn't ever do anything else.

It is that, frankly, we don't really want to.

We might have ideas about something else we might want to try -- if we have to. But, truthfully, our heart just isn't in it. And that's the problem.

 

[Birdscribe]

I understand the "sellout" feeling quite well.
I felt that way when I left and still do. Even though all signs beforehand pointed to it being the right move and they've all been magnified many times since.
Newspapers are all I had done, I love newspapers and I loved the work. I have many, many friends still there.

It didn't bother me to the point where I stayed, obviously. But I do understand the feeling.

That said, I'm happy as a muvva that I left.

What he said... from the standpoint of someone who didn't leave the biz. Rather, the biz left me (as a co-worker at my last paper artfully put it).

Loved the work, got a lot of cool memories and stories I bored six years of college students with.

But I don't feel like a sellout anymore. Haven't felt that way in several years.

Another flack and I were talking about this last week. He left first, a metro, then a .com for a publicist job not long before I got my current gig.

We were saying that both of us caught some flack for being flacks -- him more so than me because I was unemployed. He said not a week goes by where he doesn't talk to a writer who is miserable at what's happening around them -- and not more than a bit envious.

 

[DanOregon]

D-Day: War's over, man. Tribune dropped the big one.
Bluto: Over? Did you say "over"? Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? heck no!
Otter: Germans?
Boon: Forget it, he's rolling.
Bluto: And it ain't over now. 'Cause when the goin' gets tough...
[thinks hard]
Bluto: the tough get goin'! Who's with me? Let's go!
[runs out, alone; then returns]
Bluto: What the fork happened to the Sportsjournalists.com I used to know? Where's the spirit? Where's the guts, huh? "Ooh, we're afraid to go with you Bluto, we might get in trouble." Well just kiss my ass from now on! Not me! I'm not gonna take this. Zell, he's a dead man! MediaNews, dead! McClatchy...
Otter: Dead! Bluto's right. Psychotic, but absolutely right. We gotta take these bastards. Now we could do it with conventional weapons that could take years and cost millions of lives. No, I think we have to go all out. I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part.
Bluto: We're just the guys to do it.
D-Day: Let's do it.
Bluto: LET'S DO IT!

 

[BTExpress]

My shop will be cutting 60 sometime soon. Maybe next week. Maybe the week after.

Maybe I'll survive (until the next Tribune quarterly fiscal report comes out). Maybe not.

But I've applied for a dozen jobs elsewhere and had one interview already. None of them having anything to do with this toxic business.

Selling out? More like surviving. I need to be employed --- somewhere --- by Aug. 20.

 

[Clerk Typist]

Zell: "Let's see; if I get rid of everybody and sell Tribune Tower and the Times-Mirror building and the Cubs and Wrigley, I can make $30 gazillion bucks and pay the ESOP a buck and a half. Yeah, that's it."
Zell's crony: "But won't that hurt the thousands of people who have placed their trust in you?"
Zell: "Yeah. But I'll be richer. And you're fired."

 

[SockPuppet]

So, since McClatchy started the ball rolling on June 16, any SportsJournalists.com math majors care to figure up the total carnage in the biz over the last 10 days?

 

[thegrifter]

please don't. it will only further depress us all.

 

[BYH]

My shop will be cutting 60 sometime soon. Maybe next week. Maybe the week after.

Maybe I'll survive (until the next Tribune quarterly fiscal report comes out). Maybe not.

But I've applied for a dozen jobs elsewhere and had one interview already. None of them having anything to do with this toxic business.

Selling out? More like surviving. I need to be employed --- somewhere --- by Aug. 20.

Ugh. That sucks. Hope it works out for you.

 

[Diabeetus]

So, since McClatchy started the ball rolling on June 16, any SportsJournalists.com math majors care to figure up the total carnage in the biz over the last 10 days?

McClatchy: 1400
Boston and Hartford: 157
Daytona Beach: 99
Palm Beach: 300
Newport: 15

Total so far: 1,971 jobs axed in 10 days. Who knows how many more to come by the end of the week.

 

[slappy4428]

So, since McClatchy started the ball rolling on June 16, any SportsJournalists.com math majors care to figure up the total carnage in the biz over the last 10 days?

McClatchy: 1400
Boston and Hartford: 157
Daytona Beach: 99
Palm Beach: 300
Newport: 15

Total so far: 1,971 jobs axed in 10 days. Who knows how many more to come by the end of the week.

Nothing like the end of the quarter to make the suits feel all warm and tingly...