gannett plans to layoff 3,000 by december.

My wife worries a lot more than I do.

 

I think the beancounters sprinkle in saltpeter.

Or maybe that was band camp.

 

Mine, too. She resists my suggestions that we'll be fine.

 

That's the worst part of all of this... Seeing the stress it puts on your family.

 

A couple of months ago --- with another round of layoffs looming at my shop --- I arrived home a couple of hours early because I happened to be doing the business section that day in my paper's universal design setup.

Upon arriving home --- I usually get home a couple of hours after my wife has gone to bed --- she gives me a concerned look. "You're home already. What's wrong?"

Any change in the routine was automatically viewed as "Uh-oh. Did something bad happen?"

 

My wife continually rolls her eyes every time I bring up the company follies (layoffs, furloughs, etc.) It's to the point that to her, the lack of stability is almost funny, because the company doesn't seem to be able to plan anything longer than a week at a time.

My older son, though, is very worried. I've tried to reassure him that things will be fine, that we have saved enough money for me to be out of work for a long time and that I have plans for the future, but he seems to think we're all going to live in cardboard boxes.

 

As long as you have a lot of batteries, you will be fine.

 

LOL, Drip.

My wife gave up on this business for me, way ahead of me. Began urging me to get out a few years ago based on the way things were going at my paper and in the industry overall.

We're close to done with financial obligations to dependents, so it won't be easy to argue against her view for long. She'd rather see me trying something/anything else and sacrificing in a way we choose than putting up with the crap ladled out on a daily and increasing basis, especially since colleagues and I already have given plenty and earned better treatment. She sees riding it out as less manly -- or womanly, if the roles were reversed -- than planting one's heels and saying, "Enough."

If I squint just right, I still fool myself and see the nobility of our professional pursuit. She just sees a screwed-up, mismanaged business that treats talented, educated people badly, while rarely doing what it purports (in terms of real journalism) in the culture.

 

I know. I told my 84-year-old aunt about my furlough in March and in June she still thought I was out of a job, just in time for my second furlough. Others had heard furlough and thought I was out, too. I was happy to give them good news, in that they were one week furloughs, and it was nice that they cared so much. But I was sorry to make them so concerned over something that wasn't nearly as bad as what they thought.

But they read papers and watch TV and know that papers like Ann Arbor are going dark, and they are concerned, not for me so much as the paper they've known all their lives which is part of a chain in much worse shape than Gannett. It's a shame the suits never took the "sacred trust" they talk so much about with readers and ran the company like it.

Instead, they leak news and write memos like this. It's sad. I don't let myself get any more upset about it than that.

 

Smart woman, Joe. You'd best do your best to keep her around.

 

Don't I know it. And when it slips my mind, she's quick to remind me.

Unlike my newspaper jobs, she does love me back.

 

Is it true that the Gannett Blog has listed no names. I heard somewhere they're about 1/4 of their way to the total, but haven't heard a single name.

Does anyone know anything?