When to call it quits?

Since you mention softball -- and since Dick Whitman mentioned the contempt for high school coverage -- I'll relate this story:

I once covered a high school softball game where, in spite of the limited number of spectators, they charged admission. As I arrived at the field and walked past the guy taking the money, I told him I was with the paper, just to be a professional and not look like I was walking in without paying. I got a few feet past the guy and he says, loudly enough for a few people standing around to hear, "we ought to make you pay triple, we hate your paper." He got laughs ... dude was killin' it at the softball field!

At the time, I was working at a smaller paper, so this was a school we covered heavily, repeatedly, game-in, game-out in many sports, because the coverage area wasn't too big. Yet this guy hated us.

Now ... this guy was just a stupid prick bastard, and you have to have a thick skin. And I suppose that by some twisted pretzel logic you could argue that the fact people say shit like that shows that they actually do care about what you do. Not sure I really buy that. But either way, we shouldn't have to take shit like that. I mean, I'm here to watch teenagers play softball. The dude couldn't find it within himself to just say nothing?

Nobody who goes into sports writing does so because their goal is to cover high schools. So I don't necessarily think it's a matter of thinking that it's "beneath" you. Like I said in my previous post, you understand that it's where a lot of people have to start, and you view it as a means to an end. And when you don't reach that end, and you spend years on high school stuff and then have an asshole make a comment like that, then yeah ... you do start to hold it all in contempt. I wish I didn't feel that way. I certainly didn't feel that way when I started. But that's where you end up.

And I understand that people covering big-time beats can have exactly the same experience. But my sense is it's a little easier to let it roll off your back at that level, when you know that you've achieved something in your career to have put you on that beat in the first place. I don't discount that it happens to the people on the big-time beats, but I do think the perspective is far different when you're looking up from the bottom rung of the business.

 

You should have whipped out a $5, thrown it on the ground and said, "Keep the change."

 

Some great stuff on this thread, and very timely for me personally.

After nearly four years with a static (and very beaten down) newsroom that has been shrinking by attrition, we've had four people give notice within the last two months. That's about one-fourth of our newsroom staff.

The slowly thawing economy is allowing people with a lot of built-up frustration to change careers, as only one of them stayed in journalism, and that was only because he got to move to his dream locale in Hawaii.

What's interesting is, while we've replaced several of them, it hasn't been with the fresh-out-of-college crowd. Instead, my boss is going for older, 50-plus former journalists who either (a) have another job and are working here part time, or (b) are empty-nester types with spouses who have good jobs.

They're still being paid like recent college grads ($20-25K).

As a 41-year-old, that's what has me wondering about my future more than anything. Would I settle for $10 an hour 10 years down the line if that's the only way I could stay in the newspaper business?

It's depressing to predict how I would answer that question.

 

That controlled chaos is a reminder of what still drives me in this dysfunctional business. It sounds wrong to say, but dealing with Hurricane Sandy -- live outside my window -- and the Boston Marathon aftermath was... well, not fun, exactly, but it gave me a sense of purpose. I was doing more meaningful work.

Did I wind up totally exhausted and frustrated that I couldn't do more? Absolutely. But I was actually providing news: live, (hopefully) accurate and locally focused.

I don't want to switch to news-side, that's for sure! But it was a chance to be more important to a wider audience, even from my little coverage area.

I'd like to feel that way more often, which is why my job search has leaned toward the nonprofit world. (Hi, KJIM!) But sometimes I think I should keep the sportswriting job as long as I can, and just go volunteer and get my hands dirty more often.

 

The day that happened to me (girls basketball, in my case), I stopped, turned around, and said "In that case, I think I'll go see if they hate me over at Westside, too." And I drove over and covered last-place Westside's game, with one bulleted folo graf on Eastside's. I told the athletic director and coach (and my editor) why it happened, and -- regardless of what they really thought of me and my paper -- everyone involved with the school treated us more respectfully moving forward.

If you feel your boss wouldn't grant you that option, you probably should start shopping for jobs. Don't buy the "it's a big game" argument. It's a fucking high school game.

EVERYTHING about this business assaults your basic dignity. Pummels at it like a jackhammer. If you allow others to brazenly pile on -- toady, shortsighted, dimwit bosses ... hyper-privileged parents ... dumbbells who never actually look at your paper yet are experts on its brand of journalism -- your dignity eventually will disappear. You can't do your job in that sort of situation.

 

In my career arc, I never made the transition to covering a bigger beat like a college or a NFL team. I have no regrets.

After spending most of my time on the preps side, my career took a turn to the desk side of the equation and hasn't migrated back to the beat writer side. With my present job as an SE, I get to do a lot of things, desk shifts, writing and other varied stuff I enjoy doing.

With the smaller number of big beat writer jobs, I have no regrets. I'm a busy man, but nowhere as busy as I'd be if I were tweeting/blogging 24/7, 365 days a year dealing with access restrictions and other hurdles while living life out of a suitcase. My wife would object.

I don't mind preps. Some do. I don't. The level of access and the personal relationships and the whole "love of the game" thing still appeals to me after doing this for 10 years. But the flame of interest is flickering with every passing day. I don't want to be an absentee father like mine was, married to his job first.

Last week, half of our newsroom was cut. I've been on the other side of the equation, getting the call for "an important meeting" that turned out to be my last. At least I was able to finish out the week. I think being a survivor was being on the worse end of the deal. The living do envy the dead.

I'm divided. On one hand, I still enjoy the work for the most part, but on the other, I would like a normal job with nights and weekends free for the most part. But the business is dying and it's hard not to acknowledge that. I'm at the age where it's time to fish or cut bait and I feel my hand is being forced. But it's very difficult to find a job outside the business. I feel like my resumé gets sent to the round file because the bloodless HR types go "sports writer, he can't do this job" regardless of how artfully I explain in my cover letter how my experience translates to many things.

 

Everything's relative. In some smaller, and even mid-size, towns high school sports matter a lot. You walk into the stadium/arena and you can sense a buzz. It does feed the ego.

On the other hand, when you walk into an event with a dozen people there, an event you could really care less about the outcome, then it becomes a chore. I realize you have to take the good with the bad, but when it becomes more bad than good, you do tend to reassess.

If you're going to cover exclusively or primarily preps, I'd rather not do it at a major metro.

 

I had plenty of experiences with dorks at the gate -- smart alecks who try to make you pay even though you've got your press pass, the "Oh, you're not covering (Fill in name of school that is always leading the standings) today?" question, the guy who wants to tell you how he worked in newspapers for a while but decided to get a real job, the mom who thinks her kid who plays third-string left bench should have a chance to be in the four-column front page photo, too. But none of that ever really bothered me or made me feel like I was having my dignity sucked away. Rarely, you run into people who the world would be better off without. But usually these are just people who love their kids and/or don't get what you do. Further, I never stopped enjoying prep coverage. You have to deal with an occasional overprivileged or arrogant coach. You have to keep your own stats. You encounter jillions of challenges filing on deadline. And you often deal with people who don't understand the nature of your work. But if what you write is read by a limited audience, it is also read intently by that audience and it is vital to them. There is a certain comfort in knowing that my name is resting in scrapbooks sitting in many a garage or attic.

Someone I worked with at my first paper explained to me that you can't expect readers to understand journalism. What I found truly soul-sucking was when the people RUNNING MY NEWSPAPER didn't understand and didn't care what I and my department did and dealt with on a daily basis.

 

I'm sure there have been beat writers for the Clippers, or the Bobcats, or the Grizzlies, or the Pirates, or any one of a dozen perennial losers who have felt that same thing over the years when they show up for a late season game and there's 5,000 people in the stands.
Game 137 of a baseball season covering a team that's going to lose 100 games (and has been on that track since May) can probably feel as pointless as any random, sparsely attended prep game in Podunk.

 

Oh, I agree. I was driving across Wisconsin some years ago and listening to a Milwaukee Brewers game on the radio with Bob Uecker among the announcers. It was early August and both the Brewers and whomever they were playing that day were light years out of the pennant race and I admired the announcers' ability to make the game sound reasonably interesting. I asked myself aloud if I could muster the drive to show up at the park day after day for games that held little to no relevance in the grand scheme of things.

I remember one night some years ago I was the one in the booth and my team was trailing 15-2 after three innings, three innings that had seen something like 6 pitchers and taken almost two hours to play. During a commercial break, I looked over at my partner and muttered "We're stuck here for at least two more hours of this ****"

 

One word of caution, though. In my area, and a lot of other areas, schools are laying off teachers, not hiring them. Your friend may not want to incur more debt, then not be able to find a job.

Nursing, though, is a different story.

 

Change is always difficult, and major life changes are even more so.

The thing to remember, both as you're making decisions, and afterward, is something that, more and more, I find to be true.

Life really is comprised of seasons/phases, with beginnings, middles, and finally -- especially -- endings to those stages. This concept applies not only to overall development and aging but also, oftentimes, to the main focuses of those times.

As you're moving on, and afterward, it helps to keep that in mind that the stages you're in are normal and right for the times they exist.

And then, you move on.

It's time to do that, and the more you realize and understand that, the more confident (and less afraid) you will become in your attempt to make the next stage of your life happen.

The angst and agony goes away as perspective and experience is gained -- and is appreciated for the help that you finally realize it lends you.

"It was good -- even great -- at the time. But now is a different time, and now this is the way it is..." or something to that effect will become an internalized part of your viewpoint.

Newspapers and the people in them will become less a big part of your life (the only life you ever previously thought/dreamed of) and they will become more a big part of that part of your life.

And in all likelihood, you will end up being OK with that.