The Storm's a-Brewin'

As you may already know, the field of newspaper journalism is suffering a great deal these days. In the storm of the poor economy, miserable real estate, and the availability of free information on the web, newspapers have been dying like a sweet little child being slowly poisoned to death by it's mother with a case of Munchhausen by Proxy.

At my paper, we are all anticipating buy-out offers and lay-offs in the near future. I feel OK blogging about this considering a local paper has a column about the newspaper chaos here in south Florida. You can read about what some local newspapers have been going through here.

It seems that all we (my friends at the paper and I) can talk about these days is what's the latest we've heard from the rumor mill. They're getting rid of 40% of us. We'll be working like a "small paper" once the dust settles. If you're offered a buy-out, you'll get 2 weeks pay for every year you've worked for the paper. No, I heard it's only one week per year.

And then there's my favorite announcement, made by my dear friend and an exceptional writer at the Palm Beach Post. Rachel said to me, in an effort to keep her spirits up, as we were walking out the building to get some lunch today, "All I know is, the worse it gets, the more colorful my outfits are going to be. Tomorrow I'm wearing my My Little Pony outfit. It's all pink and purple!". Sweet.

Then at lunch she mentioned that she felt like something was dying. I couldn't agree more with that feeling.

There's a strange level of camaraderie that comes from a situation like this. This is an unprecedented situation. None of us entered this field thinking our skills would ever become unneeded. Every day, clusters of people in photo collect in my pod (and I'm sure other pods, too...oh, a pod is what we call the four cubicles which are joined together), and we talk about what's going on. Talking in circles is human nature, and for the most part it's done in an effort to solve whatever the problem is. Unfortunately, there is no solution yet and if there was, it's out of our hands at the moment. So, we talk in circles to feel better, joking about what we'll do when we're not doing this. Taylor suggested becoming hookers and I envisioned driving down the main street in our city and seeing my former coworkers turning tricks in my neighborhood. That made me giggle.

In all the frustration, I feel I have to give it to "the man" upstairs. They have been sending frequent emails out to all of us, one which you can read about here, informing us of what they know (and are willing to tell us). Perhaps I'm being naive, but I'm OK with being naive, because then I don't think that management is simply telling us the same thing over and over when what we really wanna know is when the hell am we're out of a job. They are often telling us, too, that we are all welcome to visit them to discuss what's going on. Perhaps even make some suggestions. In the end, we can never complain that they didn't keep their door open to suggestions. They'll have every right to point fingers at our disappointed asses later and be all it's not like YOU thought of something better to save money.

All that said, I have taken up a diet entirely of my own cuticles and Dove ice cream bars.

Nummy.