Out With a Whimper

I just took back an eight-pack of lithium AA batteries I'd bought for my digital recorder.

See, I used my digital recorder for my job as a reporter for an online hyperlocal news site.  Note tense: I'm not working as a reporter now. That's why I returned the batteries to the store.  I obviously didn't need them.  What else would I use a digital recorder for - to write my memoirs?

This blog post is a memento mori for my reporting career.  I mentioned that I'd lost my night job as a reporter this past spring.  Well,  I got another job as a reporter for a different online hyperlocal news site this past summer - in July, to be exact - covering public meetings in two towns, and I was going to mention that once I was secure in that new job.  And after three months, I thought I was.

Then my editor wrote me an e-mail to inform me that the new editor-in-chief of the site, which covers two towns, expressed a desire to cover public meetings in both towns - that is, what I'd been doing - in order to become more familiarized with everything going on. 

"Therefore," he told me, "I need you to NOT cover anything until such time as I ask you to do so in writing for a specific event or meeting. I will leave our agreement open so that as something comes up, we can react quickly."

What sort of a request is that?  "I need you to NOT cover anything"?

That was in late October, and I haven't heard from him since.  I'm repeating and directly quoting here what he said because I don't expect to.

So, the new editor-in-chief stole my job.  And I'm not getting it back.

Subsequent efforts at getting another media-related job - including applying for another reporting job in the franchise that owns the site I was just let go from - have failed.  The problem is that most media-related jobs n my area are in New York City and I can't afford the commute, and I have a part-time job I can't give up.  Also, there are practically no local news outlets - online or print - that are hiring.  Local news is my biggest strength - it may be my only strength. I'm now down to writing book reviews for a local site that promotes self-published books.

It's over. I'm not a reporter anymore.  I'm probably going to have to get a part-time low-wage job in some store or something like that, the sort of job that makes a mailroom position look like a step up.  

What really gets me is that this new editor-in-chief didn't have to take my job away.  After all, an editor-in-chief has several responsibilities that don't involve reporting, and this editor-in-chief could have easily become familiarized with the two towns covered by the site without freezing me out.  But no, this person obviously wanted to leave a big footprint on the site.  And that footprint ended up stomping me out.

Meanwhile, my old fellow college alumna Karen Hunter went on to pursue a career in journalism after college and has never looked back.  She has a nationwide radio show - a political talk show on Sirius XM, on, I've been led to understand, one of its most listened-to channels.   I'm happy for her, I really am.  (However, I still haven't forgiven her for mocking people who like classic rock.)  And the only reason I don't listen to her show is because I don't listen to talk radio.  I don't even listen to NPR anymore.  Why didn't I get as far as Karen did?   Some people have told me that as a black woman who went to a prestigious Catholic high school, Karen got a lot of breaks that I didn't, and that's why she's successful and I'm not.  No, that's not it.  Because, unless you go for a job at Essence, there's no such thing as black female privilege.  Karen probably had a better idea of where she wanted to go and what she wanted to do back when we were both in college, back in the 1980s, whereas I kept changing my mind about whether I wanted to go to graduate school or pursuing a career in journalism, publishing or broadcasting. Apart from journalism, which I didn't get into until 2011, I ended up doing none of those things, and now I'm nowhere.  She's just better than I am.  I'm simply not good enough to have gotten as far as she has.  There, I said it: I'm not good enough.

And, I know when to quit.

I don't want to say never, but, yeah, I'm probably never going back to journalism. I'm through. But while my reporting career may be over, I will still continue to blog here and elsewhere.  Because, just as I pretended to be a TV anchorman reading the news from a Scholastic magazine (with a piano bench as my desk) when I was ten or eleven, here I can still pretend to be a journalist.

Though, I never said this blog was meant to be a legitimate news source.

Anybody want to buy a digital recorder? :-(  Batteries not included.

RIP Gwen Ifill

She was gracious on the air, professional in her work, and standard-setting for everyone in her field.  Gwen Ifill, who died of cancer at 61, was one of the few print reporters (she wrote for the Baltimore Sun and the New York Times) who made the transition to broadcast journalism on NBC and then PBS with ease.  She was always sharp and to the point in her questioning of Washington politicians and her insight on whatever story she reported, be it public affairs or popular music.  You will hear and have heard a lot about how she inspired other black women in journalism, but she inspired me as a reporter too.  Because she told everyone what happened and what it meant without any bias.  Obviously, I'm not talking about what I write here, but when I have more reporter's hat on, I try to follow Ifill's example.

I always found her work solid and substantial, and I remember defending her in Internet chat rooms and message boards from folks who found her reporting less than stellar, though on one occasion I did write her to critique a discussion with members of Congress and failing to return to an issue after her attempt to ask about it was interrupted by her guests.  I never got a reply, but I can only assume that she learned from whatever criticism she did receive to do her best, and that is pretty much anyone who is a reporter can do. And overall, Gwen Ifill's best was pretty good.  We're all going to miss her . . . especially in this brave and scary new era. :-( 

Below The Fold

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, having published in Washington State's largest city, folded its print edition last week after 146 years in business. The newspaper is now only available online, which must be cold comfort to staffers at the P-I (was Seattlites call it) who were downsized as a result.

With more people inexplicably choosing to read their news off the Internet, and having to boot up and then scroll down to read an article while in an uncomfortable position to do so, those of us who appreciate a newspaper you can hold in your hand and read leisurely and at a relaxed pace are feeling very lonely. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is now online only, the Rocky Mountain News folded completely, and the San Francisco Chronicle could follow, leaving San Francisco without a major daily paper (the Examiner long since gone). The Philadelphia Inquirer and even the New York Times are also endangered.

I always thought there'd still be a market for newspapers, wonderful sources of investigative reporting and assets to local communities that the Internet would only supplement, not replace. But more and more people are getting their news from online news videos from CNN or MSNBC, as well as blogs that opine more than report. The news they get is selective, biased, and poorly researched at best. This kind of news dissemination, encompassing the most amateurish forms of journalism, is not what the Internet was meant for.

Everyone knows that the Internet was meant to be a repository for pictures of hot women. :-D

I have never presented this blog as a legitimate news source. :-D

Rocky Mountain Low

The Rocky Mountain News, a Denver-based daily founded in 1859 - predating Colorado's admission to the Union in 1876 and even predating its creation as a territory in 1861 - folded yesterday. This has been the biggest blow to journalism since Tuesday!

Seriously, why on earth is this happening? Can we really get all the news we need, as opposed to the news we can use, from cable news channels that offer more opinion shows than solid reporting (honorable exception: Christiane Amanpour)? How many bloggers do actual reporting? I don't - I am here strictly to mouth off on anything that strikes my fancy, and I make no bones about it, so if you came here looking for solid journalism, you came to the wrong place.

The best thing about a newspaper is that, unlike with a news Web site, you don't have to go through the trouble of booting up, getting online, trudging your way through your favorites list to find a site, and then having to scroll a lot to read the damn thing. You buy it for fifty cents, open it up and read it. Plus you have a crossword puzzle to challenge your brain. Nevertheless, the Philadelphia Inquirer is on thin ice, the New York Times is in trouble, New Jersey's Star-Ledger is getting thinner, and San Francisco could be without its own daily newspaper. What's going to happen without real, honest reporting? Who's going to report on corruption? Corporate greed? Joe Biden's gaffes? Michelle Bachmann's violent mood swings?

One good has come out of this decline in print journalism: gossip columnist Liz Smith, who actually thought that reporting on and cheerleading for obnoxious celebrities was more relevant than stories like the Arab-Israeli peace process, lost her job at the New York Post. Unfortunately, the Post, like the cockroach, is here to stay.