'Bloodletting' may be done, but newspaper hiring still slow

I haven't made my way through the full "State of the News Media 2011" report, but was buoyed by this sentence: "In newspapers, the bloodletting seemed to have eased somewhat."

Yet here's an accompanying graphic from the report, released this month by the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism (click to enlarge):

Yes, that sentence had more to it:

"After losing close to a third of its editorial ranks in the previous decade, and 11,000 in just three years, the nation’s newspapers trimmed only marginally in 2010. We estimate losses of about 1,100 to 1,500 people, or 3% to 4%. By recent standards, that is an improvement, although it leaves the largest newsrooms in most American cities bruised and necessarily less ambitious than they were a decade ago."

Criminy!

The report pegs the peak of full-time employment in newsrooms at 56,400 in 2000, before the free fall of 11,000 that corresponded to the Great Recession (2007-09).

There was a bright spot, though, according to the report: "2010 also marked a thaw in the news hiring climate" as newspapers began filling slots emptied when workers were laid off or left of their own accord. Some wooing of talent from one news outlet to another also was evident in that re-staffing or as new online news operations debuted.

Indeed, the mainstream job boards display many, many more help-wanted ads these days than they did during the doldrums: Journalismjobs.com offered 800 today; Mediabistro.com listed nearly 1,500 (sales jobs are mixed there with newsroom ones).

But as the Pew report stated, job qualifications may be changing: "If the emerging business model is to add multiple, smaller revenue streams together, newsrooms will need soon to develop an assortment of sub-specialists while keeping up their general reporting and editing capacity." That's likely to mean newsrooms will have to juggle traditional skills with online ones to meet "the distinct demands of writing and editing for smartphones, for tablets and the next hot format to come along," according to the report.

My future then? As a jack of all trades, as shown in this ad from a regional cable news operation: "This position is responsible for anchoring, field anchoring, reporting, writing, shooting and editing stories, breaking news or news programs as directed by the assignment desk, executive producers, or news director." (The ad just as easily could have come from a newspaper, no?)

After presenting a long list of "essential job functions," the ad concluded thusly, as most do: "Performs other duties as assigned."

I'm exhausted already.

Layoffs ebb, but job-hunting has gotten no easier

Edward Scissorhands

From the looks of the numbers posted on the Paper Cuts blog, layoffs and buyouts at U.S. newspapers this year are well off the torrid pace seen in 2008 and 2009.

For 2010, says the blog, newspapers have cut loose some 2,800 employees -- which during the depths of the recession came close to the numbers it was posting for individual months. The job-loss total compiled so far this year compares with close to 16,000 layoffs/ buyouts in 2008 and just under 15,000 in 2009.

But while the blood-letting in newspapers may have abated, we're not close to replacing all of the jobs lost -- just ask any of us journalists laid off then and still not back in a newsroom.

And I've got to tell you the environment for job-hunters hasn't improved very much -- in the news business or elsewhere. All along, there's been a rushed and rude overtone that just hasn't gone away. Here are my latest gripes:

• Left dangling: I happened to land two job nibbles in the same afternoon: w00t! I thought. I interviewed for both jobs (one in person, one via conference call with two top editors) and did editing/writing for each newspaper/website. But here it is, two months later, and I still don't know where on I stand on either position, despite several attempts at follow-up. Yes, the silence speaks volumes, but actual closure would be nice.
• Little acknowledgement: What is it with academia? Granted, my exposure there is limited, but twice I've sent résumés in response to postings by colleges and both times the only acknowledgement of my application was a form to fill out that will help the college show it is complying with equal opportunity hiring laws. Months later, in both cases, a polite letter arrived saying I was an unsuccessful candidate -- with no communication in between.
• No acknowledgement: More often than not, the response is no response at all -- ever. Not to your application, not to any inquiries you make (if you're lucky enough to find an actual person to make an inquiry to), not on their final decision on the position. (You usually discover the position has been filled when the successful candidate announces his/her new job.)

This -- how shall I phrase it? -- SUCKS!

Thankfully, the so-called candidate experience seems to be an ongoing topic in HR circles, judging from postings I've seen occasionally and, more recently, the discussion at a recruiting conference (video below). And it appears that development of a Candidate Bill of Rights (process, status, confidentiality) has been discussed, although not everyone sees a need for it.

Weekend-ending, week-beginning reading

(via Flickr: jj_pappas423)

Let's be quick and dirty:

"The Newsonomics of Replacement Journalism" (Nieman Journalism Lab): Media analyst Ken Doctor coins the phrase "replacement journalism" to evaluate whether new digital news enterprises are beginning to fill the gap left by the great whacking sound that signaled significant downsizing at newspapers nationwide beginning in 2007. His conclusion: no one-lost/one-gained net, but we're seeing some reversal of the losses. (Fingernails-on-blackboard alert: The piece really needed a final edit before posting.)

"The Online Migration of Newspapers" (MIT Communications Forum): This podcast features a conversation with David Carr of the New York Times and Dan Kennedy, a professor of journalism at Northeastern University in Boston who blogs at Media Nation. It's led by David Thorburn, a professor of literature at MIT and director of the school's Communications Forum, which says "the fate of newspapers" is one of its ongoing subjects. The first few minutes are filled with announcements, so jump to about 5:00. If you'd prefer a written summary of the discussion, go here. Bottom line: print will survive.

Music video interlude.

Consider the following as two sides of a sort-of-the-same coin:

"Marimow Out as Inquirer Editor; Deputy Named Interim Boss" (Philadelphia Inquirer): You don't usually find newspapers being this up-front about their internal processes. But in Philly, the two-time Pulitzer Prize winning editor of the Inquirer was returned to the ranks of reporter because he didn't have the digital skillset the paper's new owner wanted leading the newsroom. Note to journalists on the gray side of their careers: Get hip with multimedia or else!

"Storify's Burt Herman on the Evolution from Reporter to Entrepreneur" (OJR: The Online Journalism Review): Bert Herman had spent a decade overseas as an AP reporter and bureau chief when he decided to return to the States for a journalism sabbatical at Stanford. That led to an extension of the sabbatical and the founding of Storify, a process by which users can "take the best of social media and make it into a story -- to 'storify' it." This Q&A charts the founding of the start-up; on Vimeo, Herman posted an explanation of how Storify works:


Storify demo from Burt Herman on Vimeo.


Even quicker and dirtier:

"Accessing America from a Chevy Impala" (Society of Professional Journalists): The subhed tells it all: "One trainer. 1,009 journalists. 45 days. A rented car. 14,000 miles. Tons of records."

"Kindle Singles: A New Potential Home for In-depth News?" (Nieman Journalism Lab): Why not put newspaper series there, asks Nieman's Joshua Benton.

Writing is what we journalists do best

This photo by Elizabeth Malby of the Baltimore Sun building sits atop a website, Telling Our Stories, that went live this week.

The site is a collection of memoirs by reporters, copy editors, photographers and others affected last year when the Sun cut 60 positions, including about a third of its newsroom staff.

The recollections shared -- of pride and excitement at a first byline; of stories that made a difference; of a deep and abiding love of newspapers -- will be appreciated by fellow journalists. The tales of being told you'd be among those let go -- and the resulting dead man's walk through the newsroom -- will ring true for others who shared that fate.

I'd suggest approaching the site this way: read the intro on the home page, then click on "The fellows" for a brief bio on project participants. That way you'll learn who they are and what they did at the Sun before following the link to their contribution.

Just be sure to have a box of tissues nearby.

Newspaper layoffs ebb but don't end

Last week, The Oklahoman in Oklahoma City laid off 57 employees paper-wide, including an undisclosed number in the newsroom.

The Kansas City Star did likewise, laying off 12, eliminating 12 open positions, and telling everyone else they must take an unpaid week-long furlough this summer.

It was the second layoff since January at the Star; earlier, a dozen workers also were let go. At the Oklahoman, the cuts were about a third the size of the last round of layoffs in October 2008.

At each paper, the publisher blamed the layoffs on soft advertising due to a still-weak national economy. Stated the Oklahoman's David Thompson, "Like most media companies, we are trying to adjust to our environment.”

But economic indicators are pointing up and surveys say the average American is feeling better about the economy -- even if the official government group that dates recessions hasn't ruled yet that the Great Recession is over.

So what gives at newspapers? After two years of brutal personnel cuts, aren't publishers awfully close to the bone by now?

Paper Cuts, the blog run by a St. Louis newspaper designer that keeps a running tally of layoffs, says the industry lost at least 1,726 jobs in the first quarter this year. That compares to at least 970 in Q1 last year (heavier layoffs occurred in the second and third quarters of 2009) and 1,984 in Q1 2008.

Scroll through the blog and you'll see an indication of one new tack that seems to be gaining momentum: consolidation. At Media General, all of the copy editing and designing functions for the chain's weekly and daily papers are moving to just a few newsrooms; it's happening, too, at Tribune Co. and at E.W. Scripps. Booth Newspapers is consolidating printing while outsourcing ad production work.

One bright ray in all this, though, may be the U.S. Department of Labor's mass layoff report. On Wednesday, the agency noted an improvement in numbers for the first quarter: Big whacks at payrolls by employers (50 or more jobs) were down significantly from the record highs reported a year earlier.

The numbers, also tracked monthly, cover 18 industry sectors, from manufacturing and mining to retail and health care. The government said 12 of the sectors reported record declines in the number of announcements -- called "events" that put workers out of jobs for at least 31 days -- in the January-March quarter vs. last year.

The industry sector that includes newspapers (and a bunch of other information publishers like magazines, broadcasters, software and directories) reported 44 mass layoffs in the quarter, according to the government, down from 98 in Q1 last year and 62 in the final quarter of 2009. The number of affected workers, 6,290, was less than half of a year ago (14,688) and the fourth quarter (12,264).

But before we all breathe a sigh of relief, remember this: A massive layoff may be in the offing -- as many as 500 workers -- as the daily newspapers in Honolulu combine. And there could be some change in staffing this year at newspapers that just came out of bankruptcy reorganization with new owners in Philadelphia and in Orange County, California.

UPDATE: Officials now say combining the Honolulu papers will cost nearly 400 jobs.

We're not out of the woods yet

Ryan Sholin posted this picture of ASNE "swag" --
a copy of the San Francisco Panorama -- to
Twitpic. Tweets quote Panorama's Dave Eggers
as saying he's looking for money to take
the publication monthly.

Our long national nightmare in the newsroom continues.

Or so says the American Society of News Editors, the trade group for top newspaper and Web site editors.

According to ASNE, the rate of decline in newsroom jobs at daily newspapers slowed last year to 5,200 -- from 5,900 jobs lost in 2008.

But that still put the census of full-time staff -- reporters, editors, photographers, layout and graphic artists -- at its lowest level since the mid-1970s: 41,500.

And among minorities, the 2009 hit was bigger on a percentage basis than for the newsroom work force as a whole: 12.6 percent of jobs lost, vs. 11 percent overall, ASNE said in a report released yesterday.

The association, which keeps tabs on employment at daily newspapers in particular to track minority hiring, called the numbers disappointing. "Without diversity in our newsrooms, we miss reporting on important stories in our communities," ASNE President Marty Kaiser, editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, said in a prepared statement.

Indeed, the Asian American Journalists Association today called on ASNE "to make diversity a key pillar of the news industry's financial future," as it underscored a drop in Asian Americans in newsrooms. (This table in the ASNE report shows the minority census in newsrooms over the last decade. This table shows the minority breakdown by job category. And this one shows the trends since 1978.)

ASNE is holding its annual conference in Washington, D.C., through Wednesday. Live-blogging, tweeting and reporting on sessions can be found here.

While the 2009 conference was canceled -- only the second time in the group's history (World War II was the backdrop for the hiatus in 1945) -- this year's meeting was promoted as less navel-gazing and more about "what is working now and what isn’t."

One active tweeter, a journalism professor from Arizona, liked what he saw: "... speakers are showing phenomenal number of very specific examples. Good teaching." But one online account of the conference so far likened the editors attending to "patients in the dentists' waiting rooms: anxious."

That's an apt description to be sure, given that newsroom layoffs and buyouts merely slowed in 2009 from the hurried pace of a year earlier and haven't yet reversed.

Prediction: Media chaos hangs on

You'd think, with all the thousands of layoffs over the last few years, we'd finally be at the trough in the business cycle for newspapers and other media, at which they're done contracting and now are ready to grow once more.

Bob Garfield

Not so, says Bob Garfield, author, columnist and pundit.

"In the short term, news organizations will simply retrench with painful cutbacks, not only on investigations and enterprise reporting, but on the basis of monitoring local, state and national government," he said this morning. "The medium term will be much worse as liquidation and consolidation reduce the number of newspapers and broadcasters by at least half."

Garfield, who last summer published The Chaos Scenario, a book on the effect of the digital revolution on mass media and marketing, was among today's speakers on the first of two days of discussion in Washington, D.C., on the future of journalism.

It's the second time the Federal Trade Commission has convened a workshop on the topic, which the agency sees as vital to protecting consumer interests in the Internet age. This one, like the one held in December, is meant to delve into the changing economics of journalism.

Garfield didn't paint a pretty picture.

"It's going to be a frightfully barren period of chaos for advertising as an industry and for the media industry it has for 350 years supported," he said.

Mass media and marketing have existed in "a mutually sustaining yin and yang" for centuries. "Consumers have put up with ads as part of the deal -- the quid pro quo, the unspoken compact that provided all of us with free or subsidized content in exchange for having to sit through 20 years of  Mr. Whipple fondling toilet paper," Garfield said.

But the Internet has changed that, breaking the bond that existed between media and marketing.

"People are consuming more stuff, including newspapers and TV, than ever before in human history but the audience is carved in smaller and smaller slices," Garfield said. "... The thing is, as audiences fragment, the amount of revenue coming in for any given piece of content goes down, down, down, below the point where the publisher or broadcaster can continue to produce the thing."

So rather than great drama or point-on sitcoms, TV, for instance, offers lower-cost fare. "It's cheaper to do," he said. "But it's also suckier and draws fewer viewers to the ratings, still less revenue and so on until oblivion."

"It was a magnificent ecosystem," Garfield said. "But it turns out to have been just an accident of history -- a happy accident, but an accident nonetheless."

Now, everyone with a blog is a publisher; everyone with a video camera is a filmmaker. "The time when folks at the apex of the pyramid got to dictate to the audience, the electorate, the congregation, the electioners -- that is coming to an end," he said. "Ladies and gentlemen, the herd will be heard."

You can listen to more from Garfield here, in an interview he gave last summer to NPR's "Talk of the Nation." (Garfield is a co-host of NPR's "On the Media.")



You can access the FTC workshop sessions (audio only) here.

Why not resurrect parts of the WPA?

A traveling exhibit featuring photographs from the Great Depression recalls a segment of FDR's New Deal that put creative types to work alongside the millions of unemployed who built roads, swimming pools and museums as part of the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s and early 1940s.

Which begs the question: Why not do it again?

The exhibit, "This Great Nation Will Endure: Photographs of the Great Depression," was curated by the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library in Hyde Park, according to the New York State Museum, which hosts the 150-photo show through March 14 in Albany. (It moves in April to the Northern Illinois University Art Museum in DeKalb.)

The photos include many of the iconic images now associated with the Depression -- such as the one here by Dorothea Lange -- which were taken as photographers, writers, musicians and actors were employed under various New Deal initiatives. Some 5 percent of WPA expenditures intended to lift the country out of the Depression went to cultural programs.

That same kind of prime-the-pump spending is present today in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, sending aid to states to repair roads, to communities to weatherize homes, and to the unemployed through extended jobless benefits.

So why not lend a hand again to creative types, to the thousands of reporters, editors and photographers who have been displaced by efforts at their newspapers to stanch Great Recession red ink through layoffs and buyouts?

Yes, I do have a vested interest in the suggestion, being a purge alum myself. But I didn't originate the idea.

Indeed, Mark Pinsky wrote about it in The New Republic in 2008; Robert McChesney and John Nichols mention it in their new book, The Death and Life of American Journalism, as does the report last month from the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism on "Public Policy and Funding the News."

Pinsky, a former newspaperman, would create a kind of current-day WPA Federal Writers Project, under which grants would go to journalists to undertake specific assignments (listen to an NPR interview here). McChesney and Nichols would focus more on budding journalists by expanding an idea from media analyst Ken Doctor and others to create a journalism division of AmeriCorps that would subsidize the entry of young scribes into the field.

I'd add a complementary, me-too notion: Don't overlook us career journalists -- as mentors and editors to the budding journalists, as teachers of "news literacy" in schools, as skilled workers at the magazines and websites of nonprofits that now beg for volunteers.

But make sure, please, that we get a living wage. Just as the field of journalism needs a hand as it transitions to some new revenue model not underwritten by big ads from car dealers, retailers and cellphone companies, so, too, do we need help in this in-between period.

I promise to give the job my all, happy to be gainfully employed again and out of the menacing shadow of the Great Recession.

Confession: I have a journalist's fear of (some) numbers

I've never found a DEF 14A (a public company's proxy statement) that doesn't make me salivate. But put this in front of me and I choke: "Solve each of the following equations for x."

Remember algebraic problems like 5x - 7 = 28 and 5(x + 2) = 1 - 3x? I can't recall if I ever learned to solve them and I certainly don't know how now. Yet they're part of the GRE general test required by many graduate schools for admission.

I've toyed twice in my life with getting a master's degree. The first time, I was early in my career as a working journalist, looking to improve my employability. I searched far and wide for a good graduate school (one of my requirements was no GRE) before deciding I'd rather do journalism than study it.

Last month, I thought again of taking the j-school route. I'd heard of a master's program that offered a fellowship for career professionals that covered not only tuition but also included a stipend. Again, increasing employability was the goal, since I was a refugee of the Great Recession and 2009 newspaper purge.

The 10-month program promised new-media skills and an internship that might open a door to a new job. I needed to secure the fellowship, though, because I currently have a daughter in college and I'm still paying back loans on another daughter's B.A.

Then came the pesky matter of solving for x, along with questions about square roots, arcs and integers. Ironically, the fellowship was offered by the same graduate school I'd contemplated years earlier, the one that didn't require the GRE then. Now, though, it did mandate the test, so I was sunk.

Drat! Looks like I'll have to take the Abe Lincoln route and do a little self-education.

But let me tell you this in all candor: After years and years in journalism -- most of them spent in business journalism -- I don't ever recall having to solve for x.

And not being able to work an algebraic formula never kept me from diving into the pages of financials found in a proxy or annual report -- and coming up with the story. (The key there, if you must know, is to always, always, always read the footnotes.)

Beware the new staffing models

Once upon a time, we knew the lingo.

If you were a reporter, you were on a newspaper's payroll, and received a salary, vacation time, and health and retirement benefits for your 40-hour workweek. If you were an intern, you were an unpaid reporter-in-training, likely a college student earning academic credit while you learned the ropes. If you were a freelancer, you weren't on the payroll, but worked on a per-story basis for the paper.

There were permutations, of course -- a unionized reporter might work just 37.5 hours a week; an intern might be paid -- but the jobs had generally recognized definitions.

These days, you need a playbook to figure it out.

For instance, one New York City business newspaper advertised this week for a real estate reporter. The beat is deemed "important" by the paper and is targeted for expanded coverage, but the job is listed as "full-time freelance" and "offered on a contract basis, with some health insurance benefits," according to the job board posting.

Wait. How's that? You want to beef up your real estate coverage, but you aren't willing to add to your permanent payroll to do it?

Here's another: A New York City electronics trade magazine advertises for an "assistant editor," but come to find out, it's a 12-hour-a-week unpaid internship for the spring semester. "Duties will include the writing of daily news stories, including byline opportunities, copy editing of staff-written features, and posting material to our newly redesigned Web site," says the ad.

Whew! That sounds like a lot of work and responsibility for a college student over just 1½ days a week.

Sure, the economy is pulling out of a recession that started in December 2007. Newspapers laid off thousands last year as they grappled with declining revenue, and magazines lost a quarter of their ad pages. But businesses that have begun to feel at least a little optimistic are adding temporary workers before they commit to permanent hires.

So perhaps that's what the New York City newspaper is doing: adding a freelancer now who might get an on-staff gig later. (Many times, though, employers will state that: "This is a six-month position with the potential to extend the relationship to a permanent position based on the performance of the candidate and client need," according to an ad for a marketing post I saw.)

But what about the many intern postings on job boards lately? Yes, it's the season to line up spring or summer interns. But, then again, there have been instances when it appeared budget-conscious papers used college students to augment their decimated staffs.

And then there are the experiments involving new online news platforms and two graduate schools of journalism, at the City University of New York and at the University of California at Berkeley.

Next week, the CUNY graduate school will take a lead role in The Local, the New York Times' community news site for Brooklyn, which has been affected by buyouts and layoffs at the newspaper. Students are expected to be involved through a hyperlocal news course new to the curriculum this semester.

On the West Coast, the UC Berkeley school is involved in the Bay Area News Project, a nonprofit collaboration among the school, KQED Public Media and philanthropist Warren Hellman to supplement news coverage thinned by cuts to San Francisco's reporter ranks. Students will work there, too, an aspect of the project that has raised some hackles. The effort has yet to launch, but is staffing up.

Let's be clear that internships are an important real-life experience for students interested in journalism, and over the years many reporters have been hired by the newspapers where they interned. And let's recognize that freelancers fill a valued role for many publications -- especially when special supplements or new ancillary products are piled on in an attempt to improve revenue.

But let's be careful that neither interns nor freelancers takes the place of the full-time reporters who make their living as journalists.

It's a buyers' market for wages

It was the first time I had run into the question in an online job applica- tion, and so I hesitated.

"Current salary" (fill in the blank); "Desired salary" (fill in the blank). What numbers should I offer, particularly to the latter?

Online forms are the rage these days. They ask the usual kinds of questions like name, address and past employer(s), and allow you to upload or cut and paste a resume and cover letter. Hit "send," and off it goes. In return, you usually receive an emailed acknowledgement of your effort -- something often lacking when employers seek a paper or email package in response to a job posting.

But the online forms can be frustrating. On one, I was asked to supply the names of five previous employers when I only had four -- without reaching back to my time bartending in college. And the program would not let me submit my application without the required five.

Same with supplying a number for "Current salary": If I try to answer "NA," since I'm unemployed, I get an error message. So what do I say to "Desired salary"?

Recruiters and human resources professionals will advise you not to talk salary if at all possible, although it's generally recognized that if no mention of money is made, you and the prospective employer both may be wasting time.

But should you low-ball yourself when it appears the labor market is already doing that for you?

An Associated Press story that ran in many newspapers Sunday recounts the tales of laid-off workers who, when they finally returned to work, found themselves earning less than they had before. It's what happens with economic calamities like the Great Recession, according to labor experts.

Even more troubling, though, is that it will take these workers years to get back to their previous salary levels.

In a study last year published by the Connecticut Department of Labor, researchers found that workers who lost their jobs during a recession were still suffering lower-wage effects years later. “What it shows is that if workers who have held a job for at least three years lose that job during a recession, they still have earnings losses of 20 percent or more six years afterwards,” said Kenneth Couch, an associate professor of economics at the University of Connecticut and lead author of the study.

These days, though, lower pay seems to be a given -- especially in journalism, where so many have been laid off or bought out. A lot of candidates are competing for the same jobs -- even freelance ones -- and the media companies that are hiring are doing so cautiously and watching their pennies.

One prospective employer I spoke to informally tested my interest in a job that would pay 20 percent less than I had been making before I was laid off; another quoted me a salary that I had started my last job at a decade ago.

It's discouraging and demoralizing, but apparently it's the new normal.

Another tough year for newspapers

Erica Smith, the unofficial keeper of vital statistics for the Fourth Estate in this country, has published some eye-opening 2009 data at her Paper Cuts blog:

• 14,875+ jobs were lost through layoff and buyout at U.S. newspapers last year;
• 143 papers stopped publishing print editions in 2009, although 13 stilll remain available online;
• 34 newspapers tallied layoffs of 100 or more workers last year;
• 40.7 newspaper folks, on average, lost their jobs each day last year.

The good news? The carnage wasn't as bad as Smith had expected. "The year started off with a lot of layoff announcements — so many that I was sure the 2009 total would easily top the 2008 layoff total ...," she says. But the final quarter of the year didn't see the same "onslaught" that 2008 did, which had pushed that year's total to 15,984.

(To put some of the numbers in perspective, using figures from the Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism, the workforce in American newsrooms ended 2008 at 46,700; the country had some 1,422 daily newspapers in 2007. Smith's numbers, though, also include weeklies.)

But, of course, there's bad news, too: Smith's layoff/buyout tracker already stands at 321+ just five days into 2010. (She says that's mostly due to her not counting a layoff or buyout until it takes effect.) Others also see some clouds on the horizon for the new year.

Rick Edmonds, a veteran print journalist who now follows the industry for The Poynter Institute at The Biz Blog, told Forbes.com in November that he expects layoffs to continue this year. "The math is that when you cut a bunch of reporters from your newsroom in June, that continues to show up as a savings in January," he said. "But if advertising revenues continue to fall, you will have to cut again. My prediction is that in the coming six to nine months, ad revenues will continue to fall and newspapers will be forced to cut yet again."

Alan Mutter, a former newspaperman who blogs at Reflections of a Newsosaur, also worries about newspaper ad revenue going forward, despite some publisher optimism and the recovery seen in stock prices last year. He's concerned papers may begin to outsource whole departments to keep their books in balance.

So we'd best buckle up for another bumpy ride this year.

We journalists sure like our work

The Poynter Institute hosted a live chat with the provocative title "Are Journalists Giving Up on Newspapers?" that concluded with a split decision: "Yes, some are, with important consequences" (42 percent of respondents) and "Yes, some are, but newspapers will survive anyway" (26 percent).

Meantime, 32 percent feel journalists aren't giving up on newspapers as fast as the papers are giving up on them. (Which earns a big "Right On!" from the 15,000 or so journalists like me who were laid off or bought out by newspapers this year.)

I can't tell you how big the respondent pool was to the Poynter chat, which I just happened upon one afternoon; it's archived here. (Click on the "Are Journalists Giving Up..." title under "Completed Events".)

These kinds of chats, live or archived, are sometimes frustrating because they aren't linear: Someone is always countering a point or answering a question from several speakers ago. Nevertheless, they usually are instructive.

Such was the case with the mini-polls that popped up as the Poynter chat progressed over the course of an hour. The program was led by a couple of folks from the school and also featured Matt Stiles, a former big-city newspaper reporter in Texas who now works as a reporter and data-base specialist at texastribune.org, the deep-pocketed online news site in Austin that went live in early November.

For instance, one poll asked why we journalists stayed at newspapers. Four in 10 respondents answered "It's what I love," while three in 10 said they "need the paycheck." (Does that practical sentiment negate the first?) Two in 10 said they remained because they were "still optimistic about its future," and one in 10 picked the "all of the above" option -- which also had for good measure "I don't like my other options," which was picked by no one.

The majority of participants were full-time journalists (53 percent); 21 percent identified themselves as former journalists.

One mini-poll seemed directed at the latter, asking why they left the newsroom. "All of the above" was a favorite answer here, too (33 percent) for a list that included  "It (the news organization) was moving too slowly" (27 percent); "I was more excited about other options" (20 percent); "The money was better elsewhere" (13 percent); and "I lost faith in its future" (7 percent).

The journalists who still work full-time at newspapers seemed resigned to riding out the storm that is threatening to topple their papers' traditional ad-based revenue model. Asked which action was more admirable, 75 percent picked "Staying put to steer through rocky waters," while the remainder endorsed "Bailing while I can." (No one chose the option "Going down with the ship if it must sink," perhaps reflecting the cost in worker loyalty wrought by the deep staff cuts made at newspapers.)

Remember the old Timex slogan that the watch "takes a licking and keeps on ticking?" Seems like we journalists do the same.

Calling all oracles

I'd like to find someone to intone, as Gerald Ford did, that our long national nightmare -- of newspapers closing and journalists losing their jobs -- is over.

Ford's famous line came after he was sworn into office on Aug. 9, 1974, soon after Richard Nixon officially resigned the presidency in disgrace over Watergate.

"I assume the Presidency under extraordinary circumstances never before experienced by Americans," Ford said then. "This is an hour of history that troubles our minds and hurts our hearts."

OK, so maybe the speedy race to the bottom by newspapers -- some 135 shuttered so far this year and more than 14,500 journalists laid off or bought out -- doesn't quite measure up to what Ford faced. But for those of us caught in the downdraft, it is a recurring nightmare:

* Today, the Newspaper Association of America reported that third-quarter advertising revenue at papers was down 28 percent from the year-earlier period, to $6.4 billion. It was the 13th straight quarter of decline, according to the association, which predicted that full-year ad sales likely will be under $30 billion at newspapers for the first time in 20 years.

* Yesterday, in a Forbes.com story titled "A Perpetual Recession for Papers," Rick Edmonds, a former newspaperman who now studies the business side of the media at The Poynter Institute in Florida, suggested that "more staff cuts will be coming to newspapers next year." His line of reasoning? "When you cut a bunch of reporters from your newsroom in June, that continues to show up as a savings in January. But if advertising revenues continue to fall, you will have to cut again.

"My prediction is that in the coming six to nine months, ad revenues will continue to fall and newspapers will be forced to cut yet again," Edmonds told Forbes.

Yes, this is a time in newspaper history that "troubles our minds and hurts our hearts."

Are journalists an endangered species?

I'd better hurry up and find a job.

"Journalism is dying," says John Nichols, Washington correspondent for The Nation magazine and co-author with Robert McChesney, communications professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, of "The Death and Life of American Journalism: The Media Revolution that Will Begin the World Again," due to hit bookstores in January.

He's shown above, in a clip posted on YouTube by The Nation, at a July conference of student journalists on the future of the industry, sponsored in Washington by the magazine and Campus Progress, a program of the liberal think tank Center for American Progress. (The "dying" comment comes at about 3:13.)

What's more, Nichols says, because there has been an acceleration of job losses in the media -- down 10 percent last year and an expected 15 percent this year -- "...we have about eight years until there are no paid journalists left in America -- period, gone, out of here."

That sure doesn't bode well for a return to the newsroom by me or any of my unemployed cohorts.

But note that he's talking about paid journalists. Because if you listen closely at the top of the video (some context is lacking in the shift to Nichols as the next panelist), you'll hear him mention that writers can "get your stuff out there ... you're just not going to be paid for it."

Pay is an issue that absolutely belongs on the table. Why do you think that legacy newspapers have been trimming page counts and cutting staff? Because their two biggest costs are newsprint and the people who produce the paper.

Meantime, one new-media business model getting some traction (and criticism) relies on content produced by writers and editors who are paid pennies for their work but get to "share" in revenue resulting from the ads or clicks connected to it. (That's a subject for a future post.)

Nichols falls into the you-get-what-you-pay-for camp. He and McChesney, who together founded the Free Press website, which champions broad media ownership and universal access to the Internet, have written extensively on the need for a government role in the press -- like the one provided by the Founding Fathers years ago.

"If there is to be journalism, there must be government intervention," he told the student journalists.

An in-depth essay by Nichols and McChesney on that theme is here.

Humor in the face of outsourcing

Journalists are among the funniest people I've ever met.

They're razor sharp, have a dry wit, and can mimic with perfection the mannerisms and speech of many of the newsmakers they cover.

So I had to laugh out loud at the drubbing given to Toronto Star Publisher John Cruickshank at the hands of his paper's copy desk -- the same people whose jobs likely will be outsourced by management to save money.

The Star, Canada's largest-circulation daily, announced plans last week to restructure through buyouts and other actions, including outsourcing and layoffs. The outsourcing -- moving copy editing and page-layout duties outside the company -- could affect 100 newsroom jobs, according to the union representing the workers.

So in a bit of tit for tat, one (or several) of the creative folks on the copy desk took a red pen to the publisher's memo to staff. To the uninitiated -- and those of the digital-only age -- that means marking up the text for style errors, jargon and a missed opportunity on leading with the news. Gawker got hold of a copy of the red-penned text.

(Full disclosure: I remember when editing was done with what was called a red grease pencil (shown above), which subsequently became a red fine-point marker. I received a framed, red-penned "story" as a going-away gift from a reporter when I left one editing job for another at a cross-town rival. I guess the reporter didn't think so highly of my thoughtful tweaking of her work. I laughed then, too.)

The Star incident was full of the gallows humor that newsrooms are noted for. But, unfortunately, it masked a more serious issue: the continued pummeling of print journalists as newspaper companies scramble to make money. The Star is no different than its U.S. counterparts in reporting ongoing losses for its print holdings in the third quarter.

And it's not alone in trying to find new staffing patterns: The Nieman Journalism Lab today published the text of an address last week to the New York Times newsroom by Executive Editor Bill Keller in which he touched on several money-saving ideas, including the need to find new efficiency in staffing the copy and layout desks.

The one bright spot, though, was his statement on endless belt-tightening: "The idea that you can do 'more with less' is, in my view, one of the four great lies. ... What you can do with less, is less."

Can journalists make a living in the 2.0 world?

Here's today's food for thought:

" ... in most newspapers, the mood is like death. [And] a place where people are worried about losing their jobs during the worst recession in 70 years with little hope of working again in their chosen profession is probably not the best environment in which to encourage risk-taking and innovation."

Ouch.

The emphasis is mine, although the sentiment comes from Judy Sims, former vice president of digital media for the Toronto Star Media Group, owner of Canada's largest daily newspaper and thestar.com online.

Like me, Sims lost a career in journalism to a layoff in July. She describes herself now as "an independent online media consultant while waiting for the right permanent position." Sounds optimistic enough.

Her blog dates to the spring, when she says she decided "to finally become a part of the conversation" about old and new media, then picked up momentum when she didn't have to worry about a day job.

She's thinking hard about Journalism 2.0 on the site: "Top 10 Lies Newspaper Execs are Telling Themselves"; "Dear Editors and Publishers: Please start a blog, open a Facebook account and start Tweeting";  "A Tale of Two Strategies -- AOL vs. Newspapers."

It's from the latter that "the mood is like death" observation comes. She fancies how AOL has bulked up staffing in preparation for its disentanglement from Time Warner to stand on its own as a news and information site rich in content. Newspapers, though, have taken what Sims sees as ill-conceived forays -- talking about erecting paywalls for content, e.g. -- led by factions loyal to print.

She has other pearls for folks like me, too: fewer paid journalists in the 2.0 world.

"To survive, news organizations will have to focus on what they can do better than anyone else in the world. That’s producing high quality, original, local or national (depending on the site) news reporting and analysis," she says. "That’s a much smaller content pie, and it will mean fewer journalists."

Ouch again.

The Magic 8 Ball says 'ask again'

Some advice to those of you trying to be helpful to us unemployed journalists: Please stop.

Or better still: Please stop, listen and look.

I'm talking about the neighbor who suggests we seek out a government job. ("I know the XYZ Dept. could really use some editors.") The career counselor who offers Fortune 500 names for our resume list. ("You can help ABC Co. get its message out.") The former colleague who says he'll put in a word with a PR bigwig he knows. ("I can put you two together fast.")

Thanks but no thanks.

You asked us what we wanted to do and we told you: news. PR is not news; marketing is not news; "internal" or "external" communications is not news.

News is... Well, it used to be newspapers, but they're closing or trimming sections or cutting the number of days they publish because the revenue and expense sides of the ledger no longer line up.

Nowadays, news might come from a just-launched online-only operation backed by foundation money, or one that has a bit of time under its belt and follows the public broadcasters' pledge model. Or it oozes from the noisy and ever-expanding blogosphere.

All of which leaves me ... somewhere that I can't quite put my finger on yet.

That's why I have no neat answer to friends' and relatives' inquiries on what I plan do next: Solo blog? Seek employment at a news website? Find a niche newspaper that's hiring?

The future still is murky as various pundits ponder it.

So while they hash out the new model and I try to wrap my head around how I fit in, maybe I'll sneak off here every now and then to see whether the Magic 8 Ball has any better answers.

Prey (or is it pray?) for editors

I can't for the life of me remember now where I read what I took to be reassurances that Journalism 2.0 would need editors.

I had just joined the ranks of unemployed journalists, and the gist of what I read was that as more and more people migrated to blogs and Web sites for their news, the typos and grammatical errors that drive print readers to the telephone to complain will also find voice online.

Whew, I thought, I do have transferrable skills.

But now I wonder whether there will be any copy editors and line editors left to migrate to the Web.

"Can newspapers afford editors?" asks a provocative headline at Reflections of a Newsosaur, a blog written by a former newspaper columnist and editor who left journalism two decades ago to become a software and Internet entrepreneur.

In it, Alan Mutter posits that "managers eager to maximize the feet on the street at their newspapers" are shifting resources from editing to reporting when faced with edicts to economize. "With the fat (if ever there were) long since trimmed from most newsrooms, the choice for many metros now may be coming down to whether to rein in news coverage or relax their traditional standards by editing out some of the editors," he says.

Echoes Jeff Jarvis, a journalism professor at the City University of New York (who blogs at buzzmachine.com), "Do we need editors?" The headline on the piece he wrote in August for the news site guardian.co.uk wonders whether editors are "a luxury that we can do without."

Move over Magnum?

Maybe I should become a P.I.

You know, a private investigator, like TV’s Jim Rockford or Thomas Magnum. They were hunks in their day, cracking tough cases, righting wrongs and wooing women. (Why can’t I recall a similar-caliber female P.I. series on the networks?)

I mentioned the career shift in jest the other day to a neighbor who had inquired about my job search.

In truth, though, I keep running across the become-a-P.I. theme in news reports (read the transcript of the radio interview or go to about 1:53 on the audio), articles and ads since I joined the ranks of Paper Cuts. (By the way, that often-cited blog, which is the unofficial keeper of newspaper layoffs, now puts the bought-out/downsized tally for journalists in 2009 at more than 14,000 -- up 1,000 since I was laid off in July.)

Of course, the shift from reporter to private eye is logical.

We journalists know how to find information: court documents, DMV records, business filings. If we can dog stories, we can dog people. It’s part of our DNA.

I'm ambivalent about repurposing those skills, though. It's not that the P.I. requirements are daunting; they aren't. I'd still prefer to stay in journalism.

But more and more, I'm finding tales of journalists who decided they had to give up their longtime careers. This one came to my attention over the weekend.