I took a big step this morning. As the day dawned cloudy and unpromising I decided to make the step all newly unemployed must eventually make – applying for Unemployment Insurance.
I suppose most people today do not give it much thought, but I am a little older than most people. I can remember when a reporter without a job (or prospects) was an anomaly, and not a growing concern.
There was a time when every city had at least two newspapers. Often there were a couple of morning papers and then the reliable afternoon daily. With multiple newspapers, the number of reporters and editors also was expansive.
A couple of decades ago the New Britain Herald (where I once worked) had nine reporters covering the city. There were at least three reporters just for City Hall, one for the school beat, another following the religion beat, two for the police beat, and a couple of general assignment reporters. Since journalism is a somewhat closed community, a reporter on their beat would quickly get to know their counterparts. Although competitors, they also became friends who shared an occasional beer, commiserated on the dictatorial aspects of editors, and volunteered their own solutions for the problems of the world. The end result was that a reporter: whether fired, laid off, or just looking for something new, had a network that almost guaranteed them a job within a week.
Those days are long gone.
When I worked at the Herald and later at the Norwich Bulletin, there was one city reporter – me.
The result is the end of the networking system for journalists. There just are not enough of us anymore.
Okay, before someone writes back about my feelings of entitlement, or that I am feeling sorry for myself, let me say that you’re not entirely wrong, or right. The truth is I am not like a factory worker trained on a machine whose job has gone away and for whom the skills of a lifetime (the machine is now in China) are proving unusable. That’s the person for whom I actually feel sorry.
My skills – observing life and writing about it – are still with me, and I believe, still viable. The marketplace has shifted but that’s all. We, that is to say, those who seek websites like Displaced Journalists, may not have our networks, our impromptu meetings in the corner bar or our jobs, but we still have our skills.
I suppose I can wait until tomorrow to apply for my unemployment insurance.
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