The Long and Winding Road that Leads ... Somewhere
follow your dreams - banksy
I graduated in 1991, in the midst of a recession that hit the newspaper industry especially hard. Afternoon papers were closing all over the country. Journalists working at those newspapers were snapped up by the morning papers and graduates were lucky to get an internship, nevermind an actual job.
For personal reasons, I had to move to South Florida, which wasn't a bad thing. From Miami to West Palm Beach, there were three really good daily newspapers - The Miami Herald, the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel and the Palm Beach Post. None had any jobs, of course, but I'd interned at the Herald and started freelancing there. I got a couple of freelance gigs, as well, from the Journal of Commerce.
Despite being relatively fortunate, I was also crushed. This was all I'd ever wanted to do, but I couldn't find a full-time job. I watched too much TV when I wasn't covering things for freelance assignments. Daytime TV brought me a story I successfully pitched to the Herald's feature section: A commercial for disposable diapers that positioned them as environmentally sound. I looked anywhere and everywhere for a story.
By summer's end, I was rewarded with a full-time job, though it wasn't full-time reporting. I was what was known as a "clerk-reporter," later designated an "Editorial Specialist." That meant I called 40-ish police and fire departments every morning, wrote up cop shorts and stories (in South Florida, even being the third-string cops reporter still brought you great bylines), called 30-ish funeral homes each afternoon to compile the obituaries, wrote feature obits, sorted mail and faxes (back when fax paper was that weird, shiny stuff that faded), ordered supplies, answered phones, and did just about anything else you could imagine to keep the office running.
On a typical day, I'd have a least one byline in the paper. One crazy day, I still recall, I had five. The more experienced reporters teased me for being so obsessive about keeping the printer area and supply closet neat, but they also knew that whatever they needed, I'd find some way to get the main office to order. One of my favorite recommendations on LinkedIn is from one of my bosses from that time:
Even then there were tight cost controls at newspapers; I used to joke that Amy could have nonetheless found a way to buy a big-ticket item like a staff car even if she had to order it piece-by-piece.
And -- this part is not a joke -- she probably could have.
Eventually, I moved to a full-time reporting job and after a total of six years, I moved on from Ma Herald, as many of us called it. I'd spent those six years being asked how we could make the newspaper relevant to people my age. I'd spent those six years seeing nothing actually change and noting that all the suggestions and ideas from myself and the other Gen Xers on staff were pretty much ignored. At my next paper, I was no longer one of the young turks - I moved into editing soon after and then turned 30. I was no longer one of those young'uns so hotly sought after by newspaper management. But they were still trying to figure out how to attract young readers. Same at my next newspaper. Basically, that was every newspaper.
I recently was on a panel at Talentedly's The Influential Woman workshop. The topic: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly and The Beautiful (Career Moments from the Real World). I talked about when I was laid off five and a half years ago, after nearly 20 years in newspapers. Talentedly CEO Lydia Loizides asked me about how that felt to no longer be a journalist - a question no one had really asked me before. At least, hadn't asked me in such a direct way.
I paused.
For a brief period of time, it was an emotionally crushing blow, knowing I was no longer a journalist. It was all I'd ever wanted to be, once I realized in fifth or sixth grade that being a starving novelist living in a loft in Greenwich Village would mean I'd have to have some other job to be able to afford the loft in the first place. The point is, I knew I wasn't going to try to get another job in journalism. I'd been tilting at windmills for 20 years, and the business was changing so much and fighting so much against the change that I no longer had the desire to fight for an industry that had done so much to torpedo itself.
The point of all this is the fact that often, even when we know exactly where we're going, we don't necessarily know where we're going to end up.