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For many of us in the news business, this will not be the first time applying for unemployment benefits. https://twitter.com/mepodmolik/status/1260318901826727941
As @CTguild appears to have reached a tentative agreement on furloughs among Chicago Tribune employees. This will result in many of us, probably myself included, in filing for unemployment. https://twitter.com/CTGuild/status/1260319778599813121
(Pardon the agrammaticisms, I'm a little emotional.)
If this happens, it will be the second time I've been on unemployment. The first time, I'd lost my job at the @MGMAdvertiser, which I'd gotten after fumbling around at the end of college and deciding to be a reporter. (Got the job, bought a $100 1979 Chevy Malibu and relocated.)
Professionally, my time in Montgomery was pretty well spent. I still have, in a box, the 4 inches of clips from my (exactly) 13 months there. Personally, it was a hard time. I found some friends, but didn't treat some of them well. I drank too much. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/42652897/dexter-avenue-pastor-he-fell-in-love/
After losing my job, I wrote a bit of freelance, and came back to Chicago. I got a job at the City News Bureau the week I was notified my unemployment was being canceled because I'd gotten paid $250 for a freelance piece.
(As an aside, I have NO INTENTION of leaving the Tribune, I just anticipate going on unemployment because of the furloughs.)
Anyway, I worked at City News for a longish time, meeting people like @dahaar, @chasejohn, @dionnesearcey, and of course, @annweiler. I got to cover Mayor Daley, the funeral of Cardinal Bernardin, and the trial of Amanda Wallace.
Because of my work at CNB, I landed a job at the @chicagotribune, as a 1-year resident. I wasn't in it long, as @John_Kass soon had an opening for a legman, and thus Slim the Legman was born.
The first job I'd applied for at the Tribune wasn't as a one-year. It was for an expanded Northwest Bureau, in Schaumburg, part of Digital Cities. Another friend, @EricFerk, got hired through that expansion of Tribune digital, as I remember https://www.editorandpublisher.com/news/behind-the-tribune-s-move-to-digital-cities/
And this is where I diverge from some of my colleagues on the narrative of TribCo's ups and downs and vagaries and mistakes.
Tribune Co., more than most news companies, tried to prepare for the Internet age. That's what the Digital Cities thing was about, that's what creating http://Cars.com was about, that even was what merging with Times-Mirror was about.
Pausing for a bit, will return.
Anyway, TribCo made a lot of mistakes over the years. There's a good argument to say buying Times-Mirror was one of them, given the debt it saddled the company with, the clash of cultures (as great as @latimes folks are/were, many seemed to resent Tribune, and deadline times...)
Before that, or around the same time, moving online news folks to the business side of of the company rather than under the paper's leadership lost us good people. And we pulled back from online news, chucking Digital Cities and retrenching as a newspaper operation.
...even while we tried new sources of revenue by and tried to synergize using TV and online to repurpose the news from the paper. Along the way, it invested or helped create Metromix, CareerBuilder, Gracenote and other tech sites or companies.
You could say that the newspapers were screwed from the day we went public in the early 1980s. Or you could look at almost 30 years of investment in the newsroom, the creation of online platforms, the diversification of revenue as attempts to deal with the change that's here now.
I digress. Even in my first decade at the Trib, as we in the newsroom often failed to adapt to the changes, the company expanded our reach. We opened a bureau in Havana in March 2001. Those of us who started at low salaries had them increased to gain equity with our fellows.
It wasn't all salad days, but even then, the company tried to treat people reasonably well. In 2001, after 9/11, when the economy tanked, our one-year residents weren't going to be able to find jobs and we couldn't hire them. So their jobs were changed to two year stints.
By 2006, TribCo made $594 million in profits. But it looked like stormy seas were ahead, and a good way to continue the transition would be to not have to answer to investors, and go private. But the timing was horrible. Just as the company tried to protect itself...
the bubble began to burst. To some it looked like, in retrospect, those at the top drove the deal through to gain from it. (Some people might recognize themselves in a photo here) https://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/20/business/media/20tribune.html
But who saw the Great Recession coming? Well, a few people. But few thought it would be as bad as it was. Along with the recession, we got the Zell folks, whose alleged misdeeds were well-documented. https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/06/business/media/06tribune.html
We tried a lot of new things in those days, however, to try to respond again to changes in the news industry. https://web.archive.org/web/20080922004653/http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/blog/
Tribune did a lot over the years. https://web.archive.org/web/19970222033253/http://www.chicago.digitalcity.com/schaumburg/schaum.htm
But we hasn't happened is any sort of long-term follow-through on a web strategy. From AOL to digital cities, to audio news reports in the late 1990s, to the New City News Service to the Continuous News Desk to the Breaking News Center, all have been a way to try to stave off ...
But we hasn't happened is any sort of long-term follow-through on a web strategy. From AOL to digital cities, to audio news reports in the late 1990s, to the New City News Service to the Continuous News Desk to the Breaking News Center, all have been a way to try to stave off ...
or deal with in some fashion, the onslaught of the web, while at the same time, retaining our core journalism. But leaders have come and gone. Peter Liguori sold off all our assets. And here we are.
A few of us, many fewer of us than there used to be, trying to cover the Chicago area, and some of the Midwest, and the occasional national issue, instead of the whole world. It's a hard time for everyone, and I'm proud of what we're doing, on my desk, on the Metro desk...
at our depleted suburban papers (would that we had the staff of the much-derided @TribLocal), on @ChiTribEnt, on @ChiTribCloutSt, on @ChiTribGraphics, and @ChicagoSports.
Not to mention, of course, our Audience team and what's left of @ChicagoBreaking. I might be happier doing something else at the Trib, but I'm glad I've done so much, had so many opportunities to meet and report on people I never would have met otherwise.
I hope we find a way to survive, and then build again. It's possible. But what's possible isn't always what happens. See you back when tomorrow's blog starts again. https://www.chicagotribune.com/coronavirus/ --30--
An addendum: I was emotional because the loss of my job at the Advertiser meant to me that I was a failure, and I was recalling that feeling today when thinking about applying for unemployment. Despite my other aspirations, I'm glad I've done most of what I've done at the Trib.
And I hope I can stay on.
