Here's a new one that was posted in comments that I'll pull out here:
Though the ax has fallen on my head this go-round, too, i will always be glad for having had the opportunity to be a part of The Dallas Morning News.
And while it may sound like patting myself on the back, I can truly look back and know that while I felt lucky to be there, I also worked hard to stay. While I may not have walked away with any big journalism awards in my box, I could walk away knowing i did a good job.
In my time there I led the Metro coverage of the first Breeder's Cup race ever in the Southwest, I was the first to report on Farmers Branch's efforts to make illegal immigrants unwelcome there - a story that would put them in the national spotlight - and continued to top every other media outlet in the country in following that story over the next two years, and my reporting on a mayor's lies about her background derailed her bid for re-election.
Not bad for a small-town girl with no degree, lol.
I am proud to have been a part of what was long considered one of the best papers in the country, and to have known each and every one of you.
Today, i remain heartbroken to have been let go after 13 years with the company. I also am at a loss to explain it. Coming in from the old suburban newspapers I know my salary never reached those of many of my colleagues. So the didn't save much by letting me go.
But it is what it is, and it was time to move on.
I with all of you who remain the best of luck. i really don't expect newspapers to be around much longer, and that's the saddest part of all.
To those of you who were laid off, this time or previous times, I hope you find happiness and fulfillment and stability, whereever the road takes you.
Stephanie Sandoval
Posts
Let me give my colleagues a seed of thought that may hopefully sustain their faith in themselves. In media these days you are the true manufacturing base. You produce and deliver a true new information product. On the other hand, as the saying goes, opinions are such that everybody has one of those also. As bad as things look to you now, realize this: the alternatives in favor of which you are currently being cast aside--transient opinions, and opinions of opinions, and opinions of opinions of opinions, and infinitely cloned minimal news summaries--are in all their myriad forms very much like like the house of esoteric financial derivative cards that only just recently came crashing down. There will come a time again in the not so distant future when the public will tire of a headline attempting to stand in for a real news story, will spurn a thin blog smear of snarquique de snarque on dry cracker as a truly informative offering and will once again demand steak. All that stands in the way is a successful business model, and business will always find a way. When it does it will need you. Will you still be there, or will you have cried your eyes out before wandering off to become potters and cheese makers and cat breeders instead? Keep the faith, keep your resume powder dry, and remain ready for the moment to come when the public once again demands what only we can make.
ReplyDeleteI am ex Dallas Times Herald (through 4 years of college and 2 years after--I went to the AP in 1963 for MONEY) and I am ex DMN )1968-69). I quit the News because I was tired of being poor and I started my own business. Since then I have been rich and I have bern poor. Currently I'm in between, I'm 70 and I don't have to worry about someone firing me. I believe that Anonymous is dumb wrong. He tells you that someone will develop a business model to replace the DMN-type model. He says that you should stick around and await the new newspaper business model.. I would suggest that the reason print is going broke is that they have the wrong model. And only those of you who have been in the sweaty part of the business can develop the new model. It must be you who develops the "new model" and it must be you who takes the risk of making your model a product. Don't wait on some Suit to do it. Suits are what has been wrong with Texas newspapering since I was a cub at the TH. Good luck to you all.
ReplyDeleteStephanie:
ReplyDeleteI don't know you as it's been a while since I worked at the DMN.
Congrats on your blog. It's sad that you were one of the layoff casualties.
But your colleagues were served admirably well by your decision to pick up the blog torch.
God bless you and good luck.