Blogatology

Well, that’s that.

Today marks the end of my 95 days of “unemployment.” Tomorrow, I go out to the Riverside Press-Enterprise for the various paperwork and orientation that comes with joining the paper’s staff full-time; Tuesday, I make my debut as the paper’s Dodgers beat writer, although I’ll be in and out of the beat until July.

The quotations around unemployment reflect the fact that I’ve worked a whole lot during this period when I wasn’t working, having picked up the Lakers beat on a freelance basis on April 1. I had 31 assignments in April for the Press-Enterprise (not bad for a 30-day month) and while I haven’t gone back and added everything up, I’m going to guess I had about 70 assignments in those 95 days, for Riverside, the Associated Press (nine times), Cal Lutheran (twice) and the San Bernardino Sun (once).

I’m not yet fully on board with the idea that everything works out for the best — ask me about that a few months down the road — but I have to say that things went a whole lot better than I could have anticipated when I was cast out by That Other Paper on Feb. 16. And I know I’ve defied the odds by landing another newspaper job, on a major beat at a bigger paper, at my age. This involves a whole lot of being in the right place at the right time.

The part of all this that was both gratifying and a little strange was all the support I’ve received from others in the newspaper business, both at the time I was laid off and since landing the new job. It’s felt a whole lot like living to hear your own eulogy.

So many people have said so many nice things. It’s been humbling, gratifying, wholly unexpected — honestly, who really knows what other people really think about you? — and at times, even a bit uncomfortable. (I’m not the greatest at taking compliments; luckily, I guess, they haven’t been handed out very much for most of my career.)

More significant than the praise has been the way people have really gone stepped up to help out. I have to particularly thank Jim Alexander and Jeff Eisenberg, who recommended me in Riverside, opening the door for the freelance work that, in turn, led to the full-time job; Beth Harris, who set me up for work with the AP, short-lived though that turned out to be; Lynda Fulford at Cal Lutheran; several people who went to bat for me at the L.A. Times, though the regular work at Riverside meant nothing ever came of that, and a number of others who offered tips on freelance work or sent work my way.

So, it’s on to the next phase of my career. I’m not sure what, if anything, I’ll do with this blog, but I know you’ll be able to keep up with me at pe.com.

Thanks to everyone who’s kept in touch and offered encouragement through the last three months. It’s meant a lot.

Just in case you’re wondering why there’s so little activity here: I imagined this as an outlet if I wasn’t writing. Right now, I’m writing virtually every day, for the Riverside Press-Enterprise (go to www.pe.com if you want to see my Lakers coverage, along with some spring football stuff for USC and UCLA), so I’m pretty much focusing my writing energy on the freelance stuff. If that slows down — and if the Lakers keep messing around, that could happen pretty quickly — there will likely be a bit more writing here. In the meantime, you can see what I’m up to at the Press-Enterprise site.

So, 25 years ago today I started work at the Thousand Oaks News Chronicle.

For some reason, I don’t feel a whole lot like celebrating the milestone.

In the 24 years, 10 months and 21 days that followed, I went through one reapply-for-your-job merger, one pay cut and at least two pay freezes. I worked out of four offices, for a half-dozen sports editors, and went through uncounted crises — either for the company or journalism as a whole — until the one that claimed my job on Feb. 16.

On the bright side, along the way, I also covered:

— The 1996 Little League World Series, which I remember most for the improbable way Moorpark earned its berth — winning three games in a single day at the San Bernardino regional — and the resulting logistics of getting to Williamsport on one day’s notice. (I ended up having to fly to Baltimore and drive from there to Williamsport. Google Maps tells me that’s a 176-mile trip. It seemed longer, but then, I was operating on about four hours’ sleep and distinctly recall wandering out of my lane as I fought to stay awake over the last part of the drive.)

— The 2002 World Series, one of the great unexpected success stories in my experience, as the Angels just kept winning. As much as I enjoyed covering the success of Mike Scioscia and a very likeable roster, the championship was a bittersweet moment. My dad, a big Angels fan and one-time season-ticket holder, had died the previous summer.

— The Ducks’ Stanley Cup Finals appearances in 2003 and 2007. As a hockey fan, seeing the Cup presented in Anaheim should have been one of the great moments ever, but I was so incredibly sick that I didn’t enjoy it as much as I should have. Still, the memory of walking out on to the ice to do interviews after the Cup presentation — with the crowd still in the building, cheering — still gives me chills.

— Three BCS championship games. The best one, clearly, was the USC-Texas game at the 2006 Rose Bowl, the second consecutive year Vince Young was just dazzling in Pasadena. The other really memorable one was the Orange Bowl the year before — memorable mostly the cross-country trip for about a 36-hour stay in Florida to cover USC’s 55-19 thumping of Oklahoma was such a complete anticlimax to the because Texas-Michigan Rose Bowl I covered before flying out.

— Six NBA Championships. I have so many memories from these that they deserve their own blog entry or entries, which I’ll save for a future date. I’ll note here that the 2004 Finals, the one that saw the Lakers lose to Detroit, marked the high point of the paper’s commitment (and financial wherewithal) to sports. That was the year I covered every playoff game, home and road, learning just how grueling the beat-writer life could be in the process. Between the Lakers coverage, the Olympics, a few other assignments and vacations, I was away from home over 100 nights that year. I like traveling, but even I found that a bit excessive.

— And, of course, the five Olympics: Sydney, Salt Lake, Athens, Turin and Beijing. As I’ve written before, I have great memories from each one, and few of those memories revolve around the actual sporting events.

And, as I’ve told a few people over the years, I sometimes think it was a misperception that made it all possible. It was mostly because of Marion Jones that I joined the Scripps-Howard Olympics team in Sydney; she was clearly going to be a big local story for The Star, and there was some thought that, because I’d covered her in high school, it might help us get a little more access to her.

Which, of course, it didn’t — access to Marion was tightly controlled (understandably, when you remember she was arguably the biggest story in Sydney, and there were something like 10,000 journalists covering those games). And, though I never went out of my way to point it out, I had never covered Marion as a track athlete, even in high school. Former Star staffer David Kirvin did the track stories, as well the best single feature about Marion during her high school career. I covered her during basketball season — and still think she was the best girls’ basketball player I’ve seen.

Still, it went well enough that I was part of the Scripps team from then on, until there wasn’t a Scripps team to be part of — the news service passed on Vancouver in a cost-cutting move.

I know about those all too well.

Still, to the extent I’m thinking about that 25th anniversary today — and once I’m done writing this, I probably won’t dwell on it much — I’m grateful for the things I was able to do, and the people I met along the way.

And the support I’ve had over the last month has made it clear it was the people, not the places, that made those 25 years really meaningful.

Not just because of my own situation, I’ve suddenly become aware of just how spurious the idea is that we’ve begun recovering from the recession — at least down here at the bottom of the trickle-down economy.

The studio apartment I’ll be vacating in a few days is in a small (28 unit) building. And the design is such that my front door is on a little balcony shared with three other units.

The neighbors in the three adjacent units (and much of the rest of the building — most of the tenants know each other at least a little bit, which is one reason I’ve liked it here) know I’m moving, either because they’ve seen me starting to carry things out and have asked, or because they’ve heard from others in the building who are aware of it.

They’ve asked why I’m leaving, and I’ve told them. (I’m doing my best to not buy into the idea of feeling ashamed or embarrassed about losing my job; I tend to think those feelings should lie with the people who wielded the ax.) As a result, I’ve learned that two of my immediate neighbors have also lost their jobs in the last couple of weeks.

This means three out of four the four units who share this landing have been struck by unemployment in a matter of weeks. I know there’s a healthy degree of coincidence involved there, but it’s also a pretty sobering reflection of the current state of the economy.

Just a quick note for anyone who might be dropping by to check in. Between preparations for moving (given the circumstances, I’m going in with a friend for a while), various obligations resulting from my new status (I’m getting to know the EDD website) and other complications, it’s been difficult to find time to write here. I still have an idea for the farewell column I would have written at the paper, given the opportunity, and I want to do that very, very soon. Now that I’ve got a laptop to replace the one from work, that should be a little easier.

So please, keep checking back. I’ll have more soon. Thanks.

At 12:50 p.m., I was a veteran sportswriter.
Shortly after 1 p.m., I was an unemployment statistic.
And so, as I drove off from the paper that had been my professional home for half my life, I was feeling physically ill and emotionally stunned.
Before I was a block away from the office, I had my brother on the phone. Told him the news. He couldn’t quite believe it, either, even though we’d certainly discussed the looming threat over anyone at a newspaper. We didn’t talk long — it’s amazing how little there is to say at a moment like this — which was probably good; I needed to force myself to pay attention to driving, while my mind was going a thousand miles an hour.
I didn’t drive straight home. I had, occasionally, thought there was one place I might approach if this ever happened, to see if they might be able to create a position for me. The person I needed to see wasn’t there, but I reached him on his cell, and talked very briefly about my idea. (Sorry to be nebulous about this, but really, I don’t think it would be fair, or in anyone’s best interest, to be specific.) My friend was receptive, but wasn’t sure the idea would work. He said he’d float it to his superiors the next day.
From there, I did go home. Reached one friend on the phone as I was driving, and cried for a little bit — for the first time, but not the last.
Tried to reach a handful of other close friends; we’ve shared our joys and sorrows for most of our adult lives, and this definitely fell in the latter category.
In keeping with the day, I got nothing but voice mail.
I e-mailed the Lakers to cancel my seat request for Thursday’s game with Boston, one of four assignments that had already been on my schedule. The other three were high school playoff games — exactly the kind of thing that are supposed to be crucial to the “hyperlocal” strategy that is the buzzword of most newspapers, but that would no doubt go uncovered now, because there was one less person to cover them.
And then I went on Facebook. The reactions had started rolling in — some of them shocked, some of them angry, all of them supportive.
The Facebook post would prove to be the saving grace of the day. People said amazingly complimentary things, and they came from everywhere: People at the Olympics, at newspaper jobs all over the country, at web sites, in the media relations offices of sports teams.  There were Facebook posts, private messages, IMs, e-mails, phone calls, and they just kept coming, all day long.
I was, to be honest, stunned. And moved.
Newspaper layoffs aren’t really that big a deal any more, in the grand scheme of things. There’s not anyone in the business who hasn’t seen a friend downsized, or a face-of-the-paper veteran summarily dismissed, even though those are the kind of people that give papers their distinguishing features, make them unique in a corporatizing climate of sameness.
I made that post mostly because I knew the paper wasn’t going to publicize what it had done, and I knew there were a lot of people I was used to seeing — and enjoyed seeing — that suddenly weren’t going to be seeing me at the Lakers, or the Dodgers, or the Angels, or the Kings. I wanted them to know why.
Reactions? I suppose I expected a few, but layoffs are so closed to home for all of us that I thought it was more likely people wouldn’t want to dwell on the subject.
Instead the messages kept coming, and they’ve kept coming well into the next day, as someone sees the post for the first time, or learns about it from a friend, or sees yesterday’s blog post, which has been linked by a few friends. (Thanks for that, guys. And welcome, those of you coming here from one of those links.)
It hasn’t just been sympathy. It’s been pep talks, phone calls, and real, solid, meaningful advice — freelancing leads, tips on dealing with unemployment, people I should call.
I received a call from someone on a break from covering an Olympic event; she’d just heard the news from another writer. She offered condolences, and the possibility of some work. I heard from the Lakers’ beat writer, Mike Bresnahan, as he drove home from Tuesday night’s game. At midnight, after going through the deadline wringer. I don’t even know how he got my phone number.
It’s been incredibly uplifting. If my employer didn’t appreciate me, my professional peers did. That may not mean anything financially, but boy, is it fulfilling. I’ve always gotten along with all these people, but I never really knew they, well, cared.
It was a long, hard, awful day. When I left the paper after getting the goodbye envelope, I felt incredibly alone.
By the end of the day, I knew that wasn’t the case. And there is no way to explain how much that means.

For anyone finding their way over from my Ventura County Star blog, welcome. I was laid off today — in some ways not that surprised, and in some ways shocked. Shocked mostly that it was today.

I’ll have a bit more to say about this as soon as I sort out my feelings, so please check back. One of the many bad things about today was that I didn’t get to write any kind of a proper farewell column. I’m sure I’ll be doing something along those lines shortly.

Thanks for checking in.