Blogatology

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.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 18th, 2010 at 2:54 am and is filed under Career change, Facebook, Sports, Sportswriting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.