Day 61: Dreams

Teachers used to ask grade-school students this question: "What do you want to be when you grow up?"

Maybe they still ask. A lot of people now have taken this question and even later in life said "When I grow up..."

If you think about it, this question is probably one of the first probing questions asked of a child. It assesses the values and the dreams of a young person who hasn't yet experienced the limitations and roadblocks life will inevitably throw their way.

I wanted to be an astronaut. Space was a national obsession in 1960s America. NASA was located only a few hundred miles away. The U.S. was the leader. Launches and excursions dominated the news when they were happening. When Apollo I burned up on the pad, it was one of the awful events of the era, almost as bad as the murders of JFK/MLK/RFK, Manson or Kent State.

Reality set in later when I got too tall. Space flyers had to be shorter to fit into the confined craft. I outgrew my dream.

My heroes later became explorers of truth: Men with names like Woodward, Bernstein, Thompson. Journalism became something I was interested in before I knew it had a name. It took a long time for that dream to start falling apart, because it took a long time for journalism to lose its way. Now that game is dominated by bean-counters and charlatans more interested in making money than making history. Newspapers haven't lost their way because there's no interest -- the Internet and 3,000 TV channels are proof that information is a hot commodity. Newspapers have lost their way because they're too slow, and because they aren't trusted.

The speed issue can be managed. That's what the Web offers. The print product is a goner, but that's OK. It's slow, ecologically unsound, and financially wasteful. Why spend money on a print product? Paper costs money, then you have to distribute it. The Web solves those problems. Yes, people still like a physical product, but it just doesn't make economic sense for the producer. Create an online product and let the end-users print it out and carry that cost if they want it. They'll get over it.

But where traditional print entities have given way too much ground is with the credibility issue. And it's their own damn fault. The News of the World scandal is nothing. Stupid leadership has been around in newsrooms a long, long time. At one time the print media knew that the most important thing it had was its name, its credibility, its dependability. Somewhere along the way this got compromised. One factor was the increasing emphasis on profit. Print always made money but the greedheads always want more. So what did they do? The crude, simpleton approach was to cut the newshole. Instead of a product that was 70 percent news and 30 percent ads, that's now the other way around. There's so little actual news left that the value has eroded. What's worse is that some editor chooses which stories go in that small space. That editor now usually brings his or her own pressures from above and personal bias to the equation. If there are 20 stories but space for only six of them, what remains?

It should be the six stories that have the most relevance and impact to the reader, but that's not always the case. So the erosion of trust begins almost without anyone seeing. But because there are so many information sources, those other 14 stories ALWAYS find their way to light somewhere. And at that point readers realize they've been played. The odds are great that someone interested in some of those alternative stories are then going to wonder why these stories weren't given facetime. Regardless of the rationale, they're going to have suspicions. And so they no longer trust the newspaper.

When you lose someone's trust, it's damned hard to get it back. And almost impossible for them to forget.

I love newspapers and media, and when I was in that game I tried hard to tilt at those windmills and make people see this. I still think I'm correct. The six stories that make it into print should be the most important stories, period. The other 14 join them to feed your Web product. It's obvious, but not to the multitude of morons running most newspapers.

Yet somehow they have jobs (for now) and I don't. It will be of little consolation to me when these fools also become jobless, because in doing so they took a lot of good people with them. It's only noble to go down with the ship if you've gotten all the others safely to the lifeboats first. These dumbasses are instead aiming for the iceberg to prove how strong the ship is. They don't get it and it's safe to say that if they ever do, it will be too late.

So here I am in 2011. What do I want to be when I grow up?

I want to do something exciting, something that gets me enthused to come to work every day and that sparks my creativity and imagination. I want to see something in the real world that makes me think of adapting it in a natural way to my work.

I want to do something meaningful, something that enhances society. Providing important information was one way to do that, but the system has flaws. Those can be worked out, but only if there isn't resistance. Everyone has to share the mission. I've worked at a place where I was told, essentially, that slashing company expenses might not be a great idea. (You'd be shocked to know more of this story, but trust me, it is relevant to you.) I worked at a place where a part of the corporate advancement depended on very specific religious and political persuasions. Companies can easily discriminate... people don't think of this always. If you think that your constitutional right to free speech is inviolable, go tell your boss to stick it and then see if your free speech rights allow you to keep your job. I worked at a place where after the application of technology and social media tools began to produce results, management quelled it because it was creating too much work.

Do you know what you call a business that discourages growth? A failed business.

I embraced minimalism unwittingly by being involved in newspapers. People just don't make big money in some businesses. No one thinks of being the millionaire teacher, firefighter, reporter.

So while I need a job that pays a living wage, I don't need an exorbitant wage. The highest-paying job I ever had I walked away from after less than a year. It was a great job, great company, but I realized that I had to give it up and pay my soul. I miss some things about it but I know to this day I did what I should have done. Money doesn't motivate me, but some employers use this against you.

I am crafting cover letters that spell out my vision for each position. I look at it like this: if you go into something thinking you're going to conquer dragons but they're going to arm you with a butter knife, that's a ridiculous journey to set out on. On the wall 8 feet from me is written "Go Big or Go Home." If you know what that means, and you have a job opening, we should talk.

Day 23: Paring

First off, thanks to everyone who's stopped by. You've no idea how much it means to me, but = a lot.

A lesson learned through unemployment is to cut down to the essential. I learned this through the Great Unemployment of 2001-02 and have refined it to a science by now. I don't know if this had a name then, but today I think it falls into the category of what's called minimalism.

I'm defining minimalism in this sense as pertains to personal economic behavior.

Little did I realize as life unfolded that a career spent mostly in journalism pretty much requires a minimalist economic lifestyle. The few people who get rich in journalism are generally those who don't actually practice reporting any more!

These few well-paid types consist generally of:
* Columnists, who will steal a few facts and then pontificate. They're connected, for sure, but the actual digging for information and pounding the beat reporting is long past in the vast majority of cases. These people are clever writers, good writers, but they're paid for their way with words and influential or controversial abilities more than for their reporting chops.
* Editors. Editors often are failed reporters who hung around long enough to outlive their competition and move to a higher tax bracket. That may sound like a rip, but as a former editor, I think I can speak to it. You can make decent money as an editor, but only at the top levels are you truly going to cash in. Line-level reporters and staff almost universally feel like whatever money that editor makes, it's too much.
* TV types. But TV isn't usually real journalism. And grunt-level, behind-the-camera jobs are often as poor-paying as print jobs.

Journalists learn to live on a tight budget. It's minimalist. Through trial-and-error, practice and time, I learned how to stretch that money.

I'm fascinated by the minimalist community. I have a lot of thoughts on this but I don't want these posts to be too long. We'll come back to this. Suffice to say, I recommend looking into it. Some of the minimalist thought leaders include Chris Guillebeau of The Art of Non-Conformity (chrisguillebeau.com); Leo Babauta of Zen Habits/mnmlst.com; and Everett Bogue, who meteorically shot into widespread consciousness with his embrace of the concept (and now, apparently, a sort of rejection of it). There are others I check out as well.

Fundamentalists of this school do things like try and reduce all possessions to 100 things or less. The thinking is, get rid of the things that anchor you. Quoting Tyler Durden: "The things you own end up owning you." Bogue calls it "untethering."

As I said, I could go on and on with this and I will. But not now. Just know that even if you have a job loss, you can live with less money. America is a consumer society. We're indoctrinated to have more, get more, buy more. Cars, electronics, buy, buy, buy.

It's a trap.

The short take is, you don't have to live a totally monastic lifestyle, but chop costs where you can. Do you need those trinkets? Do you need those products? How much freedom would you have if you had more money and no debt? Pay off your credit cards and cut them up. Save as much money as you can. Make a life where you could conceivably pull up stakes and go wherever you want to go. It is possible. But only if you break the bonds of economic slavery that Western society expects you to toil under.

Cutting back the things you don't truly need applies to non-monetary items, too. You may need to trim your Facebook friends list, your bookshelves, that musty box of crap in your closet that you haven't opened in three years. Why are you keeping this crap? Let it go.

OK, off the soapbox and back to the job hunt. I have to do a cold call that I'm kind of dreading but I gotta just jump. Details TK.