Extra! Extra! Can I bargain for extra?

I was a hit; I was a hoot. The publisher liked me. Otherwise he’d never have had the managing editor contact me to set up a follow-up interview the same day.

The job is familiar, I feel I’ve done this before; even the interview coincides with the one I had this time last year when it was either editor or cook in Alaska. The pay’s the same. I made more in four months working a sauté pan in Alaska than I would in a year as a newsman. Yet, there’s something appealing in finding something no one else knows about and transforming it into something everyone in town’s buzzing about, the same way on that island last summer I could always find a spot to be alone.

There’s a privacy about writing news. You’re an unobserved observer, a painter who seldom signs his work. It’s a quiet living, social and political storms swell and subside; it’s impossible to please everyone, but the stories are always positive. In local news your beat becomes a foster home, the pleasant people are a foster family and while you can’t call it fame, the subtle recognition is nice.

But since I have experience shouldn’t I hold out for better pay? Should I say I need more time to decide? I always jump at the first offer, even if it’s a consolation prize. I’m never the guy with three offers on the table, tasting them to see which is the sweetest. But maybe I can string the paper along just long enough to gain some leverage. I was offered an almost identical job last year; it’s time to see what I’ve learned.

Big day tomorrow

I got an interview bright and early tomorrow, so I gotta prep, and by prep I mean watch TV and go to bed. I don't brush up before interviews and I've never been interviewed and not offered the job. Sound overconfident? Maybe you're underconfident.

Paper pushers pushed too far: Why are so many mainstays of major newspapers being fired or forced into early retirement?

Communication Breakdown
There was a time when the typewriter ruled the print media world. Said world is going the way of the typewriter. Its epitaph is written everywhere, except on physical paper. Community papers are the only newspapers making money these days, because people want to know who won the high school football game last night. Many are aggressively competing with the big city papers, forcing these publications to adapt—feature more specialized articles, quickly rev up an interactive website, or hold on and decimate the seasoned writing staff. “Don’t know web publishing?” Then it’s “do I know you?”

Book and magazine publishers better stay ahead of the curve, also; digital magazines that update continually and books with automatic edition renewing hit shelves soon.

As personal service plummets, interactivity mounts; manufacturers will have to replace personnel with artificial intelligence to make consumers comfortable again. Despite the brave new world’s exploding population, there are fewer personal touches; business is brisk and often faceless, so technology has to take over. Imagine if you didn’t have to send a greeting card because a server already signed, sealed, and delivered it. Myspace and Facebook already alert users to buddies’s birthday. It’s happening; witness all the abandoned Northeastern U.S. paper mills.

The Future of News not Paper

You can keep the coffee. Just give me the paper. I need the newspaper to survive the morning. It enlightens and entertains me. It’s also a great placemat when a story so enthralls or enrages me I spill my cereal. A wise man named Josh Brown once said, “as long as I’m gainfully employed I’ll subscribe to the paper.” I agree and I don’t even have a job.

The morning paper is an endangered species as dailies move or mirror content online at varying paces. Vintage staff writers worry they won’t adjust to the blog world and may lose their jobs. Hiring freezes chill the industry as publishers push early retirement on tenured writers. That’s why I can’t land a staff position even at a mid-sized paper.

Though I am for the environment, I’m against physical newspaper obsolescence. What would I do without that telltale 4 AM thud of packaged newsprint on concrete? Let’s just say it’s more devastating than what I’d do for a Klondike Bar. Yikes.

I read Slate Magazine online, listen to NPR, watch Fox News (just to keep things fair, balanced, and interesting), and browse various other virtual publications which oft serve as cannon fodder for my blogservations, but I’m a newshound who demands real material in my hands; I want to feel current events. Besides, if I spill milk on my laptop, I’m screwed! I like to cut articles and, you guessed it –comic strips out of the paper. I like the texture of recycled newsprint and the ink stains it leaves on all my white surfaces. Maybe I’m old fashioned, but using a magnifying glass to read tiny stories on an ipod rubs me wrong.

Until home printers can adequately authenticate newspapers –infectious ink and all— I’ll keep paying the paperboy. Eliminating newspaper delivery takes spending money away from kids who spend it on slingshots and BB guns. And what about the nocturnal weirdoes who toss papers from their minivans? Who’ll employ these husky vampires? Our fragile economy can’t cope without print news. Kid weapons and burrito sales will suffer. For the sake of mischievous children, odd adults the postal service won’t hire, old time rag devotees like me, and the nation, don’t stop the presses!