A bail-out for ink-stained wretches

The government is injecting several trillion dollars into the mortgage, insurance and investment industries, and will likely pony up an addition $25 billion to keep the automobile business afloat. Couldn’t it scrounge up a measly billion or two to prevent the media from completely flat-lining?

Granted, the communications business doesn’t comprise as many jobs as the GM/Ford/Chrysler black hole, but it’s as important to the economies of New York and other places as the car business is to Detroit. It’s also of singular importance to a democracy, as the Founding Fathers acknowledged by citing the press in the Constitution.

This wouldn’t have to be a giveaway. Rather, the money could be used to help media complete the agonizing transformation from paper to digital, from Gutenberg to Gates? Having been on the forefront of that changeover, I know how difficult it is to come up with a new business model that makes sense. Government support would buy the trade some time to figure it out.

I’m hoping that, at the very least, Barack Obama’s obvious appreciation for F.D.R.’s job-creation methods might lead him to one of the New Deal’s most intriguing programs, the Federal Writers’ Project. In forming that wrinkle to the Works Projects Administration, the federal government kept writers from starving, using them for what amounted to busy work until the economy could revive. Among the soon-to-be-luminaries who took part were talents like John Steinbeck, Conrad Aiken and Richard Wright. They drafted travel guides that are still used by those of us who value the telling as much as the content of sightseeing directories.

The feds should consider a program where it’d subsidize the salaries journalists and thereby help newspapers and magazines make the transition to a digital era where advertising is an anachronism. How many of us, for instance, have been trained to conceptualize and execute webinars, meetings, conferences or any other direct interaction with an audience? And yet, until recently, that was the major area of growth for many print media.

The same holds true for new vistas of journalism, like message groups, moderated chats and blogging to a specific audience. Those are the future for our business. And a few dollars from the government might help to usher it in.

So, where do I sign?

Why 'Pink-slipped'?

Some people climb mountains, others strive to out-flambe Emeril, still others try to bed as many people as they can. My quest? To make this the shortest-lived blog that ever was. What else is left? I've already been pushed off a summit, singed and screwed.

On Tuesday, I was drafted into what has to be the demographic classification with a bullet, though that's probably a poor choice of words. The day started out as any other. By lunchtime, for the first time in my 51 years, I'd been pink-slipped, an unwilling recruit for the growing army of the jobless. Technically it was a lay-off, a tag that does indeed afford some comfort, since it wasn't performance-related. But my parents, those children of the Great Depression, would have never made such a distinction. You're either working or you're not. And I'm not.

All the motivational speakers I've endured over the years would be quick to add smiley-face qualifiers like, "temporarily," "until the economy picks up," or "in the traditional sense, but pay comes in many forms." It's easy for them to be so positive. They've found a way to turn unemployment into a paying career.

Now it's my turn either to do the same or find real work again. But have you looked at the news lately? More than 50,000 new recruits are joining the army of the unemployed from Citigroup alone. Depending on what estimate you see for the U.S. automotive industry, the carnage could extend anywhere from about 250,000 people upwards to 3 million. My profession, journalism, may be faring even worse on a percentage basis. One wag has set up a website, NewspaperDeathWatch, to tabulate the cutbacks in that sector of the business. Even the bounciest motivational speaker would sound a bit Steven Wright-ish after considering the situation.

Actually, I'm not as bitter as this might make me sound. And my barbs are meant as black humor, not as any real signs of resentment toward my former employer. Indeed, it handled the situation in an extremely humane fashion, and I'd go back there in a heartbeat. My anger is reserved for the White House and the other guardians of the economy. They're the ones who sidelined millions of responsible, eager-to-work people who did nothing wrong but work in a job that looked glaring on a budget sheet.

But that anger won't get me anywhere. Hence this blog. I'm hoping it'll be a medium for airing my frustrations. Ideally it'll also serve as a touchstone for others who've been thrown into this new uber-category of the newly laid off. Indeed, I hope others will post their experiences, feedback and advice, not for me, but for anyone who's been victimized by the economy.

It'll also scratch my jones to write for an audience until I find a regular communications gig. At that point, I'll pull the plug and move on. But in the meantime, I hope you'll enjoy these bar stool ramblings as you unwind from your own job hunting or survival strategizing. Just remember, it's BYOB.