Jennifer Brown

Do I or Don't I Still Have a Column?!

Yesterday was another bad day at The Star -- a lot more people were laid off, including my editor at the Northland bureau.

Of course I'm thinking... Is there still going to be a Northland bureau with no editor to head it up? Will my Saturday column now follow my Sunday Star Mag column into the don't-let-the-recycle-bin-hit-you-in-the-ass category? Should I even bother to write one this week at all?

I don't know the answers to any of those questions at the moment. And, frankly, I don't really care at the moment either. For right now, I'm just sad and slightly ticked to see my city's newspaper slipping down the toilet just like so many newspapers are doing right now.

Seems like everywhere I look, people are standing in line to give a List of All the Reasons Why Newspapers SHOULD Fail. Shoot, I've been guilty of reciting that list myself.

But you know what?

Newspapers don't fail without people failing with them. Newspapers don't just shut down, faceless and nameless. People are being shut out. People who spent long, hard hours studying their craft... long, hard years building their careers... long, hard days and nights doing a really good job because they believe in what they do and they believe ("believed"?) that there would always be a place for a good, solid reporter. A home for a hardworking editor.

And now... well, it just seems like there's not.

So, no, I'm not going to bother the remaining editors right now, being all about me-me-me and sussing out what exactly is going to be the fate of my column. This week I'm going to let them try to make sense of yet more of their friends and co-workers who were given pink slips and tossed unceremoniously into the pool of abysmal unemployment statistics.

Next week or the week after I'll find out what exactly happens to my column now. But for right now, I'm just going to sit here and be sad to see another bunch of good people who gave me a chance and a spot in a local paper be without a career.