Category: Transitions

From Editor & Publisher

 

Business of News: What Are Your Qualifications?
posted: 11/25/2015

by: Tim Gallagher

The job coach reviewed my resume on his desk, used his thumb and forefinger like pincers and picked up the sheet.

“We can work with this,” he said.

I was leaving the newspaper business. This guy was supposed to help me. And he was treating my resume—my career—like a dirty diaper.

He read my face. “This is what you were,” he said. “We are going to talk about who you are. What your skills are. Not the jobs you’ve had.”

And for the first time in nearly 30 years I began to think that there were jobs out there that did not start with journalism.

My job coach was the first person who looked at my skills, not at job titles.

This column and this magazine is about the newspaper industry, but it’s instructive for your future—whether it is in the industry or out—to look at the extraordinary set of skills that newspaper people possess. Believe me, these are not in the skill set of many people outside the industry.

Unfortunately, I’ve had this conversation dozens of times in the past decade with newspaper people looking for a new career.

Like many who left, I chose to start a consultancy that turned into a small business. Others found new jobs. In either case, these skills—rather this combination of skills—learned in the newspaper business proved lucrative in new careers.

Rapidly synthesize complicated information. Journalists take it for granted that they can take notes during a four-hour meeting and then compose 800 words that capture the essential actions. This is an exceptional skill.

Make a deadline. In all the disciplines across the newspaper industry, deadlines are sacrosanct and daily. But talk to people in many other industries and they find deadlines, well, deadly. They are blown off or pushed back. The fact that you can make a deadline each day makes you valuable.

Compose coherent sentences. Even write some that sing. In the newsroom, we get used to a minimum level of composition competency. Step outside the business for a few weeks and you will appreciate those who can take subject-verb-object and write it clearly, and often with panache. This ability is not to be taken for granted.

Ask questions. Sometimes in my new job I am interviewed by a journalist who just won’t run out of questions. That’s great. A natural curiosity makes one smarter.

Great facial architecture. The best journalists remember that the head has two eyes, two ears and one mouth. According to that ratio, one should listen and observe four times as often as one speaks. This is crucial in another career you are just learning.

The ability to reserve judgment. Newspaper people learn to wait and listen with disinterest. The best never take a side. They explore points of view and ask for facts. But they never choose a side. No matter what field you might enter, the ability to stay neutral (until there is time to take a position) is important to building the strongest position. Aristotle advised us to know the other side as well as we know our own position.

Manage multiple projects. The best people in our business keep several balls moving at once. They can drop one to work another. This isn’t prevalent in everyone’s skill set.

Motivate. If you’ve been a manager in the business for the past decade and managed to keep your team focused on moving ahead in spite of the challenges, then you are exceptional. You’re a great motivator and other industries need that skill.

Creatively problem solve. Some of my newspaper colleagues once put out a newspaper after an earthquake that knocked out power by powering laptops with a car’s battery. Enough said. We know how to work under difficult circumstances.

Know the ins and outs of a community and who makes it run. We take for granted our knowledge of civics and which level of government or which business leaders make our communities work. If you move outside the newspaper industry, that intimate knowledge will make you exceptional.

Like many former journalists, I built a new career after thinking I would be a journalist forever. I hope those reading this do stay in a business that gets healthier than it has been. But if you don’t, take comfort in knowing that your skills are unique and extraordinary and can help you make a living.
Tim Gallagher is president of The 20/20 Network, a public relations and strategic communications firm. He is a former Pulitzer Prize-winning editor and publisher at The Albuquerque Tribune and the Ventura County Star newspapers. Continue reading “But you already knew this …”

I don’t know Jeff Bradley, although I feel as though he is me in many ways.

His excellent blog post the other day about being an out-of-work sports writer, which I include here because it’s poignant and relatable, is too common a story these days.

I just had numerous friends survive the media-company slashes in Philadelphia. I am happy for them, obviously, especially if sports writing remains what they truly want to be doing, if it is still the best thing for them and their families.

A year and a couple weeks ago, my detour met me straight up. There is a lot of angst that comes with such a parting and recalibrating, and Jeff, a much bigger-time sports writer than I ever was, gets at the heart of it well in his piece. He doesn’t write asking for sympathy, as some jerkwood blog commenter offered up from his snake pit. He just writes with honesty, same as I do here . . . and every day in the different word-jockey position I now hold.

I don’t know Jeff, but I wished him good fortune, as you do for fellow travelers. Too many of them on the road.

 

 

 

I haven’t read that big-hitter book “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up” yet . . . but I feel that life-changing spirit moving within me, hallelujah!

When the month turned, I promised myself to throw out, sell, give away or otherwise discard at least one possession a day. A New Year’s resolution in July. Why? Because I really don’t need a best-seller, or any of the scads-worth of decluttering books and testimonials out there, to sip on the affirming tonic of simplification.

Control feels good, in whatever amounts. Self-control; to breathe and count to 10 and let a virulent moment percolate and die. Self-discipline, to push through a workout or a task with mindfulness and feel lifted when it is done. Self-worth, to appreciate your place in the order of the universe and to value that gift.

It is along the lines of breaking a habit — “I will only drink two cups of coffee this morning.” — or promoting a new skill — “I will spend 15 minutes on that learn-a-new-language website, learning, um, a new language.” I will read just a chapter of this book a day, go to bed 30 minutes earlier each night, put a dollar into an envelope  for charity each morning.

Extremes — obsessions, compulsions, hoarding — aren’t the issue. They don’t have to come into play. The ticket is small bites. Tapas meals, so to speak. Wednesday, the brand-new-with-tags sweatshirt hanging there that I will never wear went into the donation bag. Thursday, to the curb with the crusty living room chair with cat scratches down one hideous leg, and a couple of ratty area rugs shoved into the garage years ago for no perceptible reason. That felt damn good.

Now today, free time to root through books boxed and sitting in the attic. They are forgotten. Unused. Valueless here any more. Why are they there?

Inertia. That’s all. The force that mutes self-awareness, self-improvement, that reinforces unproductive patterns lapsed into without forethought. They are comfortable when they are unexamined. Shine a light on the clutter — physical, mental and emotional — and it scatters. It abhors challenge, craves the comfort of more of the same, then more of the same, and then more still . . . of the same.

This house will continue to streamline on its inevitable way to new hands. Same for the storage bins that time and experience shove under beds and into corners to darken the spaces that would most benefit from light and fresh air.

Purge the chaos, feed a soul thirsty for nourishment, even if it doesn’t realize it. That’s the chapter and verse. That’s the book.

Easter.

Hope.

Full hearts, unlocked, allowed to flower and burst.

And these words for Easter, and every day, from “The Color Purple” by Alice Walker:

“Have you ever found God in church? I never did.

I just found a bunch of folks hoping for him to show.

Any God I ever felt in church I brought in with me. And I think all the other folks did too.

They come to church to share God, not find God.”

 

I have been absent, against the whims of my better self.

My intention upon starting a job at Old Dominion a couple weeks ago to write interesting stuff off of academic beats for the school website was that I would rise extra early and bang out a couple of blogs here per week – or else do them late after I’d gotten home, had some dinner and walked Ollie.

I evidently need more self-discipline – probably true – or like most of us, more time in the day – also probably true.

Having to be some place by a particular morning time for the first time in my life – outside of 8 a.m. college classes – is the culture shock I guessed it would be. I know, call the waaaa-mbulance! The whole world has done that forever. I get that. I’m just saying it’s new for me, that’s all. Which means if I want to get up, drive 10 minutes for a 30-minute swim, shower, eat something, write a bit here – because writers have to write, right? – and walk Ollie before work, well . . . getting up at 3 in the morning on purpose just doesn’t seem proper.

Writing for yourself at night, after writing for someone else all day? Sure, writers all over the place do it. I’m still trying to figure out how.

I HAVE done a bit of it, at nights and on weekends, serving a couple of freelance clients who have been really good to me the last couple of months. But I have lapsed in my own ideas and execution — again, against my will — and it makes me, not sad necessarily, but restless because writing feels so good to me. It feels good to all writers, when it isn’t driving them insane, of course.

So I guess I just say all this more as a pep talk to myself than anything. I created this outlet for a reason, when I needed it most, and I do not want to ignore it now just because my brain is occupied with salary-and-benefits-related responsibilities for many hours each weekday.

I won’t then, despite appearances I won’t. I still vow to use the smart people I am around every day, the brilliant writers and scholars and teachers, as inspiration to be better, to think and learn deeper, to be a more intuitive reader and writer and, in the end, a better person I am certain.

That is the lure, and that is the promise.

 

This is the story that I did for USAA insurance company a few weeks ago — although it just posted today — on the equine therapy program called Equi-Vets that is operated in Virginia Beach.

https://communities.usaa.com/t5/Inside-the-Mission/Therapy-Program-Helps-Veterans-Get-Back-in-the-Saddle-of-Life/ba-p/59388

My friend Jason Hirschfeld, a supremely talented photographer, took the photos that run in a slide show accompanied by audio of the vet, Chris, I interviewed for the story.

I am proud of it. (I wrote it, even though it says “By USAA,” ha.) I hope you like it.

 

 

I can guarantee I didn’t watch President Bill Clinton deliver his first State of the Union address 21 years ago tonight. That was nothing to do with political leanings or being at a ballgame or on a plane. Our family’s union had grown by one male child earlier that day, the brand-new brother to his 2-½ year old sister. My state at that point was pretty much oblivious.

Today, it is more like incredulous. Twenty . . . plus one? No way . . .

I don’t make a huge deal out of birthdays, especially my own. I’m a killjoy in that sense, among others. But 21 for your only son begs a mention, if not a party hat, a paper horn and an embarrassing childhood photograph posted on social media because as ever, 21 is real. The fake ID, shredded; the crutch of “youth” or whatever, dismissed. The mantle of adulthood, drawn and fitted for permanence, adorned.

Except I suspect mommy and daddy take all of this life-passage business, sniff-sniffing down Memory Lane, much more to heart than the actual passenger, who just wants to finally enjoy a beer without threat of police action. It’s a personal sample size, granted . . . but my 21^st was so time-stopping and monumental, I have only the barest recollection of getting obligatorily drunk at a happy hour in Allentown, Pa., where I was playing summer baseball, courtesy of teammates with shocking disregard for the training rules.

Anyway, what I mean is, for the subject most intimately involved in aging, the beginning of 21 is really just a day after the end of 20, a milepost reached in the relentless scuffle through degrees of clarity and wilderness that continues unabated, for all of us.

But yet, the parental pang commands an emotional revelry forthwith. A reflection on first steps, lost teeth, report cards, hair styles, fastballs, goals scored, prom pictures, skateboard tricks, speeding tickets, ER visits and acceptance letters. The plucking of an upright bass, the deepening of a voice, the violence of a volleyball, well-spiked.

But now, and better still, his gradual awareness of a world beyond those daily dramas. The recognition of his unique place and potential impact as a young adult and citizen.

So yes, 21 today it is for that . . . well, normally here I would write “boy.” But that pat-on-the-head diminutive really no longer fits, even draped with affection — and not only because he physically dwarfs me, but because of merit. Chronology announces a “man,” but not all who transition to the stature can or will answer to all it demands.

I burst for this one who has arrived to the path, and beam for this one who walks on.

(photo stephenstalnaker.tumblr.com)