Ruminations of a dinosaur

Barely more than three years ago, the newspaper I've spent most my waking hours at the past several years employed some 1,800 people. Today, we're down to about 1,200. I'm not good with math, which is why I became a journalist, but that's a decline of more than 33 percent. Now we're going to lose another batch of folks, including nearly three dozen in the newsroom, through yet another round of buyouts - the third in three years. As The Clash so famously asked back in the early 1980s, the question for me becomes: Should I stay or should I go?

It's a question being asked at newsrooms across America. It's a question thousands of reporters, editors, layout artists and news assistants never thought they'd ask. It's a question I'm getting tired of being thrown my way.

I suppose it could be worse. My company could make it easier on us by calling 30 or 40 newsroom employees into HR and simply tell us we're being laid off. The cord would be cut, unceremoniously true, but at least I wouldn't have to worry about collecting unemployment benefits.

Problem is, the economy sucks. Government economists are still trying to determine if we're officially in a recession, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out things haven't been this bad since the 1970s. The unemployment rate just rocketed past what the Associated Press calls the "psychologically important" level of 6 percent, but let's get real. It's much worse than that. In this new economy, so many people have gone back to school or stopped looking for work that my guess is we're well beyond 7 percent. If the same economic data used for determining inflation rates back when Jimmy Carter was president were used today, the Consumer Price Index would be well beyond 8 percent. I've been looking for work for several weeks, and let me tell you, there's nothing out there.

So here I am. Waiting for yet another shoe to drop, hanging on in the meantime, wondering if the economy will improve by the time the next round of buyouts - or layoffs - arrive. Meanwhile, I figure it would be healthy to write about how one journalist, with nearly 30 years of professional experience - is dealing with the dilemma.

I call it ruminations of a dinosaur.