This morning I was having breakfast at the usual place with Mark Nichols, an attorney from Little Rock, Ark., who’s writing a book about the South. I’m still not entirely sure what the book’s about, except that it’s meant to be an update of a book published in 1938 called A Southerner Discovers the South, by Jonathan W. Daniels. Not having read that book, I asked what sort of book this would be — travelogue, politics, culture? He said it would be all of the above.
He had interviewed David Beasley and Henry McMaster the previous day, so I spent some of our time setting him straight. (Just kidding, Henry — but not really kidding, David.) I was also able to deliver a sort of primer on Columbia. The Capital City Club is a great vantage point for doing that. Since it takes up the whole top floor of the city’s tallest building, you just walk around to windows on the four sides and point out the things you’re talking about. (And along the river there, parallel to it, is the Columbia canal. It was dug by Irish laborers in the 1820s — they were cheaper than slave labor, because they didn’t have to be fed. Their situation was pretty desperate, and my church — that’s it right there, St. Peter’s was started by the bishop in Charleston, who sent a priest here to minister to the Irish laborers. Right at our feet is the Vista, which… and so forth.)
Anyway, at some point something came up about newspapers, and I asked whether he understood that I had been laid off by the paper (the paper owned by McClatchy, which also owns the paper Mr. Daniels’ family once owned) — and he nodded (he’d read up on me ahead of time), and then I said, “… about a year ago…” and I stopped…
It was a year ago today that I was told I was being laid off. The publisher, who had been out of town and was arriving back that day (a Monday), had called ahead to arrange a meeting with me in his office, which was only separated from mine by a conference room (my office had actually been the publisher’s office originally, several publishers ago). He was delayed and had to reschedule to later in the day. He was obviously anxious to have this meeting, while I dreaded it. That’s because I was almost sure that I knew what it was about. I was pretty sure that I was going to be told I had to lay off my good friend Robert Ariail. I had fought it off and gotten it postponed time and again, but all sorts of signs in recent weeks — plus some overt statements — had prepared me for that.
The newspaper’s financial situation was nightmarish — not anyone’s fault; the industry was just imploding, its business model collapsing beneath it — so I knew that quite a few people would be let go, and soon.
And yes, this was a fateful day for Robert. What I wasn’t prepared for was being told “Your position is being eliminated.” The reason this was a surprise was that I had always assumed I’d be the last person left in the editorial department — a prospect that depressed me severely. You see, I was the one person in the department who knew how to do everything — write, edit, design pages, see them through the production process. I couldn’t draw editorial cartoons, but I was the only person other than Robert who knew how to fetch them from the Web, work them in Photoshop, and so forth. I knew how to do everything, and was good at it, so if ever the editorial department were to become a one-man show, after having consisted of nine people at the start of the decade, I’d be that one man. And I hated the thought, and I hated the fact. I’d already had to lay off a friend or two (very strong, hard-working, smart people whose situations had absolutely nothing to do with their performance), and I knew for a fact I’d have to do it again, probably repeatedly. I would have quit to avoid it, except for two reasons: One, I wasn’t sure how to go about looking for another job. I couldn’t ask any friends or professional contacts to keep their eyes open for something else I might do, for ethical reasons — anyone in a position to help me find a new job would almost certainly be someone I’d have to deal with professionally as editor. I couldn’t even hint, although I was frequently tempted to. Secondly, I felt too much of a sense of duty to quit. I truly believed I was the individual best qualified to be editorial page editor of South Carolina’s largest newspaper. (I still believe it.) And I believed that it was critically important to South Carolina to have a good editor in that position.
Sounds awfully egotistical, doesn’t it? Even messianic, delusional. But that’s what I thought. It didn’t make me proud; it just made me feel like I couldn’t quit.
I never even suspected that the decision of whose position to cut next would be made on the basis of who made the most money. I was one of three vice presidents laid off in that round (the other two were the heads of circulation and specialty publications).
Stupid me, huh?
Well, the nice thing about the situation was that I was now free to search for a job, to think creatively about how I wanted to spend the rest of my working life — to start a new career entirely. Which was really cool, because I love doing new stuff (it’s why I started the blog, back in 2005 — newspapering was moribund and all about cutting back and doing less, and it was the one way I could move forward and do more, which is sort of necessary to my sanity). The bad news, of course, was that we were in the middle of the worst economy since the Great Depression, and no one was inclined to take a chance creating the kind of quirky position that a guy with my skills and knowledge and contacts might usefully fill. A couple of years earlier, I’d have been in a great position. Or a couple of years from now. Bad timing.
But things are actually going pretty well now, a year later. Not nearly as great as I might like and making ends meet is a bit of a struggle, but pretty well. It’s certainly interesting, and often fun. I expect to have some good news to share with you soon. I’ll write about that later. Today, I just thought I’d make note of the anniversary of my liberation…
