Today I found out that my former employer is imposing yet another round of layoffs, this time threatening to gut the newsroom beyond recovery. There is a lot to be said about how those cuts will impact power, corruption and development in Nashville and Tennessee, but there will be time later to speak of the abstract. Tonight, I’m just too darn sad for the people who are there now to care about anything else.
I went through three rounds of layoffs in my three years at the Tennessean, including a merciless bloodletting that occurred while I was on vacation. I was either too young, too stupid or both to think that I could ever be impacted by such events; I was right only in the sense that I cost too little in my early years for my termination to produce any real savings for the company. It seems the notion of “last in, first out” never occurred to me — or to management.
But the continued cuts affected everyone long after the pink slips were distributed. Eventually, the combination of abysmal morale and utter hopelessness was too much for me to overcome, and I took a different path. Since then, many of my closest friends at the Tennessean have also left, although some remain. There was a mini-exodus at one point, but with the Pulitzer finalist announcement, there had been reason to hope again. Some folks had actually returned in recent months, eager to once again make meaningful contributions while praying that the worst was behind the paper.
It wasn’t, and it won’t be for a while now.
For those who lose their jobs today and in a month, the decisions will be much more immediate than for those who will begin looking for an escape. The effects of today’s news won’t be reflected in those let go, but instead in those who decide to leave on their own terms. Like me, they won’t leave because they suddenly stopped caring about the poor and forgotten, the downtrodden and ignored. They won’t leave because they decided they never really wanted to write, to shoot, to craft a story. They will leave because the place that allowed them to do all that is quickly disappearing. Their passions will need a new home, one that doesn’t threaten to collapse on them at any moment.
I’m sorry, guys. You deserve better.
