Some bad news

Telling bad news is sometimes harder than the bad news itself. 

So I said in my bad day Facebook post about Wednesday, there were two things. 

Second, I detailed, was my car suddenly wouldn't start. My son and I went down a checklist of some things, for about 20 minutes, and got it to start. 

But the other thing happened first, and there's no 20-minute fix for it. 

It was inevitable, but still cuts to the quick. 

I was laid off from my job designing sports pages for Gannett newspapers on Wednesday. 

I had finished and was about to send my first Wednesday assignments to the press when I got a message to come to an "urgent" meeting. When I logged in to the meeting in Teams, there was my Team Manager and an HR-looking woman. 

When no one else seemed to be logging in for a group meeting, I knew what it was. 

Just last week, they changed — again — the way we were doing our assignments as a way to manage time and costs. Can't go in to details. But I was moving my pages faster than I had previously. 

My wife was working from home as well and was on a computer call herself. So I told her first. 

Told my son when he got home, and called my mother later in the evening. 

You tell the news, and then there is the pause, as it sinks in, as the person you told looks for something, the right thing, to say. 

There's a look, not quite blank, but empty, as if something is being sucked out of them, as they start hurting for you. 

And not wanting to do that any more, I had not told my sisters and brother or any extended family. Until this post.
Sorry to them. 

My wife, quoting a woman she works with, one who used to work at a big metro daily that is a shell of itself, said that she didn't leave newspapers. Newspapers left her. 

That's something I know. I have said variations of it to people I know who were getting out. 

She is usually right about such things, but it takes me a while to get around to agreeing. Usually. I do agree. She says I need to find something else to do. 

I know I need to. I just haven't got a clue what that ought to be. 

I have been a newspaper office drone since 2010. I've covered some big events as a freelance writer on certain occasions. Took a week to go the World Meeting of Families in Philly when Pope Francis came to the U.S., and also covered the 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte. But jobs like that and stories like that were few and far between. 

I know so much of the newspaper profession these days is based in digital, rather than my forte, shoe leather. 

Newspapers like we used to have are going away. Far away. 

But we still need journalism in this society. Desperately need good journalism. 

And I think I have some stories yet to write. But don't know for whom I could. 

So my last hurrah in journalism will be a basically unseen design gig for a company that ... admits it wants to be digital. 

Thoughts and prayers will be greeted with thanks. All my best to you and yours.