Coffee Heath Bar Crunch is my choice as I write this. We expect to hear next week (June 16-20) about the layoffs that we have been anticipating for three weeks. The anxiety of waiting has been distracting, to say the least, and I will be relieved for the ax finally to fall, even it if severs my ties to the newspaper where I have worked since June 9, 1987. I am fully prepared to hear from my boss that I am being laid off, even if I am not prepared at all to live without a paycheck.
Either way this thing goes my life will be harder as a result. If many of my colleagues are laid off, then I will be saddened and saddled with even more work. It will be miserable to see colleagues and friends leave. We've already experienced a bit of that when two of our editors in Features took buyouts in the first round of cuts. The more I think about it the more I realize what a strong signal that was: Two talented, hardworking editors were allowed to leave. It must mean that there is no hope for Features to survive in its current form. That doesn't mean we will all be cut; some might be reassigned. I could be one of the reassigned folks. Or I could be one of the laid off folks. Either way, I am prepared to hear the news.
It would be a relief to think that I didn't have to go to work because I am pretty sure I can't continue to work under the conditions that we have now. I know that relief would be a temporary feeling. I would soon need to get to work somehow somewhere.
Tim Russert died Friday of a heart attack. He was 58.
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