I've ran some ideas past management in the past but working with people who are 20+ years your senior you kind of get overlooked or pushed to the side. Especially in the Newspaper world.
For the past 5 years the focus has been on the bottom line and if you have to lay off people to reflect a better number then so be it.
It's hard to see this place go down this route when you genuinely believe in the product. Having an informed public is very important but at the end of the day you have to keep the lights on.
So you know the industry, you have ideas that you consider to be very valid and now you even have the time. Maybe you can create a product to fill in some gaps they surely must have?
And if the idea doesn't sell, what about some competition? Maybe following a crowd-funded model? I know I'm just throwing random ideas, but hopefully this will spark a light in you :)
My local newspaper is the only paper in my city. Our population is roughly around 100K. Unfortunately living in a community where agriculture is the main source of income technology jobs are scarce. The closest city to me with tech jobs is about 1.25 hours away (Santa Barbara). This might be my short term option, until I can relocate somewhere else.
It's not in me to bad mouth anyone anyway. I will definitely start looking A.S.A.P. I'm lucky because the layoff news isn't going to be disclosed for another couple of weeks so this gives me time to start the job hunt.
If you don't have a severance package, I'd immediately investigate unemployment benefits. If you have a health savings account, it can be used to pay for insurance premiums if you're collecting unemployment. Also, compare the COBRA your employer will offer to health insurance you can get on the healthcare.gov marketplace with subsidies (since you won't have income at that point).
Obviously you want to get a new position ASAP but I don't think it's a big deal to have to disclose you were laid off so don't freak out if you can't make something happen in a few short weeks. I don't hold layoffs against applicants, especially when they're coming from an industry like print media that has very well known macro-level problems.
Yup, I've held multiple titles here, I'm in California.
I started as a Print Graphic Designer, then moved to I.T. Due to more layoffs I then became I.T./ Web Dev. I weathered the storm once again and had my job mutated into I.T. Assistant/ Web Dev/ Digital Campaign Coordinator.
Will they still need someone to do what you do occasionally?
Try to stay on working one or a few days per week or work for them on a contract basis.
It is easier to find a job if you are currently employed so hanging on 1 day per week or as a contractor you could list them as an employer or yourself as a contractor.
If you're interested and have the skills you could try to pick up some of your own clients including your current employer.
Sounds like you have basic skills but will need to spend some time getting to the next level.
If you enjoy web development you could elevate your skills by learning web application development front end with Angular or React back end with Rails or Laravel. If you have a few months till your let go you could make some progress learning new skills.
You won't be an expert or even employable over that time but the sooner you start learning the sooner you will be.
Check with companies in your area and see what skills they are hiring for.
If bringing in the same level of income isn't critical you could take an entry level developer position and start working your way up.
Play around with some of the popular languages and see what you like, what you are interested in.
Good luck.
Enjoy the Holidays, things will work out. You're still young, have a good foundation of skills to build on.
I work for a newspaper and unfortunately it is all about "pageviews, pageviews, pageviews". In the 10 years I have been here (I'm 30 now) the newsroom has shrunk by 75%.
One of the first people to go was an opinion columnist whose phone always rang. He would take calls from supporters and not so supportive people. But the one thing that made him known, loved, hated...etc. was the fact that he was out there talking to the people.
Now what's left of the newsroom, +/- 10 people serving a community of 100,000+, are glued to their desk and dont leave the building unless its for a council meeting. A lot of them spend there day fluffing press releases and turning a quote into a full blown story.
I am in the minority in the building who believes having an informed public is important. Maybe I should start my own blog/news site for my city. Maybe I can convince some college kids to follow me and start rubbing elbows and pissing of politicians.
Yup. There are so many legacy things in the newspaper business that make running the business so difficult. When the San Jose Mercury News was dying in the Bay Area I emailed back and forth with Dan Gillmor[1] on his take on it. He is very passionate about being able to create new ways to inform and educate the public for the common good.
The NY Times has done several pieces on the cost structures that weigh on newspapers, in the early days of kindle the publisher suggested that they could give away kindles to their subscriber base, and free up all the resources of printing, storing, distributing, and managing the actual paper business and be profitable, except that their customer base was firmly wedded to the "paper experience" of picking up the paper and reading it widely on the coffee table with a bagel.
So if we assume that people develop their habits in their 20's, ingrain them in their 30's and 40's, and complain about the way things were in their 50's, that is 25 - 30 years to clear the decks of a previous way of doing things and replace it with a new way. We are about half-way through that transition with Newspapers. Sources of news for people in their 20's is the web (and often their phone as reader), and for people in their mid to late 40s and early 50's still paper newspapers. In 2025 there won't be enough people who cares about getting their newspaper on print to allow printing them to continue, and so these new news agencies will be all digital. And with communications being fast enough there won't be any need to have an office for everyone to meet in. The equivalent of large scale Google Hangouts will suffice. And since random advertising will be completely discredited by then the only place people will advertise seriously will be with digital properties that charge a subscription service (that makes Ad fraud much disproportionately more expensive for the fraudsters) And once again subscriber base, not page views or clicks will become a major influence on ad revenue. That will lead to a great renaissance of good journalism which will be paid for by the ability of the editor/publisher to make enough money to pay their staff.
Between here and there though, are the slowly rotting corpses of organizations like the Sun-Times.
I have repeated some of the things here to my coworkers in the past. My city for the most part is a community of retired people (baby boomers). They are use to getting their paper, and get angry when the crosswords are missing. You'd be surprised how many elderly people call and complain about little things like that, or maybe it's not so surprising.
Social media has changed the way news is reported as well. Everyone is a reporter now and by the time news agencies find out about an incident the public knows more about it then they do.
If someone is around when an accident happens they snap a picture and post it on facebook before offering the injured a helping hand. By the time a reporter catches the beat the comments are full of more information than the reporter could gather on their own. "Oh that's so and so....etc."
If you went to our website and removed all the click bait, advertising, "non-news" items the page would:
1: load faster :)
2: be mostly empty
no problem, hope it helps. if it helps at all my friend uses https://www.ableton.com/ he produces everything from hip hop to electronica with it. they have some great plug ins...for a price though.
So they would start shorting it once it starts to rise? I thought perhaps someone holding the shares would start to sell at maybe 5% and then buy back in on the way down. But with shorting I guess you don't need the capital outlay of owning the shares in the first place.
Consider the following short-selling example. A trader believes that stock SS which is trading at $50 will decline in price, and therefore borrows 100 shares and sells them. The trader is now “short” 100 shares of SS since he has sold something that he did not own in the first place. The short sale was only made possible by borrowing the shares, which the owner may demand back at some point.
A week later, $SS reports dismal financial results for the quarter, and the stock falls to $45. The trader decides to close the short position, and buys 100 shares of SS at $45 on the open market to replace the borrowed shares. The trader’s profit on the short sale – excluding commissions and interest on the margin account – is therefore $500.
My query was really - if you short it in advance wouldn't it require the price falling below it's starting price for you to profit. It seems that this was intended to raise the market price in the short term, therefore only shorting it on the way up would make you profit when shorting. Also it did not fall below the original price when it corrected.
For the past 5 years the focus has been on the bottom line and if you have to lay off people to reflect a better number then so be it.
It's hard to see this place go down this route when you genuinely believe in the product. Having an informed public is very important but at the end of the day you have to keep the lights on.