DPJs: I Value Your Ideas, as Well as Your Identities
Posted on | March 5, 2010 | No Comments
Melanie Kolden is a former copy editor/arts & entertainment editor who has worked at the Dayton Daily News, the San Francisco Chronicle and the L.A. Weekly.
By Melanie Kolden
I am a journalist, but I don’t have a recognizable byline. For all of the years that I worked in newspapers (15 plus) I was a behind-the-scenes player. Most recently, I was a copy editor at the Dayton Daily News. One could say that writers are the visible part of a print publication, the ink. All the rest of us are the blank paper, metaphorically speaking. Any time I told friends that I worked for a newspaper they wanted to know what I wrote. Explaining what a copy editor does tends to befuddle people. Eventually I gave up trying.
I am still a quiet observer, but now I am very actively observing the profession of journalism itself, rather than the goings-on in the newsroom. I left my position with Cox Ohio Publishing several years ago voluntarily (I wanted to take a break to focus on my kids), but I’m still on the journalism beat in my thoughts. I keep up with the troubling state of things in our industry via the many blogs exploring the topic. I follow news about the comings and goings of people at Cox, as well as the San Francisco Chronicle and the L.A. Weekly, other places I’ve worked.
I’m a fan of the Displaced Journalists Facebook page and the Displaced Journalists website. It’s a quickly growing community of kindred spirits. It fascinates me. So many of us have been affected one way or another by seismic shifting in our professional lives. Speaking from my own experience, I know that it’s tough to gain one’s footing when the ground is shifting beneath you. It’s unsettling, to say the least.
I see your faces and names on the Facebook page and wonder what you have seen and done. I feel as though I’d like to connect.
I am curious about the people in this DPJ community, the stories that might be told if we really opened up to talk. I know that some in the DPJ community are still working in media or blogging, whereas others are not employed or have completely left the profession. At this moment in time we’re participants in an important news story ourselves – one might call it journalism’s big shakeup. I want to read about this story from the people who know how to put an accurate, meaningful story together – you. We’ve lived to tell about it. So let’s do.
Toward the end of my time at the newspaper, I found myself wanting to talk with my colleagues at length about how different things were becoming. There truly wasn’t time for much desk chit-chat though. There were pages to be designed, proofs to be read, headlines to write, more and more all of the time. Work came at us faster and faster.
Everywhere newsroom staffs had shrunk due to buyouts, or, in some cases, layoffs. Remaining staffers had to adjust, make things work without comrades who had exited. Even under the best of circumstances newspaper work can be exhausting. It had become even more so at the time that I left (2008), and is most certainly tougher today.
I can’t help but think of the “I Love Lucy” episode with Lucy and Ethel working at the chocolate-candy factory. Their job is to wrap candy before it gets to the end of the conveyor belt. When the conveyor belt speeds up, faster and faster, they have to eat the extra candy to keep things moving along, to keep their jobs. Finally Lucy said to Ethel, “I think we’re fighting a losing game!” Anyone who has worked in a newsroom on deadline can relate to that clip.
Fellow DPJ readers who have left print journalism, I have a question for you. I wonder what you liked best about it. What do you miss? Beyond that, how will you take what you have experienced and learned into new territory professionally? What do you want or plan to do? How can we help one another?
I loved my 15 years in newspapers. Having news and feature stories filtering through my hands and brain was intellectually stimulating. There were always things to laugh about with coworkers. The work was never dull; my colleagues were fun to be around. I was a skilled copy editor and cared very much about the quality of the product. Word after word, page after page, edition after edition, I tried – we all tried – to get everything right for our readers. This was true at all of the places I worked. I have tremendous respect for my colleagues and journalists in general.
I loved the food tastings in the Dayton Daily News conference room. Staffers got to compare Christmas cookies, chips and salsa, pizzas and other goodies. I loved being an official taster of recipes and products.
I loved writing a great headline. I loved catching big boo-boos. I loved it when a colleague would give me a pat on the back. Better yet, when a supervisor did.
I handled the entertainment calendar in L.A. and San Francisco. My desk was piled high with press releases; phones rang almost constantly. I felt like I was in the center of a whirling hub of activity and I loved it. I always knew what was going on, what to see and do myself, what to recommend to others. I was very much in the know.
When I was associate calendar editor at the L.A. Weekly, we were invited as a staff to a Cirque du Soleil performance at the Santa Monica Pier. A party for the staff was held afterward. The alt-weekly’s lefty intellectuals showed up in style, which in some cases meant tattoos, multicolored hair and hip black garb. Circus performers and local homeless people crashed the party. I danced with them. It was a trip. There was something surreal about being there with such a diverse group. I felt that I was living a magical life.
When I worked at the Dayton Daily News, one of my favorite things was picking up the newspaper off of my driveway on a Sunday morning, knowing beforehand what was going to be in Section F, Arts & Entertainment. I had designed many of the pages; I had written the headlines. I knew before I opened the paper what was going to be in the section. I had pushed a button and sent the pages to the Print Technology Center myself. To have such a moment makes you feel big, even if you are one of the quiet observer people.
I didn’t leave my profession on any bad terms. I feel compassion for all of us who have had to adapt: newspaper owners, publishers, management, editors, writers, worker bees, all of us. I do feel, though, that I separated from my chosen profession far earlier in my life than I wanted to.
I wonder. At what point do I cease being a journalist? If you write something without pay for an online site, are you still a journalist? If you only tweet, comment on blogs and post Facebook status updates, are you still a journalist?
I still like to talk about journalism because I am passionate about it. I’d love to hear from anyone who feels the same way. I’m not interested in kvetching, talking about the way things were in newsrooms and how disheartening it is that we aren’t there anymore. I’m thinking about now. I want to discuss ideas, network, grow. I’d like to put on a virtual name tag and meet you in a virtual newsroom. That’s the place where we can brainstorm, learn from each other and move forward.
People like us are still telling stories, but it’s not just the written word on a flat page anymore. Dare I say it? Dare I think it? Isn’t multidimensional better? I’m excited by the possibilities of interactive multimedia communication, but I’m intimidated at the same time. I’ll even admit to feeling rather stuck because I have yet to take that first step into new territory.
My thought at this point is that I’d like to start learning how to design websites. Maybe I could earn money doing this for other people. I admire former journalists who have launched websites and who write blogs. To me, that’s doing journalism. I seek your input, DPJ community. Where does one start?
I’ve been in love with my work before. I want to feel it again. It’s so important to have love in your life.
I’m wearing my name tag, my hand is outstretched. I’m a journalist – still. My name is Melanie. What’s yours?
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Melanie Kolden is a former newspaper copy editor and arts and entertainment journalist. She has worked at the Dayton Daily News (Cox Ohio Publishing), the San Francisco Chronicle and the L.A. Weekly. She has a bachelor of arts in journalism from California State University, Northridge, and a master of arts in humanities from California State University, Dominguez Hills. She is a stay-at-home single mom raising two sons in Middletown, Ohio.
Tags: Career > Commentary > Community > layoffs > newspaper > Solutions
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