2010 has been a hell of a ride so far: I got laid off from the newspaper, scooped up by the most prestigious journalism foundation and then laid off once again. Luckily, thanks to my connections on Twitter (and to serendipity), I found another job quickly – this time outside of journalism. I’ve joined AutoNation as a social media coordinator and blogger, working alongside my partner-in-crime Mallory Colliflower and just across the street from my new friends at AgencyNet.

Speaking of my new friends, I remembered how important it is to really live life. I hate to point the finger at the career I chased after, but it is very difficult to make friends outside of the newspaper when you work nights, including every weekend and holiday. These short few months outside of the Paragraph Factory have allowed me to nurture relationships with new friends which may never have been otherwise. I’ve been spending almost all of my free time with these new friends and one special person in particular. I really hope they know how grateful I am for having let me into their lives.

As for leaving journalism, it wasn’t as heartbreaking as I expected it to be. When I was initially laid off, I made the decision that I would not take another job at a newspaper. I began to struggle with what that meant. After moving cross-country a few times for my career, I made my way back home to be near family. I wasn’t ready to give that up again. And, I really wasn’t comfortable with the uncertain future of being a newspaper designer. I am young and I had already gone as far as I sought out to go as a page designer — By 26, I was responsible for weekend and daily front pages at a large metro daily paper. Initially, I was confused. How could I remain a journalist while not working for a newspaper? My short term at the foundation helped me wrestle with this question. But when the foundation gig was up, I was okay letting go if my career in journalism.

One of the reasons I switched to journalism in college was that I wasn’t comfortable with the (lack of) ethics in advertising. Since I moved back to South Florida and embedded myself in the local tech and social media scene, I was reminded of how much I despised the world of public relations, advertising and social media. And yes, here I am — part of the marketing arm of a Fortune 500 company. Ironic, huh?

Luckily, as a social media coordinator, I am not primarily focused on the hard sell. That has really helped me transition from the transparent world of the newsroom to marketing. I feel that my strong ethics and journalism background actually add to the authenticity of our approach to social media.

So, here’s hoping that the rest of 2010 is a bit more stable and that I get a chance to show those friends of mine just how much they all mean to me.

This week has been a roller coaster of emotions. While my last day at the Miami Herald was December 26th, Monday marked the first official day of my unemployment. I went to the office one final time to sign a severance agreement and returned home to find myself struggling to navigate the State of Florida unemployment website. It was the first week my time off didn’t feel like vacation. I spent Tuesday sorting through years of newspaper clips, scattered around three or four different hard drives. On Wednesday, I started applying for jobs. For the first time in my life, I found myself without a plan.

By the time I graduated from the University of Miami in 2006, I had already been working part-time at the Miami Herald and had two great internships under my belt. Before I began my job search, I was offered a six-month news design contact in Milwaukee. After my first real fall and winter, my contract at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel was up. Again, before I started to plan my next move, another job fell in my lap. As I was digging my car out of ten feet of snow, I got a phone call from a friend in Austin. A chance to thaw out in the Texas Hill Country? I was game. The Austin American-Statesman turned out to be a wonderful place to work and I made many great friends there. After a year and a half, I found myself still unable to call Austin home. What was missing? Family. So I hatched a plan to return to the Miami Herald. I stayed in contact with the graphics editor and despite the layoffs that were underway, we were able to secure me a spot on the presentation desk just one week before the second round of layoffs began. I was home, and regardless of how difficult things had quickly become in the industry, I was happy.

In the short time that I was back at the Miami Herald, I found a new passion for journalism. As I first started out, I thought of myself as a designer, who specialized in news. After a few years, I learned that I was much more than that. I was a journalist who had a passion for visual storytelling, and that design was just one of the tools available to me (and one that I am extremely passionate about). Perhaps I didn’t express this new passion in the best light, as my new bosses came to think that I had grown unhappy with my job. It’s important to note that while I was working at the Herald, the news design desk had shrunk from 15 people to ten (and now eight), but while our top editors had made lofty plans initially to compress the paper (and therefore reduce the work load), none of those plans came to fruition. We quickly found ourselves multitasking and most of us doing the work of two people or more. Stress and morale were at thier lowest.

As this new passion for journalism manifested itself in social media and news video, I was not awarded any time in my schedule to work on them. I did most of it between sending pages or I’d come in early or stay late when I had the energy to do so. I can’t fault my bosses for not allowing me more of a chance to spend on my new interests, they were in a precarious position to begin with. They supported me as much as they could afford to.

That brings me to today. While I don’t know what my next step is quite yet, I am looking forward to life outside of newspapers. And hopefully, I will still be able to call myself a journalist.

This post is co-authored by Mallory Colliflower and Lori Marie Todd. Mallory graduated in spring 2008 from the University of Florida and works part time at the Miami Herald as an online content producer. Lori graduated in 2006 from the University of Miami and has worked at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and the Austin American-Statesman before returning to the Miami Herald as a news page designer in September 2008.

We’ve got a bone to pick with some of our favorite professional organizations. At a time when most people in the US have had to adjust their lifestyles because of the economic downturn and as the newspaper industry is struggling to survive, industry-wide training and conferences have simply gotten too expensive for many of us to attend.

THE FACTS

There have been 31,757 layoffs and buyouts at U.S. newspapers since June 2007[1].

If you’re lucky enough to not be counted in the figure above, you’ve likely had to take a pay cut (many people have been docked as much as 10%[2]) and/or mandatory time off work.

In addition, company training budgets are getting slashed, and many are nearly non-existent. At Lori’s last job and her current one, the papers were unable to send any employees to the Society for News Design annual conference. Lori was able to negotiate time off to attend the National Press Photographer’s Association’s Multimedia Immersion and Convergence09 conference in June because she was willing to foot the bill for the entire thing (which came to over $2,000 after tuition, airfare, hotel and minor gear purchases – Thank you, MasterCard).

THE CONSEQUENCES

Expensive conferences create a pay-to-play environment [3].  While it’s easier than ever to catch a livestream of a conference (The Online News Association did a fantastic job, utilizing technology and equipment from Livestream.com), physical attendance is invaluable. You cannot network like you can in person. Those lucky few who are able to afford attending these conferences are able to make connections with big names in our industry, not necessarily because of merit, but because they can afford to be there. Even if they can, the current work environment in most newsrooms is strapped, leaving little or no staff to cover shifts.

Expensive conferences put out-of-work journalists at an even greater disadvantage. Attending industry events and keeping skill sets up-to-date are all we can rely on to market ourselves in a suddenly flooded field of applicants.  Attending a conference is resume material. Following a conference online is not.

Sending only newsroom veterans is counterproductive to innovation. Recent college graduates who are employed should be attending these conferences because they are bursting with optimism and ideas and are the future of our industry. So often do newsroom veterans look to us, the wired generation, for clues and tips for adapting news for the Web and starting conversations with the audience. They need our help. We should be better equipped to give it to them.

We realize that there’s a lot of cost associated with putting on a professional conference. Venue fees. Speaker fees. Bandwidth charges. And so on. However, it seems that the cost of these conferences have not adjusted to consider the state of the industry. Some of the speakers at these conferences are reimbursed for every penny spent. That’s not to say that they shouldn’t be, but it’s ironic given that these are the people who can often afford the conference in the first place.

THE SOLUTION

Mark S. Luckie of 10,000 Words provides a great list of resources for journalists to learn technical skills. We urge journalists to take advantage of the these opportunities. However, they are no replacement for in-person training and networking.

We want an affordable alternative to the big annual conferences, with a comparable level of networking and training that you’d pay hundreds of dollars at SND, ONA, NPPA or other conferences. We propose a BarCamp-style unconference.

What’s that? As defined on BarCamp.org:

BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from participants who are the main actors of the event.

At Miami’s last BarCamp, Greg Linch (of Publish2, who at the time was a University of Miami student), led a track called NewsInnovation, which focused on creating better ways to deliver news.

Holding a similar event in your area, either on your own with fellow journalists, or in conjunction with an already established BarCamp, is one way we can train one another on the cheap, and still get to do a lot of the face-to-face networking that you would do at a national conference, but on a regional scale. We are in the very early stages of doing this ourselves and will blog it as it comes together.

If you have any ideas on how to make conferences more affordable, or want to throw around your ideas with us, leave a comment below or chat with us on Twitter. Mallory can be reached at @malcolli and Lori at @loritodd.

Footnotes:

1 This number totals those reported on Erica Smith’s Paper Cuts, a Google Maps mashup which tracks layoffs and buyouts at U.S. newspapers. It does not include job cuts made through attrition. (Numbers as of October 10, 2009.)

2 At McClatchy owned Miami Herald, employees making over $25,000 a year were given a 5% pay cut, over $50,000 were given 10% pay cut. On top of this, all full-time employees had to take five furlough days between before October 31, 2009.

3 We do realize that some concessions have been made in consideration of the economic state: NPPA’s Convergence09 workshop was under $100 for members (professionals and students). SND froze registration rates and members paid 2008’s rates and students who registered early did not have to pay any registration fees.