The beginning of the end

That's a what friend said after hearing the news that came to us at work earlier this week.

The newspaper where I work, a nearly 80-year-old institution in the town, will shut down its press at the end of September and be printed by one of our sister papers in a town 90 miles away. All the county weeklies we print will go to. Four or five full-timers, some of whom have been there for years, and a handfull of part-timers will lose their jobs. It's already in the works to consolidate the circulation and business departments of the papers owned by our parent company, and probably several more from our paper will lose their jobs by year's end.

This is it. There's no light at the end of the tunnel, and I anticipate the same kind of thing will eventually happen to my job. It wouldn't be tough. If gas prices spike up around $4 a gallon ever again, the company would say driving back and forth five days a week to pick up papers is costing too much, so my paper cuts its publication frequency, and then they say they don't need two full-time page designers. The best I could hope for would be that they consolidate copy desks of the papers and my job transfers to another town.

So now I'm trying to figure out what to do. Looking for another job is an option, although I don't relish the idea of trying to sell my house at this point. I've been thinking for some time about going for a master's with the idea of teaching journalism, maybe at a small university or community college. I'd hoped to make that happen this year, but didn't get to a more financially stable place. So now I'm thinking maybe spring. I'm going to try and get my car paid off early -- December or January -- and I'll have a credit card paid off shortly afterwards, if all goes well. I wouldn't be debt-free, but I would be a lot more stable. I'm sure my employer would be willing to work with me on the schedule (I had actually talked with my boss about it once before), but I would certainly keep my eyes open for anything local that would work too.

Because the one thing I do know is, I can't just sit around now and think it's not going happen. My job's expendable. And the days are numbered.