What’s your escape plan?
Waiting this week for the final layoff announcement from the Chicago Sun-Times made me think “what if.” If you were laid off tomorrow, what would you do? What would you want to do? Not your immediate reaction, but your plan for the future. Would you stay in journalism? Move to something else? Try the entrepreneur route?
I just updated Paper Cuts with final numbers from the Sun-Times, and a layoff announcement from the News & Observer. Journalists will always been needed — especially reporters. Designers will be needed too, but our role will continue to evolve as the print vs. Web debate continues.
I haven’t figured out my escape plan — my what-if plan. I have tons of ideas of things I’d like to do and learn, but not a single one that’ll keep me in mac ‘n’ cheese for more than a few weeks. What’s your what-if plan?
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I don’t have it figured out either, but I notice that while our newsroom is shrinking (buyouts, then more buyouts, then finally layoffs a couple of weeks ago), the staff of our affiliated Web site is growing. So I’m trying to expand my skill set to include more Web-related stuff: a refresher on Dreamweaver, a splash of Flash. Can’t hurt, might help.
I read Charles Apple’s interview with Don Tate last night and it reminded me that what I really want to do is illustrate children’s books. So the plan is: keep working on flash and producing illustrations, maybe do some more freelance work and finally get started on putting together a portfolio that I can use for kids books.
Don Tate interview:
http://www.visualeditors.com/apple/2008/01/austins-don-tate-hits-the-bigtime-with-childrens-book-illustration/
I don’t know what I would do; for some reason I haven’t really given it much though. It likely would prompt me to look harder at going ahead and moving over to the dark side of advertising and public relations. And no, the way things are going in our industry, that really wouldn’t bother me all that much!