Gary,
It is with sincere regret that I need to inform you that we will no longer be running your column in The Observer newspapers effective immediately. The reason has nothing to do with your great work, it's simply because of the tightened economy; a new price increase by the U.S. Postal Service and escalating costs from our printer (4th one this year). Simply, the cost of putting out the newspapers is growing while this terrible economy is forcing many businesses to cut back or eliminate their advertising and this is forcing us to make cost-saving cuts that we otherwise would not have to do.
I was hopeful we could retain your great work, even with your moving out of town, but I was unaware at the time of the new rate hikes by postal and printer when we last communicated.
(We) want to thank you very much for writing for our newspaper. We truly appreciate your column and the work you put into it.
If the economy turns around in the future and advertising once again picks up, we would like to be able to contact you again for your services.
Thank you for understanding. You will receive your check for your April columns that have run at the usual mid-month pay period.
Again, thank you very much for all your great columns. We've really enjoyed them.
I was hopeful we could retain your great work, even with your moving out of town, but I was unaware at the time of the new rate hikes by postal and printer when we last communicated.
(We) want to thank you very much for writing for our newspaper. We truly appreciate your column and the work you put into it.
If the economy turns around in the future and advertising once again picks up, we would like to be able to contact you again for your services.
Thank you for understanding. You will receive your check for your April columns that have run at the usual mid-month pay period.
Again, thank you very much for all your great columns. We've really enjoyed them.
Sincerely,
Editor
Observer Newspapers
It's not so much that I mind losing my column, it's my readership I'll miss. I have a ten-year following. Because the paper is in a Michigan tourist town, and because both retail and tourism is down, papers that depend on that advertising have been suffering. I actually made it through several cuts which began last summer. For me, it's doubly sad because it was my last link to the town I had to leave.
Unless you're syndicated or write for a major national/international newspaper, columnists don't really make that much--I got what was considered "top dollar" for a newspaper the size I wrote for--thrity bucks. It was more a labor of love than anything--the way most art is.
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Comments
You got cut because of $120 a month tops. I am so sorry.
I turned one of my paying galleries to consignment until things pick up. I hate consignment and do not do it anymore. But that one gallery is worth being in on bad terms until things turn around. And I agreed going in that in two years it was back to the old terms.
Write your column for free for the next year and keep your readership. If this paper folds, the next one coming in may see that and keep you on. Or you can use the existing one to parlay it into a gig in NC.
Sometimes you have to roll with it until it stops spinning. Good luck.
Roger: thanks. You're right. You always have a good way of putting things in perspective.
bahHMMMblog: I'm waiting see what tourism will be like in Michigan. Last summer the state cut funding for advertising. This year they increased it. It's the the only "industry" left. If it falls flat this summer, especially up north, Michigan will have to reinvent it's real estate along its lakeshores.
Mumble: At least I'm with my sister and her family and getting "odd jobs." It would be worse if I were with my folks. Got a call from my "mother" yesterday and it wasn't pretty--a whole new post that coming soon!
Voicegal: thanks
Ask: Yes, I'll still write--but it was always motivating to have a deadline--especially if you're a procrastinator like me.
How is Chalk? I think about you guys often and try to send good thoughts and wishes.
OS affords me the chance to continue writing my weekly columns; sometimes, I post on my old newspaper's site, too. I find the audience here at OS receptive and supportive, and I love reading everyone else's stuff. The pay scale is what's different.
Good luck to you.
Good luck!
What's so maddening about this is that they judged your work purely in financial terms, and judged it ineptly at that. The people who run newspapers don't understand that good writing is part of what sells the product. I mean, how many times have you heard people complain about a paper on the basis that the ads weren't entertaining? What people complain about, and appreciate, is the editorial content.
The pittance they paid you probably was more than made up by the enhanced circulation.
Hope you can find a place to keep getting your work before the public.
Best of luck.
Rated
Jeff
I've been, shall we say, de-columned twice in my so-called career. The last time it happened, I was informed of the change in a breezy, oh-well note that didn't even bother to insincerely say how sad, upset or frustrated the note-writer felt. He wasn't, actually. He was taking orders and felt no obligation to feel or behave otherwise. It's nothing new, but it pulled me up short anyway because, when the time came to file a column there was no longer any room for, I discovered, as so many people -- not just journalists -- are discovering, that the world goes spinning round perfectly well without your thoughts or feelings about the matter.
What's hard to see just now about the awful disarray in newspapers may sound Pollyanna-like, but I'm betting on it. The benighted will not rule the day; nobody has ever read a newspaper because they love a publisher, a board of directors or a media mogul. People read newspapers (whether printed or pixelated) because they love writers, reporters, columnists who speak to them, give them the breaking stuff or something to chew on, give them a word they haven't heard in a while or the time date and place of an event they just might want to try.
The people who love writing and reporting and who know that they're getting paid to serve their communities faithfully and straightforwardly, will find new homes. This interruption, this trial you're facing will provide you with the vital stuff -- personal anguish, anger, hope -- that is the lifeblood of any good newspaper story or column, the lifeblood of passionate work of any kind.
If you're one of those, you'll find a home for your passion, and the bean-counters be damned.
m.a.h: Thanks. Chalk is doing just fine, purring away and losing his winter coat here in the South!
Melissa: Be sure to go to Veldheer's farm--the last tulips farm in the area. As you travel along N-31 try to imagine what it looked like before the strip malls and development--it was all tulip farms!!!
Bluesurly, Deb, Monica, and Con: thanks. Yes, it's all about "them" not me. But so many people and businesses are in trouble that I think it's all about "us."
Tom: thanks. I agree. Will be interesting to see if I'm missed. It was a small paper but I had a large following. Circulation and readership are two different issues. The latter feeds the former.
Pam: thanks. Something better will come along.
Ruth: advertising plummeted last summer which the paper depends on--no tourists = no business = no advertising.
cominghome: losing the column may, actually, be a good thing--allow me to move on and cut all ties, etc.
Scupper, Theo, Jeff: thanks for your kind comments. Words of support always help.
fibrogirl: Yep, it sure is changing and they said the economy would only affect the east side of the state. No way.
LaRae: yea, frowns for now . . . but smiles along the way.
Karin: HI. Saw a head of cauliflower in the fridge the other day and thought of you. Hope the cheese did the trick. Thanks for the comments.
Perhaps you can take some samples of your work to the local papers there and see if they would like a column by you. Maybe they would get a kick out of reading a transplanted northerner's views of the new south.
Monte