Maine news, sports, weather from Portland Press Herald / Maine Sunday Telegram, Portland, Maine

This is probably the most difficult blog post I've ever had to write. So I'll start by just ripping off the Band Aid:

I'm leaving the Press Herald.

Some or most of you probably have heard that the newspaper is going through a round of layoffs to reduce staff. Along with that the company is offering a number of buyouts to anyone willing to part ways.

Since they were looking for willing bodies, I volunteered. So after more than seven years at this newspaper, my tenure will end on March 31. That means the NXT Desk will most likely close its doors and I'm moving on.

Even though I'll be sticking around Press Herald Plaza till the end of the month, I wanted to drop the news first before anyone else got around to it. (See all you PR and campaign people, I have learned something from you all these years: Message control.) I had wanted to stage a news conference on the shores of Sebago Lake to tell the world the only way to help the Press Herald and people of Maine was to quit...but it seemed a bit tacky.

So the question you're probably asking now is why leave? Like all break ups in history, I suppose I could trot out the old "It's not you, it's me" line. But that wouldn't be fair. Also, tacky.

Here's the truth: After you've been through enough of these situations, where the line between a layoff and a voluntary BASE Jump into the job market is sometimes thin, you have to wonder where your future is going. As much as I've loved writing for the newspaper, getting an opportunity to take time off, try and develop some projects and take stock of my career is a hard thing to pass up.

More than that, if by taking the leap I can help keep someone else from losing their job (someone who has more responsibilities than car and student loan payments), then it's a win-win scenario for everyone.

Deciding to leave was not easy, but in case you're coming late to the party, nothing in newspapers is easy these days.

I could spend an entire blog post cataloging the problems journalism is facing right now, from declining circulation and advertising revenue to shrinking staffs (I know, not helping there) and limited resources, and of course the general question mark about figuring out The Internets. Can we get people to pay for content online? Do people even want news the way they had it in the past online? How do iPhones, BlackBerrys and other mobile devices change the way people get information. And oh yeah, just about anyone can be a journalist now.

But that's getting off topic -  at least for now.

As for what's next for me, that's up in the air. I wish I could say I was being coy and trying to stay within bounds of some non-disclosure agreement. But at the moment I've got no concrete future plans after March 31 and I won't be leaving Portland, at least for the immediate future.

So I could be a hopeful idealist on the verge of new discoveries...or the dumbest guy you've ever seen. At the moment, judging by the alternating waves of optimism and unending terror I'm feeling, it's tough to know which is right.

At the moment what I can say is thank you. I'll probably be saying it a lot over the next two weeks. Thanks for reading, thanks for taking my phone calls and emails, thanks for letting me talk to your school groups, thanks for letting me into your homes when you didn't have to and thanks, mostly, for putting up with me.



 

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