Surviving layoff season in the media

“It’s a five year cycle,” say media old timers who’ve been around since the booming nineties of the last century. “Over a five year period, you see salaries go up, and then there’s a crash … and people lose jobs.”

These old geezers say that the reported decision by the Times (BCCL) to cut around 5 per cent of its staff is a harbinger of things to come.

Most other media companies are going to follow suit. They’re going to ask people to take paycuts and all sorts of perks will be withdrawn. I’m certain emails have been doing the rounds for a while now telling people to use both sides of paper to take printouts. During a similar period at a newspaper I once worked for, the toner for the printer would run out and not be replaced quickly enough. So, the whole purpose of saving paper got defeated when you had to take multiple prinouts just to get one legible copy.

You can also forget about a raise — I remember a raise during one of these downturns where my salary went up by 23 rupees a month (or some such equally vague number … I do try and bury these memories deep).

News budgets will be cut even, so no more travelling by air. And though elections are around the corner, channels will have to get creative about coverage. This should lead to interesting stuff on-air.

(I know stuff like this is already happening at various media houses, but if you have details feel free to leave a comment.)

Which brings me to the survival bit.

Stop worrying about whether you’re going to get fired. If it has to happen it will, so there’s no point in getting stressed about it.

For trainees, it’s a bad time. In my experience, its the lowest of the low that get the boot first, so if you’re a trainee start thinking about what you’re going to do. The best thing that laid off trainess can do is forget about the media for a while.

In fact, a downturn is a great time to go back to school. Seriously. Find a course that you want to do that’ll keep you out of the workplace for the next couple of years. By the time you finish, the economy will have improved, things will be looking up, and people will be hiring again. And if you’re smart and taken a course that lets you do other things besides a media job, you’ll have a lot of options.

For everybody else, the world is your oyster. As journalists you have picked up very valuable skills. And now is the time to put them to some use. Just don’t sell yourself short.

I maintain that this is one of the best times to start a company if you have a truly innovative idea. Figure out how to make a business more efficient — so work gets done faster, for less — and you’re on a winning wicket.

Recovered from the site’s WordPress archive, where it was published on 2008-12-12.