Waiting for the phone to ring

The kids are back in school and looking for a job is once again on the front burner. I had some positive interviews in August, so now in addition to going through job postings; I'm waiting for the phone to ring.

I had one call this week. I was told I'd hear something on Wednesday, when Wednesday morning came and went I figured it wasn't going to be good news. I was right. The call came early afternoon. I could hear the hesitancy in the man's voice.

The part that stopped me wasn't the fact that I didn't get the job. I'm a big girl, I can handle that. No, what was interesting was the fact that I lost out to an advertising agency. Talk about lousy odds. I wanted to say, you should have told from the outset that you were considering that path and saved me my time and energy.

Think about it. In many ways, this was a bottom line decision not to add to the payroll, not to pay benefits. I didn't come up short I came up too expensive.

That's been a recurring theme throughout my search - employers making the assumption that because of my experience level and previous salary that I wouldn't even consider something less. There's also this whole notion that my skill set consists of writing and editing. (I'm rolling my eyes on that one.)

The paycheck I received from the Star-Telegram was a good one. But it came with A LOT of strings attached. You know, like being on call 24/7, being a gatekeeper against libel and an arbiter of community taste and tolerance, staying until the story is ready or deadline passes, whichever comes first.

I could work for less for a straight 40 to 50 hour work week that knows how to take a breather. I could work for less if I didn't have to make sure that a story wouldn't elevate readers' blood pressure and by extension the publisher's. To me that's a fair trade off.

I can also do a lot more than journalism. There was plenty of time this summer to explore the creative talents that always had to take come after the journalism, if at all.

During my last couple of interviews, the employers acknowledged that my resume was impressive from a journalism standpoint and but they asked, 'What do you know about marketing?'

In both cases, I smiled and admitted what few editors want to talk about: Every story, every photo, every graphic that goes into the paper is there for a reason. There's a target audience that's being sought and editorial decisions are made in hopes of appealing to it. This means an editor on top of her game has to understand the market, know the community and how to present information so that it will be most effective.