Good times, bad times

Newspaper journalism these days is a see-saw ride on steroids. One day you’re up, the next you’re down. It’s an industry in huge flux with uncertainty rolling around about as frequently as the next deadline.

I spent last week at a “Storytelling Innovations” seminar at the American Press Institute in Reston, Va. The conference was largely inspiring, seeing innovative work being done in print and online at newspapers across the country. When it’s all flashing up there on screens for days on end, enhanced by passionate talks by smart and daring colleagues, it gets you fired up about the biz, about what can be accomplished, and about how the Gray Old Ladies born more than a century ago are still plugging away, finding new ways to inform and connect with readers in the Internet age.

That’s clearly the key to the future, as traveling between Denver and Washington, D.C., I saw loads more people clicking away on wireless gadgets than flipping through newspapers.

So, I returned to work on the upside of the see-saw, feeling rejuvenated and recharged. But by day’s end, the mood had shifted, an announcement made, and sobering reality brought me back down to earth.

It was announced that 3-year-old La Tribuna, a quality newspaper staffed by talented pros, has struggled in the tightening advertising market. It’s being merged with another of our papers, Greeley Now, but the result is a couple jobs eliminated. Two friends now looking for work.

When my fellow seminar participants introduced themselves a week earlier, several spoke of cutbacks at their papers. It’s something we’ve all become familiar with. When it hits people you’ve come to admire and respect — folks who moved great distances to be here, to work in this competitive-as-hell profession — it packs a wallop and you wonder when the ground will collapse beneath your feet.

I’ll try to take what I learned at API and apply it here at the Trib. Try to keep focused on storytelling, yet nimble to the fast-evolving cyber-platforms for telling those stories.

But today, after riding a wave of creative inspiration just days before, I worry for our craft and the people who sweat in the battlefields to practice it.