Get a long-term job in journalism

I will just be filling in for someone who’s on vacation, so that it will probably just be the 4 weeks. But it’s in culture. Ahh. 4 weeks of cultural bliss. ;) Hopefully someone else will need a holiday or something after that.

sigh, it’s a lla total nightmare really. I knew there was a good chance the job I’m in now would still be vacant for at least a few months after july, so I was very much hoping to get a new contract for at least a few months. That won’t happen. The editor told me today that she is very happy with my work, but they are now starting to really feel the effect of the financial crisis, and have decided to keep that job vacant for now. So no more work for me after august 1st.
I’m sure I will be able to get some work still, they always need someone to fill in when someone gets sick or goes on vacation or something. But that will be on a day to day or week to week basis. And even if I managed to work full time like that, it would mean a substantial loss of income. And my financial situation is a complete disaster as it is. Crap, crap, crap.
The one thing that will help, is that I hopefully won’t have to worry about dogsitters to go to work any more. If all goes well with Cora’s home alone training that is. The last time I worked on week to week contracts it was very stressful, because I had to find dogsitters in advance in case I would get to work, and was then always at risk of having to pay for dogsitters without getting any income to pay for it if I didn’t get any work that week. Now it will hopefully be easier to go to work on short notice and work evenings or weekends if needed, to make as much as I can.
Still, it’s extremely stressful to work like that, never knowing what my income will be and panicking at the sight of a bill in the mail. The editor said I should start applying for jobs in other papers, but the thing is, that is quite hopeless. Even though the paper I work at is having financial difficulties, it is still among the ones that are doing best. Most of the others have already laid off a lot of people. Which means, there are a lot of experienced journalists out there looking for work now. And whenever there’s an opening, most papers will simply hire back the people they laid off.

Crap.

It seems I will be offered a job until summer! Yay! It’s in the weekend section, which is more stressful than culture, but still, very supexited about it! Especially since I was worried the weekend editor didn’t really think I was doing a good job. She sent me a message saying we’ll talk about it tomorrow, so I don’t know exatly what she means by summer, it could be anything from may to august. I have been seriously worried about my job situation because of the financial crisis, which is causing a serious crisis all across norwegian media. Now at least I can relax for a few months. Yay!
Plus, this is actually hiccup guys job. He will unfortunately still be sitting very close to me in the office, but instead of working as a journalist he will be a full time photographer until summer. And I overheard him on the phone with the photographers union, he said he wanted to join them because he will now be working as a photographer at least until summer. Instead of constantly grolwing in his direction, I will now start telling everyone what an amazing photographer he is, hoping that the boss will overhear it and be inspired to hire him as a photographer for a longer period instead of giving him his old job back. ;)

I desperately need to impress the weekend editor right now, in order to get work after november, I really need her to want me to work for her. But the past few days I have done the opposite. Life is just too much to deal with these days, the worries about getting more work, which is a lot worse with the financial crisis, my financial situation which has gone from terrible to even worse, the heartbreaking situation with Agatha and plenty of other things.

It’s overwhelming. And the result is that all of last week I went to work feeling seriously dizzy and nauseous and with a constant headache. The weekend editor didn’t come to work friday and today because she was sick. She asked me to write a tv article for friday. So I tried finding people to give me some information I needed for the article, but they were impossible to get hold of. I told the editor, and she said “well, find another idea and write the article”. Which is a whole lot easier said than done. It had to be something newsworthy about norwegian television. And november really is not the time for new things happening on tv. And finding creative ideas in the state that I have been in lately is seriously difficult, so I wasn’t very efficient. Today I discussed it with some other journalists, we found some ideas and I spent a lot of time researching, but all of the ideas proved difficult to do for different reasons (that had nothing to do with me, it was reasons like that we had done simimlar things recently) I finally found an idea that might work, and called the editor to ask her if I should go for that and she said “WHAT??? Have you been working on that article for TWO days and it’s not finished??? I hope you have been working on other things as well??”

In part it was rather unfair, because finding and researching ideas does take time, I had some bad luck in that I called a lot of people who didn’t answer their phone or didn’t know anything about the topic, and several ideas didn’t work out. Plus, I have been doing other things. I made the weekly news quiz for our webpages for instance, which she seems to think takes 5 minutes. But finding good questions and alternatives for answers takes longer than that, especially because it was my first time doing it.
But it definitely also had to do with me not being efficient at all lately. Which is terrible, I completely depend on her liking me. Crap. I have to find a way to get my act together even though it feels like my life is crashing down at the moment.

The chief editor is back from holiday now, and only gave me a contract for August. The two people I`m filling in for both work 60 % now, so there is really just an 80% job left, and it`s hard to know for how long.
I really think he is being unnecessarily mean though. I have worked there for a year now, always said yes to working whenever they need me, taken responsibility even as editor, and get great feedack on my work. And he gives me a contract 2 weeks after my previous one expired, and only for 2 more weeks. The 80% job will definitely be open for at least a month or two more (and 40% of it permanently), he could at least have given me a job through september. He really takes me for granted.
These jobs are hard to get though, which he ofcourse knows, and I do love working there.
The culture editor is fighting for me though, he said he has made it very clear that he thinks I should get a full time job there for a lot longer than just august. But this seriously arrogant guy will very likely just ignore him.
Crap.

and really enjoying it. The culture editor is now back from his vacation, and came over to tell he he thinks I`ve done really well this summer. I told him I have loved being editor, it was so much fun. So he said “Oh, well, I do have some other stuff I would like to do, so why don`t you continue being editor for one more week then?”. Yay! Fun! Plus, that must mean he really does think I have done a good job.

It`s a little bit awkward though. This summer, the culture journalists were mainly summer interns and freelancers, and I had no trouble whatsoever making decisions and asking them to do things I needed done. Now though, all the permanent culture journalists are back at work. And they are all 20 years older than me, and has worked in this paper for years and years, I am by far the youngest and less experienced, so asking them to do things feels really weird. Plus, a couple of them might have felt that they should have been asked to do this maybe, not sure if they enjoy that sort of work or not.
But other than that, fun!

being culture editor! It`s exhausting, and all I do these days is work, walk the dogs and sleep, I have no energy left when I get home from work. But I enjoy it so much! And I do think it is a good thing for my career in this paper (or somewhere else, it goes on my resume obviously!). There`s not that much feedback really (but that goes for all the sections in the paper I think, we don`t have evaluation meetings during summer, so noone gets much feedback.) But one of the permanent journalists said the other day that she thinks the culture pages are great, and the main editor has said a few times that I have made good priorities. Plus, the culture editor sent me an e-mail the other day saying I`m doing a really good job, that my culture pages have “character” and that I should keep doing what I`m doing. He also said that my pages are “unpredictable”, I`m not sure that is entirely positive, although he said it in a positive sentence.
Either way, I still don`t know how much longer I will have a job there, but this has to be a positive thing for my career there. Or so I hope. The weekend editor is also on vacation, but one of the permanent journalists on the section is is there. And the head editor asked if he would be responsible for the weekend pages, and he said “Well, I`ll be your consultant when you make the decisions about them”. He has worked there a lot longer than me, and still didn`t take the opportunity to step up and take the responsibility, so hopefully they like that I did.
Plus, I`m having fun!

as culture editor. It`s stressful, but also a lot of fun! I`m getting a bit more comfortable with the role now, and I`m starting to figure out how it all works. I thought I would be spending most of the time running around in a state of panic, but I`m actually having a good time! (Well, a good time interrupted by moments of panic, but not too many ;))
It is challenging, but I`m actually feeling that I`m growing with the challenge, which is such a great feeling! There are lots of things I usually ask the editor about, because I don`t trust my own experience and judgment enough to make all the decisions myself all the time. Now the summer interns and the people who make the layout are asking me the same type of questions. And because they expect me to know the answer, I generally don`t find it hard to make the decisions. Fun!

^{The bad side to it is ofcourse that I can`t post on 43T during the day. My days are hysterically busy, plus, I`m using the editors office and computer, and I don`t want to leave traces of 43T activity for him to find on his computer, I`m not sure I want him to read all my entries here ;)}

OK, I`m getting really nervous about the whole culture editor for the summer-thing now. I just had a meeting today with the editor, wow, there is so much to do and remember! And none of the permanent culture journalists will be there, so I will have to make all the calls, remember everything myself, and get the summer temps to do things for me and not mess them up. I must admit I like the idea of actually getting to ask others to do things for me instead of being the one being asked. ;) And I ofcourse then get first pick of articles to write, since Ï will know about things first. Also good. Remembering a million things at the same time, not so good. They said today that they hope we can get someone to make the culture pages that has done it before (don`t know their title in English, the people who put the pages together when the journalists have finished writing). Because otherwise I will have to spend a huge amount of time explaining to them how to do it right, because the culture pages have a spesific set of colours, elements that are always the same, fonts and so on. Huh?? I have no idea about those things at all! I just write and enjoy seeing my articles in the finished paper, I have no idea how they did it.
And there`s a whole lot of arranging to do, negotiating the number of culture pages every day with the editor in chief, show up at editors meetings every day presenting the culture pages in a way that makes them want to put them on the front pages, getting freelance critics to send in their work and so on.

Still quite exited about it, but EEEK! Also very scared.

It seems I will get my contract renewed for at least a while. It might not be for more than a month or two, but that is certainly better than nothing!