Six months after his newspaper layoff, a Chicago Tribune alum looks ahead, not back

Lou Carlozo's Chicago Tribune desk, minutes before he carried the last box out and bid adieu to his job of 16 years.

Six months ago today, I got laid off from my big-city newspaper job as a writer, blog columnist and source editor. I’ve had plenty of time to heal, move on and get right, even though in a global sense–the one affecting one outlet’s street cred more than any guy in a cube–crucial questions remain. Namely: How can anyone trust a company dedicated to “watchdog journalism” when it refuses to come clean about millions in executive bonuses (some given to editors) which, if cut by a mere 20 percent, could’ve saved 50-plus newsroom jobs?

But as a friend of mine still toiling in said newsroom reminded me (let’s call him Mr. Crunchy), now’s no time to be bitter. And he’s right. Today would mark a better occasion to look ahead than to look back. (Thanks, Mr. Crunchy. I owe you lunch.)

So I’m using today, Oct. 22, to create a self-styled holiday. Call it Entrepreneurial Journalism Day.

Sad but true: The full-time newspaper journalism jobs of the past no longer exist in significant numbers–and never will. Print journalism, if not dying, has a grave chronic illness. I derive no glee from this fact, though I might point out that the decline has been hastened by piggish corporate types like Conrad Black. The arrogant press baron (and present-day jailbird) used Hollinger International and the Chicago Sun-Times as his personal piggy bank; for the cost of his wife’s lavish birthday party, $40,000, he could’ve kept a hungry young staff writer on the payroll for a year. (We’ll see how the Sun-Times does under its new ownership. I’m rooting for them: Sail on, Bright One.)

Fact: The demand for news, reliable and dependable news delivered in amazing new ways, has never been greater, as witnessed by the explosion of cyber-journalism outlets. And so, portals such as True/Slant provide an amazing umbrella where gifted and passionate reporter/writers can ply their craft and build an audience the same way a rock band or talented actress might.

Yes, this has pitfalls. The quest for “eyeballs” on the Internet can and does cause some to abandon ethics and decorum. Old school newsrooms, for all they do wrong, know how to keep reporters in line–and safe from apparent conflicts of interest, or stories that hit way below the belt. I think about the Pitchfork Media review of an album by Jet that showed a monkey pissing in its mouth, and nothing more. I refuse to link to it because, for all the juvenile laughter it may have prompted at Hipster Central, it represents irresponsible, terrible journalism of the highest order. And the Internet needs a sense of fair play, best practices and ethical conduct … lest it turn into the cyberspace equivalent of a no-holds-barred orgy … where some of the guests have STDs, and don’t give a rat’s ass.

The entrepreneurial journalist, freed from the shackles of editors who spout worthless platitudes such as “your job is to make me look good,” can aim for a much higher pursuit: How can I cover and comment upon the news in interesting and unheard-of ways? A great example: the abandonment of one-dimensional beat structure. At T/S, I gravitate towards faith and popular culture, a hybrid beat that does not exist in any newsroom anywhere. At the Daily Bugle, the editor would likely say, “You can be the religion writer, or an entertainment writer … but not both.”

Besides its laudable bias towards narrowcasting, Entrepreneurial Journalism forces pluggers to learn and stretch. My video shooting and editing continues to improve. Some stories I might cover through parody songs, complete with my own music and lyrics. Most exciting: I spend about 95 percent of my time chasing things that fascinate me, as opposed to 10-20 percent in my waning newspaper days. Sadly, short staffing forced me and many others into beats and assignments that held no lure for us, save to help us keep our jobs another day.

What’s more, EJs know that competition in the print sense simply does not exist. If another web site, for example, jumps on my story and tries to advance it, they will likely link to my original piece–and drive lots of traffic to me as a result. These reciprocal relationships hold lots of promise as news scrappers, much like indie record labels, form feisty new(s) alliances.

Rather than wait for a blessed columnist gig, the Entrepreneurial Journalist can create one, instantly–though Lord knows, we need less crabby, third-rate Mike Royko wannabes, and more people doing fascinating interviews a la Terry Gross. EJs can also, if so moved, gather the diaspora around them into news organizations that create the Next New Thing. Putting a newspaper online? Yawn. Creating a news site dedicated to one singular niche issue or a city/suburban neighborhood where dozens of dramas come and go unnoticed? Sounds much more intriguing to me. A gathering of erudite, funny and smart scribes dishing on everything from health care reform backstabbing to ice skating? Hey, that sounds like T/S!

Don’t give up on newspapers, folks. We may see a wonderful day, as we did with radio in the wake of TV, where a surprising turn of events allows the medium to reinvent itself and carve an as-yet undiscovered niche. But for those who would cast their vision to the vocation itself, my advice–speaking from six months out of print–could not be more emphatic.

A major metro newspaper internship will give you some measure of hustle, bustle and crucial deadline training … but rarely will it turn into a job of any lasting security or creative possibility. News holes are shrinking. Corporate greed and cash grabbing carries on far beyond deadline central. And as any student of the Internet knows, most media innovation comes not from focus groups or meetings ad nauseam, but when two or three people bet the ranch and the dog on an unheard-of concept or paradigm. Google, peer-to-peer file sharing and Facebook all launched in this way.

So can you. Here’s to the Entrepreneurial Journalists everywhere. And to quote the most Inernet-unsavvy Romantic poet Leigh Hunt, “May our tribe increase!”