So... I was fired last week

Mon, 29 Jan 2024 00:24:05 GMT

Crossposted from Livejournal

It’s been a while since I posted anything in this platform – but given how much digital ink I spent on my journalism career, it didn’t feel right not to mark it here.

Back in mid-April 2022, I was hired as a part-time reporter at Growing Community media, which I freelanced for in my Chicago Journal days back in 2012 and then after the whole Pioneer Press debacle in the spring of 2015, when I ended up writing for Austin Weekly News. I got bumped up to full-time in late August 2022 (but because I wanted to surprise my family during what was supposed to be a joint birthday celebration with me and my siblings, I didn’t actually publicly announce it until September).

Since mid-August 2023, the work environment inside the company, at least on the editorial side, has been deteriorating. The fact that two employees left within less than a month of each other during the fall of 2023 should have been a sign of how bad things got – but the leadership was determined to ignore the implications. On December 22, 2023, I decided that I had no future in the company, that it was not going to get better. I set a deadline for myself – I was going to leave in May 2024, two years after I was brought on staff. If I found another job earlier, I would leave earlier, but if I don’t, that’s when I would leave.

I was fired on January 17, 2024. And, a week and two days later, another reporter, who also happened to be an immigrant from a former Soviet republic and a native Russian speaker, was fired. And while, with me, the writing was obviously on the wall for a while, she was fired without any apparent reason, and when she asked for an explanation, the company refused to provide one.

A lot happened in the past two years and a change, ladies and gentlefolks. And I may yet write something about it in a series of f-locked posts, because boy is there a lot to unpack and I have a lot more free time to unpack it. No promises, though. Like, I’ve been meaning to write about a lot of those things for just as long, but the sheer enormity of the task kept intimidating me.

For now... what happened with Niles Bugle taught me the importance of never putting all my eggs in one basket. I’m going to be regularly writing for Streetsblog Chicago (I never stopped writing for them, but I’ve been writing a lot less because it was harder to find time when you got a full-time staff job). I’m going to be doing regular freelance contributions for another publication I worked with before, and semi-regular work for a third publication I worked with before. I am still looking for staff jobs in journalism, or somewhere journalism-adjacent, but for now, I’m going to have money coming in, and I have quite a bit of money saved up (like I said, things have been deteriorating for a while), so I’ll be alright for the time being.

It’s been a hell of a ride, ladies and gentlefolks. I’m glad it’s over. I’ve done my best, produced some good journalism in the process. I worked with a lot of great people, and I hope that the ones who still work at GCM will be able to keep working there for as long as they want.

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Echoes of the Crossroads

So... I was fired last week