And I’ve been cashing checks like a sucker…

Debit cards for the unemployed

Lose your job in Illinois and you gain a debit card. Beginning Aug. 1, the state began issuing Visa debit cards to people who qualify for unemployment insurance payments.

The check is no longer in the mail, but electronically deposited directly into your debit card account.

Folks who don’t want the card can opt for direct deposit in their checking or savings accounts.

While the program is currently aimed at the newly unemployed, by Nov. 1 of this year Illinois plans to eliminate checks completely as it transitions to a paperless system.

I was tipped to this story by a former colleague who is now unemployed.

Once he wrote the news, now he’s a news source.

Odd how things work out.

But my source, we’ll call him George, still knows a good story when he sees one.

“You don’t have to go down to the unemployment office any more, either” he said.

“I found out you can file for unemployment on your computer.”

No more standing in line for hours only to be told by some sour-faced bureaucrat that you’ve been standing in the wrong line.

Read the rest of Phil Kadner’s column here. Please do – he’s my colleague now.

I’m reporting again for a paycheck — not the kind issued by IDES. Check out my stuff or set a Google Alert for “By Lauren FitzPatrick.” Please. More to come — I’m trying to wrap up day 1 before 9 p.m. That doesn’t mean the end of Termination Date, though. I know I’m one of the lucky ones, and who knows how long this streak will even last?

Job Board! CASHIERS Flying Food Fare (Chicago, Ill.)

From an ad posted here, courtesy of the SouthtownStar newspaper. Probably I ought to look there first since they’re about to be the ones to sign my paychecks. Let’s find out together what they have to offer.

CASHIERS Flying Food Fare

As seen in The Daily Southtown/Star

CASHIERS Flying Food Fare Chicago Treasures Gift Shop at the Midway Airport has Full Time opportunities available for cashiers. Requires HS Diploma or GED fluency in English and cashier experience. Must be flexible to work nights days and weekends do to schedule changes that may occur. All positions are subject to drug testing 10-year background check and fingerprinting. EOE. Fax resume to Greg Abramson 773-884-0771. If not flexible with hours of a schedule no need to apply.

Good advice: Don’t go to work for people who can’t describe in basic English what you’re going to do. Writing errors? Keep checking those classifieds.

Look to the East

I live in Chicago, where I’ve worked for about five years now. Posting’s been slow this week because I’m in Philadelphia, giving my hometown job market a shot while staying with my parents.

My sister is interviewing this week, too, so I find myself handing out interview advice to her about things like how to politely indicate you will not answer an inappropriate question, how to find out what’s wrong with the company or office and what kinds of questions to ask to show you’re really interested.

Turns out the Philadelphia Inquirer just eliminated some Sunday sections, I learned this weekend, but I’ll go take a look and introduce myself anyway. Ditto for the People’s Paper, whose tabloidy style might better suit my writing anyway.

The media market’s weird here, too, though the news is a blast here with a new mayor, ridiculous homicide stats, chronic malaise at the child welfare department and all kinds of TV reporter drama. Inky has relatively new ownership but also a couple of writers I particularly enjoy. When I think about the sources I’d have in this city thanks to an extensive network of relatives who do all sorts of things in life, I begin to believe I’d be stupid to report anywhere else.

Fingers crossed.

Lousy newsprint

My friend, former colleague and father of three teeny children is “too young” to be part of this first phase of buyouts in Atlanta. Yuck. Makes me want to get to the bottom of the cost of newsprint.

Atlanta newspaper cutting staff by 200

By DORIE TURNER –
ATLANTA (AP) — The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is cutting its staff by nearly 200 jobs, or about 8 percent of its work force, and eliminating some targeted news sections.

In a news release Wednesday, Publisher John Mellott said the moves are aimed at cutting expenses amid dwindling advertising revenues and steadily increasing fuel and newsprint costs. Mellott said the job cuts will be mainly in the news and advertising departments between August and October through voluntary buyouts and layoffs.

The newspaper will cut 85 positions from its newsroom, 27 of which are vacant, said Journal-Constitution spokeswoman Jennifer Morrow.

The company has a staff of 2,300 people, according to a news release. [...]
Total online and print readership is up 7 percent over last year, but the cost of newsprint has risen 35 percent in that time, Mellott said.

It’s the second downsizing in two years at Georgia’s largest newspaper. In February 2007, the newspaper announced it was offering contract buyouts and reducing its circulation area. About 40 newsroom employees took those buyout offers, Morrow said.

I’m trying, Mr. Lopez

Dear Steve Lopez,

Been thinking about you lately, having devoured The Soloist last weekend while holed up in a cabin by a Wisconsin lake with my Mister and family. And I do mean devoured, Mr. Lopez. That book didn’t stand a chance the minute I opened the cover; it was d-u-n by the time I went to bed that same night.

Then this popped up today, thanks to a woman on my school’s alumni listserv.

“Like a lot of my colleagues, I’ve wondered if I should finally give it up, or might be forced to. But most of us dread the idea for the same reasons we’ve always had: We love what we do, we believe in the cause, and we realize that on the open market we’re not as employable as, say, a laid-off IndyMac janitor.

The joy of my job is that I honestly don’t know what I might do from one day to the next, but I can always figure it will be pretty interesting.”

See, I’ve been reading your columns since I could read the Inquirer on my parents’ kitchen table in the Roxborough neighborhood of Philadelphia. And when I figured out at age 26 that reporter was the thing for me, I couldn’t have been more excited. But my reporter job just went away and I’m trying to figure out how to get back in the saddle without begging my way onto another sinking ship whose captain has hidden a gold plated liferaft under his mahogany desk.

Morale is low. I know how important our jobs are in chronicling our neighbors and changing cities, in calling out the powerful when they act up, in safeguarding against systems that become too big for their own good. I’m just trying to figure out how to feed my family while trying to rejoin your Forces of Good.

Keep at it, LAUREN FITZPATRICK

Bloodletting

I’m returned from the shores of the Long Lake outside Waupaca, Wisconsin, where leeches abound in the muck around the water’s edges, full of writing notes and ideas, and various cheeses. I took neither phone nor computer; turned on the TV zero times; devoured books.

And then this bloodletting welcomes me home:

The Horror! Preview of ‘Wall Street Weak’ Ahead for Newspapers By Mark Fitzgerald Published: July 13, 2008 6:00 PM ET

CHICAGO Between the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac meltdowns, the collapse of airline industry market caps, the cratering of the financial sector, and arrival of $145-a-barrel oil, last week in the stock market was no fun for anybody. Lost in the general media headlines, however, was the beat-down of publicly traded newspaper companies, a sickening dive of share price in the double-digits — for some, in a single trading session. Don’t blame the media. Newspaper stocks swooning is old news.But the sector’s stock woes may get another 15 minutes of fame over the next two weeks as investors and analysts get a look at second quarter results. Bet your house: It’s not going to be a pretty picture.

[...] The roll call of collapse:
–GateHouse Media Inc.: Down 91.7%.
–Lee Enterprises Inc.: Down 84.1%.
–The McClatchy Co.: Down 82.3%.

–Media General Inc.: Down 68.7%.

–Gannett Co. Inc.: Down 68%.

–Journal Communications Inc.: Down 65.4%.

–New York Times Co.: Down 43.9%.

 
That’s kind of how it’s going with the newspaper industry. So far, the NYSE has kicked Journal Register Co. and Sun-Times Media Group off the Big Board because they fell below the requirement to cost at least $1 a share. with market capitalization of at least $75 million. On Friday you could buy a share of either company for less than a copy of their flagship papers. Sun-Times, which fell 10.42%, ended Friday at 43 cents a share. Journal Register shares cost just 15 cents. The publisher of the New Haven Register, the Daily Tribune in Royal Oaks, Mich., and 20 other daily newspapers has a market cap of less than $6 million.

Going into Monday’s trading, GateHouse’s market cap, at $91 million, was not much higher than the NYSE’s minimum requirement.

Read the rest here.

Of course, I’ve managed to work for two of the companies listed – Sun Times News Group and GateHouse. My Mister’s at a Sun Times paper, too. Perhaps we should take a dollar or two and buy a few shares of SVN (as the Sun Times was called when it was allowed on the New York Stock Exchange) and have the fun of becoming Stockholders at a lower cost than the Sun Times’s cover price. With only one regular income right now, it’s Fun We Can Totally Afford.

And it’ll make me learn about stock, something a responsible adult ought to understand.

The good news: I’m hardly alone. The bad news: I’m hardly alone.

While I was figuring out how to set up this blog yesterday, the New York Times was busy analyzing this print news biz: “The industry will not bottom out for another three or four years, analysts predict.”

Three or four years?