Another chance

I don't need an economic indicator or an interest calculator, a talking head from a 24-hour news channel or a radio pontificator, to say what's going on around me.

I got a clear reading last week as soon as I announced that I'm leaving The Bergen Record, as of Sept. 20, to become the regional editor for an AOL venture called Patch.com.

The last time I changed jobs - back 10 years ago - I got a hundred "farewells." Now, with the help of Facebook and the rest of cyberspace, I got hundreds more of these:

"Help me."

Anyone who knows me understands that I've always put a life of good deeds ahead of a life of material gains. But the economy has had such a the devastating impact that too many people appear to be, as David Crosby once sang, "too far gone."

In many ways, I'm sorry for what's happened to others, but thankful for some of the choices I've made. I've worked hard to get to a point where I can see a bright light in a dark world.

I'm also grateful, and damn lucky, because I know how easily I could be like so many others.

I've been there, too, where I've had to turn to a food bank for help because the salary I got was too small to feed me. Twenty years later, I can say I'm lucky to be alive, a survivor with a family that feeds me with strength and affection.

Twenty years later, I can say I've had bosses with the guts and the brains to guide me, and shape me into a journalist who's earned trust and respect. They've helped me become, in many ways, a person who's above the many fears that once consumed me.

I wish I could do more, and in my new position, I hope I can. I'll continue to do this blog, because I think it's provided the kind of guidance to others that's helped me through the highs and lows of life.

I'll help to hire people with the kind of experience that's necessary to work as local editors in Point Pleasant, Brick Township and other communities in the Jersey Shore (and, no, not the Jersey Shore T.V. show), because news - good, informative and unbiased news - is what those towns need.

But, again, I feel lucky, because I've managed to avoid the suffering and desperation of others that has had hit depths I never thought I'd see. The stories of breadlines and bankruptcy that were the stuff of the Great Depression now look more inevitable than merely possible.

Newspapers such as The Star-Ledger are offering buyouts, and the whispers in the industry are that the buyouts are just delaying the inevitable end.

At least so far, I've managed to avoid this kind of crisis - with more luck than pluck on my side - as I've watched an industry fall apart, and the Internet take away what was left of the content that once made newspapers look and read like miniature books and magazines.

I've seen people in my industry, and out of it, getting into trouble with foreclosure, bankruptcy and eviction. Ironically, they've turned social networking and cyberspace into virtual breadlines, pleading for another chance.

These are good people who ran into a wall. In the past, they always had a little more credit, another job opportunity or a bank to give them a little longer grace period to fall back on.

Now, all that's gone. The banks no longer show mercy, because they supposedly don't have any money. The credit card companies are no longer so "generous," because they no longer have the patience.

Getting a better job is something, I believe, I've deserved for a long time. I went to Columbia's graduate school to learn digital media, and now I'll manage a series of editors as each of them try to churn out as many as three stories a day in the towns where I grew up.

Sure, I was picked because of my resume of 21 years of hard work, covering the suburban and urban cultures of Dover, Del., Hackensack, N.J. and Easton, Pa. I was picked because of what I did after 9-11, convincing The Bergen Record that somebody should be covering the military as the United States waged war in Afghanistan.

But I often think of how I could be like many others who didn't have an employer that trusted them, and didn't give them the respect to build something on their own.

I got that from The Bergen Record, where they let me call the "military beat" my own, and travel to the Fresh Kills Landfill with the National Guard, and see how the ruins of the World Trade Center were being recovered.

They let me fly with troops en route from Afghanistan, and hear their stories of missiles flying by the cockpits of their planes in early days of the war with the Taliban.

I think about Columbia University, where my father encouraged me to accept their offer to go, and I learned from the best in the digital media world. I was told by others - usually people who went there, and got good jobs as a result - that I shouldn't go, that I was wasting my time.

Boy, were they wrong.

I think of the others who didn't get that chance, even if they were just as smart, or even smarter than me. Some of them grew up with me, and they didn't have the family, the guidance and the support that could wrap around them, and nurture them along.

Again, I think of my friend, John. I often thought John was smarter than me, not because of the grades he got, which were almost always worse. I always thought that anybody who is funny has to be smart, because the hardest thing to do is to make people laugh.

I often hung around with John, especially in middle school, and engaged in some of the silly pranks that were the stuff of innocent childhood. Only John kept it going, well into adulthood, long past it all being tolerable.

Last I heard, John was in jail, with bail set at more than $100,000. He was charged with theft and a host of related offenses. He let down his family, and he had no money. All he had was denial and defiance, and a body wrecked by years of hard living.

I often think, am I smarter? Or am I just lucky? I often wonder...