The news industry is frantically searching for solutions and new directions. Poynter Online is searching for answers of a different sort: career success stories. We are bringing you how-they-did-it snapshots from people who have faced today's employment challenges and found some measure of success.
VICTOR CHI, 40Current job: Senior editor at
SportsFanLive.com. We are a startup company with a small staff, so I am responsible for much more than editors in a traditional newsroom. In addition to overseeing content on the site, I also do PR and marketing and help our sales executives craft proposals to advertisers and potential partners.
Old job: I spent nearly 15 years as a sports reporter at the
San Jose Mercury News. I covered everything from girls high school volleyball to the Super Bowl and spent nine years on the Sharks/NHL beat. Before that, I worked as a composing room editor at the
Chicago Tribune.
Exit: Layoff. (Exactly two months before my wedding. Very classy.)
How long between jobs: Almost a year. I had a regular freelance gig with
Sporting News for both its Web site and magazine. I also sold a story about chefs who write cookbooks and created a food blog with my wife. (Gratuitous plug:
grubtrotters.com.)
How I found the new job: The flip answer is that I moved to a city where a friend of a friend was starting a new site whose content happens to be my area of expertise. But the truth within the wisecrack is that networking is vital. That's not exactly mind-blowing insight, but there is a reason why everyone stresses the importance of it. It works.
Networking, Part 2: Before I took the job with SportsFanLive, Northwestern offered me and my wife jobs as journalism professors at the new
Medill satellite campus in Qatar. We ended up declining because she didn't want to move to the Middle East. I was on Northwestern's radar because I had spent five summers on campus teaching journalism in the
National High School Institute. (You, of course, know it as Cherubs.) If I hadn't taken advantage of my comp time during the hockey off-season and tried something new by being a Cherubs instructor, the Qatar opportunity would have never materialized. It didn't work out, but at least I had the chance to eat camel on my visit to Doha.
What I've learned: The platforms and the outlets are changing, but fundamentals are fundamentals. I’m still reporting, researching, writing and editing on deadline.
Outlook/Advice: Despite my crack about the layoff coming two months before my wedding, I felt from the moment that it happened, the
Merc was doing me a favor. I didn't know what the next chapter was going to be, but I was eager to find out. I couldn't have imagined it at the time, but in the past five months, I have helped our site launch an iPhone app -- FanFinder Mobile, a sports bar locator -- and two Twitter-related features --
AthleteTweets.com and
SportsBlogTweets.com. This is obviously a tough time in the business, and I suppose it's easy for me to say this because I landed on my feet, but it is also an exciting time. It's like the Wild West out there with lots of adventure and new ideas.
If you know of a career success story that might be helpful to other Poynter Online readers, please e-mail Joe Grimm at joe.grimm@gmail.com.
