The Sword of Damocles finally fell

Frank Browne

Frank Browne

Final Approach
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Apr 28, 2005
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Jacksonville,Fl
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FB
Well, after 38 years on the job and at 55 years of age, today I got laid off. I have no idea what to do now. I'm still so in shock.
 
Sorry to hear it, Frank. Is early retirement an option?
 
That sucks Frank. But you can use this time to reinvent yourself and find something else to do that interests you. I know it can look bleak, many of my friends have been laid off and I have been teetering on the edge for a few years myself. But it is not the end of the world. While we may joke about being a Wal-Mart greeter there is more out there. The bad news is not one of my friends has found a job where they were making as much as the one they left. But many have found jobs that made them happy.
 
My experience is that, in the end, these turning points in life get you out of the rut and into better things.
 
Retirement is definitely not an option. Strange though, after it happened I suddenly noticed that the fear of it happening was gone. Well, maybe it was replaced with a new kind of fear. I dunno. Tomorrow is another day.
 
Frank Browne said:
Retirement is definitely not an option. Strange though, after it happened I suddenly noticed that the fear of it happening was gone. Well, maybe it was replaced with a new kind of fear. I dunno. Tomorrow is another day.
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The big thing I must caution you on is your medical/health insurance. What I have seen is even though you probably got some employee rate health insurance for a period of time, payroll will not be doing the automatic deductions for you any longer. If your payment is late by one day, they will drop you like a bad habit. This has been a huge problem for all of the people I know that have gotten laid off. Make sure that payment is there on time, a few days early is even better.

If you are a veteran and are not enrolled with the VA do so. Getting into their health plan may take a couple of months. You would be surprised to find what you may be eligible for, so do not write them off without checking in. Killing a day at the VA and being turned down is not bad. Spending a day and getting a benefit is great.

Time to get your linkedin account all up to speed and cleaned up too. Get involved with any job networking group you can. If you got an offer of an outplacement service use it.

Lastly remember, there is no shame in being laid off. The economy sucks and I know in your field that there is a paradigm shift in the way news in being delivered. I have friend in the same field as you down in Ft. Lauderdale. I'll tweak him to see what resources he knows of and if he has any good leads. If something turns up I will pass it on.
 
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Crud, Frank, I'm sorry to hear about the layoff. Share with us a bit about what you did and your skill set and perhaps some of us may know of something.
 
AdamZ said:
Crud, Frank, I'm sorry to hear about the layoff. Share with us a bit about what you did and your skill set and perhaps some of us may know of something.
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Scott, thanks for the advice. No veteran here so VA isn't an option.

Adam, I've been 38 years working for a daily newspaper as a prepress supervisor. When I started, we were still "hot type" setting type with linotype machines. With the transition to cold type, I was very adaptable and was able to transition seamlessly. Following that, when desktop publishing became the norm, I found my pace. Today, prepress basically means Photoshop. I know Photoshop inside and out. My job was to make raw images print ready, meaning adjusting brightness, contrast, hue and saturation, enhancing detail, and adding dot gain settings and ink weight limits for whatever the end user required. I specialized in making really horrible photos look good in print. In addition to doing prepress for daily newspaper, I was the only person doing color correction for two monthly magazines, one of which was a large glossy, high end, "coffe table" type magazine. I was also the one doing the color work for our 3 weekly military newspapers...Jax Air News, Mayport Mirror, and the Kingsbay Periscope. Two of those publications recently won major honors from the CNO for weekly base newspapers.

In addition to the prepress side of Photoshop, I've also been doing some photo restoration work. Faded, stained, creased, color shifted, cracked emulsion can all be restored. Below is a PDF with a couple of samples I happened to have on hand...
 

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Frank, I am really sorry. You sound incredibly adaptable and I know it doesn't seem like it now, but I have a big hunch you will be just fine. Don't let the health care lapse and while you are seeking the next job take some down time too.

You sound like you have really good "virtual" skills. Would you be able to do something like that as a consultant - without traveling? Or, I'm thinking of your last sentence here... could you open your own shop doing work like that for people? I would be willing to bet you could find a lot of people to pay for fixing their old photos like that. I know when the economy was doing well that framers could make a mint. I have friends in Clearwater who owned a few "art galleries" (I have it in quotes for a purpose - the artwork seemed to be mostly posters) but that was a draw for their framing. They made a MINT. They had a huge house but mostly lived on their huge houseboat and would sometimes take a few weeks off (letting their assistants run the shop) and putter down to Key West.... I know that framing and photo works are discretionary expenses and in a downturn might not thrive, but, they tend to be high volume with low cost so you might garner enough people to do something like that for a living. I bet if you put something on craigslist with your samples you might find some people...

Thinking out loud here... would publishing houses, who focus on history books, have a need for someone who could take the photos they procure from archives and restore them for printed book usage?
 
Frank...

First...damned sorry about your situation. I wish you the absolute best of luck.

Second...get this out of SZ...expose your skillset to the largest possible audience and get as many people as possible looking to help you out!
 
Frank Browne said:
I was the only person doing color correction for two monthly magazines, one of which was a large glossy, high end, "coffe table" type magazine. I was also the one doing the color work for our 3 weekly military newspapers...Jax Air News, Mayport Mirror, and the Kingsbay Periscope. Two of those publications recently won major honors from the CNO for weekly base newspapers.

In addition to the prepress side of Photoshop, I've also been doing some photo restoration work. Faded, stained, creased, color shifted, cracked emulsion can all be restored. Below is a PDF with a couple of samples I happened to have on hand...
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If you are not subject to any non-compete or non-solicitation agreements, you should consider contacting the two monthly magazines and three weekly military newspapers and offer your services on a freelance basis.

If you do, make sure you set it up properly so you're still eligible for unemployment. When I was collecting, I took a two week contract. When it ended, unemployment denied me because they said I had started my own business. I was able to explain the situation, and start collecting again, but you never can tell with some bureaucrats.
 
Thanks for the advise everyone! I put this in SZ because this is where I posted the most and was afraid that few outside of SZ would know who I was. I've already spoken with the Military Publications manager and the Specialty Publications manager, and they want me to determine an hourly rate and let them know. I do have lots of contacts away from the newspaper and am not yet in panic mode. I AM frightened though. I haven't had to look for a job in nearly 4 decades.

Oh, and the 2 monthly magazines have folded up within the past year. The big magazine that I mentioned was called Water's Edge.
 
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Sorry Frank, that really sucks. Your skills are still valuable though. If it makes you feel better, a character in Doonesbury had the same thing happen to him. Started a blog.
 
Oof. That is indeed a punch in the gut. I'm really sorry to hear that.

I second Elizabeth's recommendations - those are very good ideas. I think your skills are in demand more than ever. It's a bonus that you can conduct work over the Intertubes!

Good luck. Take a week and drink a few beers, then get back at it!!!

And remember, we're all counting on you.
 
That is really too bad, Frank. It has to be hard to be let go like that. I doubt it brings you much comfort, but eight years the company that my wife worked for went under. At first she was traumatized, but in the end it was probably the best thing that ever happened to her. She landed on her feet and is undoubtedly doing better than she would have had the old company stayed in business. Stay positive.
 
Frank Browne said:
I've already spoken with the Military Publications manager and the Specialty Publications manager, and they want me to determine an hourly rate and let them know. I do have lots of contacts away from the newspaper and am not yet in panic mode. I AM frightened though. I haven't had to look for a job in nearly 4 decades.
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Sorry about the job loss.

Sounds like you may be on your way to self employment. As others have said pay close attention to the Health Insurance that's the killer.

Set a realistic hourly rate and it needs to be more than you were making, some market research is in order. Then use your network and think how your expertise and what your interested in might go together.

Good Luck!
 
Actually, your job sounds pretty important to a print news source. What will they do now, publish lousy photos? Pardon me for saying so, but most humans react far more strongly to visual images than to prose.
 
steingar said:
Actually, your job sounds pretty important to a print news source. What will they do now, publish lousy photos? Pardon me for saying so, but most humans react far more strongly to visual images than to prose.
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In a word...yes. The industry is moving toward automating the prepress process, but unfortunately, the software used to "correct" photos cannot think and evaluate an image. All it can do is apply certain automatic photoshop functions that works adequately for average photos, but it cannot isolate portions of an image to apply different functions to that portion to fully optimize that image for print, especially when it might print on a variety of stock. My specialty is that I can optimize images for whatever the end user will require, whether it's for an offset web press, an offset sheet press, or for newsprint. All presses print differently and on different stock. Without someone that knows how to do that, images can look really awful in print. Anytime you look at a good high quality product, I can guarantee you that there was a photoshop expert between the photographer and the press!
 
You can't automate that sort of thing at all. Photos are all different, and computers don't really have eyes, not in ay meaningful sense. My guess is you'll wind up being an independent contractor doing the same thing for the same guys, but for more money.
 
Frank Browne said:
...

Adam, I've been 38 years working for a daily newspaper as a prepress supervisor. ....
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Frank,

I have no idea what this actually involves, but it sure sounds like this is something that would be of use to the publishing industry at large, and not just to a newspaper.

With that in mind, the legal printing industry is huge. If you were to apply to a Thompson-West or a Lexis-Nexis (the two big publishers of legal stuff), I think they'd take more than a quick look.

And, if you're willing to be a government drone, the U.S. Supreme Court currently has an opening for the Reporter of Decisions, which if I understand it correctly is a publishing job with a cool title. :yes:
 
Obi Heed Kenobi said:
And, if you're willing to be a government drone, the U.S. Supreme Court currently has an opening for the Reporter of Decisions, which if I understand it correctly is a publishing job with a cool title. :yes:
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And if you're not wanting to become a drone, take the job and do some creative editing...the officially reported decision becomes precedent!:thumbsup:
 
Frank,

With your extensive Photoshop background, and image work, have you even considered going the route of Creative Design for an ad agency? If you're interested, PM me, and I can send you some information about some jobs in that area that might work for you. They would require relocation, I'm sure, but it may be worth looking into.
 
Damn, Frank!

Get away for a night. Let's go fish. We'll fish New Smyrna Inlet, throw stinky bait at rich people's docks, have some beers and tell some lies (and we can both be back home before midnight).
 
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