TomTom XL 330s is Mac compatible, affordable & feature-rich

If you are shopping for a navigation device for your news vehicle, then you have probably felt overwhelmed with the choices. If you are looking at the TomTom XL 330s, you are a practical person who needs to get from Point A to Point B with reliability. You simply need a GPS device and not a multimedia player with Bluetooth connectivity. Navigation, not entertainment, is your goal. That’s what you get with the XL 330s, but don’t let simplicity fool you. I discovered you get a lot for your money with this unit.

In a nutshell:

THE GOOD

• Less expensive than a similar unit with its top competitor, Garmin.
• Fast GPS fixes, superb sensitivity.
• Guaranteed latest maps; update free one time with new purchase.
• Annual map updates are inexpensive at under $10 per quarter.
• User map updates are free through Map Share community.
• Macintosh and PC software compatibility.
• Customizable features include colors, icons, keyboard (QWERTY or ABC).
• “Red Light Camera” warnings are available for cities that have them.
• Speed indicators show red when you are excessively speeding.
• You can record your own voice for spoken directions.
• Voices are clear, volume can auto adjust to speed.
• Long power cord easily reached unit from DC power tap in car.
• Suction mount has a vice grip.
• On-screen info helpful.
• Trim profile.

THE NOT SO GOOD

• Window mount can be a little tricky until you get used to it.
• The screen was a bit difficult to see in bright sun.
• No SD card slot. All memory is internal and not upgradeable.
• (The memory is thus far adequate)
• No AC charger included. Only DC car charger and USB cable included.
• The “bundle” being offered saves you $9.95 on a case, but no AC charger.
• Battery life of 4 hours not that great on long trips. Keep the DC cord handy.

I have tried several GPS units in the past and still have navigation (ALK’s CoPilot Live) on my Motorola Q SmartPhone, but I didn’t want to tie up my cell phone while I was trying to navigate the streets of Tampa while on business for four days. I knew I had to buy a standalone GPS and I was most pleased with the performance of the TomTom XL 330s.

My needs were simple and I had narrowed my choices down to the Garmin nüvi 255w and the TomTom XL 330s. Both are widescreen devices with good features from reputable companies. I picked the TomTom over the Garmin for several reasons:

• It was approximately $60 less than the Garmin.
• Map updates and corrections could be done through TomTom Map Share.
• TomTom allows subscriptions to its map updates for under $10.
• There was more trip information on the TomTom screen.
• It was just as customizable as the Garmin.
• TomTom’s software is Apple Mac and PC compatible.

The last issue for me was huge. I have three Macs and didn’t want to have to keep a PC around, or install a Windows simulator program on my MacBook Pro. It is too clunky. The TomTom Home software is simple to use and allows me to access my 330s very easily to perform customizations of the maps, icons, splash screen, and will even let me record my own voice to use with spoken guidance. As Paula Abdul might say, you can take this unit and, “make it your own.”
Map updates can be done through TomTom’s Map Share community and TomTom guarantees the latest maps with the purchase of your device. When I purchased my 330s, the software informed me the maps it came with were two quarters (six months) old. I was allowed to download the latest U.S. and Canada maps for free (one time only).

TomTom users can upload map corrections, then download corrections made by other users for easy map updates. You can note corrections while you are using the device, so if you find that a road no longer connects to another street, you can make that note on your device and upload it later to the Map Share community.

I mentioned the on-screen information as a plus for this unit. I liked the fact I could see everything at the bottom of the screen, including distance to next turn, ETA, speed, GPS signal strength and time of day. I also found that when it came time for me to make an exit, TomTom produced a small green-and-white exit sign at the upper right of the screen that gave me the exit number as well as what was on the exit sign itself. The information was clear and very helpful. I never once used a paper map on this trip.

This isn’t a perfect unit and no GPS units are. I did find on several points of the trip where the 330s wanted to send me around the block instead of making a simple turn, but that may have been because I did not have time to do the free map update after I bought the unit. There are a lot of new street improvements, bridges and freeway changes in the Tampa Bay area. When I navigated to the Grand Hyatt Tampa Bay, for example, I couldn’t get it to come up on the POI list and the exit to the address off the Interstate was wrong. The Interstate exit had been changed and the roadways were freshly paved with construction still going on. Thankfully, I found the hotel exit through a temporary sign posted on the Interstate. I also had trouble finding the new schools my two children would be attending. I called GOOG411 from my cell phone to get the physical addresses, navigated flawlessly to the schools, then added each to my Favorites list and later to the POI list.

The sensitivity of this unit is astounding. I got my satellite fixes quickly and I couldn’t believe that I still had a fix after placing the unit in the armrest storage while going in to a store! For grins, I tried it out on the plane ride back to Ohio and it locked on just fine, calculating the airspeed at just under 470 MPH. My friend sitting next to me on the plane had a Garmin Street Pilot. It couldn’t find a satellite, but in Garmin’s defense, this was an older unit.

THE FINAL WORD

Keep in mind that this review is not meant to be a slight against Garmin, a highly respected U.S. company headquartered in Olathe, KS. Garmin makes great navigational tools. TomTom has roots in Amsterdam and does not have the product line choices of its competitor. I purchased the XL 330s because it was more affordable (at the time it was offered for $189 vs. $239 for the nüvi 255w) and because I had heard good things about TomTom from others who had similar units. When I went to BestBuy to check out the two units, I found that the Garmin nüvi 255w had features I didn’t really need, including an SD expansion slot that the TomTom does not have. I will not be loading multimedia files or maps of Ireland on it, so the SD slot is a non-factor for my needs. I wanted a solid base model for my news vehicle and that’s what I feel I got with the XL 330s. One of the things I did like about the nüvi 255w were the topographic maps in shaded relief; handy if you are in a microwave truck and searching for a high point from which to feed. Central Florida’s pretty flat, so not much of a worry there.

I couldn’t fully express my joy at finally finding a GPS unit that was Mac-friendly. I did not have good luck attempting to use Garmin’s Communicator software with its handheld unit, the 60CSx, and I wish that DeLorme’s Topo and StreetAtlas software had simpatico with Apple. DeLorme has a handheld unit, the PN-40, that is dynamite for trekking. It has road maps and satellite imagery along with topographic maps, but the DeLorme Topo and Street Atlas software are PC only. More clunk and clutter for a Mac user to make it work.

The TomTom XL 330s has a good price-performance ratio that will get you where you’re going without all the other features that will keep you distracted from working out details with your reporter or assignment desk.

Be positive when you are positively bummed

Back on March 24 I had been reading Deborah Potter’s “Advancing the Story” blog on handling rejection and it inspired me to leave a comment. Being unemployed for four months after a layoff has been real difficult, but I’ve managed to weather the layoff in some positive ways. I’ve done my best to make good use of my down time, so I’m sharing my formula for maintaining sanity while at the same time preserving your dignity during these really ugly times.

1. Do not take a layoff personally. Festering anger and resentment will hinder your ability to think clearly. The day I was called in to my news director’s office, I knew what was coming. He could barely look me in the eye and the assistant news director’s eyes were red and watery. It wasn’t easy for either one of them to tell me I was getting cut. I was part of his team and we worked well together. I had no contract and the news director was forced by corporate to trim. I was an easy target, along with 20 other colleagues. I understood this formula, as I had a budget to oversee myself and over the past year I also had to find ways to trim and keep my operating costs at a minimum. I thanked him for the opportunities he had given me and for giving me a total of 10 good years with the company. Leaving on good terms and being at peace with the transition was a great starting point for me to maintain level-headed.
2. Don’t feel sorry for yourself for too long. Get up, dust off, move on. After the initial shock wore off at home, I moved on. I felt worse for my wife and kids who were very sad and concerned. It took me all of 24 hours to realize that the yoke of stress from my job had been lifted from my shoulders and this was now an opportunity for me to take my career in a different direction, or at least research what I would need to do to take it there. I’ve had dreams of teaching college and learning some new skills. Now I had time to figure out how to pursue them.
3. Allow friends to provide comfort. It will make them feel good, too. When you think you’ve hit rock bottom, you’ll find out who your real friends are. So many of your friends may not know what to say or do, but others will be quick to reach out and offer support. Take them up on a free lunch or coffee. It will be good for you to get caught up with them and it will make your friends feel like they are providing real support–which they are. Having a sounding board for your frustration, fear, or even sadness is a great catharsis for what ails you.
4. Use social and professional networking to your advantage. You never know what leads you’ll find. It will also help you stay in touch with changes in the industry. It’s been about three years since I first joined LinkedIn, a professional networking site similar to Facebook. Someone invited me to join it and I didn’t think much about it at the time. I was able to realize its value after I changed my status on my home page on December 10. I have 208 connections. Many of those friends called or emailed me leads, a couple offered me freelance and consulting opportunities with their companies, BMI and Verité Productions. I never once felt alone or abandoned. (Thanks!)
5. Keep your faith strong. Spiritual guidance is often undervalued. Never underestimate the power of prayer. Allow yourself to be open to accepting prayers of assistance from your well-intentioned friends. Likewise, be thankful for the gift of prayer; there’s nothing like help from a higher power. Your burdens will be lifted when the time is right. If you believe, you will be in good hands.
6. Enjoy the gift of time during a layoff. Spend it with your family. For the six years I was a news ops manager I lost a lot of time with my children. In at 8:30 A.M., home around 7-7:30 P.M. That’s a long day. I rarely ate dinner with the family and I’ve missed seeing the kids in school activities. In light of that, I’ve been taking advantage of every opportunity to spend time with my kids. I walk my first grade daughter to school in the morning and walk her home in the afternoon. My 12-year-old son and I play basketball, play games on the Wii, or just hang out. My kids are great cheerleaders. They’ve perked me up when I’ve had down moments and there’s nothing like creating good memories for them to look back on down the road. I didn’t want the bummer of my layoff to be their bummer, too.
7. If you can’t work for money, work for free. Give back to your community as a volunteer. I love my community. I’ve spent most of my life here in northeast Ohio and about 30 years of that have been spent in some capacity as a Boy Scout and adult leader. I’ve been spending a lot of time with my Boy Scout troop as an Assistant Scoutmaster and giving time to the church. If I can’t work for the good of an employer, then I can feel good about working for my neighbors. Giving back to my community made me feel my time without work was not wasted.
8. You don’t have to take unemployment sitting down. Get off your butt and learn some new skills. This is the time to seek professional enrichment. You have some time on your hands, so use it to expand your toolbox by honing skills and diversifying your knowledge base. I began taking advantage of Poynter’s free online enrichment program called “News University”. I have learned how to sharpen my writing skills (and I’m a photojournalist), learned more about multimedia storytelling, and even learned more about Freedom of Information. It doesn’t all have to be about one narrow experience, what may have been your comfort zone for most of your career. As our business evolves it will become increasingly apparent that diversity in your skill set will be an advantage and it doesn’t have to cost a fortune to do it. Professional organizations like the National Press Photographers Association offered seminar tuition reductions for those members who are struggling, but wanted to network and learn at a seminar. Their recent annual Northern Short Course was a perfect example of this. Some of the sessions were even available live via streaming video.  You can beef up your résumé by adding some of these new skills to your repertoire.

These are just a few of the possible things you can do for yourself, or suggest to a colleague, when things are looking bleak. The worst thing you can do is allow yourself to fall in to the abyss of depression by thinking everything’s hopeless. Your life isn’t ending; it’s taking a different path.

If you make good use of this gift of time, you will increase your chances of being ready and in the right spirits when the opportunity to return to work presents itself.

It’s 2009 for 1989 Prices

I have always favored the underdog. Maybe it’s because I have never liked the idea of the schoolyard bully disrupting the peaceful life of the nerdy kid who just wants to live a happy existence and be a friend to all. I like it when everyone’s placing their bets on the odds-on favorite and the long shot wins. Is that not the formula for every feel-good movie you’ve ever watched? I pray for the Little Guy to win. After all, I am a longtime Cleveland sports fan and the whole country, it seems, hates Cleveland. I profess that the winter weather is terrible, the roads might as well be cobblestone, and things are looking pretty bleak right now, but Clevelanders are scrappy. We’re survivors.

I have believed for years that I am a very good reflection of my city. I believe in hard work to achieve success. I enjoy making people feel welcome. I find great delight in showing off hidden treasures. I want people to like me, but have no problem biting back when someone treats me poorly. I defend against the falsehoods people can perpetuate. I am not a poseur; what you see is what you get and I am very down to Earth. I don’t throw in the towel very easily, even when it seems the odds are stacked against me. I am a cultural reflection of the immigration to Cleveland at the turn of the 20th Century, with grandparents from Campobasso, Italy and Møss, Norway.

I am a direct product of growing up in Cleveland’s influence.

In spite of being a son of Cleveland, the entry to the television market for me was difficult. I left Bowling Green State University before I had completed either my B.S. or B.A., with a job in TV waiting for me in North Carolina. It was my very first full-time photojournalism gig. I left school with the idea that accepting $10,000 a year was what I needed to do in order to get in to the TV news country club. It was the Fatica Way: work hard, with that good, old-fashioned Italian work ethic complimented by Norwegian practicality. That strategy worked well. In fewer than 12 months I was working full-time in Cleveland television.

Cleveland was a Top-10 market for a long time, right in to the 80s. The market I had been in was ranked 151, so this was a major move. People used Cleveland as a stepping stone to greatness: Mike Douglas, Ernie Anderson, Bob Dotson, Al Roker, Martin Savidge, Kelly O’Donnell, Gretchen Carlson, Vince Cellini, just to name a few. I spent time behind the lens for all but Douglas and Dotson; what a grand experience that would have been, and what a treat it was for guys in this market who spent their time with other television greats.

I’ve learned from some of the best, both Old School and New School photojournalists. The Old School guys cut their teeth on film while the New School kids started shooting on BetaSX, or DVCAM/DVCPro, which is quite a jump from the 3/4″ U-Matic format to which I attribute any back problems I might experience today. I spent 23 years in Cleveland, a once-proud market with a rich television history. I was fortunate enough to enjoy a good slice of that rich history through the 1960s and 70s as a kid and work with some of the Cleveland greats who were still around in the 80s and 90s. Unfortunately, now there is little to celebrate.

The decline of local news is evident here on America’s “North Coast”. I was one of the first released from my duties back on December 9, when 20 others were also laid-off from my station. Other stations in town have cut their staffs, ceased the practice of allowing photojournalists to have take-home gear and cars, dumped helicopter ENG contracts, and slashed overtime spending. At least two of the stations are sharing video. Morale is no longer in the toilet, it’s in the sewer, according to some of my former co-workers.

Four months have gone by since I’ve had my last interview, with ABC News in New York. I’ve uploaded my resume and vita what seems like a hundred times, filled out online applications–thank God for having it online. I remember what it was like filling out applications by hand with a clipboard. My hand would have been deformed by now, in a perpetual cramp. There is a bright spot to this, however. My cell phone rang two weeks ago from a potential suitor.

Those of you still working will think I’m crazy when I tell you I accepted a position two notches down the ladder from my news operations position I held the last six years. I won’t be the ops guy. I won’t be the D.P. I’ll be a staff photojournalist and I’m loving the thought of it. Some people see this as career suicide; I see this as opportunity. I told you, I’m a Clevelander. We seize opportunities.

I’m starting with a clean slate. Ground zero. I’ll have a salary that will match what I made here in Cleveland when it was a top-10 market 20 years ago. It’s now 17th. I’m headed to the 13th position. Salary aside, in my eyes, this is a career move with a bullet and it’s not pointed at my head.

I’m good with it all. I don’t have an ego that needs to be fed, but I have a family that does. In these times one would be foolish to be overly selective because opportunities are not abundant in broadcast journalism. My heart has always been with the camera and the challenge of creativity, of beating the clock and having friendly competition. I’m heading to a fresh newsroom with a different way of doing things and more opportunities for me to expand my professional toolbox. I’m going to be next door to one of the most respected institutions in my profession, as well as a very good school of journalism.

Some of my friends have given me the line that I’m being paid with sunshine. After you have lived in the rust belt most of your life and see how fast cars can rot from salted roadways, sunshine isn’t so bad. I’ll miss the potholes that are often mistaken for Lake Erie, too. (Not.)

Opportunity is what you make of it and I plan on giving this one everything I have. I’ll not look back wistfully, pining away for the way things were when I made better money. Cash is overrated and it never lasts. Experience stays with you and makes you stronger, more resilient, and more confident. I had fun 20 years ago and I plan on having fun again. It sure beats sitting at home, wishing I was employed.

When is a cliché a good time had by all?

If I hear Nadya Suleman referred to as “Octomom” one more time I think I’ll hurl. Not only is this an overused cliché, but it’s a form of editorializing that has no place in journalism. This is a rant from an Old School Journalist who still believes in referring to people with dignity, as in “Mr. Smith” or “Ms. Jones”. Regardless of how we feel about a person, hanging a colloquial moniker on someone tells our viewers and readers that we find it acceptable to label him or her.

I enjoyed reading an excerpted article from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch back in January that discussed clichés we could do without. I immediately cut it out and posted it on my fridge, where it has stayed as a gleeful reminder that there are people who still care about keeping the luster on our profession. It’s been mentioned on a dozen other websites and is an uncomfortable nudge that we could do so much better in the way we present our news. The article lists four of the biggies, but we are often guilty of so many more literary transgressions. To avoid it becoming an Internet cliché, I’ll avoid listing them in my posting.

I enjoyed the American Journalism Review’s article on using gorilla-themed clichés. I’ve had this on my mind for years. Afterall, how much should a gorilla weigh before it has enough gravitas to pull off such a ubiquitous reference?

Here’s a link to an oldie, but goodie: a list of  “quickchés“, posted by Joe Grimm, editor for recruiting and development at the Detroit Free Press. On this page you will also find a wonderful resource, a Cliche Finder, just in case you come across the same ol’, same ol’ and are looking for a little some’n-some’n. (How should that be written, anyway?) We all like to shorten things to fit our get-it-now lifestyle. You can see Liza Rosenberg’s blog that looks at a little something something.

Those of us working with visual mediums, photojournalists, should be on the lookout for visual clichés. Back on February 11 I replied to Deborah Potter’s blog posting on “Say no to staging“, referencing those irritating and overused pensive shots the networks like to use on their long format pieces. On any given story you will see that familiar scene of the subject looking frame-left or frame-right, gazing contemplatively as if to say to the viewer, “I’m thinking about something deep and I do it this way all the time.” There’s always the walk-and-talk interview, the interview on the couch, the interview while holding a picture of your deceased relative…the list is onerous.

I give my props to Dr. Kristie Siegel of the Mount Mary College (WI) English department. She uses the term “Engfish“, referenced in Ken Macrorie’s book “Telling Writing“. She rightfully maintains that clichés are Engfish and communicate…nothing. We’ve become desensitized by hearing regurgitated phrases and words so repeatedly that they no longer hold much meaning.

I have to say…(bad)…I will say this…(equally as awful)…let me rethink this (ouch) and get back to you (blech) before I write another lowly, overused, and therefore meaningless, phrase.

Twit to be tied.

I was gaining some serious momentum on Twitter, but it must have been my 76th update since February 12 that killed it. That’s when I noticed one of my 16 “Followers” dropped out. I guess he didn’t give a tweet about “online photo apps compared”. I’m back to fifteen people now and feel miffed that someone thought my tweets were boring. That’s okay because now I have ItalAmerGirl and Edit_Foundry following me. I feel better now having kindred spirits.

I’m a newb at Twitter, still feeling my way around what I call “Twittiquette”. I’m such a newb that I wasn’t aware that “Twittiquette” was already in the Urban Dictionary. (I checked after I thought of it.) So we learn that I’m not innovative in this blog, but I’ve always considered myself a forward-thinking person, always ahead of trends. I bought my first Apple computer (an SE30) back in 1988, when people thought Apple was going to fade away. I had my left ear pierced the first time back in 1983, then twice more, long before it was “safe” and when “right is gay, left okay”. I’ve been wearing clogs since 1977, even when they almost dropped out of sight in the mid-80s, reappeared in the early 90’s, and then reincarnated as Crocs in this decade. See? I’m a visionary. People follow me.

But I’m feeling like a Johnny-come-lately with social media.

I’ve been wanting to take Twitter for a test drive ever since the first time I saw CNN’s Rick Sanchez panning for tweets on his live show last fall. Amazing what a layoff can do to free up time for such an experiment; I fulfilled my desire on February 10. It then took me two days to figure out what to write when prompted with, “What are you doing?” What could I possibly say in 140 characters that would be life-changing for someone who really cared what I was doing? What is the best use for my skimpy 140 character allotment to bolster my career as a journalist?

I am convinced nobody will follow me when I tweet that I just took my dog for a dump. I don’t think anyone would give a dump about my personal habits, routines, or rants. But a cause, a special interest, a commonality with people of the same skillset? Yes. Most of the people following me now have figured out that I am a journalist with a specialty in visual storytelling. So nearly all of my tweets are related to what I do and those who are following me, though small in number now, are also visual people.

Am I interested in making Kool-Aid for a cult following? If I feel I’m providing something people can use to better their career, provide a good lead, lead them to something of interest…then the answer is an enthusiastic “yes”. Likewise, I have also begun to follow people with similar interests.

If you’re a journalist, fresh to the New Journalism of our times, you might be asking yourself who is using it? How about 72-year-old Bob Schieffer of CBS News? As of this writing he has 647 followers. Schieffer’s younger counterpart at NBC, David Gregory, has a whopping 87,245 groupies. Sanchez, over at CNN, has a respectable following of 58,697.

Who is utilizing the New Media most effectively? Who wins the ratings war online? CNN has no competition, even if you combined the major networks, tallying more than one third of a million followers–303,137 to be exact. Trailing is NPR (33,018), BBC (31,931), FOX (20,467), NBC (4,822), and CBS (3,804). ABC, apparently, has found no value in Twittering. They are nowhere to be found, or at least after searching for several minutes, I could only find DisneyABC with exactly zero followers, and that’s because they have protected their updates. You need to be approved by them to follow. If it’s that hard, forget it, and shame on the company that is the king of marketing.

So for what purpose would one use a 140 character micro-blog?

Consider it a social SMS–Short Message Service–perfect for leading people to helpful URLs, pointing out current events as they happen, or in the case of the three on-air hosts, teases to upcoming shows. Sanchez is a masterful tease artist and has used Twitter to effectively build up to the daily show topic. For CNN’s breaking news, Twitter is the new “Headline News”. I can’t put it more simpler than that. You have to think like a headline writer or a show producer, leading your followers to the bigger story read with a URL in your tweet that will point the way to more information.

Cultivating a following doesn’t take a marketing genius. Personal blogs, social websites and even your email signature can contain links to your Twitter page. Stations and programs promote their Twitter page on their websites and through their broadcasts.

Regardless of one’s desire for audience growth, one must also be cautious about whom they accept as a Follower. The other day I was prematurely thrilled to find my gaggle of followers had grown to 13. When I checked the person’s profile I was shown a picture of a girl starting to open her shirt with only two tweets proclaiming free government money and the links were bogus. Phisher! She can open her shirt for some other rube now. I blocked her.

People with time on their hands tweet about some crazy things. Free money…

The door that was open? Pure Shinola.

Jobs come and they go. One door closes and another one opens, or at least that is how the cliché is supposed to go. Recently, however, I believe the cliché needs retooling to fit what is happening in our profession. I propose it should be amended to, “One door opens and it gets closed before you get to it.”

This is the third time in as many months that a job I had applied for was left unfilled. Today’s notice came from The American University in Cairo where a vacancy for a video journalism professor was begging to be filled. The email notice I received from AUC’s Dennis O’Connor read, “…we regret to inform you that a decision was mad not to fill the position at this time.”

Honest to God, there was a typo in the letter. The decision not to fill was “mad”. It pissed me off, too, but no great loss this time. Who wants to work for an institution that promotes sloppiness? Bowling Green State University shoved me in to the real world with high standards. As a person seeking employment, I make sure my submitted materials are free of typographical and grammatical errors. Call it making mountains out of molehills, but I can tell you it’s a reflection on the sloppiness that is going on in the journalism profession today. I want to see my profession progress, not regress. I won’t be going to Cairo anytime soon, good weather or not.

My search for a job began innocently back in November, more than a month prior to my layoff. I learned from my boss as early as September that the company would be laying off people and was requested to take inventory of my employees to figure out who might be a possible layoff target. It was my belief that I was not impervious to being laid off, regardless of the fact that I was a senior manager. I figured that I should troll the waters and begin applying just to see what was out there. My first application went to a managing position at ABC News in New York. What the heck–shoot high.

December 9 was D-Day for me. Death of My Job Day. My station killed off the News Operations Manager position, parsing my duties out to about five different newsroom managers already feeling the pressures of being overburdened. On December 18, around 5:30 in the afternoon, I received a phone call from ABC/Disney. They wanted to interview me for the position of Manager of News Training, the position I applied for more than a month earlier. I was numb with disbelief and could not believe my fortune. The interview was set for the next day.

Sure enough, the next day my cell phone rang and the interview with the senior recruiter was underway. Eighty minutes later I was told that the hiring manager would be calling me before the end of the year to place an offer and I was assured my salary requirement would be easily met or exceeded.

The call never came.

I had assumed that the holidays were to blame. The worst part of getting laid off in December isn’t the fact it puts a major crimp on the enjoyment of your holiday; it’s the fact that the people you need to talk to are all on vacation. The country shuts down for more than two weeks while you panic because you can’t sell yourself to a potential employer. From the week before Christmas until a week after New Year’s Day it’s practically impossible to make headway on a job search. Companies take a week to gear up for gift shopping and pre-bacchanalia rituals, a week for gift-giving and getting it on, then a week to get caught up on the previous two weeks to get back in the groove.

To avoid the trap of sounding desperate, I waited until a week after January 1 to contact the senior recruiter to see what was going on because I had not received my call back from the hiring manager. Very kindly she informed that they had taken an internal candidate, but that I was now on their “hot list”. The senior recruiter and I had developed a good rapport and she had asked that I invite her to join my LinkedIn network so we could remain in touch. That was encouraging.

On Friday, January 30, I stumbled upon an article in the Cleveland Plain Dealer announcing that ABC/Disney would be laying off 200 and leaving another 200 positions unfilled. I shot off a brief email to my ABC senior recruiter and LinkedIn comrade to inquire about the layoffs. Within minutes I received this auto reply: “Due to cut backs my last day with the company will be the middle of next week.”

My “hot list” status had gone cold.

The Cleveland Indians gave me their Dear John reply after I had applied to be their Manager of Technical Services: “We had many fine applicants for the position, including you. However, we have decided not to fill this position.”

At least now I know I’m a fine application-submitter.

As the job market continues to worsen and more work continues to be heaped on people already stressed past their limitations, mistakes will continue to become more apparent, both in broadcast and in print journalism. Where once I used to be able to rely on finding proper grammar and spelling in a newspaper, now the one I read nearly every day is riddled with errors. The very first day I was gone from my post at my former station–a post that oversees visual quality control–a goofy head shot effect popped up in the wrong package, there were audio problems and a live shot with poor white balance.

I just read an Internet article written by Chris Skoyles titled “Why the spelling and grammar on internet postings is so poor”. Interestingly enough, there were two issues right off the top within the first two sentences. I always thought proper nouns like  Internet were supposed to be capitalized, and referring to himself as the third person pronoun “is” instead of “his” was, I’m certain, simple oversight. Just check the American University of Cairo’s Style Guide; even though its representatives send out communiques with errors, it agrees with the capitalization of Internet. To Skoyles’ credit, he admits fallibility in the last paragraph of his posting: “…yet without a fresh pair of professional eyes to pick through it with the proverbial fine comb, even this article is likely to bring up an overlooked mistake somewhere along the line.”

Far be it from me to point fingers, I also do not have the luxury of a copy editor. I’m self-policing and will most assuredly be picked apart for my own syns. (That was a pun. Syntax errors I will occasionally have. Never mind.) As I once heard NPR’s Daniel Schorr proclaim, “Media bashing’s become popular sport. Let us forgive us our press passes.”

Forgiveness by our readers and viewers is easier said than done as they look to us for a higher standard. Unfortunately, we don’t seem to know the difference between shut doors and Shinola.

Seeing black when all is read.

I must be crazy. Or a lemming. In a month’s time I have let down all of my defenses. I successfully resisted the Last Temptations of Christ: Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and blogging. At least three out of four isn’t bad, and my apologies to Jesus. I won’t touch MySpace; it’s a hot mess. For a person who had been an old school journalist the last 25 years, having these mediums assigned with my personal stamp is a big deal.

The irony in this last statement lies in the fact that I have been reading blogs for a long time now and every time a young person was murdered, people in the newsroom would begin looking for pictures on social networking websites and searching for insights on that person through blog postings. Heck, Twittering’s no big deal. Even CNN’s been doing it. Getting your news in 140 character bursts and TinyURL links provides a tsunami of information in a day’s time.

This old dog can roll with new tricks. I’m passionate enough about journalism that I enjoy the challenge of keeping up with trends, trying new things, and augmenting the skills I possess with new ones. I’ve never been one to allow myself to be pigeonholed, so while I was quite comfortable telling stories the Old School way, I will learn to be comfortable adapting to the New School way. I have to.

The revelation of the New Journalism came to me as a vision. Okay, so it wasn’t a vision like the one Joseph Smith had with the angel, Moroni. No one could possibly romanticize a layoff, and the vision didn’t reveal itself on golden tablets. My former employer decided that a news operations manager,  the person that coordinates all the technical and logistical aspects of newsgathering, was an extravagance against a shrinking budget. My position’s responsibilities were divvied up between several other over-burdened news managers and I was set free along with about 20 other co-workers.

Make no mistake about it, I didn’t skip my way out the door. I was crushed. Panic-stricken. Embarrassed. Downtrodden. I have a family to care for, bills to pay, a community to whom I must answer. And I knew there were no jobs to be had in Cleveland news with my skillset. The welcome mat has been rolled up. I am finished with local television news in northeast Ohio.

Nobody will hire an award-winning cameraman at the tender age of 47 with a five page curriculum vitae. Potential employers would never think of hiring me at a reduced salary, like a fire sale, in spite of my loyalty to the person signing my checks. I’m overkill. Or over the hill. Or, like I used to say, I’m like delivering pizzas in a Porsche. By the way, awards are overrated. I’ll save that for another blog post down the road.

So while my poor wife freaks out because we have no income, I’m blogging. Welcome to my first post.

Proving the worth of social networking and the New Journalism to my wife is a hard sell job to someone who is a non-techie with a Twitterish attention span now living a penniless existence. Nearly three years ago she tolerated the fact that I accepted an invitation to join LinkedIn, a professional networking site. Now it was Facebook, a social networking site, a place where people often troll for relationships. All I wanted was a place to post some of my videos and let the world know I was alive. I got much more than I bargained for.

Some of that worth has finally surfaced after the launch of my Facebook page nearly 30 days ago. It has taken on more than 250 friends, or 250 people claiming to be my friend who are gloating in my misfortune. It has reunited me with former high school and college classmates who have now gone on to greatness, distant family members and even colleagues from my profession. At least one person requested to be my Facebook friend whom I thought couldn’t stand the sight of me.

Now with some extra time on my hands, I’ve been able to keep my people updated on my status.

That extra time is now beginning to dwindle as people learning I have become self-employed begin alerting me to potential employment opportunities. I like using the term “self-employed” because it is more positive than being unemployed, and I want to remain positive-thinking during this time of reinvention. And reinvention is more positive than simply saying I’m looking for new ways to bring in money. You may read this and think to yourself, “Why doesn’t he just say this is more politically correct than that?” I despise the P.C. movement. I’ll leave that for another blog, too. For this posting, P.C. will stand for Positively Correct. Pardon my digression…

As the word gets out that I am available, well-intentioned friends and colleagues are throwing me a bone and it’s wonderful. Someone I regard as one of the finest cameramen in Cleveland contacted me through Facebook last week, wanting me to take over a job he couldn’t handle because he was already busy. Another person sent me a Facebook note requesting my help in recording a congressional visit. Yet another person, seeing that I had not attended the annual Eagle Scout Association dinner, went to LinkedIn and saw my status had changed. He emailed me asking about my availability because he needed someone savvy with digital technology who had some camera skills. Best of all, I have a longtime friend here in town who has offered up a place to squat in his downtown office, complete with a desk and a gorgeous view of Lake Erie; something I never had at my two previous companies.

As I write this paragraph another longtime friend of mine in North Carolina has requested an endorsement of his work on LinkedIn. Connectivity is a wonderful thing.

Staying up with blogs through RSS feeds has produced an unexpected windfall. I’m not talking about prattlings from posts like this. I mean professional blogs like “Advancing the Story” and “The Media Doctor”. Following the scribes of my profession who are far more erudite and experienced than I could ever hope to be has helped me stay on top of what’s going on in the real world. I am trying to remain in touch with my vocation rather than allow this temporary setback in my career to distance me from it. Reading and contributing my responses have been positive exercises in creating the sense that I still have a pulse.

Oh, Twitter! I almost forgot. I’ll save that for another blog post. I can tell you, however, that it’s not bulltwit.