JOBSPAGE ASK THE RECRUITER UNITY TEACHING WRITING JOB FAIRS
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Life After the Buyout
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I give Adell Crowe a lot of credit.

Not long after taking a buyout from USA Today, she called me. We have known each other for years, stealing ideas from one another and each other in a loose confederation of newsroom trainers that came together in the early '90s after the Freedom Forum's "No Train, No Gain" report.

Adell, out of work, called to ask whether we could use any training at the Detroit Free Press.Adell3

"Sure," I said, "what do you charge?"

"It's free," she said, "just cover my expenses. After all, I'm already getting paid for the year."

Rather than doing some side jobs to add to her buyout money and help her bank something for the years ahead, Adell was jumping headlong into a transitional year that she hopes will get her back into leadership at another paper or puther on a path as an independent trainer.

Brilliant!

While others might mope around about having taken a buyout, she was using it as an opportunity. And, rather than using it to open a soft ice-cream stand up north (a fantasy I share with co-worker), she is preparing for her re-invention in journalism.

She has created a pretty good online profile to market herself and she is staying busy and optimistic.

You could have seen it coming. In her digital stump speech for the board of the Associated Press Managing Editors, 2007-2008, she wrote that newspaper editors must "resolutely challenge with a united voice the predictions that newspapers are near death. We have a platform we must use to champion measurements other than circulation to show our value, our successes and in some areas, our growth. APME must become a champion of newspapers before the gloomy forecasts become self- fulfilling."

Everyone should go into a buyout -- and into the future -- with such enthusiasm.

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