Draft Four: 20+ jobs I could do

My potential future, with bullet points.

A reminder: one of the driving engines of these letters is my unemployment. More accurately, my lack of a full-time professional home since DoR, the magazine I ran for 13 years, closed at the end of 2022.

We’re almost at the mid-point of this year of transition (and these letters), so I wanted to share where I’m at. Week by week you might have read me muse on the kinds of journalism I’d like to do, on generosity as a glue for collaboration, on our inability to listen to each other, on being open to re-writing personal and societal stories. (I often go on for too long, I know.)

This week I’ll be more practical and share with you the kinds of jobs and projects I see myself doing in the future. Why? Because, when the time comes, maybe you can help me decide.

*

Two things before we get there. (I told you this gets long.)

First, I’m busy in my fantasy job as coach of CSC Dumbrăvița. I had just started this role back when I told you about games as “agency training” through stories. Games give us a chance to practice life – if we didn’t do a good job the first time we played (and we died), we can play again.

In reality, CSC Dumbrăvița is a tiny club in Western Romania. Last summer, they reached a spectacular pinnacle by promoting to the second tier of Romanian football, which is where I found them when I decided to start a Football Manager 2023 save.

Virtual Dumbrăvița had no transfer budget, scraps in terms of payroll, and the stadium could barely fit a wedding party. The coach I created for this was Cristobal Papanaș, bald, sporting a handlebar mustache, and with a penchant for bright suits.

Today, it’s 2029 in our fantasy world, Dumbrăvița has won the top tier of Romanian football two times in a row, we are currently topping the league, and we’ve reached the latter stages of the Champions League. None of the players we started with in 2022 are still with the club, but we have a stadium that can seat more than 10.000 people, a payroll budget close to 9 million euros, and about 20 million euros to spend on transfers.

It wasn’t easy to get there – playing a game where you mostly lose for 4-5 seasons in a row is not fun. But then, somehow, it clicks, the team gels and performs. (It’s just like the four phases of the psychological development of a team: forming, storming, norming, performing). I’ve always liked this curve, probably because it resembles a narrative arc: we meet the heroes who will save the day, but they are far from ready, and it’ll be painful to watch them try in the beginning. Then they hit upon something that works and they soar.

Eventually, they’ll fall once again, the cycle repeats. It’s the natural state of things, and it’s the natural cycle of teams and projects. Looking back over my life, I’ve been through a few of these: from starting a high school newspaper, to starting a digital publication in college in the early 2000s, to being there when Esquire started in Romania, to coming up with DoR.

The more complex story of DoR is that within the 13 years it was around, it went through a few cycles itself, certainly three or four. One of the reasons we closed it is that, in its latest incarnation, post-pandemic and with a war on the border, the first couple of phases (forming and storming after the apocalypse) were more painful than ever, the cost to all seemed greater, and there were not enough Papanașes in the room to help us come out alive.

The possibility of calm after the storm and a Champions League spot exists – in theory – for every team, and for every project. Taking Dumbrăvița there – even though the big clubs of Europe still trash us by margins of three or four goals – was a good reminder. We go up, then down, then stall, then rise again, fall and so our lives progress.

*

Second thing: I haven’t been idle. I have a hard time being idle. I was listening to this conversation between the psychologist Adam Grant and the philosopher Agnes Callard (both of whom I’ve mentioned a bunch here), and they were talking about people who are more stress-avoidant or more boredom-avoidant, and how this corelates with the introversion-extroversion spectrum. In general, extroverts seek out stress, introverts strive to avoid it.

I’m something of a stress-seeking-introvert – which has made me more resilient and confident over the years, while at the same time doing little to adjust my self-doubts and worrying.

I haven’t spent the last six months “doing nothing”, but I did have the privilege of “doing less”. (Less for me, but enough that a stress-avoiding introvert would say it’s a lot.)

I taught narrative journalism at the University of Bucharest, I guided 12 students on their final professional projects (as in I edited their stories), I ran a few workshops, I coached journalists from publications in Romania and abroad, I did consulting, I ran the European Press Prize Preparatory Committee and read a couple of hundred contest entries, I wrote this newsletter etc.

Not all of it was fun, and there were intense and agonizing moments. I want to be forthright about all this because without all this work I couldn’t afford to travel as much as I have this year (especially not for a month in the US – where I also worked a few hours every day on average), nor could I afford this extended period of watching, learning, and thinking.

And, for transparency’s sake, in February I told you I was applying for a Reuters Institute fellowship. Back then, my ideal 2023 had six months of work and travel, summer leisure and workshops, then an on-site fellowship. I heard back from them in late April that I didn’t make the cut; second year in a row. I did apply for another program recently – CUNY’s Executive Program in News Innovation and Leadership, – and I’ll know by July if I make the cohort, and if there’s financial assistance involved (otherwise, it’s way too expensive).

*

Those two caveats are necessary, because they inform the list of projects and roles and potential jobs I have in mind. I am more attracted to ideas that come with a challenge attached to it (I see an arc to the story), and I feel I’m ready to consider things that go beyond project work – from a full-time job, to starting something.

I haven’t sketched out a complete framework that explains the list below, but the bullet points sit at the intersection of story-work (writing, editing, producing), structure work (strategy, development, leaderships), and social work (community, teaching, connection). Or, to put it another way, this list is born of ideas that aim to answer a series of questions: what would I enjoy doing if I were writing? What if I was assigning or editing? What if I was developing or innovating? What if I was teaching? What if I was creating connection?

So, here are my ideas thus far, in random order:

• Be a consultant, and work with newsrooms on their development strategy, editorial plans, upgrading on their current offering.

• Do journalism training, in Romania and abroad. This could be working with existing newsrooms to improve their storytelling, or with groups of journalists (a grant cohort, for example), or with students (in schools or training programs).

• Join someone as a co-editor/partner. I’m thinking of small-scale operations here: be the second voice on a newsletter, be a partner in a two-three people project, join a documentary crew etc.

• Turn the NGO that published DoR into one focused on media development, innovation, and training. I’ve become wary of re-inventing the wheel (too many of us start something that already exists in one form or another, instead of joining forces), so I’d make sure to coordinate with places like the Center for Independent Journalism or FFFF, so we don’t overlap, but amplify each other.

• Turn this newsletter into a paid product and live from it.

• Become a freelance reporter and writer both for international publications, but also local media.

• Be an editor for hire – meaning a newsroom wants to do a story but they are at capacity or need more narrative chops, so I work with their reporters. Or a reporter is doing an ambitious project and needs an editor. This could also work for nonfiction book writers.

• Do an idea I mentioned before: a magazine about the future, but with an expiration date. We tell the stories of what Romania could be in 2030, and we stop publishing at the end of that year.

• Do an idea I’ve been dreaming about for a decade: cross all counties in Romania and do a story from each. I always envisioned this as a team project, so this is less about reporting and writing, and more about strategy and editing.

• Find something at the intersection of journalism and community work – a project that turns over the reins to a community (geographical or with a shared interest or facing a certain predicament) to tell its own stories. Maybe all we do is create the container and give people some skills and guidelines.

• Create events that blend learning with emotional impact. DoR Live and The Power of Storytelling both had elements of this.

• Bring My Country Talks to Romania. Both this point, and the one above, play with the idea of doing journalism divorced from the act of “publishing”.

• Build a project team without its own outlet. A group gets together occasionally – maybe the same one, maybe a rotated cast – to do complex stories, and then publishes them in a host of partner outlets.

• Run a newsroom in Romania. An existing one. What’s attractive about this is that I wouldn’t have to build everything from scratch. And there’d be a budget already in place. Not having as much freedom as I am happy with is the main potential downside.

• Start a newsroom in Romania. Every time I’m with the next generation of journalists (mostly students or recent graduates) I envision joining forces with them to build something fresh and nimble – both in presentation and in structure. They could teach me new tools and their consumption habits, I could provide some principles, structure, and the needed reassurances. It could be a topical or a local newsroom – devoted to covering the city, for example, as the change is usually easier to measure at the local level.

• Run an in-house projects team. That is join an existing media, build, and run a 3-4 person narrative stories team, or a special projects unit etc. What’s exciting is that we’d be part of something, but also autonomous. If we were living in the past – or in a country with a more developed media ecosystem – I would say we’d be the Sunday magazine.

• Be a story editor for an international publication.

• Write about journalism for place like Nieman Storyboard, or The Fix, or even start something in Romania that looks at how we do journalism (and is less interested in news about who changed media jobs, or what the ratings are).

• Teach full time – this would mean starting a PhD program, try to get a job at the university, and the likes. The pull here is that the journalism school in Bucharest is in bad shape. The downside is that academic bureaucracy and infighting is soul-sucking. So maybe when I’m 50.

• Start an alternative journalism school. Moldova has a nice model – a one-year masters-like private program that trains a cohort of 15-20 journalists a year. Some are journalism graduates, other come for professional re-conversion.

This is the list. And there are variants of all these – the umbrella is large. Also, they would all into account present day media realities: how we consume journalism, how we discover it, whether we trust it or not, who do we want to have as gatekeepers etc.

I’m aware all are directly connected to journalism. I did perk up at some job openings I saw – like the documentary film festival One World Romania looking for a director, or various non-profits seeking communications help – but it was brief, and I only did because I believe in those organizations’ roles in making all of our lives better.

To me, the potential of impact – no matter the size –, and a mission to make the world better are crucial in choosing a project. But they are not enough.

When I envision the day-to-day work – which is always less fun and more boring and tedious – I’d like it to be done in proximity to making true stories. Journalism is hard work, it’s painful and stressful. But I still find a lot of joy in the process of imagining it, doing it, editing it, debating it. Work is work, and dreaming of an ideal situation where everything is perfectly calibrated is an exercise in futility. To me, the more important question is: will this grind be both meaningful and fun?

The answer to the journalism bullet list above is a resounding “yes”.

*

Now, I didn’t get offers to do most of them, and the offers I got were less like offers and more like vague conversations. To be fair, I did tell people I didn’t want to think too much about the future until after mid-June, and I didn’t necessarily want to hear ideas or pitches or offers.

But I’m getting there. And something tells me that you – any of you – could be either a catalyst, a future partner, a new colleague, or part of a community of people hopefully enjoying whatever stories we tell.

---

SIDE DISHES

Because the past couple of letters were long(er) and more complicated, I skipped the extra recommendations. They’re back today but as call to actions and opportunities for you to support others.

1. My long-time partner in crime Sorana Stănescu writes a newsletter in which she takes apart the medical system, so we can all understand it (it’s in Romanian). She just started receiving payments for the work. I’m signing up to support her with 80 euros a year the moment I press send on this edition.

2. My friend and inspiration Oana Filip is a master community builder; she even has a newsletter about this work (in Romanian). Her latest, just published, is about how she’s thinking of her next career move.

3. Raul Mazilu is among a small group of people who can talk about living a more organized life (including productivity lifehacks, frameworks etc.) without pretending this solves everything. He just launched his own newsletter this week: Organizat (also in Romanian). Let’s give him a boost.

4. A few weeks ago I wrote about the crisis of homelessness in the US, and mentioned Carusel, a Romanian NGO that does important work in Bucharest. Carusel is fundraising for 10.000 euros to buy a few washing machines; they are 30% of the way there. Can we help?