Economic Crisis: The Soul Searching

Here’s an interesting exercise: Google the phrase “economic crisis blame” and read a handful of the nearly three million results (talk about enough blame to go around). You’ll find the finger pointed at the usual suspects: greedy hedge fund managers, Alan Greenspan, the nearly nonexistent government oversight of the markets, etc. But I didn’t really find what I was specifically looking for on the “blame” question (although I still have at least 2,900,000 results to go through). I’m interested in exploring how much regular people are blaming themselves for the panicky feeling that’s keeping them awake at night and putting a knot in their stomachs during the day.

I’m interested because after my initial panic subsided, I found myself blaming… myself. Let me be clear, I’m not talking about self-blame, by me or anyone else, resulting from taking out a sub-prime mortgage I couldn’t afford, or putting all my money in the capable hands of Bernie Madoff (I didn’t do either one). I mean self-blame that I’ll put into two categories: 1) failure to track trends and changes in my now-deeply distressed industry, and 2) Failure to plan my household spending better before all this happened.

Here’s a line from a Fortune.com story I found on my web search that, while ostensibly about large institutional investors going all in with Bernard Madoff, can also be interpreted on a more personal level of blame.

“…any sophisticated entity that actually did its homework would have seen the warning signs.”

When I came out of college in the late seventies and moved to east Tennessee to work for my first TV station, I was thrilled to see this newfangled thing available at my $155 a-month apartment: Cable TV! 16 channels instead of just 3! A few years later, 57 channels! And VCR’s that played rented movies! Sweeeeet!

Well, now I ask myself, “Jim, why didn’t you do the rather simple math around that time, and realize that all those new channels, and all those people watching movies on TV, mean viewers will be able to watch lots of things besides the newscasts where you’re working, which means the slices of the viewership pie get smaller, which means lower ratings, which means less ad money coming in, which means….?” (I often ask myself run-on questions.) I guess when it got up around 300-channels it occurred to me the game was changing in my chosen profession. But by that time, the squeeze had begun. Network affiliated TV stations and their news operations began cutting in response to dropping revenues. Fast forward to now, when the very existence of mainstream media operations is threatened.

I constantly ask myself now if I should have been more aware of the possibility that these enormous technological changes would completely alter the landscape of my business. And what if I had been more aware? Would I have done anything different with my career? Could I have done more to help update the presentation of local news that would have made it more contemporary?

The fact is, I still don’t know. Apparently, I’m not a very sophisticated entity. But I do know now that it’s better to be constantly aware of changes in your field, if you’re to even have a chance of adjusting.

I’d better get to work on tonight’s newscast right now, just to make sure I’m up to speed for THAT. I’ll write tomorrow about category two of self-blame, failure to plan better for your family's home finances in case hard times come. In the meantime, I’d love to hear from you in the comment section about any thoughts you’ve had about your career, the way it’s changed over the years, and whether you look back and wish you’d had YOUR eyes open a little more.