I was at a soccer practice not long ago, and the subject turned (as it so often does in any spare moment at any sports venue), to the print journalism implosion. And all the people who have been fired or will be soon.

We were talking about those still getting paid, and how nerve-racking it had to be as round after round of cuts go down, and we agreed that it had to be awful. The not-knowing.

There was a bit of a pause, and one of the media relations guys (for the team that was practicing) said, “and until that happens, they probably have ‘survivors guilt’ to deal with, too.”

It struck me that I hadn’t really thought about that much. Survivors guilt?

And a moment or two later I said to the PR guy, “You know … I don’t think there’s much survivors guilt out there. At all.”

An anecdote:

A very good baseball writer, name of Tony Jackson, was laid off a couple of months ago by the Los Angeles Newspaper Group. Tony had lots of experience, worked the beat hard. Far as I know, he was little or no trouble to his managers and was considered a diligent, ultra-competent reporter.

But when I asked a middle manager, inside LANG, about Jackson being dumped, this titled person said, “Tony Jackson made a lot of money.”

That’s it. That explained it all. Tony made a lot of money. He should have known better than to make a lot of money. (“A lot” being a relative term, considering this is MediaNews.) Making a lot of money actually was a fairly serious character flaw. Tony was asking for it, basically, by making a lot of money. I suppose he should have offered to give some back.

I was stunned by the lack of sympathy for Jackson, a fine and decent guy — and more competent than many of those LANG still employs. But “he made too much money.” Well, of course.

My overwhelming experience, from the day I got fired to this, is that those still inside of print journalism feel little or no survivors guilt. I just hadn’t thought about it until this PR person brought it up.

Let’s back up for a moment, and define survivors guilt. This is from a wikipedia entry, and wikipedia should never be confused with the Encylopedia Brittanica. But it will serve for our purposes.

“Survivor, survivor’s, or survivors guilt or syndrome is a mental condition that occurs when a person perceives himself or herself to have done wrong by surviving a traumatic event. It may be found among survivors of combat and natural disaster, and in non-mortal situations among those whose colleagues are laid off.”

Basically, survivors guilt is what (sometimes) happens to that remnant left behind. The questions of “why is he/she gone, and I remain? Why am I still here when the people who are gone were just as good/decent/competent as me?”

Anyway, having perceived little or no survivors guilt among those people still employed in the business, I asked a couple of them about it. Both of these individuals still draw salaries from the L.A. Newspaper Group, which has suffered something like a 60 percent reduction in its work force in a year and change. These are good people; they are not callous; they never seemed to draw satisfaction from the misfortune of others.

One of them wrote: “Ultimately the degree of guilt depends on how well I know the affected party.”

I had suggested that perhaps the lack of survivors guilt was a coping mechanism for those still employed. Because if they couldn’t tell themselves (and each other) that there was a good, logical, easily understood reason for a firing (“he made too much money”) … well, how are they supposed to avoid becoming immobilized by a presentiment of doom? How can they keep office morale from utter collapse?

This person agreed with those notions and wrote, “On the inside, we realize we could be sacrificed next. If we don’t remind ourselves of why you guys got sacrificed, and why we might not, we might as well live in constant fear.”

And this print employee concluded with, “Ironically, the more (journalists) get laid off, the less guilt I feel. It’s a commonplace occurrence now. Unless I can associate a specific friend, colleague or memory with each layoff, they are nothing more than a statistic.”

A response from a second LANG employee went like this:

“I personally have felt bad about everyone who was laid off, and I suppose I felt some survivors guilt for a short time. But that emotion was soon replaced with the ‘I’m glad it wasn’t me’ feeling. I guess that, ultimately, while I may sympathize with those who lost their jobs, I eventually just get wrapped up in my own situation.”
So, yes, there we are. Survivors guilt? Maybe a little. For a moment. But then a more powerful emotion kicks in.

“Better him than me.”