ISSAC J. BAILEY A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE

Changes in job inevitable and exciting

T he woman was standing near a stop sign. She asked if I was going to Conway.

I was. I gave her a ride.

Her name was Bobbi Bland. She was 45 and had an 11-year-old grandson.

First thing that morning she hitched a ride from Green Sea Floyds to the bus stop in Conway, which took her to Seaboard Street in Myrtle Beach. She had to walk a few more blocks to reach her destination.

She was applying for a job cleaning hotel rooms, like thousands of other women who make up the low-paid backbone of the area's tourism industry. She was disappointed she would have to wait until tomorrow to start. Her car doesn't work. The friends she caught a ride with that morning wouldn't be leaving early enough the next day. She'd figure it out, she said.

"They said if you clean up four rooms, you can make $100 a day," she said.

"Man, that's all?" I asked.

"That's good money," she returned. "What do you do?"

"I work for The Sun News," I said.

"You got a good job," she said.

Four days later The Sun News announced its first layoffs in my almost 11-year tenure. The cuts were small. Six people lost their jobs, and others were offered voluntary buyout packages.

It was weird hearing the publisher and executive editor talk about "involuntary separations," the kind of corporate speak I've scoffed at many times while covering stories about much larger layoffs.

It was weird listening to colleagues who felt as fearful as all those other workers. I remember watching men cry during a Christmastime strike at Georgetown Steel.

Change is stressful. That's why it hurts even when it's necessary but not necessarily bad.

The announcement wasn't surprising. The world changes. So does the economy. As more Fortune 500 companies put down stakes along the Grand Strand the past decade, a couple of things happened. It made developments such as The Market Common and Hard Rock Park more likely. And it made us more susceptible to national economic downturns from which we had been somewhat shielded.

As a former business editor and reporter, I've written and read about businesses being forced to adjust while too many assumed those adjustments meant death, when all it really meant was change - though a painful change for those caught directly in the crosshairs of layoffs.

I remember the days when analysts said video stores were obsolete as Netflix challenged Blockbuster, only to see Blockbuster add an online presence to serve its customers better. You no longer have to pay a late fee because of that competition.

Starbucks has to figure out its response to the move of McDonald's into the flavored coffee business, just as Realtors and car salesmen had to find a new way to sell as the Internet became more prominent. They did, and they remain.

Strong businesses make the necessary changes, become stronger and their customers are the primary beneficiaries. That's what's happening in my industry.

Our reach has never been wider and our readership has never been higher. Search engines such as Google wouldn't be half as good without what we do.

But it's a combination of those who find us online - and our photo galleries, blogs, staff-produced and reader-submitted videos, and news projects - as well as those old-school folks (like me) who won't ever stop wanting to hold the paper in their fingers. What's ironic is that many in my industry seem dumbfounded when market forces reach our front doors. I'm not. I'm excited, even if a little antsy.

The new world is forcing us to reassess our business, which means, if done properly, we will only get stronger. There will always be strong demand for objective (and sometimes provocative) information providers.

Bobbi Bland, the woman who cleans hotel rooms, said I have a good job. I do. But just as she has to "figure out" how to get to work every morning, we have to figure out this new world.

I believe we already are.

ONLINE | For past columns and to read Bailey's blog, go to MyrtleBeachOnline.com.

Contact ISSAC J. BAILEY at ibailey@thesunnews.com or 626-0357.