UPDATED: January 30, 2013

Yesterday, The Globe & Mail, “Canada’s national newspaper,” fired took its literary editors, the crusty and intelligent team of Martin Levin and Jack Kirchhoff, off Books. I pounded my fist on the desk when I read this. Then I let out a cry in my condo that was heard only by the dogs down the hall. By the end of the day, word broke that Levin had been moved to Obituaries (the symbolism there is unfortunate). Kirchhoff’s new location in the building has yet to be determined (updates from insiders welcome).

What appears to be clear is that The Books Section will be no more will be a shadow of its former self. Last year it lost a ton of weight, going from a 20-plus page supplement (like The New York Times Book Review), to a handful pages in Focus, to … well, that too has yet to be determined. But it sounds like it’s living off sugared water.

These corrections were issued at the end of the day in a letter by Globe and Mail editor John Stackhouse who claimed Now Magazine got the story wrong, sending an army of bibliophiles on a rampage through social media. The veteran writer at Now didn’t even call the paper, Stackhouse noted. He went on to reassure readers,

“The Globe is as committed as ever to both books coverage and book reviews. While space and style continue to change, the importance of books to the Globe does not. I continue to look forward to opportunities to innovate in this space as rapidly and creatively as possible, with the sort of energetic leadership that 21st-century book readers and publishersdeserve and demand.”

I hope Jack and Martin dust themselves off. Every day there’s something fresh to make print journalists uncomfortable in their own skin.

I’ve lost many writing jobs because of the economy and the rise of digital media, including a column in a national magazine shortly after the economic collapse in 2008. But even though we’ve known for years where the stampede is going too many of us are still crying, “No-o-o-o-o-o-o!” Yesterday, I noted the number of journalists screaming their disbelief on Facebook when this story broke. “Everything’s going to rat shit,” was the general tenor of the comment stream. Many of these journalists, I silently noted, were folks who have openly admitted on other occasions to no longer subscribing to The Globe.

I stopped subscribing to the paper I’ve written for many times (including full-page features with commissioned editorial cartoons) back in 2010. My reasons were the same as theirs. It dropped its freelance rates to a handful of nickels and it switched to more advertorial-style articles after the net highjacked breaking news, a move that has seriously diluted the quality of the commentary. The paper build-up on my coffee table goes without saying. But for many writers, the cachet of being in The Globe has been lost. That peaked, in my opinion, in the late nineties when competition from the new National Post sharpened everyone’s analysis and wit. What a line-up it was: Robert Fulford, Val Ross, David Macfarlane, Bronwyn Drainie … sigh.  I wasn’t even a journalist back then, just a hungry reader.

The literary geek in me misses the late nineties. Music geeks tell me they feel the same way. Music had a similar burst of creativity before Napster unearthed our cannibalizing tendencies. Today, with Books gone on a potentially meat-free diet, Ian Brown and Ivor Tossell are the only two reasons I’d go to the Globe‘s website, but two reasons are not enough to make me invest in the entire package. My news consumption is messy and piecemeal. Just like yours.

So to my colleagues who hiss that things like blogging are ruining us, I say, you’re right.  But, as the aphorism goes, “If you don’t like change, you’ll like irrelevance even less.” There are no guarantees of success in anything (including blogging or what follows after achieving the “All Star” status on LinkedIn), but there are even fewer results if you don’t try.

I had no idea Whitney Houston recorded this in 2009.

I gave up on her years ago.

Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011)

©AGJ on Sketches

Thank you, Dan

Thank you, Subhash

Thank you, Craig

When I’m dead and all physical reminders of the life I built have disappeared under the pile-up of stuff from future generations, I’ll live on, for a while, in the minds of my family, friends and ex-boyfriends. But they’ll die too and take their memories of my voice, my bent and signature scent with them. The biggest cache of information will go down with my parents and my brothers. Then where will I be?

I suppose my name will linger on for a little while longer inside my high school, on the gym walls that show I played for this team and won that award. And, of course, I’ll live on in cyberspace, endorsing a lip balm (good grief), interviewing an expert, cheering on a friend and calling out to my lost mother.

My blog will just stop. But it will never suffer the fate of print, curling at the edges or turning yellow with age. Like a fresh sheet of paper, it will be as crisp and clean as the day I launched it.

At first, people will think I’m too busy to post and my page views will drop to zero. The odd person might check back in to see if I’ve cobbled together a new entry. And if they’re really committed to this site (or me), they’ll do a Google search of my name, stumble upon my obit and go … “Oh.”

Elsewhere in cyberspace, my face and name will pop up in the “People You May Know” columns in LinkedIn and Facebook. Requests will go out, but my silence will hurt my future job and social prospects. Meanwhile, the lineup of guys in my eHarmony account will be several miles long and administrators will shut down my page for “lack of activity.” The question, “Who does she think she is?” will shoot through at least one male heart because I didn’t even try to strike up a conversation with him.

But, half a moment!  I still have some more time to make hay in my personal and professional lives. So, IF I’m lucky enough to reach old lady status, here’s what I hope my legacy will be after I collapse in a heap for the last time.

… agj …

She lived an unconventional life for someone with some pretty traditional values.

She was afraid of dying which made her unafraid of living.

She hated interruptions when she was in The Zone.

Loud noises irked her too.

She had the courage to say “No” to marriage until, one day, she had the courage to say “Yes.”

But, even then, she still lived through herself.

She let her hair show its first lashings of grey and opened to the idea of becoming a Silver Belle

Keeping in mind, Nature always prevailed.

At 80, she was at her most liberal (and, no, it wasn’t too late)

She spent the money she saved on dye jobs and bought books, presents, fresh flowers, and paid her property taxes.

She found plenty of ways to mother young people without ever seeing her feet disappear behind her belly.

She cried when her friends described their losses and left behind Kleenex balls for them to pick up.

She lived a highly engaged life and negotiated the “me time” it took to achieve that with mixed results.

She negotiated her “us time” with equally mixed results.

She was a sponge for love, and she’ll miss you.

A lot.

This post is part of a blog series on BrazenCareerist.com being sponsored by Entrustet. Ryan Paugh sent out emails to Brazen members asking us to answer the question, What do you want your legacy to be?