An interview without answers
A few minutes from now, at 3:30 p.m., Karl Etters will
interview for a job he’s already been hired for.
Etters is editor in chief of the Famuan, the student newspaper at Florida A&M University. But the j-school dean has shut down the paper and ordered the staff to reapply for their jobs.
Etters did just that last week, filling out the same application he did a couple months ago and including a resume, a cover letter, two letters of recommendation, and three clips.
So who’s interviewing him?
“I haven’t been told,” he says.
Are there other candidates?
“I’m not sure.”
Etters learned of his interview in an email from the new Famuan adviser – who he hasn’t met. In fact, the woman who emailed him never said she was the new adviser. But like a good reporter, Etters Googled the name.
“I think she’s our new adviser,” he says. “That’s what her Linkedin profile says.”
He hasn’t heard from j-school dean Ann L. Wead Kimbrough since Jan. 11. Everything he’s learned about her since – that she has no problem with his staff’s independent website but she’s unhappy with the Famuan’s finances – has come from media reports.
Etters doesn’t even know when he’ll find out if he’ll keep his new job or be replaced.
“I have my job back or I don’t have my job back. That’s just kind of how it is,” an exhausted Etters says. “It’s sad it worked out that way.”
Sad on so many levels.