I dig traveling. I recently wrapped up a two-month lam across Eastern Europe. They make delicious veggie souvlakis on Santorini.

I also enjoy writing, web design, organic pears and Empire of Illusion by Chris Hedges. He’s one of the few informed mainstream journalists that I’ve stumbled across in the last few years. He writes “the cult of self dominates our cultural landscape… it is this perverted ethic that gave us Wall Street bankers and investment houses that willfully trashed the nation’s economy, stole money from tens of millions of small shareholders who had bought stock in these corporations for retirement or college.” He’s got a lot of insight into the TV-and-celebrity-obsessed lives we lead.

In the past, I’ve run an underground newspaper at the University of Connecticut, The Muck, co-founded a local citizen journalism newspaper in Santa Cruz, California, the Cournalist, and created a web design firm in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, The Other Design House.

If you’d like to hire me or just need someone to chat about Animal Collective’s latest EP with, email me here.

Aaron Flynn arrived to work early as usual two weeks ago. Nine-thirty in the morning. A Circuit City store manager and employee of eight years, he went to work opening the store.

He unlocked the doors. Loaded the registers. Updated employees with the daily news.

But while he was tucking a drawer of cash into a register, an employee approached him with his own news. Have you heard about the layoffs, he asked.

Minutes later Flynn read along with millions of Americans skimming morning papers what he most feared. Circuit City Stores, the nation’s second-largest consumer electronics chain and his security net for more than eight years, was going belly up.

“We had an idea that we might possibly be bought out,” said Flynn, a single father who supports a 3-year-old daughter. “But no one mentioned the idea that we’d close for good.”

Saving no time at all, he began calling old friends and colleagues hoping there might be one open job in this broken economy.

Flynn and 50 employees at the Santa Cruz branch will lose their jobs on March 21. They will join 34,000 other Circuit City employees globally.

The 59-year-old company, originally known as Wards Company, announced it would liquidate all of its merchandise and layoff its entire workforce on Jan. 16. It became one of the latest victims of a serious economic crisis that has paralyzed the world economy.

Yesterday Home Depot, the country’s largest home improvement retailer, announced it was cutting 7,000 jobs and closing its Expo stores as the recession continues to freeze the housing market.

“I’m always worried I’ll be laid off,” said Robin Volstorff, a part-time employee at the Home Depot in Santa Cruz. She said they’ve been cutting hours since last November. The part-timers are the first to go.

Santa Cruz-based Plantronics, the world’s leading producer of lightweight headsets, announced it was cutting 18 percent of its workforce earlier this month.

The crisis has pushed unemployment past 10 percent in Santa Cruz. Watsonville has reached 21 percent, nearly three times the national average.

That’s more bad news for guys like Scott Glass, who has sold TVs at Circuit City for more than a year. Since finding out he’d be fired in March, he’s lost his house and totaled his car. And no one’s hiring. Now he spends his days split between sending out resumes, couch surfing and walking a few miles to a job that won’t exist in less than two months.

“I’m sending out resumes everywhere,” Glass said, with a somber sigh. “Anything I can possibly think of.”

So far, Circuit City hasn’t provided any resources for employees who will soon be cast into a needle-thin job market, according to Flynn. “There’s no communication from up top,” he said. “I talk to my boss, the liquidator, and as far as I know he is all that is left.”

Flynn has posted fliers in the break room that the Job Exchange, a national job placement firm, dropped off recently. But other than that these employees are on their own. “A few employees have asked me for letters of recommendation,” he said. “But that’s about all I can do.”

As for Flynn himself, single father and soon to be ex-manager — he’s optimistic that he’ll be able to find a new job. He has an interview this Wednesday. But he warns it won’t be so easy for a lot of these employees.

Another store manager is on maternity leave, he explained. She’s expecting her sixth child. She will lose her job along with everyone else at the store on March 21.

“A lot of these guys will have to go on unemployment,” Flynn said, waving his hands out on a store full of empty boxes, discount posters, and sullen employees in red. “This is their livelihood.”

Originally published in the Cournalist.

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Earlier this week, my father passed on a poignant article asking the same question that’s been on the minds of thousands of small business owners across the country — Does the death of the newspaper mean the death of small business?

The stipulation being that without local dailies local businesses don’t have a place to advertise, announce job openings or spotlight their community involvement.

No doubt it’s a real threat. Newspapers in their current incarnation are fast becoming an ephemeral memory of the bygone days. Two-daily cities are dropping to one and many economists predict it won’t be long before a major city is paperless. Even more papers are now in talks to ditch the physical product for an online-only version.

Small business owners argue that without a local daily they won’t be able to reach their clients. They won’t be able to update the community on sales, the most recent addition to their menu or a community fundraiser.

But they’re wrong. Rather than a death sentence, the fall of the print paper is actually a blessing in disguise if small businesses are willing to make the necessary adjustments to the Internet.

Over 75 percent of Americans use the Internet, according to a recent poll by the PEW Internet & American Life Project. I’d bet a lot of money that not that many people are reading their local daily across the country.

Here in Santa Cruz, the Sentinel’s circulation has dropped below 25,000 countywide. That’s in a county of 250,000. I’ll be generous with the statistics. Let’s say only half of the county is using the Internet. That still means there are 100,000 more people in Santa Cruz County on the Internet than reading the Sentinel. Yikes!

If anything, small businesses will benefit by switching to the Internet. They’ll reach a larger and broader base (I know my little brother isn’t reading the paper, but he’s spending hours on the Internet every week). And it’s cheaper. An ad that costs thousands of dollars in the print edition of the Sentinel costs a fraction of that it in their online edition.

As for posting job openings, Craigslist, Monster and Santacruzjobs.com have all proven their value. They’re cheaper than posting in print classifieds and you can vet potential candidates electronically, which saves time and allows you to quickly eliminate erroneous applications. Again, using the Internet is easier, quicker and cheaper.

And there’s no reason that the Internet can’t provide a platform to organize and mobilize the community. Facebook, Myspace and other social networking tools have more than proven their usefulness around the globe. And it’s not like journalism is going away. If anything, it’s exploding. New startups are appearing across the country.

Non-profits, citizen journalism publications like the Cournalist and traditional companies who’ve made the move to the Internet will all still exist. They will still write about local events, companies and fundraisers. And they’re all going to be looking for advertising revenue in one way or another.

And opportunities for broader audiences and novel ways of reaching them will continue to expand on the Internet. No longer will advertising have to be one dimensional. Direct interaction between businesses and their consumers will soon be the norm. And it’s for the better. If a customer doesn’t like your ad or thinks it’s ineffective, he or she will have the ability to tell you immediately. No more guessing games for small business owners. They’ll be able to know exactly how many people their ads get in front of, and they’ll be able to follow it live.

Rather than write a requiem for small businesses, we should embrace the powerful opportunities the Internet provides. I sense the real issue is whether small businesses are willing to become more creative in their efforts to reach a broader community, because the tools for reaching them are here and they aren’t going anywhere.

WATSONVILLE —In the lobby of Landmark Elementary School, Lupita Galvan, the office manager, answers calls from parents, most of them in Spanish.

To her left is a poorly lit nurse’s office, no nurse in site, with the door open. A boy sits on a plastic bed holding his knee.

And to her right sits an overflowing bulletin board. TEACHER WISH LISTS, it reads. A dozen or so wish lists are stapled to the board. Each one has a picture of the teacher, her name and a list of basic school supplies that she’ll have to dig into her own pocket to pay for if parents don’t chip in. The lists include requests for pencils, markers, glue sticks, paper, tissues and printer cartridges.

But their biggest wishes don’t make the list.

After the Pajaro Valley school board announced an anticipated loss of $17 million in state funding this year, the teachers’ requests have become more fundamental. They hope for a library, buses, after school programs, music classes and most alarmingly, their own jobs.

“If these budget cuts go through we’ll lose a third or more of our staff,” said Jennifer Wildman, the principal at Landmark Elementary School. “We’re scrambling asking ourselves what we can cut. But we’ve already cut so much.”

Now she is asking herself not what she can cut but who.

“We’re being forced to ask what’s more important to the school — a custodian or a librarian,” Wildman said. After a brief pause, she added, “Well, the bathroom has to be cleaned.”

In five years of operation, Landmark Elementary School has seen two major budget cuts. Last year alone, the district sliced $8 million from the district’s budget. At Landmark Elementary School that has meant pulling the plug on music classes and slimming down the physical education programs. Long before that teachers started to dig into their own wallets for basic school supplies.

But with a $17 million deficit now lingering over the Pajaro Valley Unified School District (PVUSD), changes are about to cut right to the bone.

Wildman said the cutbacks would impact all levels and departments in the school district. Pay freezes, pay cuts and layoffs are all possible. If half of Landmark Elementary School’s teachers receive pink slips — a worst case scenario — that would push class sizes beyond 30 students. This at an already underperforming school where only 20 percent of the students read at the state level.

Most of the students come from socio-economically disadvantaged homes. More than 75 percent of them receive free lunches through a federal program designed to provide nutritious lunches to those who can’t afford them.

“The kids are already being hit hard by the economy,” Wildman said. “Their families are losing their homes and they need clothes.”

But the added pressures of larger classrooms, fewer teachers and fewer after school programs could mean even fewer opportunities to achieve success, according to Roberto Torres, the assistant principal at Landmark Elementary School.

The two administrators applauded the teachers for their hard work in the face of these potentially dire circumstances.

“Teachers are tricky,” Wildman said. “They can make do with very little.”

That means working 12-hour days sometimes and grading homework on weekends. But they do an excellent job of keeping the students focused on school and not school cuts, Wildman said.

“The students have no idea.”

So now, Landmark Elementary School must wait along with the rest of PVUSD for the final draft of the district budget that will be released on March 15. The district will send out pink slips to teachers and employees on that date. Though the state’s final budget won’t be finished until late June, the district is preparing for the worst.

“The big thing right now is the uncertainty,” Torres said. “What we have now is barely enough. But it could get a lot worse.”

For now the school is holding staff meetings to discuss what else they could possibly cut. They’re hoping that parents, teachers and administrators will continue sending letters to local and state legislators. But other than that, all that is left to do is wait.

“We’re just hoping it’s crazy talk, and everything will settle,” Wildman said, with a measured laugh. “We’ll do what we have to when the time comes.”

Some people just never learn.

In an editorial this past week, the Chicago Sun-Times touted its unraveling of Sen. Roland Burris’s shadowy fundraising for ousted Gov. Rod Blagojevich as proof that traditional newspapers will endure.

The facts report a much different story. Newspapers in their current form are dangerously close to extinction. A perfect storm of paralyzed housing and car markets and a volatile economy have destroyed advertising revenue for papers across the country. The wild success of Internet companies like Ebay and Craigslist have only contributed to the mess. Newspaper ad revenue fell 14 percent in the first half of 2008, according to the Newspaper Association of America. Future outlooks aren’t so optimistic.

In response to this disaster, papers have been forced into massive editorial layoffs, required furloughs for those remaining and other cutbacks. Many cities that have traditionally housed two dailies now have one. Some of these cities fear they’ll soon have zero.

Here in Santa Cruz, the storm has been just as visible over the last few years. The Sentinel has scrapped its printing press, relocated to Scotts Valley and slashed its editorial staff. Because of these cutbacks, Editor Don Miller recently found himself trumpeting the paper’s first investigative piece “in a few years.”

Still, the Chicago Sun-Times thought it reasonable to attack the emergence of alternative news sources like nonprofit papers, blogs and citizen journals.

“No army of bloggers, no TV or radio station, no nonprofit journalism collective, no foundation-supported task force of political and government reporters will ever do the job so well,” they wrote.

Maybe so. But that same army of “bloggers in pajamas” — as the paper later referred to them —broke news that the head of NASA had lied on his resume, banking lobbyists were trying to payoff members of Congress and the police chief in San Diego was lying about crime statistics to cover up the city’s failing police department.

In reality, these fresh news sources are necessary to fill a growing void. That’s not to say professional journalists have no role in the future reporting of news. To the contrary, trained writers are essential in deciphering the nuances of the country’s daily news. But there’s no question that as the void grows we’ll need new and innovative ways to cover the news.

The Chicago Sun-Times and other media dinosaurs must face these facts. The age of the traditional newspaper is coming to an end, and the dawn of a more diversified media is at hand. The papers who accept this fact will survive and the ones who don’t will be lamenting the good ole’ years over unemployment.

Ironically, the Chicago Sun-Times said it best when it wrote, “Competition brings out the best in everybody.” Surely they’re not afraid of a little competition from the people who were previously confined to reading the papers.

In reality, I sense these graying dinosaurs are finally coming to grips with the fact that they might one day be the “bloggers in pajamas,” they so dubiously referred too. My advice to the editors of the Chicago Sun-Times: Best hit the local Walmart for a new onesie before they’ve sold out!