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Success is easy to deal with. Let's be thankful for failure.

Ruben Navarrette Jr. on

SAN DIEGO -- This holiday, I'm thankful that I've learned how to fail.

Stop right there. If you're the kind of person who always gets what you want, never gets turned down, has never lost a job, and has never failed at anything, this column is not for you.

My peeps are different. We know from painful experience that life roughs you up good before the final bell, and what counts is how you take the beating.

In fact, I've become an expert at failing. This year marks my 30th anniversary of writing for newspapers, and so I've had a lot of practice.

Given the tumult that envelops my profession, many of my colleagues and I have had to become skilled at surviving setbacks -- whether it's being laid off, or having your workload triple, or watching your newspaper turn off its presses. Journalism has seen better days. Ten years ago, I was laid off from my last full-time newspaper job, and I've lost a half dozen other part-time jobs since then. The only constant in my business is chaos.

My friends in radio and television are going through their own challenges, as they compete with digital streaming and hundreds of thousands of podcasts for the fleeting attention of viewers and listeners.

 

These days, if you make your living in media, Plan A is a crapshoot. You had better have a Plan B, and maybe even a Plan C and D.

I've been luckier than most. I've taken my lumps, with folks on the right and left pestering my bosses to fire me. Being a national journalist is one thing, but there is nothing like working in the local market -- like I did in Phoenix, Dallas and San Diego -- to make you feel as if your job is not secure.

Once I had the goods on a local power broker who was doing something shady, and I wrote a fire-breathing column that scorched him. Turns out, the big wig was buddies with my publisher. Surprise. I lost my column. So I resigned and went to graduate school.

Still, I've had plenty of work. I get fired from one job, and there are two or three more around the corner.

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