Repositioning

The Alternative To Packing It In

The concept of “Repositioning”appeals enough for me to have written about it before, most recently here. Some time ago, I was commissioned by a publication to write a piece for a feature called “Ancient Wisdom”. It turned out that my particular wisdom wasn’t what the editor had in mind. Hence:

“Are you retired?”

“No, I’m repositioned.”

“What does that mean?”

“I will explain…”

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I am of the generation who made our careers in journalism in the 1960s, taking advantage of what was, in retrospect, the apogee of preeminence for newspapers and magazines.

Decades later, most of us have moved on from what are, alas, largely less formidable enterprises. We are retired, bought-out, laid off, and in the chapters of our life stories that are generally considered conclusions.

But wait!

By the time I turned seventy, I was called the “Founder and Editor-at-Large” of PublicAffairs, the book publisher I had launched in 1997 (and still going strong today as an imprint of the Hachette Book Group).

It was around this time that I started getting the “R” question.

I looked up the word in Oxford Languages and learned that the term originated in the mid-sixteenth century, in the sense of a withdrawal to a place of safety or seclusion, from the French retirer, from re “back” + tirer “draw.”

This was not my intention. Instead, I devised the concept of being “repositioned,” for what I hoped would be many more years of consequential activity in my chosen fields: reporting, writing, editing, and publishing. The difference would be that I would be doing all these things not to be making a living, but rather to be living in a way that sustained my brain, social, and emotional faculties— which sounds more pompous than it really was. Think of “Being Alive,” as Stephen Sondheim counseled in the great song from his 1970 musical Company.

In the fall of 2020, during my last months of involvement with PublicAffairs, my wife, Susan (whose field was human rights and NGO leadership), and I established what we called Platform Books LLC, reflecting the name of a column — I never called it a blog — that I had been writing as an extracurricular activity for many years.

The purpose was to have an organizing principle for my plan to “read, write, and pontificate,” with Susan as my co-executive, manager, and muse.

I pause here to say that those of us who came of age in the 1960s and stayed in journalism, achieving some success, had a good shot at a defined pension, a reasonable 401(k) balance, and other assets, as well as, hopefully, a loving spouse or partner. In all, enough resources to support a lifestyle, adjusted but not altogether depleted.

At PublicAffairs, I had published a number of books by the brilliant Marc Freedman, a social entrepreneur whose Encore movement defined what I had in mind. Marc had framed retirement as essentially a marketing term, to promote senior communities in sunny locales. Instead, he and his colleagues created things like “Experience Corps” in schools, Encore fellows in major corporations and the Purpose Prize for people over fifty whose nonprofit enterprises had some traction. My favorite was the New England used car dealer who opened a storefront advising people on how not to be cheated by used car dealers.

A major aspect of repositioning is knowing when the time has come to begin planning for it.

After PublicAffairs was acquired by the Hachette Book Group in 2016 and relocated to its headquarters, I realized that our staff, talented and devoted as they were, found my involvement and energy, well, intrusive. When I proposed initiatives to support our books, the message seemed to be that I didn’t trust them to do it as well themselves.

Sometime after, an officious Hachette bureaucrat told me to give up my open-plan desk to a new employee. I had the good sense not to have a full-on tantrum.

Without making a pronouncement, I gradually stepped back, and I left at the end of 2020. I was given a genuinely warm send-off by my colleagues — after all, I had started the company.

The office of Platform Books LLC was our Upper West Side apartment. Our “team” consisted of people I had worked with over the years, expertly seasoned and themselves outside the confines of full-time work. We considered what we paid them to be an investment in ourselves.

There would be no golf-course condos (neither of us play) or lavishly outfitted safaris. Our financial adviser has kept tabs on our expenses, and our accountant looks after the tax requirements.

We arranged for the books we planned to publish to be handled by a national distributor, whose general manager had risen through the ranks at PublicAffairs’ original parent company, the Perseus Books Group. And here’s where reality comes in. My memoir, An Especially Good View: Watching History Happen, was our first book, and four more have followed, one in collaboration with Harvard Business Review Press and another two with Rivertowns Books, a small independent press started by my friend Karl Weber. We have issued in paperback two books I especially admired when they were PublicAffairs hardcovers. (That was a one-and-done experiment.)

All these efforts were satisfying and even successful in their own way. Sales have been modest by profit-making standards, and while any sales are welcome, they are not our main measure of the effort.

A Substack called Peter Osnos Public Affairs Press is posted weekly, with subscription revenues going to two NGOs: the Center for Civilians in Conflict (CIVIC), where Susan has been the chair, and the Barth Syndrome Foundation, which funds research and services for a very rare genetic metabolic disorder affecting boys.

Paul Golob is the editor for all Platform Books LLC content. That he has the time and inclination to handle this role is invaluable.

By now you may be thinking, That’s fine for you, Big Shot, but what thoughts do you have for the rest of us who want to reposition?

While I do not display a shingle offering advice, I am regularly asked by authors how to get an agent, a publisher, an editor, a publicist, a reviewer for a proposed book, which tend toward memoirs. My compensation, saccharine as it may sound, is gratitude.

Coming off their high-flying years, a shrug of disinterest or an outright rejection tends to undermine aging morale. My counsel can be summarized with the quote I have on my wall, from the legendary editor Maxwell Perkins:

“Just get it down on paper and then we’ll see what to do with it.”

There are a great many ways to publish a book in this multi-platform digital era, even if the only readers turn out to be friends and family.

As for news gathering as a repositioning option, my vision is to deploy experience where it will be most valued, generally but not always pro bono.

The record to date is persuasive as to the need but I have yet to find the means and enough other people who are similarly determined to make Encore journalism broadly understood and accepted.

When I was the vice chairman of the Columbia Journalism Review, serving under the estimable Victor Navasky, we received funding from Atlantic Philanthropies to establish four Encore fellowships and chose reporters who had been at major newspapers to write features for the magazine. Over my fervent objections, CJR’s editor insisted on calling them “downsized” journalists, a sufficient downer for me to drop the concept after one year.

Over the next decade or so, I got encouragement to develop Encore programs in association with Long Island University’s highly respected George Polk Awards, the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University, and the Newmark Journalism School at the City University of New York.

None actually happened, because enthusiasm evaporates unless there is guaranteed funding to have an infrastructure to recruit journalists and arrange places for them to work as reporters, editors, and coaches. Note to anybody who wants to pitch the idea going forward: Even the best ideas will work only if they can get beyond the gauzy vision to line up solid start-up money.

(I’ve heard rumblings of interest in Encore among the emerging and increasingly robust nonprofit journalism enterprises around the country that seek to replace the thousands of local newspapers that are no longer viable. I’d be happy to talk to anyone who is serious about this, but not if you’re susceptible to disappointment.)

Repositioning means recognizing that you are no longer in a career ascent, with ambitions for further fame and fortune. The traditional pattern of work followed by a precipitous drop should be replaced by a gradual lessening of responsibilities, and you may find yourself offering support to someone you mentored in the past.

Accepting this change of status, depending on your personality and level of pride, is not for everyone.

What is widely possible is to choose where, when, and how to take advantage of expertise or even to try something very different. When I asked an AI overview for a definition of an Encore career, it responded: “The primary motivations are often purpose and a desire to give back.”

This explanation was doubtless scraped from the writing of the professionals who shaped it and it is now being dispensed robotically for free. Oh well.

I certainly enjoy getting respect and appropriate recognition. But these days the question I’m asked most often in doctors’ offices and wherever I am filling out forms is date of birth. Mine is 10/13/1943.