WilLaVeist.com

What's it feel like to leave your job as a newspaper columnist for a new job in Chicago with the leading African American magazine company, only to be fired after six months because the boss says

Wil LaVeist last month at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. When bad things happen, 'focus on knowing there's a bigger story at play,' he writes.

"After more than fifteen years of successfully navigating my journalism career through white-owned media companies, a brother -- a fellow black man -- was firing me, throwing me in a well," Wil LaVeist writes in a new self-published book, "Fired Up: How to Win When You Lose Your Job."

"Not only that, but he was a top leader of an organization that advocated to keep journalists like me employed. As I watched him mouth words, thoughts raged in my head. I wandered off to back in the day on the streets of Brooklyn, N.Y., to a time I would have dealt with a punk move like this by using my fists, a blade, or a gun," wrote LaVeist, a graduate of the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education who had moved his family of five from Newport News, Va., to Chicago to work for Johnson Publishing Co.

"'Leap over the desk and wear him out!' I heard the corporate thug in me say.

"But then, through my anger, pierced the clear, firm, still voice.

"'You are a professional and a family man, a Christian, a new creature.'

"I came back to myself.'"

LaVeist, 43, worked under CEO Linda Johnson Rice and Editorial Director Bryan Monroe, who was also president of the National Association of Black Journalists, during his brief career as Johnson Publishing Co.'s director of Web development. His description of his time there serves only as an introduction to his larger point, which takes up the bulk of the book. But it is chilling nonetheless.

"The book is not about dwelling on any particular company. That's why the company isn't named," LaVeist told Journal-isms. "That's not important. It's about how to cope and climb back after you've been knocked down.

"I share the facts of my personal story only so that readers can know where I'm coming from. I give readers an intimate behind the scenes look at what really goes on with a person who has been blindsided so that others who are going through job loss can be helped. The lessons I share apply to dealing with any type of major loss. Ultimately, the bad things that happen to you are oftentimes what point you to your true destiny. It's all in whether you decide to embrace the bad or be its victim."

LaVeist is back in the Hampton Roads area as editor in chief of MIX magazine, a publication of the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot. MIX is described as "a multicultural publication covering the personalities, issues, trends and happenings among the Hampton Roads area's minority communities — African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans and Native Americans."

While with the publishers of Ebony and Jet magazines in 2006, LaVeist writes, he was fired not once but twice. The first time with:

"No prior warning.

"No performance review process.

"Just fired.

"Dumped.

"Bye."

The second time followed a reinstatement by the CEO, who "had convinced me to join her company," which she described as a "family business" that treated its employees fairly.

"With diamonds glistening from her light brown earlobes, she focused her eyes on me and said that things could've been done differently, but that her mind was made up," LaVeist wrote in the book. "However, she felt I still had a role with the company if I wanted it. I would have to take a substantial pay cut, though. It cost me about $35,000 annually. Thinking of my wife and children, and imagining her discussions with my supervisor and the company's attorney, I accepted it."

In employment law, LaVeist writes, the concept of "constructive dismissal" is used to induce an employee to quit on his or her own to forgo a potential severance payment, and possibly unemployment benefits, and to weaken an employee's leverage for a lawsuit. Stephen A. Smith, the sports columnist who was demoted at the Philadelphia Inquirer and then quit, has hired an attorney who specializes in the "constructive dismissal" concept.

"However, a couple of months later after adjusting to my new role," LaVeist continues, "I was abruptly terminated again. This time my new supervisor, who was brought in to replace me, did the deed."

The Johnson company announced in December 2006 that Eric Easter, formerly of Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, would direct the company's New Media efforts as chief of digital strategy.

Johnson Publishing Co., supplied with a copy of LaVeist's remarks, did not comment.

In February 2007, Monroe let go Aldore Collier, who wrote for Jet and Ebony for 26 years and covered Los Angeles for the previous 25. Collier, 51, told Journal-isms. "I don't know what his reasoning is. I've had minimal contact with Bryan." Monroe said then, "We wish him well, but I cannot talk further because it is a personnel matter."

This past February, Vandell Cobb, who had been at the company for 30 years, taking photographs for everything from fashion spreads to news events, was cut as well. Sounding stunned by the turn of events, he told Journal-isms then he did not want to comment.

A number of others have been brought in by Monroe, who joined the company after being an executive at the Knight Ridder Co., which went out of business. They include Director of Photography Dudley M. Brooks, who was assistant managing editor/photography at the Baltimore Sun, and Harriette Cole, author, columnist and life coach, as creative director for Ebony.

"Of course not all terminations are unfair or financially devastating," LaVeist, a founding member of the Arizona Association of Black Journalists, writes in his first chapter. "In fact, many are just the opposite and are simply necessary, nothing personal and just business. However, I want you to imagine the types of changes people are put through particularly when they're let go without warning. And perhaps an employer who is considering terminating employees will realize that he or she doesn't have to be brutal about it. The same result can be accomplished humanely."