Life on the Outside   

When the Baltimore Sun offered its first buyouts in late 1991, Art and Design Director Donna Crivello saw a perfect opportunity to pursue her dream: She opened Donna's Coffee Bar. Today, Crivello and business partner Alan Hirsch oversee eight different Donna's in the Baltimore metropolitan area. She's been so successful that her former paper crowned her Baltimore's "coffee queen."

"We were instantly busy," recalls Crivello, 51, who appeared on the cover of AJR's July/August 1993 issue to illustrate a story about the buyout phenomenon. "I'm still working seven days a week as I was 12 years ago, trying to oversee all of the different locations."

Although she accepted one and has flourished ever since, Crivello believes buyouts can have a negative impact on journalism. With the advent of the Internet, she worries about the future of the business she left. "I would hate to see newspapers dry up and to fold," she says. Crivello reads two every day--it's impossible for her to imagine a world without them, she says.

While she misses the Sun newsroom, where she spent eight years, Crivello says the buyout came at an ideal time for her. She says her hands-on approach to design was beginning to conflict with the more tech-savvy methods gaining popularity back then.

Crivello sees many of her former coworkers and other Sun reporters who frequent the Donna's that is just a few blocks from the paper.

When she's not busy running from location to location, Crivello is working on a cookbook for the average cook, featuring her own "foolproof" recipes.

As for the lesson of her career shift, she says, "If you think you could be happier doing something else, you should do it."