Trading athletes tends to be big news, especially in states that have professional sports teams. Here in Wisconsin, the world of basketball was rocked when Milwaukee Bucks superstar Giannis Antetokoumpo, who had spent most of his career here, was traded to the Miami Heat recently.

It had seemed like Antetokoumpo would be here forever—or at least until he decided to retire. Then he was gone.

This thought popped into my head as I was driving on the highway this morning and listening to the radio. The question came up about whether you’d be into the idea of having the company you work for trade you to some other company the same way that sports teams trade their players.

In the case of the newspaper I work for, I’m thinking it might be a good idea to get some more players before we start trading them like baseball cards, seeing as we only have two journalists, one sales representative and our publisher. We don’t even have enough people to form a major sports team, as you would need at least five people to be on the court, plus a few extras to switch out so you didn’t exhaust your players.

I seem to have gotten off track, haven’t I?

Anyhow, I could see a couple of potential trades if this were to ever become reality. One would be to trade with another newspaper. I could see that being a little problematic, as many of the adjacent newspapers are owned by Gannett, which has been steadily downsizing its workforce. Even big cities like Green Bay have a skeleton crew of reporters, which has made it almost impossible to adequately report all of the news that’s fit to print.

Besides the potential for getting laid off, I’d also be facing the expense of commuting to work at least 35 miles, unless Gannett happens to have a relocation allowance like I had at a previous newspaper in Arizona. If the paper didn’t pay me a higher salary, that could be somewhat inconvenient to my bank account.

There’s always the option of going to a different media instead of print. We have a radio station in the community; in fact, the newspaper office is next door. The commute would be the same (I only live a half-mile away from work), so I wouldn’t be looking at more gasoline every week.

Of course, the workload would be drastically different. It’d be the same amount of time to sit through meetings, take photos of community events or taking notes. Radio stations are utilizing websites the same as newspapers, so I’d still be writing a story to post.

However, I’d also have to record an audio report, which means learning new equipment. That’s not usually a problem for me, as I tend to learn at least the basics of a program fairly quickly. With a newspaper, besides writing stories, I take photos, edit copy, type up press releases and design pages.

The idea of being traded to a radio station has potential.

The only other media nearby would be television stations, but the nearest ones are in Green Bay. The expense for the commute would go up, but television reporters make a lot more money than those in the newspaper industry. However, trades are usually on an even scale, so for my newspaper to get one television journalist, it would have to trade several newspaper journalists to make it even.

Not a good option, if you ask me.

When you factor in that I’d have to get used to speaking in front of a camera—not my strongest suit—and learning how to edit video, it seems like switching to television might not be the best fit for me. Besides, I think my appearance would be more suitable for radio.

Maybe if I were traded with a book editor, getting out of the journalism game entirely. I could spend all day looking over manuscripts and helping writers to find their way into the world. That could be fun.

I’m still not sure I would ever want to be “traded,” but the idea definitely has some perverse potential. I’m sure most of us have had days when we wish that someone would pluck us from our miserable jobs and put us somewhere else. Granted, most jobs wouldn’t bring us millions of dollars like football and basketball players, but the idea definitely has intrigue.