Overtime pay

It's the work of getting the information that is routine for the reporter. Getting quotes is a routine part of the job.

A beat writer, on a daily basis, is gathering information, which doesn't just include stats or facts. Quotes are information. The gathering of information does not satisfy the creative component.

 

I have been working under the impression that to be a salaried reporter meant that you self-assigned what you did and when you did it.

The paper could give you give an overall coverage emphasis but couldn't require office hours, days worked or even send story assignments.

I think that the paper can set things like byline counts and social media work as long as those applied newspaper or company wide.

 

I think you are completely misreading the Department of Labor guidelines and the relevant case law. The presumption is that a journalist is a creative professional. The exceptions that the courts have found seem quite extreme, just writing up public meetings or doing five articles a day at the direction of the Chinese News Daily editors. Going out and getting quotes and deciding which quotes to use is professional discretion. Again, it is not that the process is routine, it is whether the information is routine, such as a public meetings or press releases.

 

Journalists do not fall into just one category, which is what the regulations say. There are different types of journalists. Reporters, copy editors, columnists, artists, editors. Some fall under creative professionals, such as investigative reporters, because they are routinely doing creative work, which is investigating. Mere reporting is not enough. There must be an extra component, which is the investigating. And it must be their primary duty, not just something done on occasion.

 

I don't know where you are getting "investigative" work as the relevant factor. The bar is much lower. Pursuant to the case law and the Labor guidelines, a beat reporter would be a creative professional, I think.

 

It was in the link to the actual China Daily case that I posted. "Investigative" was one example. Editorial writers are another. The primary product produced by the journalist must be require extra thought and creativity beyond what is normal reporting.

 

Where I worked, reporters were hourly and could receive OT. Columnists and "senior reporters" were salaried and could not.

Copy editors, designers, clerks could get OT.

Supervisors could not.

 

It was one of many factors. Read the Sherwood case. At various times he covered beats and was not an investigative reporter. Compare Sherwood to the China Daily case where the reporters wrote"standard recounts of public information [created] by gathering facts on routine community events." All of the cases decided in favor of the writer involve the simplest of reporting that requires no particular skill.

 

It can "be expected" all they want. They're still breaking the law.

 

And you're breaking the law any time someone goes a mile over the speed limit. Should we call the cops on them too?

 

Sherwood also was making $67K in 1989, his final year at the Post, which was above a threshold that had been negotiated by the union. Also, editors testified that reporters, not them, came up with most story ideas. Meaning that reporters had creative control over the work they were doing. Editors also did not dictate how stories were written.

SHERWOOD v. WASHINGTON POST | Leagle.com

 

Are you looking for ways to be taken advantage of and trying to rationalize why you should have money that is legally yours kept from you?