Gannett announces furloughs

When did the prevailing attitude in newsrooms change to a 9-to-5, Monday through Friday mentality?

 

This is the disgraceful stuff that I like to post about. Why? Cause we need to let the suits know we know how disgraceful they are. And that we know and have always known about their being so despicable. Why do we do it and take it? Various reasons but mainly, newspaper writing in in one's blood, so much so reporters accept these deplorable conditions. And now the final insult. The suits are using this as an excuse to raid sports staffs because "no sports are going on." Oh well, at least the suits are close to bleeding the final cents out of the properties. Business will be dead soon.

 

Not 9 to 5 Monday through Friday necessarily but certainly it's 40 hours total for news writers and limitless for sports writers with no overtime allowed.

 

I worked in 4 chains and was a manager in the 3 big chains, flagship metros each time.
I heard plenty of Big G horror stories before landing at one, but I never really experienced them. Again, maybe because I was at the bigger papers. I'm not defending any of the chains, and I've always thought annual reviews were useless, but I was never told there was a cap on reviews. At Gannett, specifically, there was no wink, wink implication to do so, either. The 4s were earned and 5s were rare, sure, but I handed out and explained both.
I did have an instance where a Big G ME wondered why one of my beat reporters hadn't written in a while. I answered that with a spreadsheet showing how, in 8 months, the reporter wrote more stories than every other non-cops reporter had the previous 12 months. In sports, we go hard when it's go-time, and barring breaking news, I typically had the support to take care of those reporters during the offseason. We don't do 40 hours a week, 48 or 49 weeks a year. Some weeks were 60. Some stretches were 12 consecutive days. Some offseason work weeks were 20. Some offseason work weeks were 3, but even those weeks, those reporters knew they are on call. It's never perfect, but we tried to make it work.

 

Most newsrooms treat Election Night as some sort of heroic feat. Late night! Crazy deadlines! Pizza for all!

Sports departments, of course, do that every night. (Or did, in the pre-pandemic era.)

 

I figured journalism - at least newspapers, was kind of like a grad school for life. You're exposed to a lot in a short period of time, good way to figure out what you want to do with the rest of your life etc. Interesting idea about farming - what about a volunteer fire department? We've already seen the ethics of the business thrown into the can due to financial constraints, Have a small staff to edit and handle "the big stuff" and the uncomfortable stuff (like the pros who work a volunteer FD) but supplement that with people writing about local businesses, local sports, features and the local arts scene. Meke it a non-profit with a board and an executive director/editor (who is paid).

 

Bail Out Journalists. Let Newspaper Chains Die.

 

As someone who has been involved in both, this is a notion that really needs to die.

 

Totally agree. I've been on the desk for both and I've been out late writing for both. It's part of the job. You don't see sanitation workers celebrating every time they head off to the dump when the hopper is full.

 

Woody, in all due respect, if your view is that election night is like every night in a sports department, your view is deeply silly.

 

I wouldn't say every night, so let me back up. But there are plenty of nights a year, at least in the old days, where sports departments I've worked in were parsing far more information into a section than the news department was on the biggest of election nights.

Forty HSFB game box scores, twenty HSFB gamers, plus anything else that was happening, for example.

 

Even before the pandemic hit, earlier deadlines and slashed staffs have meant less "deadline" stories and coverage for both news AND sports.

I guarantee the majority of print editions won't have final election results in the Wednesday, Nov. 4, paper this fall. Local, state or national. At best, someone in the newsroom will stick around late to post them online. More likely, readers will just go to their county clerk's web site to find them.