Secret Rules

As screwed up as a journo’s can life be (schedule, job security, taking work home with you, etc.) I can hardly believe that a relationship with two reporters can possibly work.

 

I have seen many journalists pair up over the years (after all, with the hours we work, where else are you going to meet someone?), and the only couples that stayed together for the long run were those where one or both got out of the business.

 

This is exactly why it works — you work opposite schedules and never see each other. One covers education, the other covers cops at night.

On the same shift and seeing each other on the regular at the office? I’d prefer to be stabbed with cocktail forks.

 

I was friends with my 1st paper's bicycle, she was in sales but devoured every newby that came into the office ... including my friends from the TV station that I had come from.
My 3rd paper didn't have an employee that was like that, but we were next to a bar and they was one that was a "friend of the paper" and she made sure she "drove someone home" pretty much every night.

 

She was a little broken inside from a divorce, but young enough to turn it around. We all were.

Still, not the kind you bring home to mother.

 

Don't tempt and then challenge a journalist who's on 24/7/365 to dive into the details.

 

A corollary to this is "don't eat where you shit."

 

I got another one:

It's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.

 

I think that is most college newspaper offices. If it was anything like mine, you spend an awful lot of time together, sometimes late at night. That creates quite a bit of opportunity and college students do not think about issues workplace relationships and hookups can create.

I remember quite a bit of drama from my college paper. One rather attractive co-worker I was friends with was dating one of the other editors. Being an idiot, he asked how she would feel about him also dating one of the photographers. She responded by asking how he would feel about her dating me. Somehow I managed to get dragged into the office bullshit without even getting to enjoy the fun part!

There was only one marriage from that staff, though they swear they didn't get together until a few years after college. They are still going strong after about 20 years of marriage.

Of course, I also saw plenty of that sort of thing in newsrooms where I worked after college, too, but not all of it was funny. One editor I worked with was married to a woman on the staff. While she was on maternity leave, and likely before that, he was screwing another woman in the office. That wasn't enough for him, so he sexually harassed an intern, though I didn't find that last bit out until much later.

 

At my first gig, there were at least three married couples I could remember and three more couples that would get married. I wouldn’t say it was encouraged, but with a lot of people coming straight out of college or at least under age 25, management basically took that office romance happened and just rolled with it. I jumped to a mid-sized daily after that and there were strict no fraternizing rules in place. We chased the single television reporters instead.