Beware, Trentonian offering jobs that don't exist

Bedwetter, I am sorry to nit-pick, but two part-time obit clerks weren't fired ... one of them was an obit, one was the Back Talk clerk who has been at the paper for over 20 years. Funny that JRC should want to eliminate people to whom they a.) don't pay much money and b.) don't offer any benefits. Those are the type of employees that are right up JRC's alley! Now the full-time obit clerk has to do the Back Talk work, plus her additional duties with the lame "Go" section that runs each week. Tsk, tsk ... so sad to see JRC trying to make up for that crushing $700 million debt by eliminating nickel-and-dime positions.

 

They fired ed note or just one of the people that gets to pick which calls ed note responds to?
(for those that don't get the joy of reading the Trentonian, BackTalk is a small section of phoned in "letters to the editor" type things (complaints about something going on in the area, praise for someone that did something nice, etc.) and each thing has a smart-ass response from ed note (as in editor's note, not someone named Ed Note))

 

Ed Note is Jeff Edelstein.

 

The original Ed Note from back in the late 1980s and early 1990s quit almost 10 years ago. As of late 2006, there were a few people who wrote the Ed Note responses. The person PHINJ named is only one of those few people and he is not the main person who handles that assignment.

I haven't verified Sinking Ship's information about the termination of the Backtalk clerk. But that person's duties included listening to hours of Backtalk tape and then typing those phone messages from readers. That is the real work behind the Ed Note column. The people who create Ed Note's responses only spend a few minutes performing that task.

 

Reasons To Not Work For JRC​

Reason No. 9: A sports section reporter traveled to cover an event 200 miles away. JRC management was angry with the reporter because of a story featured in a nearby newspaper that did not appear in the JRC paper that same day. The reporter was in the pressbox in the middle of covering this event when the sports editor phoned him. The sports editor told him that he had been ordered by JRC management to revoke the reporter's "privilege" of covering the event and that the reporter was to return to the newspaper. The reporter made sure that JRC was aware that a hotel room, food expenses and the mileage to and from the event would still need to be paid and that he had already worked a certain number of hours covering the event. It did not matter. JRC decided to pay for a hotel room, pay for 400 miles of travel, pay for food expenses and pay for a few hours of the reporter's work just to get the pleasure of humiliating the reporter by making him pack up his belongings in the middle of the event and leave the pressbox. Later when the reporter learned the reason behind the incident, the reporter showed JRC management that three days earlier he had written an article with the same information that appeared in the rival newspaper. He beat the competition and was still punished by his own company. Translation: While sipping on a Pineapple Sunshine at the Blue Oyster Bar, Bob overheard his "friend" Ramon giggling about the article that appeared in the nearby newspaper. Bob was enraged that the nearby newspaper had turned Ramon all tingly while his own JRC publication was nowhere to be seen. Bob ordered that the reporter be punished for ruining his Blue Oyster rendevous with Ramon.

 

You leave Ramón out of this.

 

This might be my favorite thread on this site ever.

 

First off, this thread is comedy at its finest. I have twice read the highlights to others over the phone.

But I have a serious inquiry.

I am fresh out of college, and have spent less than two years in the journalism industry. I thought it was bad at my paper (we have rehired only five people out of 12 who have quit or been fired), not to mention that all of our computers are straight out of 1991. I can't search for anything on Yahoo! without crashing my Web browser. Our machines that print our negatives aren't even made anymore, so when something breaks, we have to wait forever for new parts.

After reading this thread about JRC papers, I'm wondering if I've made a horrible career choice. Is this what I should expect from my employers for the rest of my life? I am not someone who will take unjust bitching lying down. There is a mordant, recalcitrant tone to most of my remarks, even to the highest management-types. And if that doesn't get the point across, I can always cut the back of his hamstring. That way, when he goes back, when his weight displacement goes back, he'll push everything off to the right. He'll quit the game.

I like journalism and I like my job, but it's still early enough for me to get out if I should so choose. Any thoughts?

 

Reasons To Not Work For JRC​

Reason No. 10: An assistant sports section editor was fired because he proofed a page-proof that featured high school ice hockey. There was a high school ice hockey tournament game being played that day and Bob was livid that the high school ice hockey page did not include a preview capsule of that game. Translation: Bob and his "friend" Ramon like to play footsy while reading aloud the names of teen-aged boys who play high school ice hockey. Footsy was ruined because of the missing preview capsule.

This next part comes from a personal message that made me smile. I do not consider it to be a reason to not work for JRC but is worth noting nonetheless. Here is the personal message: "The publisher at the Trentonian gets a bonus based on how much less than the budget the paper spends each year. The less money spent, the bigger the bonus. Within the last year, the publisher's secretary resigned to take a job for a different company. Instead of finding a new secretary, this genius decides to eliminate the position entirely. While it is pathetic, it is hilarious to see the publisher of a daily newspaper jumping up from his desk and running to his secretary's old office to answer the phone."

 

Internal e-mail from Matt DeRienzo to various JRC editors this week indicates that stringer budgets must be further slashed, and that the abundance of frozen reporter positions is not justification to spend money on stringers.

"We are holding back these positions to save money," he wrote, (NO SHIT SHERLOCK!) and to spend that money elsewhere is completely unacceptable.

While this "frozen position" phenomenon is an industry-wide issue, it's un-freaking believable for a corporate suit to actually come out and admit it - in black and white no less.

 

It really amazes me how, at age 28, Matt DeRienzo has the wisdom of Solomon.