Your newsroom atmosphere

My fellow writer and I are good friends but the SE is always selling us out to the boss.

 

Who knows? I've spent maybe 20 hours in the office the last month. I've never been introduced to more than half the people who currently work in my newsroom.

 

My department gets along very well. Hell, I get along with the news desk, too.

 

My new experiment is to brown nose....a smudge. Everyone likes compliments, I figure.

It seems to be have been taken graciously, and I've been trying my best to be sincere. I really dunno what else to do with these people.

They seem to act like they're a family at times, a family I'm not a part of for whatever reason.
Truth be told I don't give a hoot, but I do enjoy talking to my co-workers and hearing from them. It makes the time go by quicker and makes you feel like you aren't sludging along by yourself.

 

First newsroom I worked in was ideal. Brainy, hard-working, loyal folks who were professional without being uptight. I miss that job sometimes.

Second newsroom was like a morgue or a bank. Silent and repressed. Freaked me out. Pretty much the main reason I left that job in a hurry. What's the point in doing this if you're not having fun?

Third newsroom, well, most of the people there weren't very sharp, so there wasn't the intellectual edginess that you'd expect in a newsroom. But, they were fairly nice.

Fourth newsroom, cliquish as a freakin' high school theatre department. Fortunately, I was accepted by the clique-masters, but I shuddered to think what my life had been like had I not been allowed into the inner sanctum. The editor tried, sproadically, to do something about the poisonous environment, but without success. Really, there are limits to a supervisor's power to change the world. Only by firing the ringleaders and replacing them with nice people could that situation have been solved. Not even the best boss can undouchify a douche.

Current job, great.

 

Most of us get along great. In sports, everyone gets along great except the SE. We go out for lunch every once in a while, get drinks and generally have a fine time putting out the best product we can. Of course, the SE is a bitter, lazy, error-prone old man who does virtually no work and seems to enjoy ripping into us for mistakes both real and perceived.

As for the newsroom as a whole, we're cordial but not really friends. I don't think most people hang out at all outside work. But while we're there, we're chit-chatty and get along fine and there are no cliques, although it's a fairly small newsroom (25 people or so, including reporters who aren't always around) so there's not a lot of people to develop cliques around. Not the friendliest newsroom I've been around, but I could certainly imagine worse (and from reading this thread, I'm sure worse exist).

 

Clubby --- kind of a skull & bones atmospheres.

Lot's of talk of sailing and cognac.

 

The current place is collegial to a point. The night crew on both desks gets along great. There is a core group that heads out after deadline on weekends, which is nice, the shared experience of an accelerated social life.

The last place... I was an outsider from Day One and no one extended any kind of a welcoming embrace to me. By the time I'd been there nine months all the news-siders I'd gotten along with were gone. I got along great with the other sports deskie; we're still very good friends. But that place overall had to be one of the most depressing newsrooms in the country, very much us (sports or newsroom) vs. them (news or management). No one was interested in talking shop or trashing management, ever.

 

My shop's atmosphere sometimes depends on whether the publisher and CEO are in or not. When they're in, they often cause drama/trouble and almost always get in my way.

When they're not in, it's much more relaxed, even on our production day. Of course, the fact I'm considered the office comedian helps in that regard.

 

Same situation here. But I've only been at the paper a couple of months.