Yahoo Sports "in chaos"

I'm a writer who works away from the office. My editors are 3,000 miles.

I think it's a good arrangement, and a necessary one for the nature of my job, but sometimes I miss those old days when I was a prep writer and me and the other prep writers would all be in the same office, with real desks. We'd go out to lunch together and go drinking after football Friday nights.

Of course, they wouldn't let me work in my pajamas.

 

I'll admit it. My sole purpose was to drive you to drink. I hope you didn't become an alcoholic because of me

 

I was a lot happier in my previous job because I spent time after work at the bar with my co-workers. We would do that three or four times a week, and I think it really strengthened the relationships on the job because we genuinely liked one another. At my current job, no one goes out after work; everyone heads home. I think that lack of camaraderie outside work is what makes my current job feel like it's just a job.

 

Nice! Hope all is well in Fanhouse land my friend.

 

Hey, Holder...enough of the camaraderie...get back to work!

 

We do the same thing, and it drives me nuts. I've broached the topic a number of times and all I get told is, "that's how we do things around here."

 

If I don't get up and walk over a few steps to have a conversation with somebody a few times, but the end of the night I've got butt-rot.
A lot of our staff is able to work from home now. I think I prefer to go to the office.

 

I think if you have a single drop-dead deadline at 11 p.m., like the old days, and the news is distributed at well-defined increments (as in solely at your doorstep in the morning, or on the 10 o'clock news) it makes sense to have office presence from as much of the staff as possible for all the planning and staff chemistry that can help maximize that single product you put out.

But in this day in age, news moves all day and most work can be done from anywhere. We are extremely mobile in more ways than just mobility.

Ever send in a Quark page from a thousand miles away while you were on assignment for something else? It's done all the time and is a great solution for smaller staffs that have gone through cutbacks (a former SE of mine who was primarily a writer would send in the Sunday outdoors page from the road when he was covering a Saturday game. With Newseditpro, he had the ability to add up-to-date wire stories or staff-written stories to it whether he was at home or in Bangladesh, assuming internet availability).

Given all that, it would be insane to create a culture that ignores that empowerment -- especially when the staff cuts are coming anyway -- and values face time to a fault. We don't have to have all hands on deck at the office in order to produce the product -- thus our face time SHOULD be reduced. We have the ability to communicate from anywhere at anytime -- so we should not use face time as an excuse to not be out where the story is.

I always thought the business suffered for people in the business having to spend too much time in an office. It was bad for personal relationships (My wife loves the times when I can work in the living room when she's at home. That kind of thing can only help the sportswriter divorce rate). It was bad for the ability to gather news (remember having to rush back to the office to write with no quotes from an evening game?). It was bad for production (Frankly, I'd rather write at a noisy Starbucks than my desk at the office because of all the "camaraderie" that goes on in the office. Unless there is deadline pressure upon me that tends to block out all distractions, I find that I can write in an hour at a Starbucks what it will take me two hours or more to write at my desk).

Look, I'm all for the camaraderie and I think human interaction is important. But, as Moddy suggested, in many ways it's something that those in positions of leadership need to be creative about and should never force. Never get caught trying to get "your people together" while the other guy is out breaking news.

Edit to add: This is primarily written from a writer's point of view, but it's not strictly a writer thing. When you are cutting staff, having all this great technology allows even copy editors more scheduling flexibility -- with a program like the above-mentioned Newseditpro (I'm a huge fan, by the way) and others, copy can be edited from anywhere in real time. In other words, the moment the story is filed, a copy editor is just as easily able to open it at home as in the office. Newsedit has a chat function too, so anybody logged in can communicate with anybody. Again, I'm sure there are several other programs that allow the same thing, some probably better.

One other point: It's been a few years since I last used Newseditpro. By now, it's probably way outdated, maybe even quaint. Some of you are probably saying "Newsedit? Is this guy from the 90s or something?" But please understand, the places where I've worked since have had MUCH worse front end systems, so to me, it's still the gold standard.