Digital First Media laying off at least 24 journalists

Not too many people over age 40 in that picture either.

 

Why would there be, if it was a digital initiative?

 

Mooning would have been appropriate because, after all, John Paton is an emperor without clothes. Too bad nobody's told him.

BTW, I left JRC a little over a month ago...

 

People over 40 are incapable of working on digital initiatives?

BTW, Wolv, er, congrats?

 

Not incapable. But on the whole, not as adept in the digital world as people under 40 are.

You said there were "not too many." There are some, though. (I know a few of those people and I know they're over 40.) That's about the ratio you'd expect.

They had a lot of problems, but hiring young people wasn't one of them.

 

Hey, I'm over 40 and I'm embracing digital. Almost have no choice these days.

 

Baron - Yes, it was a good thing, thanks. I was able to leave on my own accord for a government PR job where I'm not expected to work unpaid overtime and I only normally work five days a week, not six or seven. I even got to take comp time yesterday for working at an event last weekend. Imagine that.

At my JRC job, I worked 40-plus in the office during the week, covered evening meetings and weekend community events and had to write on Sundays to hit the Monday deadline. Comp time? Yeah, right. Overtime? The once I asked for it last summer after working 84 hours in one week (I was covering for a co-worker on vacation and there was a double homicide on my beat), I was written up. It's kind of tough to plan for things like that, especially when timesheets had to be turned in mid-week.

 

Writing someone up seems to be a widespread JRC practice, which I find funny. What's it really going to do? Chance are, the person being written up is already at the point they don't plan on staying -- let alone in the chain.

Also, I wonder if the under-40 topic has more to do with younger is cheaper than digital knowledge.

 

1) They're trying to establish a case for cause when they get around to firing the older journalist, in case an age discrimination suit or any other kind of legal action is brought. They would contend that WolvEagle was 'insubordinate' by working OT without prior approval. Of course, if when the crisis situation precipitated by JRC's staff-slashing blew up, he had said, 'fuck it, my 40 hours are up, I'm going home,' he'd have been written up for failure to properly cover the beats. Either way he's got another shitstain in his disciplinary/performance file.

2) Of course it has everything to do with getting rid of older employees for cheaper younger ones. This is JRC.

 

During my 6 months in charge I allowed OT often without giving the person shit. Many times I asked someone if they wanted OT and if they said yes and it was a 3-4 hour assignment I'd just put them down for 10. What I found is that people will work a little harder for, you know, cash money.

 

You'd be lucky if you lasted 6 days, much less 6 months, 'in charge' at any JRC joint if you routinely approved 10-hour chunks of OT at a time.

Not to mention you'd be dragged into "Somebody's Office" (most likely, whoever signed YOUR paychecks), and you would be told you were going to explain in complete detail what these goddamn 10-hour OT chunks were all about, and the very second you mentioned something along the lines of, "if they said yes and it was a 3-4 hour assignment I'd just put them down for 10," you'd be fired right then and there and walked out of the office on the spot.

Now if somehow you got it all backwards and you were saying you were bulldozing the workers into doing 10 hours of OT work and then putting in for 3-4, now THAT would be all hunky-dory.

But the minute you walked into the office and said, "I allowed OT often without giving the person shit," they would straighten your ass out in a big hurry, believe you me.

Your job was not to allow OT without giving the employees shit, it was to piss and moan and pitch a bitch and hoot and holler and stomp and stamp your feet and kick file cabinets until they thought you were going to have a stroke -- and then do the same thing 2 weeks later if some big story went uncovered due to short staffing.

 

Actually, the best thing for him to do is leave after 40. They write him up for "failure to properly cover his beat", his lawyer, if he's good, would have a field day with that.

I work 5 days. Want me to work 6 after I've already worked a full five? Pay me. This is business.

Glad to hear things worked out for you, Wolv.