Burnout in journalism

The bolded part works to a certain extent. I'm a copy editor/paginator who on works everything from sports to news to entire weekly papers during my shifts, and I'd say I miss our deadline 60 to 80 percent of the time (granted, only by 10-30 minutes). We have less people doing the job and last year, amid the chaos of the pandemic, downgraded our computer system and equipment to save money.

It's like asking someone to make a 300-mile road trip in five hours, but taking away their motorcycle and giving them a bicycle and expecting the same five-hour trip. This is exactly the analogy I gave my boss, and he understands (his computer system stinks, too).

What leads to burnout IMHO is remembering the quality work you used to be able to do, and the stronger relationships you used to have with your coworkers. Those two things could (somewhat) make up for the lack of pay and lousy hours you worked. Now they're gone.

 

Respectfully disagree. On a major sports beat, there is no down time. The game might start at 7 p.m., but if there is news at 9 a.m. -- even a rumor! -- you are expected to check it out and report immediately. If you're off Twitter from, say, 10 a.m. to noon and something happens -- or might happen! -- you're in trouble. And we haven't started with the actual game coverage -- tweets, pregame blogs, live blogs, running game story, updated game story, analysis or sidebar for the AM web story. Used to be that two people that would have split that workload, but staff cuts (Hi Alden!) mean it's all you. Might be midnight. Start all over the next day.

 

By "top line" I meant, you know, the EIC of Wired, and other such top of the industry jobs.

On a major sports beat, there is indeed no down time. I'm not sure how many of them are quitting from burnout.

 

There are other ways to pay the rent, ya know?

 

The huge workload and low pay coupled with newspapers' refusal to completely scrap the print product while fully embracing the 24/7 aspect of the Internet site just makes the whole ordeal very difficult for a content producer. The content producer winds up working 60 to 70 hours a week with absolutely no time to relax.
The fact most readers of this forum, most certainly the suits, are likely now shaking their heads while saying, "You are lucky to have a job," is what keeps staffs full until individuals finally get laid off or accept buyouts. It's not a worker friendly profession. I can see why you thoroughly enjoyed working for the post office.

 

And add to all that the fact there is still a print product. Chances are that print product deadline (tends to be much earlier than five years ago) will mess with your routine greatly. Routine? Who am I kidding. It's working 24/7 seven days a week.

 

And be extremely active on Twitter so you can:

1. Get as many followers as you can so, when shit hit the fans, you can leave whatever digital publication you're on and move to Substack

2. Pollute the space with your unsolicited hot take.

 

3. Work for The Athletic

 

I always like the hot takes from the previous generations. “In my day we didn’t have people leaving for burnout!”

In your day people routinely keeled over at their desk or the assembly line at 53 and the company barely paused long enough to wheel the corpse out before plugging in a replacement.

 

That's a good point. It is.

I just...I just think we're seeing people with incredible stature and decision-making power claiming hardships once meant for, you know, the assembly line. We see this with celebrities, too, in the last 15 years or so. Used to be you wanted to be famous and make a lot of money, OK, go make the movies or albums people to enjoy. It comes at a cost, a hell of a cost, but you kinda went into those experiences with a level gaze.

Now semi-famous people make that wad and appropriate every lousy experience the riff-raff of the world have from the comfort of their own high-ceilinged living room. It feels a little odd.

 

I corrected my post to insert a crucial “or” that I fat fingered away and that altered my meaning in a way I didn’t intend.

One of the good lasting changes to (hopefully, God willing) come from this pandemic was for people to stop trying to power through “just a cold” or “a little under the weather” and wind up infecting the whole office instead.

I think it would be good for what seem like small cracks in mental well being to get attended to the same way. I get that it isn’t an option for everybody, especially financially, but I would like to see sabbaticals become an expected thing beyond pastors and college professors.

And burnout isn’t always just about work alone. Usually it is about work plus family drama plus health concerns plus personal mental trauma. Maybe you can take on a couple of those extreme challenges if everything else is firing on all cylinders, but if the combination gets to be too much it is much harder to quit your family and impossible to quit your body/mind. So what’s left?

Burnout isn’t a prize to be earned through the proper amount or kind of suffering. And even the most online people only give a pinhole-sized look into themselves via social media.

 

My thoughts can be summed up thusly: the job will not love you back.