Bill Conlin on the business

guess what? i agree with both sides. i wanted it more than anything, so i made the extra phone call, did the extra work, stayed in the newsroom until 3 a.m. trying to craft a crap story into something readable -- and eventually some people wanted to hire me. but when i first started? i was horrible. but i also came into the business in the mid-'80s, when papers were flush, hired people to write take-outs, blew out PAGES to run long stories, traveled everywhere. i'm talking about mid-level papers, not the ny times. i had room and time to fail and get better. there is no question in my mind that, if i were coming out of college today, i'd never be hired. times WERE different then; i look back now and think, holy shit, THAT was the golden age. yet....i went to speak to a college this fall and asked the kids in a journo class who wanted to work for newspapers. about 35 kids: i expected maybe three to throw up their hands, and the rest to say they wanted to work for TV or yahoo.com. instead? i'd say 28 threw their hands in the air. there are people out there who still want it. for christ's sake, i still want it. but there are no jobs. i can't remember the last time i heard of anyone in this business actually being hired. anyone?

 

Management tries to get employees for as little as possible in any business.

Janitors aren't especially well paid, and I don't think their love of mopping factors into that equation.

 

And newspapers have been worse than almost all professions in this regard.
It's going to get worse. There will be 8 dollar an hour citizen journalists covering sports for papers of all sizes in the near future. NO BENEFITS. Hire 'em.

 

The problem with that parallel is that most janitors did not go to college, let alone get degrees, in or for their line of work. They probably don't get into "maintenance engineering" because they plan it as "a career," or because they see it as having any kind of ladder to climb or there being any upward mobility to be had.

In most cases, people in that line of work are in it because they either don't, or think they don't, have any other options, and that they never will.

Just like some of us, god forbid, after doing/going through all that we have to avoid just such an outlook. That is the difference, and where the parallel breaks down.

Janitors rarely get, nor do they expect to get, any of what we get, or used to get, out of their jobs. We have had opportunities for what we sought -- what we worked for -- and now, we are having it taken away, devalued and changed in ways that are untenable, given industry standards and demands, and considering the standard of living and level of expectations that come with the work we've done.

However low that standard is, it is not, nor should it be, akin to being a janitor. That's our whole problem with what's going on in the business.

This has been a fantastic thread, though. By turns, depressing, inspiring, spirited and blunt, it has been entertaining, sobering and thought-provoking all at once.

Ah, discussion...a "sport" I love.

But if I didn't, I'd never tell, and you'd never know it, either by my words, or my work.

 

If you don't think the mission of management in any business is to keep costs as minimal as possible -- which includes workers with college degrees -- you're incredibly naive.

 

Well, I've been accused of that, on occasion, before.

Nevertheless, I do realize the mission of management, or of any purely-business businessman, for that matter. And my point about there being degrees of minimalism among different fields of business that should not be compared to each other still stands.

There are differences -- or, at least, there should be differences -- between journalism and janitorial work, for the legitimate reasons, and the differences in demands, perspectives and expectations cited previously.

But any relativity of the minimalism is being lost, making some of the changes going on in the business all the worse.

 

As bad as things are in the newspaper business, they aren't a whole lot better in the rest of the world.

We all tend to focus on our own neighborhood, which is understandable.

But I just saw a headline that one company -- Bank of America -- will eliminate 35,000 jobs over the next three years. The same story said that 220,506 jobs have been cut in the financial sector this year.

I'm guessing a lot of those people are heading to the sidewalk with college degrees and plenty of experience in their field. And since everyone is in a downsizing mode, where are they going to go?

It's not like we've cornered the market on suffering.

 

Recently I re-read parts of "The Rise and Fall of the Press Box" by Leonard Koppett and found pieces of this thread (and others) and an interesting chapter titled "Ethics and Responsibility."

Here he talks about the changes that occurred in the 1970s at newspapers where their increasing role as government watchdog caused them to look inward and question their own ethics. It's a great chapter, but I'll only use a section that begins with Koppett quoting Stanley Woodward of the Herald Tribune (from his 1948 book, "Sports Page") about changing the policy of allowing reporters to accept meals, travel and other things at the expense of the ball clubs they covered:

"When we changed policy and starting paying our own expenses, it made no difference to the writer. He went on as before, only now the ball club sent a bill to his office which the sports editor okayed and passed for payment.... Everything was the same except the bookkeeping. I can't say the departure had changed baseball writing an iota. It was always generally honest and critical. It has become neither more honest nor more critical. Long ago the ball clubs stopped trying to control the writers they transported."

What worried him was that the publisher would use the added expense of paying for road trips as an excuse to cut personnel and other coverage.

The point here is that the "integrity" of the writer depends entirely on the writer, unrelated to who pays the costs of meals, travel and hotels as long as it doesn't come out of the writer's pocket. All sports travel has always been the responsibility of the employer -- the paper -- whatever form it takes. Whether I hand in an expense account (for meals, incidentals, etc.) to my paper, or simply sign hotels tabs and accept the train or plane accommodations assigned to me and have the club bill the paper, it makes no difference to my relationship and attitudes. That doesn't mean some writer can't be a "house man" and curry favor with the club and players, or another can't be unreasonably hostile. But who's paying the bills has nothing to do with it. It's the individual's character that determines his behavior and what he chooses to write.

I am sure I don't need to explain why I put one of the grafs in bold.

It's been said before on this site, including by me, but the book is a great read that speaks to the heart of this and other threads and issues, and it's something worth adding to your wish list for Christmas.

 

But if they do it too well, sending jobs offshore or crushing wages to near-nothing, then their workers won't have any money in their pockets to go be some other business' customers. And that business' workers won't have money to come buy goods and services of the first boss' enterprise.

Just as in sports, sometimes you can make a deal that's too good in your favor. Management vis a vis labor has kind of done that in recent years.

 

A profession where very few succeed? I would be interested in reading how you define success when it comes to a career in journalism.

 

Define it however you want. Read these boards, they're filled with people who wonder why they can't get where they wanted to be, why they can't move up the ladder, get noticed, get a job, whatever.

 

OK. I know there are a lot of people hurting who post on these message boards, and justifiably so. I also know a lot of people, from men and women covering high schools to ones covering MLB, who consider their careers a success. But you wrote that very few succeed, and I was wondering what you meant by that.