Birmingham, Mobile and Huntsville to publish three days a week

Thanks for the insight. That's a lot of work for an HR department to do, because they are advertising for quite a few positions.

 

A thought on the tangent of bonuses, I would have loved to have a "most clicks" bonus when I was a crime reporter. Always, always, always beat out other news stories, features and sports. I could have made a killing.

 

As SixToe explained earlier, those numbers are always going to trend to the more sensationalistic.

 

Is it known how much lower the salaries of the new hires will be?

 

Probably way lower.

 

I'm bumping this in hopes of gleaning a little information ...

After a year of applying for jobs out of journalism and not even scoring an interview, I've got a phone interview for a GA news reporting job at the Huntsville division of Alabama Media Group, formerly known as The Huntsville Times.

I've read up on this thread, but is there any new information out there? I have a list of questions for the interview, of course, and I'd like to be a bit more prepared in regard to the situation. I've read that the HT building was sold as the paper is now printed in B'ham. Will there be an office at all? Would I be expected to buy a laptop and smartphone and work from home and the field at all times? What kind of pay and benefits could I expect?

I understand a lot is still up in the air, but is there any news?

 

Congrats on the interview. Hopefully, you will get a good offer and things will work out for you.

 

Based on several people I know who have applied for jobs there, you'll likely be talking to a recruiter in your initial phone interviewer, not an actual person at AL.com. The first interview is more of a "screening" inventory than a job interview. Depending on which recruiter you talk to, he/she will be somewhere between mildly informed and utterly clueless about AL.com.

 

That's cause they don't care. They simply don't care what the peons think. They'll probably be outsourcing all the reporting work soon anyway. If there's any money to be made at all in covering local sports, Buffett should be starting papers in all these cities that are giving up. The Internet model will never make money.

 

Doesn't matter. Just got an email that the job was filled internally. That's the second interview that's been rescinded (I think I spelled that right) in the past two weeks. I sure know how to pick 'em.

 

You'll be better off not going there anyway.

 

Sounds like the total demise of newspapers has begun. So far a handful of papers have cut to 3-4 days a week. Think Gannette or Knight-Ritter (I won't spell those chains' names correctly as a form of protest against the scumbag management of those industry killers) will follow suit soon with their entire chain? It's obvious the newspaper higher-ups want to go all online and this is a prime opportunity for those 2 piece of shit chains to cut their print production to 3-4 days a week. Once they go all online they can cut staffs another 60 percent I'd say.

Interesting how the demise of the print product will affect coverage of high schools and small colleges. High schools traditionally get very few page views and small colleges get next to no page views. So there will be a big void here. Those teams just won't get covered. No reason to cover high schools and small colleges if they aren't getting page views. Might be a market for small twice a week magazines with advertisers in small towns supporting these publications since newspapers won't be around.