Copy editor, New Jersey

Trentonian management has allowed the paper to sink below mediocrity. When you have a copy editor trying to crank out six, seven, eight pages a night, with hardly time to relieve himself, how can you expect excellence? There isn't time to think up clever headlines, or layout pages creatively ... not when you use the first hour of your shift cleaning up horse racing agate or spend a half-hour correcting the spelling and grammatical mistakes of some of the beat writers, local knowledge be damned. And then on top of it all, the copy editor's feet are held to the fire when mistakes are made ... but as the clock strikes midnight, most of the copy editors are so worn down that mistakes are bound to slip through. The mediocrity of the Trentonian rests squarely upon the shoulders of management, despite what Aaronking writes.

 

I knew it! He might as well just admit it. No one is fooled any more Aaronking.

 

Erin is very much the issue here, Lapdog. The fact is that veterans in the Sports department could tolerate Uncle Bob's micromanagement and Murray's idiocy long before he showed up. Erin is hardly "powerless" to do anything to change his situation. Instead of contentedly waving buh-bye to his staff, he should be trying to keep them. He singlehandedly has pushed these employees out, and is quite pleased with his efforts. I can't wait to find out where Erin wants to work after Uncle Bob tires of him and seeks a younger boy with a firmer ass and more submissive disposition -- one who won't ask for a different pillow to bite on. Whatever connections I have in this biz I will make it my duty to badmouth him to the hilt any time he comes a-knockin' for an interview and alert the people he's dicked and let them contribute their two cents to his would-be prospective employer.

 

lapdog, you're right on about a lot re: JRC, but you're wrong when you say "nobody" from any JRC papers wins any legit awards. the new haven register has won several top 10 and honorable mention section awards from the apse in the past three or four years. there's a sports columnist at the morning journal in lorain, ohio, who has finished in the top 10 in apse under 40K in each of the last two years. and the daily local news in west chester, pa., has won three top 10 apse under 40K writing awards in the past two years. of course these are exceptions to the rule.

 

haha, nice one Sok. I might have come across far too bitter. The reality is that I couldn't care less. Guess I just hate seeing anyone getting ripped so badly by people who have no right to do the ripping. We're honestly not talking about some major paper. It's been the second paper in a small city for years. Hard to see it as anything but people clinging to imagined "glory days." Sometimes you have to tear it down to build it back up. That's no slight tothe people who are gone. But if the talent was there, the section wouldn't be where it is today. As a hiring editor, I could care less where their section stands after 3 months. Show me where you are after a year and I'll make a legit appraisal of where you stand.

 

no, even those of us who've never worked for jrc hates those pricks for bastardizing the biz and its people.

 

The talent was there. It was just being used to add up boxscores, bold and center horse racing agate, and answer phonecalls from Little League mothers.

 

thanks for stopping by aron. looks like the villagers are turning on you ... boy king.

 

Well I do have a right to rip The Trentonian and JRC being as I was an employee there for two years. Why am I gone you ask? Because I accidentally left a hockey score wrong, instead of the box saying like Flames 3, Sharks 2, It said Flames 3, Flames 2. Mind you this was in 6pt type, if it was even that big. No write up, no warning, nothing just you're fired after working there two years, not that I never made mistakes before that, I'm sure I did, but that one got through. I've heard tales about how that publisher was holding a grudge with me too. That was news to me. I also found it pretty childish that he would do that. I mean it's one thing to be upset over some past indiscretion and call someone out on it, it something else to find a mistake, not tell anyone about it, and just sit and wait, for a year, for that person to f up again. I had also found out the day I was fired that I was up for the ASE position. I'd seen people written up for much worse, but because hockey is Jellydicks passion there was no excuse. It's all water under the bridge. I'm now the managing editor for a group of weeklies in South Jerz, covering Haddonfield, Voorhees, Moorestown, Cherry Hill and Marlton. It's a sweet gig, and one I probably wouldn't have got had I not been fired, so it all worked out. As for a year from now, well I already know that I'm getting a raise, which is light years better than Trenton. The size of it depends on how valuable they think I am and my review. No matter how things go I should get at least 2-3%, if they think I'm worth more it will be more.

Back on the topic of the Trentonian and JRC, they don't have the rep they have for nothing. Aaroking makes it sound like all this bashing is just disgruntled past and current employees and that JRC is some how beyond reproach. They aren't, I mean when stock goes public at $20 a share and then less than a year later it's down to like 8, then 7 now its hovering around 5.50 obviously there's more wrong than just the Michigan Cluster. And I would say, from experience, that management is the problem. I mean when you pull beat writers off their beats to paginate, then two days later yell because those beats weren't covered by someone ... should that make me happy to be an employee of that place? When the Publisher, as I've heard, is more interested in cutting salaries so he can come in under budget and get his under budget bonus, should I be thrilled and motivated to want to make the place better? Because no matter what I do it's just going to get stymied from the top. No thanks. If you think JRC is such a great place to work, then stay there, the life will be drained out of you in less than a year.

 

Sok, sorry about my last post, it wasn't directed at you, and I guess I should have known I couldn't try to talk about the section and paper itself, without being insensitive toward the people who work/worked there since they're so intertwined. It just strikes me that for all the venom toward one person (one of what? 25 SEs in the last decade), who is just the flavor of the month. Clearly none of the past 24 did anything to make the section better either, but (correct me if I'm wrong because I've never stepped foot in that newsroom) they coddled the staff and this one isn't making friends because he's not joining in the "woe is we, we work for JRC" stuff. I'm not sticking up for JRC at all, they are a despicible company by all accounts. But they're in business and can make decisions on how they treat their people, their product and it's no secret to anyone. We all make decisions in life and if someone decides to work there, then they either knew what they were getting into.

I just think this comes down to the fact I don't think anyone's ever taken over what they see as a total mess and didn't see even worse times before they start to get better. The whole idea you have to hit bottom before rising again. Chances are Bracy doesn't have the plan to dig out of this horrible mess, and it's not like he's got a resume of rebuilding a section like it appears he's trying to do here. But for the same reason everyone ripped him for taking the job is the reason they couldn't get somone with a stacked resume. Obviously it's miserable during the process, but only time will tell if it works out for the best. My guess? JRC will never provide the support needed to really turn that paper into something worth reading. But at least I give credit to someone who is trying. If nothing else it seems like an exciting challenge and would be a hell of a feather in the cap to take that section from a 2 on the 1-10 scale to get it to a 6. My hunch is it can't happen, due to the powers that be.

 

The staff was never "coddled." It was treated like crap by management: Four cent raises while the publisher got a fat bonus every year; a crummy pension (which, by the way, they pretend to have no knowledge of any more) while upper management has nice 401K plans, etc. Not to mention the verbal abuse dished out by the publisher.

 

Aaronking:
The problem with your post is it is both totally devoid of facts and moronic.

In fact, I believe someone with talent could singlehandedly take over the section and make something of it. You are talking about a paper that is smack dab in the middle of the greatest professional sports markets in the country -- you've got 13 major league teams that people care about and 2 minor league franchises in town.

It's a tabloid and there will never be a day when you won't have an interesting story coming out of one of those teams, and I haven't even mentioned Rutgers, the other local colleges or the high schools.

One lone talented SE or ASE would make a dramatic impact. You haven't seen any impact whatsoever (except for crappy columns) because there isn't a talented SE or ASE in the building.