Gannett announces furloughs

I am doing this off the top of my head but about 35% of the revenues of the combined companies last year was print advertising? I don't subscribe to a Gannett product and I am staying in my house so I don't know. How much print advertising is in a current Gannett paper?

This is not a rhetorical question. I would like to know if anyone cares to volunteer.

 

Holy shit, you could be me.

About 6 months before I was pushed, my mid-level fuckface of a boss called me in and said he wanted me "in the office more," even as my beat as 1 of a 2-person sports department had me working every weekend and 3 nights per week. I explained that my hours would be extremely high, and his response was, "No they won't, because we are going to cut way back on covering games. You can pick 1 game a week to cover."

I asked why, since the gamers were meeting all my metrics goals, I was among the top 3 performers in the entire newsroom and regularly broke huge news in a very competitive market.

His answer was, "Because we can. And I say so."

He is still in Gannett and at what was a decent mid-level property. If he was standing in front of me, on fire, I wouldn't waste spit on him to put it out.

 

You are my new idol. I love you (in a journalistic sense of course).

 

Something similar to this (and Woody Long's experience) happened to me at a TEGNA TV station (offshoot of Gannett). I'd never seen such a gross example of inner office politics in my career.

My boss was a garbage person and a corporate crony to boot. I told her I routinely got good feedback from others at work and within the company. Her response? 'But you know mine is all documented.'

 

Despicable. Managers should be ashamed when they do such despicable things. I know somebody who got a 3 for reliability. That person never missed a day of work for a full year and didn't take vacation that year. The gall of newspapers. Some people aren't taking vacation. They are not putting down overtime. For what? Just to have employment.

 

And at the same time, newssiders use ALL their sick days. What does the sports person get for being loyal, reporting to work when sick, etc: NOTHING. No raises, no praise, low grades. It's degrading and insulting. At least the sports editors know we know they are sellouts. Their ploys to devalue a person and break him/her do not work.

 

Those managers are part of the problem. You know in life you don't have to go along with corporate mandates when they make you lie. Just think how despicable a person has to be to put fake grades, lies, just so a CEO gets a new speedboat and vacation home every year.

 

You've mistaken loyalty for a complete lack of self-respect.

 

No, it's simply the newsroom culture at work. Sports writers work overtime. They do not get paid overtime. News writers work 40 or they get their overtime. The fact the sportswriters who are basically perfect employees for the most part get low grades by some sports editors afraid to rankle upper management, is disgraceful. I'm sure the sports editor could win a lawsuit if he was fired for giving accurate grades to reporters. And make no mistake about it. If the sports editor doesn't play along, he/she is gone by upper management.

 

I've worked both sports and news - I'm curious if others feel there is a bigger "team" ethic in sports than in news. Working sports, we always picked up the slack if it needed to be picked up. It wasn't so much for the company, but for each other and for those we covered - call it a sense of pride or whatever. I really didn't notice it as much in news where too often people had their own feifdoms, didn't lift a finger if there wasn't something in it for them. The editors always knew I'd never say no if asked to cover for someone who was out or come in early or stay late - it's also why I got along well with the copy desk which operated under the same "team structure" as sports.

 

At least when I started in sports, it helped that there was kind of a 'limit' or a sort of weekly routine, an ebb and flow, to things. Like, sports can be oddly structured - You would know you're going to cover a couple games, maybe write a feature, but unless it was playoff season you wouldn't usually have a "surprise!" story or a surplus of games.

In contrast, I found the news side to be inexhaustible. Like, I could have been an hour away from being "done" for the week, and then a local school gets a bomb threat. (Which actually happened.) Hello, an extra dozen hours on my time card. In a big enough city or if you have poor management, there's always "one more thing" to cover, and I think you have to be more willing to say, "No, I'm done for the week, sorry."

 

Just curious, how long have you been in the business and how many papers have you worked at? In my about 25 years in newspapers, at 4 different stops, I've worked with sports and news people who were consummate professionals, could write on any news or sports subject and do an amazing job. I've also worked with sports and news people who were lazy, shiftless sacks of shit who I wouldn't trust to type in a bowling score or a brief about a city council meeting notice without screwing it up.

These blanket statements of "all sportswriters" and "all news writers" are pretty silly and make you look like a caricature.