Go ahead and blow a gasket...I don't really care

Late last week it was suggested I get something in on this race (this comes about three hours before I head out on vacation)...within an hour, I've made the necessary calls, rushed it into our sister paper and got it online in sports brief form, which is all it merited. It's a simple "This race is coming up this weekend" announcement.

I get back from vacation and am welcomed with the above demands.

I've called a meeting tomorrow to discuss a realistic load for the sports staff, and I use staff lightly We'll see how that goes.

 

Planning on his part? Really? He planned to cover everything going on that day because he has no help to do so. What else can he plan for? Surprises from upstairs? Give the guy a break - or some help.

 

Years ago at my one-man shop, I had a similiar issue arise with my boss when one of the local teams was in the state championship game.

There was nearly a week before the game, so I had set up a plan for coverage, including several features, a look back at the season, and some other stuff. Since my boss hadn't really mentioned anything to me all season, I figured I was good to go. I even told him my plans for the big preview before the game. I did all the stories (this in addition to paginating the section, and doing the other non-HS stuff) and got everything all set to go. Plus, every Friday, I had to put out two sections, since it was a five-day a week afternoon paper and a Saturday a.m. in a split shift.

Well, late Thursday night, boss calls me over, wants me to work on two more features that he had just thought up to preview the game. I told him that I had some other things to complete, including my advance pages for the much-larger Saturday paper. All this in addition to working the split shift on Friday. (It was about a 65-hour week, and yes, they paid for it all).

I ended up doing one of the features, but my boss wasn't too pleased because I skipped the other. And because of the additional stress, I ended up making some crucial errors in my copy that were pretty embarrassing. And being a one-man staff, I didn't have the luxury of a copy editor.

The Monday after everything was done, I spoke with my boss privately. I told him that he had added considerable stress to my week, which had helped contributed to those very noticable errors. I told him that in the future, if a similar situation arose, we should sit down multiple days beforehand to plan things out. Otherwise, if there was no meeting, I would do what I had planned to do myself, and that I wasn't going to change plans in midstream on anyone's whim. My boss, who was actually a pretty good guy, I think felt bad about how things had turned out.

After that, he would ask me what I had planned. I'd tell him, and, perhaps with one or two tweaks in the plan, things went nice and smoothly.

 

Nice work Baron...I'm hoping my meeting tomorrow goes as well as that.

 

Good job, man. We've all had days like this and I know mine make me feel like having a miniature heart attack before age 30.

 

Gee, it's a wonder any aspiring college sports journalists reading this thread and seeing what bullshit sports reporters put up with day in and day out might say, "The fuck I'm getting into this profession. I'd rather fucking sell umbrellas on the street."

The more I think about it, the more getting laid-off may have been the best thing that happened to me. I have a normal part-time job, and I freelance on the side as little or as much as I want without having to put up with the bullshit politics.

You one-man shop guys, God bless you. Nobody is more overworked and underpaid than you guys. It's sad to see such talented people getting shit on by idiots.

 

That sucks, flex. Unfortunately, I assume there are more than a few in your boat with the state of the industry. Good luck with the meeting.

 

So what is a realistic expectation for reporter/deskers to accomplish in a day? How many stories, plus how many pages, do people put out by themselves?

 

Good on you.

One of the things we've all had to adjust to --- and we recently lost one person at our shop -- is the cutbacks in manpower as well as space. A little common sense tells anyone that you can't cover the same number of events with three people as you can with four. And you can't put as much content into a three-page section as you can a five-page section. That should be pretty freakin' obvious.

When we had our most recent round of layoffs, I told a couple of colleagues "simple, we just don't cover every damn event on the calendar". You prioritize and decide what it is most important and work from there. If someone -- be it readers or management -- doesn't like that, you have a perfect answer for them. You can't take it upon yourself to work yourself into the ground to make up for loss of staff by doubling-up on everything. Maybe in the short term, but not in the long haul. In my experience, when they lay off one staffer, no one else is getting a pay raise to make up for any extra work load.

A wise old man once told me that people will push you as far as you allow yourself to be pushed. I have learned that to be true. There is a fine line between taking pride in doing a good job and working yourself into the ground for someone who doesn't care and doesn't appreciate it.

 

Back in the pre-Internet era, I remember reading in several mags that it was a big deal for someone to write two bylined stories a day. At my former one-man shop paper, the regular reporters would write three, occasionally four, stories a day.

I did a lot of results writing, with bylined stories for gamers and features, plus I'd layout, design paginate roughly three pages a day, with an occasional partial fourth ad page.

There were times when I'd have two bylined stories, a handful of briefs and do three pages in a day. Those were at busy times. Other times, I'd have the three pages, and maybe two 10-15 inch roundups.

Either way, there were plenty of times that I was doing the work that three or four people would do at other papers. I remember one state playoff day where I covered two soccer games that were being played right next to each other that ended within 10 minutes of each. I ran back and forth, grabbed quotes and photos, then did the section with a briefs roundup the next morning. I pointed out to my boss that the big city paper had a reporter for each game, a photog to shoot both and someone to design the pages. Four people to do what I had done.

 

I'm guessing the boss applauded your effort and immediately put in for a pay raise

Nice work Baron, and for the above post, yes, it is a fine line between taking pride and being taken advantage of.

That's a constant battle...it's hard to say no to covering championship-level events at the end of the year, but one person can go to only so many places.


Meeting went well today, my managing editor is great. We'll be looking at bringing back a stringer to give some relief.

 

Not a pay raise, naturally, but he did applaud my effort. He was a good guy, who sometimes would get a little overexcited when a local team would go far.