Mike Reed Sets Goals for New Gannett

This an example of the Peter Principal, as promulgated by Dr. Laurence Peter in the 60's. For example, good reporters are promoted to a middle management job as a first line supervisor. If the reporter is incompetent as a first line editor he stays in place. If the reporter is a good first line editor he get promoted up the organization chart to a job with broader responsibilities. If the person is bad at the job there he stays. If he is good then he is promoted again.

Eventually people are promoted to their level of incompetence. That is why the world is so dysfunctional.

 

Companies need to spend more money training managers.

 

I think in journalism - especially sports journalism - that's not necessarily the case.
We've heard and read and posted here all of the stories about sports departments that just don't "work." Desk hates reporters, columnist shits on beat writer and the ASE, chief desk person gets no support from SE, whatever.

My premise is, a lot of the dysfunction in sports departments is that no one got into sports journalism to be the boss. People got into the field because they liked sports, they probably liked telling stories, they enjoyed the rush of knocking down a deadline story and seeing it in print hours later. Sure, they were good at Jobs A, B and C and thought they'd enjoy and could handle being SE - not knowing what is needed to run a good shop.

Show me one person who got into the business because he or she wanted the responsibility of telling the columnist to file on time and to the budgeted news hole, to tell a "writer" that the desk read his/her "work" more carefully than he/she did and all of the edits were more than supportable, to budget for an entire year (travel expenses, freelancer costs, etc.).

The sports department is probably filled with more mercurial egos than other sections of the paper ... and someone has to herd those egos for the good of the team. I don't think it's incompetence but round-hole/square-peg clash.

 

A lot of journalists are more introverted, even neurotic, than they are "people persons." That doesn't make for good managers.

 

Oddly enough - I'd be fine with a less gifted reporter being a manager - at least they understood the challenges of the job.

 

That's a reasonable description of the Peter Principle. The challenge of management is to weed out the weak peakers. In a lot of cases that's easy, because the competition for promotions is intense. But I'm familiar with cases where promotions were awarded out of necessity and whirlwinds were reaped.

 

Yes.

I remember when I worked for a family-owned chain of newspapers in the Norhwest and a woman in her mid-20s who worked hard but wasn’t the greatest writer was moved up to ME at a small daily.

Many on the universal desk grumbled about her promotion, but she was a very organized person and good at listening/interacting with people. She was the right person for the job.

Of course she left six months later due to a dispute with management over salary and the paper’s budget … but that’s journalism for you.

 

Another issue: The sports editor who lacks all those important qualities often also becomes more and more detached from the reality of conditions on the ground with each passing day. Telling reporters to do things that worked in 1999 in 2023 is not helpful or productive.

 

What is this "strike" or walkout going to prove?

Journalists at the nation's largest newspaper chain are walking off the job in a showdown with its CEO | CNN Business

Unless they don't come back, will it matter? Looks completely symbolic and silly.

 

“Morale at Gannett has not been great over the course of the last year.”

The last year? More like the last 50 years.

 

You’re talking about the old days of journalism. Nowadays, the “sports department” is most often one person. If even that.

 

Yes, it's symbolic. There will still be a paper for those who still have the print product and editors will update the website with AP and non-guild Gannett content. It's not like newspaper strikes in the 1960s when the pressroom or composers or reporters would walk out and everyone respected it and wouldn't cross the picket lines. The pubic didn't get the major source of news back then and the papers lost ad and circulation revenue

But symbolic is all we've got.