Missing It

Damn right. My first job, I knew everybody on the staff, their spouses and kids. We played coed softball together. And on Wednesday (pay day) it was automatic that just about everybody showed up at the beer bar that was near the office, actually, go out the back door, 50 yards down the alley and in the back door of the bar. It starting around 3 p.m. when the 6 a.m. crew got off work, and continued into the evening. Some press workers showed up at 4, the office staff and sales people at 5, and so on.

 

Can you imagine going into HR and having to plunk down 4 bucks for a reporter notebook and 2 bucks for a cheap pen? Or if they made you buy notebooks on your own. My Q: "Clueless HR person ... where in the hell do I find reporters notebooks for sale? Wal mart doesn't carry them."

 

The reason you can't or don't want to do this anymore is the editors. Gannett has created a group of middle management personalities that nobody in their right minds can stand to be around outside of the office. They are such miserable people. I'm sure they are told to go to any such gatherings and pretty much break them up. The folks who call the 10 a.m. meetings, the same ones in charge of the layoffs, can ruin a party in about five minutes. The editors pretty much make sure staffs have bad morale. I think they are encouraged by Gannett to make sure people are on edge all the time and miserable. I would think in the HR manuel it says it's easier to lay off people and freeze salaries and add furlough dates when the staff is on edge and miserable to begin with.

 

I have been lucky in this regard. I genuinely like the people I work with, and though we never go out anymore (spouses, kids, etc), I still enjoy it most of the time. I worked at one of the so-called "destination papers" for a bit, and it wasn't fun at all. Ever. Which is why I am no longer there.

 

Had to do a double take until I saw the poster. But let's be damn clear on one thing. Middle managers are largely not the ones to blame for furloughs/layoffs/pay cuts. They might have a say in the decision on who gets cut, as they should since it affects the operation, but they are only following orders from people who have never done what we do. And if you are working for managers who openly push for you to he miserable, you need to question that and push back. Hard. So, they're going to fire you? Right. And if they do, you'll be better of in the long run anyway.

 

I am really having a tough time wrapping my mind around this. So, they are manufacturing hateful, spiteful managers? They're still human fucking beings. Yes, there are some socially awkward folks in this business, as well as straight-up assholes, but in most cases, if you know how to deal with people, you can get by just fine.

 

It's a lot easier to have the camaraderie when everybody isn't working remotely thanks to laptops and wifi everywhere. And when you're in the office, you aren't having to get people to take out their earbuds to talk and you're not worried about getting tomorrow's edition online NOW! and social media.

Back when you lugged a TRS-80 with acoustic couplers and nobody had cell phones, you wound up in the office to make sure everything was OK. Put the paper to bed and you were actually done for the night.

 

Sorry to anger you, but yes. As somebody who worked for Gannett and one other chain, I can tell you Gannett either seeks out or molds individuals into being complete corporate assholes. A good way to get hired as an editor at Gannett is stress to them you have experience slashing staffs and slashing pages. If you have experience firing people and making cuts you are ready for Gannett. Yes I do believe they in a way are manufacturing "hateful spiteful managers." In fact, people can back me on this ... I was told one Gannett middle management edict was to NEVER ever socialize with a reporter or copy editor, somebody susceptible to layoffs. Anybody back me on this?

 

I no longer work in journalism, but this sounds very, very much like my current job. It's awesome to have that, and it seems to be rare. I'm lucky.

 

I will preface this by saying I left the business in the Great Bloodletting of 2009 as the bottom was just starting to fall out, but:

I worked for Gannett as a middle-management editor (metro/news) for a few years. It was one of the hardest positions I was ever in, because, since I was promoted in-house, I was already friends with most of the people I was "managing."

I'm sure I came off as "hateful" and/or "spiteful" at times, but that's only because I had to balance our friendships with the various and numerous edicts from corporate -- a very difficult balancing act, since those two things were most often at odds with each other. It was almost impossible to keep my friends AND my job, and that's a choice no one should have to make.

All that said, the people who hired me as a manager didn't hire me to shit on my underlings or to wield the ax. I was a liaison between the "management" and "rank and file," with allegiances to both. This is hardly beyond the pale or unique to the newspaper industry.

 

I don't know where Frederick is going with this but he's way off base. We had 9 a.m. meetings.

 

The news industry can’t cut its way to quality