More MG News

Wonder if the folks in Richmond (not talking about Moddy's old shop) are still sending out proxies to employees to send out the big bonuses to the suits.

One shop with which I still maintain some semblance of familiarity might have major trouble with keeping up quality and worthwhile copy ... and not because of the quality of the existing employees either professionall or personally.

Marshall Morton doesn't care. He's in a race with Craig Dubow in trying to get the biggest bonus while trashing as much of his company as possible.

 

A general trend seems to be developing with the way the executives are acting:

2008: Hmmm. Economy is in the tank. Profits are off. Print product in slow decline. Let's offer buyouts and hope enough employees get the message.
2009: Well, that's not good enough. We warned them. So now we're going to cut whomever we want and furlough them in the hopes that more will quit.
2010: Hey, not so bad. We'll keep everybody. No raises, though. And, while we're at it, let's keep these furloughs around just in case.
2011: You know what? Screw it. The economy sucks again, and we're really going to let them have it now.

Not every chain is doing this (yet). But when the large chains keep contracting and keep cutting salaries, it has a trickle-down effect to everyone. I've really been bothered by this news, and I think I'm going to have to mandate another personal SportsJournalists.com sabbatical. In 2008 and 2009, I literally had to stop visiting this site because it was depressing me so much. Sometimes, blissful ignorance ain't so bad.

My sincere hope is that one day I will wind up working for an employer and superiors that take a vested interest in me. It just gets to be too much sometimes in print.

 

One, maybe.

 

Their death notices would be the first good news we've gotten from Newspaper Executives in about 5-6 years.

 

I was told last night that the managing editors of the Culpeper and Woodbridge papers in Virginia are gone, as well as the guy who was the publisher of both papers. The MG employee who told me this said it's not exactly clear who is in charge of anything up there.

Culpeper's newsroom now consists of a community editor, one guy in sports, two reporters and a photog. This is a daily paper, but I don't know how they are going to get it out everyday when people start taking their furlough and vacation days.

 

When I got to Marianna, they had one news editor (who didn't have time to do anything but layout the section every night) two reporters, a photographer and a part timer to type announcements and obits. They had just gotten a publisher, who we never saw, and sports had been vacant for months until I showed up.

 

People are going to continue to be f*ed over as long as they allow themselves to be f*ed over.

Now, I am NOT implying this is the fault of the rank and file newsroom employee. But, seriously, if you're smart enough to graduate from J-school, you're smart enough to see a pattern developing here. Be proactive. Take the bull by the horns.

Do what employees in other businesses have done for a century or more. Get together and take action collectively. Form a union if you want. Or don't call it that. Doesn't matter. How freakin hard is it to get 25-30 people (or however many happen to be left at your shop) together in a break room and have a couple of leaders and designate a plan of action to let the suits know their actions are unacceptable and won't be tolerated?

It could be a walkout, it could be blowing deadline by some ridiculous margin on a given night or whatever.But you have to let management know you're serious, that you've had enough and aren't going to take it anymore. Let's say you used to have 8 people on the sports staff and now you have 4. Hell, that's a perfectly legit reason for not covering Little Johnny Bedwetter's peewee game, or missing deadline by an hour on a busy night. For too long, we've tried to play the good guy, passing up lunch breaks, vacations, working unpaid overtime, coming in early, staying late, to cover for our colleague on furlough and keep pumping out a product like nothing ever happened. And where has it gotten us? More layoffs and furloughs, more work for the ones left behind.

You think other industries operate like that? You think management appreciates your sacrifices?

Wake up and smell the coffee or you'll have this victim mentality forever.

I wish you well.

 

Oh Lord, if every MG paper unionized, that would make Marshall Morton's head explode ... he would like nothing better than to get rid of Richmond's union, and unions at every newspaper in the good ol U.S.A. ...

Of course, it would also serve him (and the rest of MG's overbloated upper management) right IF all the papers (especially the community papers) WOULD unionize ...

 

It will never happen but thanks for playing.

 

The suits in Richmond would love that. They'd have the entire newsroom replaced with new grads making $22,000 each in about a week.

 

This is all craziness. Some of the small papers in the chain are really going to be hurting to get a product out everyday.

When I was in Culpeper in 2007, we had a managing editor, assistant editor, two designers, two features/community people, two sports guys, four reporters, and a photog. We all busted our asses to get a paper out every day of the week, but I remember feeling like we had a pretty bare-bones staff then for the number of things going on in town.

I can't imagine how they are doing it now with a community editor, photog, sports guy, and two reporters. Even scarier to imagine them doing it when those folks start taking furlough days.

 

At what point do papers like this merge with another local paper? The arguments for small papers is that they provide a unique local voice but if how much local materail can you provide with this kind of staffing?