Orlando Sentinel, other Tribune papers abandoning their offices

I am sure many companies are contemplating their commercial space needs

 

The "team leader" who has no people skills and keeps everyone in a state of tense confusion.

 

I said two years ago it felt as if I was working on Pluto.

Look at a budget online, do the section, occasionally exchange an e-mail or chat message with someone 3,000,000,000 3,000 miles away. Can do all that from home and save 30 hours of time and $50/month in gas/parking.

And beginning in September we'll get a $50/month stipend for working from home (ostensibly to pay for any hardware/internet upgrades we deem necessary).

 

If it hurts the suits' bottom line, they don't care, even if a lunatic had previously shot up the office.

 

If you're a union shop (as we are), and you're if not someone who longs for the days of the hustle and bustle of the newsroom, don't you want management to do this?
1. We've already proven we can put out a great product remotely.
2. The Orlando Sentinel was paying $123,000 per month in rent. That's three reporters by today's pay scales, or one editor and one reporter.
3. And not that saving rent money will automatically save jobs but the great thing about being a guild paper is that if they threaten layoffs, the guild, by law, gets to see the books and demand they look to other areas to cut costs to avoid layoffs. If you're Orlando and you just saved $1.4 million per year in rent (the equivalent of about 25 jobs), there's no way you can justify layoffs in the short term (2-3 years).
That said, unless it saved my job, I wouldn't want to lose the newsroom. We can still go in and out of ours to get supplies or work in there in small shifts if there's a news story going on nearby and it's easier to go to the office than back home. But I miss being with my co-workers. Even though our numbers had dwindled, we all still like each other.

 

The newsroom was lost long ago. This is one break for reporters who don't have to be intimidated daily by suits who want to disrupt reporters' days by holding unnecessary meetings. Valued reporters suddenly became ones who report to the office dutifully everyday to listen to suits rather than get out in the public and report. The loss of buildings is good news for content producers.

 

Unnecessary meetings can be held via Zoom. I know that all too well.

 

I had seven Zoom meetings and got paid for only four. The fuckin' suits got me again.

 

Poor Gannett. Now they won't need Local Information Centers.

 

re: Having an actual office, with the head count at most places now you can probably accommodate that on the outskirts of a city at a fraction of the price. I think it's important to have *some* kind of footprint in the area that you've covering, but most newspapers, if they're located in the original spot still, are close to City Hall. Back in the day when you could actually assign a reporter to that beat, and have them cultivate relationships and sources, that made a lot of sense. Since that doesn't happen anymore because all reporters are now on 15 beats, might as well sell that prime real estate and just rent some generic office at the edge of town.

 

In the Before Times, ie before the pandemic made a mush of everything, I was working at a consultant for a company that was working with publishing groups on various things.
I guess that makes me one of the dreaded "suits" even though I don't actually wear suits and I mostly get by with khakis and a polo or shorts, if I was working from home.
Just about every place that has a newsroom now, isn't going to have a newsroom in a few years. And by newsroom, a work space shared by multiple reporters and editors.
There's some important caveats. If that newsroom serves as a design hub, it will stay but will probably move to smaller space. If that newsroom also serves as a production facility where the printing press is located, they'll keep their space.
And this was pre-pandemic. Now that corona has hit and everyone was forced to work from home, it established that the technology was in place and publishers could move forward with plans to relocate.
Lots of places don't want to give up their space. There's sentimental reasons, of course, but the reality is that if you work for a publisher that owns the building it works out of, that's a tremendous piggy bank for when times get bad. Times are bad, so you are seeing places lease space or spin off divisions to become self-contained companies, that then pay rent for the space they occupy.
There's also some big boy publishers that use their current space for things like studios and such, which means they'll hang on. But if you work at a mid-range or smaller daily and the space you're in, is leased from a company that isn't a division of the publisher, you're moving out. And if you're already out because of the Covid, you aren't going back.

 

If they hire the three or 1/1, I'd be shocked 20 ways to Sunday. No way in hell management saves $1.5M and uses it to hire more people they see as expendible.