Who's your elephant in your newsroom?

Beautiful. ;D I needed that.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horton_Hears_A_Who!

A person's a person, no matter if they workm the desk or not.

 

What bothers me about these people is the fact that no one in authority does anything about it. It's painfully obvious that there is a huge inequity in workload among several reporters, yet nothing is said or done. Assistant sports editors have even said, to me, that Person A really isn't doing that much and needs to start working more/writing more/contributing more, yet it's status quo.

If we did byline counts at our paper, Person A would, no doubt in my mind, either be last or next-to-last in the department.

It used to really bother me, but I finally decided to quit getting pissed about something I have no control over and, in reality, doesn't affect me at all. My workload isn't affected by Person A's (lack of)work ethic, so I just sympathize with those who are affected. I guess we just have to accept the fact that every department has one (or more) of these people. Heck, every profession has these people.

 

Stampy.

 

A friend of mine at another paper had this story:

Lady comes in with a thank-you letter to the community for the support after her newphews (both under 10) died in a house fire. Obit/letters lady rudely informs her that the letter is maybe a dozen words too long. Woman breaks down in front of everyone. Obit/letters lady doesn't give a shit, says to cut it down.

ME doesn't fire her, but moves her to other clerk work. The nice 20-something blonde girl that everyone gets along with takes over that job. Blonde decides to quit and go back to school, old obit/letters lady is back in that post again.

 

Most recent one left during the buyouts we had earlier this year. Not as much for laziness as it was for trying to throw others under the bus for his mistakes/errors (his name would be the last name on a file as handling it, but yet the factual mistakes in editing, the factual mistake in a headline or the accidental deletion of the file weren't his fault - someone else used his computer). Also had a slight air of arrogance needing to give everyone in the department a cutsie nickname that each person absolutely hated.


The real elelphant in the department in terms of laziness left the paper a good 12+ years ago. This was a person who could make a 10-minute job last 2-3 hours.

 

Damn. Is she at least good-looking?

 

One of our copy eds, no question. He rarely reads the stories, let alone actually edits them. His headlines are abysmal. He's always the last one in and the first to leave. And the time he's actually at work, he spends roughly 95 percent on the phone with friends and family. And that's not an exaggeration. Meanwhile, he makes roughly twice as much as anybody else on the desk, even those of us who design in addition to edit.

 

Sounds like it's time to order the Code Red.

 

Hell, sounds like he needs a cue ball in a sock.

 

"Did you order the Code Red?"

 

I was at a seminar once, and a fellow sports editor from Canada was telling us about a copy editor he had.

Apparently, there was a string of abysmally edited NHL roundups, and it was always the same guy. So he was finally called in the office and asked what the problem was.

He replied, in all sincerity, that he didn't like to read the roundup as he assembled it because he liked to have something to read with his coffee the next morning.