Writing 'free' for our newspaper... what the heck?!?

[RickStain]

Lawyers bill hourly. And their companies collect. A junior associate billing at $110 an hour does not walk out the door with $110. It doesn't work like that.
Sitting there and saying you'll only work a 40-hour week in an industry like ours makes you no better than the beancounters who say you should be able to do x-number game stories, advances and features in a regular day. It doesn't work like that.

Lawyers are paid on salary, with laws and pay reflecting the expectation of more work. Most newspaper people are not. If they are, of course they don't work 40-hour weeks.

If they are hourly and working for free, they are idiots. The fact that you find salaried lawyers and hourly newspaper employees to be comparable is astonishing.

 

[Twoback]

I've worked for six different publications in a career approaching 30 years.
I've never been paid on an hourly basis, from a tiny suburban daily to major metros.
I've never even heard of journalists being paid hourly.

 

[RickStain]

I've worked for four different newspapers. I've never heard of a shop where the non-management employees weren't hourly.

 

[amraeder]

I've worked for six different publications in a career approaching 30 years.
I've never been paid on an hourly basis, from a tiny suburban daily to major metros.
I've never even heard of journalists being paid hourly.

In two shops, got paid hourly at one (as did all reporters, I'm pretty sure), was salaried in the other.

 

[Baron Scicluna]

Lawyers bill hourly. And their companies collect. A junior associate billing at $110 an hour does not walk out the door with $110. It doesn't work like that.
Sitting there and saying you'll only work a 40-hour week in an industry like ours makes you no better than the beancounters who say you should be able to do x-number game stories, advances and features in a regular day. It doesn't work like that.

The companies collect, but lawyers still get paid on the billable hours that they work. A lawyer working 1800 billable hours is going to get paid more than a lawyer working 1600 billable hours.

You are right on the second point. I DID only work what I was paid for. Like it or not, it's a business. And I treated it as such, just as management did. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed what I did. But if it made good business sense for me to work extra and not get paid for it (like covering a major event), I did it. If it didn't, I didn't.

 

[sgreenwell]

I've worked for six different publications in a career approaching 30 years.
I've never been paid on an hourly basis, from a tiny suburban daily to major metros.
I've never even heard of journalists being paid hourly.

I've worked for three companies in the past five years, and been paid hourly at every one. These are all small dailies and weeklies, and not major metros, but it seems like the trend is more toward hourly workers than salary.

 

[Cosmo]

Yeah, twoback. Hourly here, too. Was on salary when I was an SE at a previous stop. Look, I've made this point before here, and I'll make it again. Yes, there are some weeks where I'll put in more than 40 hours (this week being one of them). But there are some where I'll work 25 and no one will bat an eye, because they know what kind of hours I've put in during previous weeks. In that way, yes, it's a wink-wink, nod-nod. Either way, I'm putting 40 on the time card I turn in each week. As long as that arrangement works, I'm fine with it. It's not realistic to be on a travel beat and be held to a 40-hour code. But you can make it work in ways where you're not working 60-70 every week.

 

[Fredrick]

But there are some where I'll work 25 and no one will bat an eye, because they know what kind of hours I've put in during previous weeks.

Good for you. You make it work. But at many (most) shops nowadays the 25 hour weeks in the "dead periods" don't happen anymore. Many sports departments are sweatshops while for some reason the news side reporters get paid for their overtime. It's obviously because they are in the office most of the day being watched and controlled closely and not actually out covering games, travelling and busting their ass on a daily basis.

 

[Joe Williams]

But there are some where I'll work 25 and no one will bat an eye, because they know what kind of hours I've put in during previous weeks.

Good for you. You make it work. But at many (most) shops nowadays the 25 hour weeks in the "dead periods" don't happen anymore. Many sports departments are sweatshops while for some reason the news side reporters get paid for their overtime. It's obviously because they are in the office most of the day being watched and controlled closely and not actually out covering games, travelling and busting their ass on a daily basis.

It's a solid point about how the news side yahoos have more traditional office hours (which might be a mistake, given that news doesn't watch the clock and rarely happens within the walls of a newsroom). The freedom-slash-requirement to be out at games, traveling, pulling double shifts, etc., as long as it kept me from having to log face time in an office always was worth the extra 5-10 hours I donated a week. To me, anyway, maybe not worth it to you -- it's a personal call. But when that became 15-20 hours donated, then it wasn't worth it.

The minute you said something, though, they looked at you like you were trying to pick their pocket and weren't committed to your "job."

 

[sgreenwell]

But there are some where I'll work 25 and no one will bat an eye, because they know what kind of hours I've put in during previous weeks.

Good for you. You make it work. But at many (most) shops nowadays the 25 hour weeks in the "dead periods" don't happen anymore. Many sports departments are sweatshops while for some reason the news side reporters get paid for their overtime. It's obviously because they are in the office most of the day being watched and controlled closely and not actually out covering games, travelling and busting their ass on a daily basis.

Uh, I've worked both news and sports in the past five years too, and I'm currently split as a half news, half sports reporter. At least at the shops I've been at, news reporters don't have it any better. In fact, I had more to do as a news reporter for a small weekly - I was the only reporter for the town and I didn't lay out my own section, whereas when I was sports editor for the same paper I at least knew how much artwork and what not I could use.

 

[anotherjrcsurvivor]

Anyone else notice the sizable sect that thinks we all have Star Trek transporters that get us to and from assignments? They seem to conveniently overlook that time spent driving to and from assignments is time spent on the clock?

 

[Fredrick]

Anyone else notice the sizable sect that thinks we all have Star Trek transporters that get us to and from assignments? They seem to conveniently overlook that time spent driving to and from assignments is time spent on the clock?

One of the reasons this business in my mind is so repulsive is the inability of higher ups to even consider the possibility that travel can affect a writer's performance. I'd like to see a 9 a.m. meeting guy drive 6 hours to cover a game, write 2 or 3 stories on the game, do a postgame video bit, twitter and also write running play by play during the game. Then drive back after the game or the morning after the game after staying in some Super 8 rat trap. The total disrespect for writers who travel amazes me. It's always fun to see a news writer go on his/her once a year trip and come back burned out but so happy they've racked up some huge overtime, overtime the sports guys never are allowed to turn in. Travel is work.