15% pay cuts at the LA Daily News

Sorry if this is a db, but I didn't see anything. Talked to one of my former colleagues today and managers are pretty much on notice too. More layoffs are coming, even with a 15% pay cut in editorial and elsewhere.

http://reporter-g.blogspot.com/2009/04/union-daily-news-considering-pay-cuts.html

 

I should probably amend the hedder to say 15% cuts in editorial. Pay cuts expected.

 

Will Dean and his cronies give back 15 percent, too?

 

That's a huge pay cut for everybody. That is total bullshit. Fuck newspapers.

 

Aren't we getting into the area of forcing people to move into cheaper digs territory? I mean, I get it. The industry is a mess and Singleton is backed up to the wall, but really between the cuts, the worry about the cuts, the furloughs and the non-stop reorganizations, I'm surprised they're able to find time to get out a newspaper. Good thoughts to the folks still there.

 

LADN has been in chaos for years. Hard to imagine what it's like now.

 

My math sucks, but I'll give it a try:

An employee making $40,000 a year would be reduced to $34,000 a year. That's roughly a $230 loss a paycheck, not counting taxes.

That's backbreaking, especially for anyone not making $40K a year. At least with furloughs you get a day off.

 

Eventually, they're going to turn journalism into a second job for people, and after that, no new talent is going to want to jump into the industry. You can't continually make the job less and less attractive without eventually making it unfillable, which is the path we're on.

Bad starting salary.
No overtime.
No raises.
No 401ks.
Bad hours.
Nights and weekends.
Unfair mileage rates.
Unpaid furloughs.
Little chance for advancement.

At some point, you create an environment in which only the worst and the dimmest would immerse themselves. You get what you pay for.

 

I guess I'm dim. Or hopelessly devoted. I'm not sure.

 

After one of those "let's do more with less" and "this is your chance to do great things" speeches I looked around the newsroom and noticed the most talented people weren't the ones hanging around. They were either laid off or left willingly to pursue other opportunities. If the people I admired most at work were the ones either forced out or leaving the business, how could we possibly produce our best work? With lower wages, poor benefits, hostile work conditions, talented, smart people are not going to be attracted to print journalism. Aside from the glamor or working under tight deadlines and dealing with athletes and parents of athletes with overdeveloped senses of entitlement, what is the appeal of working for a newspaper these days?

 

W-b, I'm in the same boat. I'm still a journalist (and perhaps a little dim, I dunno), but the less you offer people, the less you're going to get from the people who accept the offers.

Maybe you can tell people who are already journalists that they should stick it out, that thing will change for the better, that the landscape will eventually change in their favor, and you'll probably wring a little more out of them because this is the life they chose and they're afraid to jump out.

But those people are leaving in droves every year, and not being replaced. And when the last ones are gone, and its 2016 and you're paying a rookie reporter the same thing you were paying a rookie reporter in 1996, only the hours are worse and they get no benefits and for the last 20 years college kids have been hearing that newspapers are dead, you're not going to have much of a pool to choose from. And to change any of that, you're going to have to drastically change the way you recruit, hire and compensate employees.

Maybe at that point, bright, competent, experienced journalists will finally have some leverage, assuming they still exist.

 

One possible answer: It's easier to get the prime beats now, since they're vacated for you instead of having to somehow earn them through diligence and competition.

Of course, what used to be prime beats might not seem that way now, either due to travel cutbacks or workload that has doubled to include blogs and video.