Afternoon paper vs. Morning paper

In my experience, most of the PM dailies were smaller ones. I know some metros had PM papers years ago, but not sure if any of them still do. It was usually 10K and under circulation papers that were PM, so in sports that meant a heavy emphasis on the local high schools and/or small colleges.

 

I appreciate the insight. The paper in question here is a six-day paper with a three-person sports staff (2 writers and a SE). Looks like most of the people who responded say my concerns about the schedule are pretty founded.

 

I've done AM and PM papers, and I definitely preferred the PM paper schedule. My deadline was 9am, so I would go in around 5am to take care of sports and I would typically help copy edit news. I was usually out of the office by 11am or 12.

The really nice thing for me was that I was able to pick up my two young daughters from daycare and spend almost every afternoon with them…so we only had to pay for part-time daycare.

 

My PM paper experience was completely different.

We didn't have to be out the door until 1 p.m. and we got to work around 10 a.m. and finished up the layout.

We wrote after the game, so it wasn't an early morning writing and when we got done, it was goofing off until game time or doing interviews for mid-week features.

Schedule wise it was about perfect. No early mornings, no late nights and a break in the middle, most days.

 

My first job was at a 12K PM paper with a three-person sports staff. I LOVED it. We usually had 3-5 pages daily during the week, so I'd have one page to lay out. I'd go in, start working, check the voicemail around 8 a.m. (when our cutoff was) and start typing up the roundup. We covered five counties, nine schools, and in the five years I worked there, we had 8 state champions in football (one school won all 5 in its class, another won 3 of 5). Done by noon, nap, run errands, cover a game, write that night, go to bed, start over. I do much better breaking my day up like that rather than working 9-10 hours straight.

We also didn't have a Saturday paper, so Friday night football and basketball was not a problem.

 

I worked at a p.m. when I was a one-man sports staff. Usually I'd come in around 6 a.m. Most of the coaches would leave their results on the answering machine, so I'd take notes from that. A few would call in the morning.

I'd do my writeups, write my gamer from the night before, design 2 or 3 pages, and be done by 10 a.m. or so. I'd go home, eat breakfast, nap, run errands. Our Saturday paper was larger, with some advance pages done on Wednesday and Thursday with page templates, so on those days, I'd go in around 2:30-3, do a couple of pages, then either go cover a game, or, in the winter time, go home, eat dinner and then cover the game. Friday nights, I'd do an early shift, then not cover a game, and work from 8 until midnight to put out the Saturday paper.

It wasn't that bad, although some people wouldn't understand why I couldn't cover anything on Friday night, and why I hardly ever would schedule things like interviews in the late morning or early afternoon.

 

I don't understand why people say you'd be devoid of a home life working for an afternoon paper. For me, working a morning paper, perpetual second shift would be what killed your home life. Basketball season was a pain and the reason I hate basketball, but otherwise, if if covering soccer, baseball, etc. I was always home by 6:30-7:00. On days when I wasn't covering anything, I was home and done for the day by the time most people were eating lunch.

 

I didn't mind waking up at 5 a.m. to go and work desk shift at my p.m. The double shift on Friday is a killer, and shot my Saturday. Working until 3 a.m. made me a zombie Saturday, and I was in my pajamas at 5 or 6 in the evening. We had a smaller sports staff, and I also worked a basketball beat fall and winter, so I covered games and worked desk shifts now and again.

A p.m. gig definitely is better if your significant other works an office job during the day (at least when weekdays are concerned). For the most part, I saw my hubby Sunday to Thursday when he came home from work. I can't imagine what it would be like at an a.m. I never would have seen my hubby.

 

Every paper I've ever worked for had morning delivery, until a couple of years ago when my current rag switched to mail delivery.

The difference was, instead of a noon deadline, I now have a 10 p.m. deadline (midnight for football and basketball).

My thoughts? I'd rather go back to a noon deadline. On non-game days, I could design my pages and be out by 10:30 a.m. and have the rest of the day off.

Another reason I liked the noon deadline was I could get all of the previous night's scores in the Scoreboard. Now everything is changed to (n).

The worst change is we now have to work six days a week instead of five (no Sunday paper). Our bosses clamored to get rid of Monday's paper, but the owner said no, so we have to come in on Sundays now.

 

I worked at a p.m. once, when I was first starting out. Longest 11 months of my life.

We were a two-man sports staff and I had to do all of the layout because the sports editor was an older guy who didn't know how to use Quark. He'd been in the job forever and was extremely set in his ways, so I had to conform to whatever he'd always done.

I found the split shift to be brutal, but if he'd been able to lay out the pages we would have been able to take turns on that. That would have allowed each of us to get some mornings off, and that would have made it a bit easier. So, as others have said, the situation and the other personnel you're working with can make or break the whole thing.

Still, it was a tremendous relief to get out from under that schedule -- not that the schedule of an a.m. is a whole lot more desirable, but being run ragged both ends of the day really wears you out. And we had "the doubleheader" every Friday, because we'd do a Friday p.m. paper and then turn around and do a Saturday a.m. edition. I easily worked 12 hours every Friday. It was in a small town where I didn't know anyone and I had zero life away from the paper. None. Period. And the schedule had everything to do with it. So proceed carefully.

 

I've worked for one P.M. paper and absolutely hated it, especially since -- for the first year-plus I worked there -- I didn't live in the same city. So that meant getting up at 5:30 (when I had a desk shift, that is) to get to work by 7 or 7:30.

And since I was still in school at the time, my boss only had me doing layout once a week.

The only upside I could see was being able to get a breaking morning news story in the paper and well before the Herald Leader and Courier-Journal had it. But that rarely, if ever, happened in sports.

I wanted to work out a deal where if I was covering something that night I would go back to the office, write my gamer and then set up the section for the next morning. But the powers that be didn't like that approach for some reason. My immediate boss and the ladies I worked with were all for the idea, but I guess they wanted whoever was doing layout to be in the office that morning.

We were Monday-Friday and an A.M. paper on Sundays.

 

The PM cycle isn't easy. Not too many long sleeping sessions. Yes, you can usually tinker with a gamer or something else written if need be in the morning, but usually that time is spent budgeting, getting the required elements in the section, figuring what space - if any - remains and compiling call-ins and such.

Done both for years. Would MUCH rather work the AM cycle.