Belo's 500 "RIF"

No doubt every reporter is required to have a car, so you're paying to work there. Nice.

 

Um, do papers NOT charge their employees for parking? I paid $20 a month to park in the garage in Richmond.

 

I was going to say that if the office is in the middle of downtown, that it surprises the hell out of me that they haven't started charging for parking yet.
Every one of my friends (non-journalism) that works downtown takes public transportation to work, because it costs $40/day to park in a garage.

 

Every paper I've worked at had their own parking lot, where employees parked for free.

 

That's not quite how I read it. They're reducing the compensation for wireless card devices. They're nice, and for some reporters, I suppose they're necessary. But with the proliferation of free wireless in this country, it's not a impossible obstacle to get around. And hardly every newspaper in the country pays for them. When I had one a year ago on a major beat, most of my competitors didn't have a card, and many worked for large metros.
As for parking, I don't know where the DMN is located. If it's in downtown Dallas, I don't have a problem with people having to pay to park. It's a fact of life working in a downtown business. I've worked before at a downtown newspaper, and my wife has worked in a downtown business, and neither compensated us to park. Some do, some don't, but it's not mandatory. Belo is saying this is a perk we can no longer afford. Now, if the DMN is located in an area where most of the parking is free, that's another matter.

 

$35 isn't going to cover the cost of a wireless card's monthly fee so yes, they are having to pay for wireless. as for parking, the parking lot is on dmn/wfaa's property so it's ridiculous to make employees pay to park there. i can see making them pay for a parking garage but not a parking lot on company property, especially when the big boss just got a 140 percent raise.

 

My old paper not only didn't pay people back for wireless cards, but we only had 1-2 for teh whole newsroom. You signed it out, took it on an assignment, then turned it back in. So there's your choice. You pay to use it (which some people at my paper did) or you find free wireless (which I did).

 

Our downtown office does not have its own parking lot or garage. You want to park, you have to contract with one of the pay lots around there at a monthly rate. Or feed the meter every couple of hours.

This isn't all that difficult on reporters. We don't need to be in the office all that much anyway. And it isn't a big deal for the night staff, copy editors and designers and whatnot ... the meters are all free after five.

I feel sorry for the folks who are required to be in the office during the day, every day. Their parking bill must suck.

As for wireless cards ... never had one .... never needed one. This is America. If I get in a pinch, I am always within two blocks of a Starbucks. Also, I have a pretty good mental database of all the hotels with free wireless I can pilfer from the parking lot or lobby.

 

The DMN is located downtown, a couple blocks south of Dealey Plaza. Parking was free in some Belo-owned surface lots for daytime employees if the lots were off campus. The parking garage(s) on site were $40 a month. Those are going up to $70 a month. Nighttime employees previously were not charged to park. The memo doesn't reference them directly.

Any way you slice it, it's a big windfall.

 

In my long and storied -- well, depending on your point of view -- career, IJAG, I have never paid for parking anywhere.

 

Huh.

 

I find it hard to believe that people who work at Major Metros are up in arms about paying for parking --- that's kind of what the other millions of people who work in downtown areas do every single day in just about every population.

My brother is a partner in a law firm, he is a tax accountant, he works downtown, the firm owns the building and the lot -- he pays $239 for his monthly lease.

My cousin works at one of the largest banks. He pays $199 for his monthly lease.

The people who work at the banks in town all either take mass transit or pay for parking -- from $5 (depending on how far you are willing to walk) to $22 per day.

People pay for parking down town.

The wireless stuff is silly, but I don't think the parking stuff is out of the ordinary, especially since the only way you get "free parking" at my shop is by rolling a ten when you are "just visiting" the jail in Monopoly.

We've never had parking paid for or whatever -- it has always been "you are on your own"