Byline Quotas/Counts

OK bumping an old thread because I have a question about briefs and bylines. I know the general rule of thumb is to not run bylines on them, but I have to say from experience that it is a bit disheartening to write almost 1,500 words of content for the next day's paper and not have my name appear once because everything was briefs.

 

How many briefs is that? If it's 7 or 8 inches, put your byline on it.

 

Ten briefs (longest was ~250 words, the others ran 150 or less), plus agate, and all of it was typed in three hours. Didn't even get to another four or so due to deadline, so another staffer had to pick up the slack.

One of the "perks" of covering 12 schools as a three-person staff (two-person tonight).

 

Depends on your paper's style rules and how they run. We had a daily briefs package that would include tennis/horses/soccer/etc, and even if it included a staff contribution, it would just get a "from staff, wire reports" tag. Never understood that. Don't think I ever had my name appear on a story in 18 years, but I wrote plenty of briefs/copy blocks. Anything else more than 4 or 5 grafs got at least a tagline of who wrote it.

 

By tagline, do you mean something like this? -MNgremlin

 

This thread is why Fredrick hates the assholes who run the 10 a.m. meetings, the newsroom powerbrokers if you want to call them that. Byline counts and story counts are insulting morale killers (newspapers and their clueless MEs are the only businesses in the country that do not care about morale I've noticed; the overriding opinion is 'you are lucky to have a job' and morale matters not to the powerbrokers). The best way to lose a reporter forever (young ones immediately start looking for jobs; old ones spirit is totally broken) is to put a byline count or story count on somebody. Or to make a reporter give a list of 20 stories he/she will write this month in addition to assigned stories. Making somebody do that is degrading and bullshit and may all MEs who think their sports staffers are loafing go to proverbial hell. Accounting for every minute of the day on a spreadsheet, sorry but you have to go to HR over that. It is harassment. If they say it's not, ask for a settlement and then resign.

 

Yes. Depends. If you have notes with a few items all written by you, you should get a real byline but if it's a bunch of compiled briefs then writers get a tagline.

 

That's something you can take to a state employment security agency or labor board about and win big ...

 

Byline counts might actually have done some good in my department where the reporters who get paid the most actually do the least and management looks the other way, while people who work the copy desk full time while writing more stories than said reporters get crapped on by management for not doing enough.

 

Byline counts are stupid. Just do your damn job and you should have more than enough QUALITY bylines, which is all that matters.

 

They are a way to get rid of employees. If you need their salary, you put that kind of strict regimen on them, and rest assured, they will quit. It is sophomoric to put a byline count on somebody.

 

I haven't had to deal with a byline count of any kind or stupid newsroom-related bullshit since November, 2010 and just seeing this was an egregious reminder of why I don't miss newspapers. At all. Byline counts and the old push to do videos were my personal favorites.