byline strike?

Byline strikes were something that newspaper staffs used on occasion, with the idea that no bylines would make readers think they were getting an all-AP product, something the paper's management for some reason would want to avoid.

AP reporters calling a byline strike would force its clients to run stories without the authoris' names and look like, uh, AP stories.

Oooooh, very scary!

Never mind the pinheaded tactic of making yourself look more interchangeable and replaceable by removing the clearest distinction between you and the next scribbler.

A byline strike? At a time in our industry when manaqement is trying to purge not just reporters' names but the reporters themselves? Right, make it easier for them, good idea.

 

AP management HATES when major stories are done without bylines. I was sent out to news scenes countless times just so we had a byline on a story. And, yes, the company has announced a planned 10 percent reduction in staff.

This all comes at a time when newspapers and other media are all demanding more out of AP because of their own staff reductions.

HejiraHenry, if you think you're overpaid and that your work is worthless, go ahead and give back some of your salary and benefits. But maybe keep the self-loathing bullshit to yourself while others in OUR industry try to preserve their very meager paychecks.

 

I can handle you disagreeing with me. Just don't give me no flying headbutt.

 

So does Alan Robinson in Pittsburgh.

 

I don't know who could have anything against the AP writers, at least the ones I read -- and I read all the baseball writers; some more than others. And the baseball writers, of course, do everything else. Rob Maaddi in Philly and Mike Fitzpatrick in New York, along with Robinson, are three I read very often. I'm always impressed when football's training camp opens and you've got multiple stories on multiple sports -- and they're not mailed in -- coming from one name.

Maybe there's a trick to it, but even so, I'm sold on the work ethic.

I've seen the pay scales for the writers, and I'd gladly trade my check for theirs; even the first-year guy makes significantly more coin than I do. But I'm not sure it'd be worth all that work and time away from my friends and family (assuming, seriously, that I have them).

There is no break in a four-sport city. At least none that I've seen.

Maybe bureau doesn't send boxes, standings, capsules and roundups as fast as we'd like them all the time. But the writers will always have my support.

 

There's nothing like AP Sports on a Saturday night in late September when you're cranking pennant race baseball and college football and maybe a big fight from Vegas.

 

As an occasional AP stringer, who has gotten exactly two AP bylines in over a dozen years, I had no idea I was making a protest by not getting a byline.
I actually got first crack at the byline strike by not getting a byline on a high school state championship game I covered for them Saturday.
I was just "The Associated Press" — again.

 

Never had a story stolen by an AP writer who then had the nerve to put his byline on it to impress NY with how hard he was working?

 

I've had no negative dealings with the AP or its writers.

 

average readers don't give a damn about a byline.

 

Yet, when reporters get laid off or take the buyout, readers wonder what happened to the bylines they've grown to trust over the years.
Readers also note when what would normally be a local byline, is instead The Associated Press.
That line of reasoning, that the reader doesn't care, is false and has been proven on numerous occasions, yet journalists, or at least people who post on a journalism message board, trot out that argument every time.
I find it amazing. That some journalists think that what they do has no value.