communication

How strong is the communication in your newsroom? I ask because ours is very poor, and I don't know if it's just our dinky little paper or if it's like this all over (this is my first job). The communication between staffers is poor among departments, from management down and within our sports staff.

It just seems like people at my paper (those in charge, particularly) do not communicate what they want done, nor how to do it, to the appropriate people consistently and it leads to much strife -- people backstabbing one another trying to protect their own name and passing the buck, people making mistakes because they weren't directed on how to do something and then getting bitched out for it, etc.

Like I said, this is the first place I've worked and all this bickering and back-stabbing, for no better reason than poor communication by the bosses, is just wearing me down. I can't tell you how many times I've been chewed out or blamed for things that either weren't my fault (it gets so bad that the blame ends up at me for things that happen on my day off that I had no part of) or were a result of me doing the best I could on a lack of instruction.

I understand poor communication happens sometimes, but it just feels excessive at this place.

Is this something I should just get used to, or should I make a more concerted effort to escape this hell-hole?

 

Do you, by any chance, work at the Trentonian?

 

get used to it. management style in this biz is all about covering your own ass.

 

I've never worked in a setting, and that includes (especially) seven years at USA Today, that there weren't good reasons for complaining about staff-management communications. Except, perhaps, in the smallest settings – where it should be impossible not to be in constant contact with everyone around you but probably doesn't happen there either.

 

You have a wonderful ability to make yourself heard and understood,.

 

Heh. I'll take that as a good thing, whether intended or not.

But big newsrooms have this ... inertia that's hard to overcome.

I remember once, a year or so before I left USAT, suggesting that we abandon our (two) daily departmental budget meetings in favor of a streamlined process that would put the emphasis on personal communications and a "dynamic" story budget – yes, as I look back on it, I was proposing a "wiki" approach ... and remember, this was in 1990. Al Gore still had his Internet in beta.

Instead, we started having three daily budget meetings. And it didn't solve a damn thing.

 

Welcome to the communications industry.

 

It's quite amazing how people who work to disseminate information, can barely communicate with each other.

I work in a four-person sports department and we communicate with each other just fine. It's the rest of the newsroom that doesn't communicate with us, and inter-departmental is even worse.

Take this for example: this happened yesterday morning. My ASE was asking the ME about this new system we put in so parents can buy photos online instead of sending in those little request forms we run in the paper from time to time.

He wanted to know when the meeting was. The ME looked at him and asked, what's that?

Needless to say, I was floored.

 

Within the sports department, it's not too bad. Some guys were pretty bad about communicating with fellow sports guys, but the weeding out process took care of the biggest offender.
Now, as an observer to the news side, communication is worse and communication between sports and news departments is even worse.

 

In my experience communication in the newsroom is bad, communication between different departments is worse and with the public is worst throughout the newspaper industry.

 

It's the same outside the newsroom, I'm learning.