Do more work for the same pay

I'm glad I'm on salary, but those guys who aren't are in a constant battle with management since we're now required to do twice the work we used to...

But the sad truth in all of this is that we have no choice but to adapt. There aren't too many papers around the country that aren't either making cutbacks or not filling open jobs, while at the same time completely expanding what they're doing online.

You either adapt to it, or you get out of the business. Personally, I'd rather adapt...

 

Maybe in the first 30-60 minutes or so of the desk shift it lends itself to a 20 minute break, but who wants to take a break right after he/she gets to work? Since as a desker I rarely, if ever, get to take a break, I just work my 7.5 hour shift, no more - no less, since anything over 7.5 a day is OT

 

And don't let anyone fool you. The cutbacks and the piling on of the workload is so newspapers and their parent companies can still bring in 15-20 profit margins, and you can bet the managers are doing whatever they can at your expense so they won't lose their bonus money.

Meanwhile, in the normal business structure, a 5-7 percent profit is cause for great celebration. And 3-5 percent is the norm. Sam Walton wrote about that in his book. And I think Sam knew a little bit about running a business.

 

I'd turn down a promotion before I ever went on salary. I've seen people on salary get screwed over too many times.

I'll work as much as they want me to, but I'm damn sure getting paid for every minute of it.

 

I've done salary and hourly, and there are advantages to each. I found it's far easier to get time away, off the books (school function, wait for the cable guy) when you're on salary. Of course, working holidays and not getting paid extra sucks.

 

I once caught a fish THIS BIG.
Seriously, as an SE, I do a few hours of work every day. I don't get time in the office to do management stuff. Last vacation to the beach was the first time I didn't take my laptop for work. If not for that vacation, I'd be counting years, not days. This is on my terms, not theirs, and that's why I don't mind it. I prefer it this way over the last job I had where it was five or six 10- to 12-hour days on the desk. It really made my day(s) off (Tuesday and maybe Wednesday if I was lucky) something to behold.
And, write-brained, my previous gig was at a Gannett paper.

 

I go back and forth on this...I work at a fairly small paper covering a big D-I college. As the beat writer, I write at least one and usually two stories damn near every single day between the start of football practice in July and the end of basketball season in March. (Or the end of spring football, whichever comes last.)

But I'm almost never in the office, except for one shift per week on the desk, and as long as I get my stuff in, no one gives me any static about the hours I work or where I work from. And as editude pointed out, one advantage of working steadily all the time is that you have a lot more flexibility to do other stuff like running errands or waiting for the cable guy. (In fact, I did both this week, in between stories and interviews.)

The rest of the staff is stuck in the office, working on a pretty well-defined schedule. That means days off and the occasional chance for OT, but it also means a lot of hours spent in the office bored out of your skull.

It used to drive me crazy when one of my colleagues bitches about having to write a story or make a few calls on his "day off." But honestly, I'd much rather have my way -- even without the days off and the OT -- than theirs.

 

Yeah, it kinda sucks to watch all the money flow to Arlington ... meanwhile I'm covering two beats and signing out office supplies ...

You'd at least think the stock would go up more than it has ...

 

Eventually, papers that overload their people are going to giving readers a product that suffers. What we do is a creative enterprise as well as one requiring hustle, and when your plate gets too full the quality suffers, as well as your judgment.

When the product is no longer as good as it used to be, will that not affect the profit margin? I mean, is there not a point where the cutbacks and overloading of duties are counter-productive to the very reason the cutbacks and overloading exist -- the bottom line?

 

Papers, Gannett in particular, are realizing that they don't necessarily need to write great stories to sell advertising but they do need stories ... so now the big thing is community news. It can be produced quicker by reporters with less experience and smaller paychecks, which means there's more of it and the theory is people will read it because there name's in it ... even if it was about fifth-grade swimming ...

That's the bottom line, unfortunately. At some point you wonder when they won't be able to cut any more to increase their profit margin but I guess they'll cross that bridge when they get there in five to 10 years.

 

To be honest, it's already gone on longer than I thought it would but they've proven me wrong once already ... they'll think of something ... maybe editors are next ... a lot of Gannett papers have too many editors ... except in their sports departments ..

 

Hmmm, blogs definitely must count in the "do more" category, as M_W mentioned. I do a blog for my paper (I cover a D-I college team) and it's honestly like doing an extra story each day. As M_W mentioned, you're already doing two per day (for the most part) from August through the end of March.

Our paper is extremely short-handed, but I do count myself fortunate to be left to my devices and to also not have to do desk but occasionally. It increases some in the summer as guys are taking vacation.

As for vacation, I used to eat about a week or so of it every year. I honestly thought most papers had gone to the "earn it as you go" way since that avoids a buildup they have to pay. Ours is also a use-it-or-lose-it policy. I've been here long enough to get three weeks. As I said, I used to lose a bunch of it. Now, I take almost every day of it during the summer. I save about three days for the Christmas break (which is about all I have before heading to a bowl game).

Oh yeah, my paper also went to this thing making everyone salaried with three years of experience there. I've been hourly, then salaried, then back to hourly and now salaried again. Didn't make much difference after the first 2-3 years because then all the cutbacks hit and our OT was gone anyway. At one point, I did an ASE gig here at this paper and I was working 65-75 hours per week, usually six and sometimes seven days per week. I couldn't bitch though. Whatever I worked, my editor was busting his ass and working 5-10 hours MORE each week.
Now, I still work seven days per week during football and basketball, but it's more or less at my choice. I could work ahead (like on a Sunday...go ahead and knock out a Tuesday story), but I've found it easier to just spread things out and work a bit each day.