Do you have a weekly byline minimum?

Maximum is how much you can do until your paid and unpaid time is up.

Do you work in this industry?

 

Yes, I do work in this industry. Have been for over 10 years.

Let's say a reporter is paid $400/week and is told they have a minimum of 10 bylines per week. Reporter writes the 10 bylines in four days. What motivation, other than personal pride in a good story and/or the desire to keep your paycheck, would a reporter have in trying to dig for another story on the fifth day? That's why byline minimums are poor policy. They encourage people to think about the minimum amount of work they need to do to do their job.

 

I wasn't defending minimums. I was defining minimums.

 

These are stories, not pieces of flare.

 

The proper term would be amateur, since they don't get paid, but they call it semi-pro nonetheless...

 

Joanna: You know what, Stan, if you want me to wear 37 pieces of flair, like your pretty boy over there, Brian, why don't you just make the minimum 37 pieces of flair?
Stan, Chotchkie's Manager: Well, I thought I remembered you saying that you wanted to express yourself.
Joanna: Yeah. You know what, yeah, I do. I do want to express myself, okay. And I don't need 37 pieces of flair to do it.
[flips off Stan]

 

You know, the Nazis wore pieces of flair.

 

You're screwing up ANOTHER great movie quote, Mike.
"The Nazis had pieces of flair they made the Jews wear."

 

At my last stop, the publisher would count bylines for a monthly contest — his fun way of checking on us. One day, he asked me I hadn't done many stories, according to his math. I was the only one working in sports after the SE left and I had been putting "Staff Reports" on most of the stories because I didn't want to have my byline covering the page — especially on the shitty stories.

I don't think he ever understood why I did that — I mean, didn't I want to be in the running for the $10 grocery store gift card?

 

This thread makes me glad that I got out of sportswriting.

 

Never had a byline minimum, but did work at a place that would count up everybody's bylines each week and send out the top 10 via email. A subtle reminder to "work harder" I guess.

It led to news folks slapping bylines on rewritten press releases and other things that should have been a brief, just to pump up their count.

Generally, I've found that whatever you measure is what you're going to get. If you're interested in sheer number of bylines, you're going to get a whole lot of quantity, and not a lot of quality.

A good editor should have his pulse on his staff. He shouldn't need a byline count to tell him who is pulling his weight and who isn't.