Gannett's newest "innovation"

I have no problem with a byline count if it's averaged out over an extended period of time. If you get shit for having seven bylines one week, that's bullshit. I think averaging two a day is a very reasonable goal for a writer. But the key word is AVERAGING. If you write seven one week and 17 the next week, that's an average of 12 per week. You're above quota. But if they're going to give you shit about a week where you have seven bylines and one of them was a longer, in-depth piece, I'd start making copies of the ol' resumes.

P.S. Takeout writers, columnists, etc... excluded. This is my opinion for beat writers only.

 

I understand the byline thing, but I think its effectiveness and practicality depends on the shop...
A big paper, in a metro market, has a lot of stuff going on, even in the slower summer months, whether it be pro teams, minor league teams, big AAU tournaments, golf, NASCAR etc...

for smaller shops, were preps are the driving force behind a sports section, that byline count could become a bit of a stretch in the slow summer months. Little league and gymnastics tournaments are all fine and dandy every now and then, but if you're at a small prep-driven paper that expects two stories a day, June and July could be hell.

 

Lemme guess... you work for an MBA. They like to count things, you see. Even things that can't really be counted empirically. Like, say, bylines.

 

Sorry, folks, but in 38 years in this business I have never heard of nor thought of byline counts as a measure of someone's productivity or worth to a staff.

 

I had heard of papers who count bylines. One of the dumbest things I've heard in this business ... and most of you have heard of some stupid crap.

 

My paper's ME tried a byline count last year. The staff as a whole, news and sports, said fuck it. They couldn't fire us all. And the ME was demoted and serves drinks at the local bar now.

For a three-man sports staff (one editor, two writers) byline counts aren't practical. The editor has (or is supposed to) write a share of stories, and we're expected to do a lot of editor/designer/clerk work. The summer is the only time we get to use vacation, so the situation of everybody pitching in for every type of job is magnified. I might write three stories per week right now.

 

What kinds of papers do you guys work at that have space for each writer to publish two stories a day? I'm lucky if I can get 6 inches for breaking news...

 

Well, in podunk where there are only two writers on staff and 4-6 pages per day ...

 

We have byline counts: two stories a day, 10 stories a week - plus once a month you are responsible for a large Sunday feature or story.
People bitched and moaned, but it really wasn't that big a deal. We byline any story over six inches. And our staff is pretty productive.
We also don't really worry about management riding us if we fall short. The EE gets a monthly count and posts it in the newsroom. He likes to read off who's writing how many stories, but nobody has ever been called on the carpet.
The policy is office wide. We have at least two news reporters who do maybe one story a week.
As long they have jobs, I'm not too worried.
Plus, many of our guys, also shoot their own photos ... and paginate.

 

Had a meathead publisher try this at a shop where I was a one-man gang. I was laying out all the pages and taking all the photos and he had the balls to start counting bylines and call me on the carpet about it. Then, I started bylining everything but briefs. Phoners, roundups, etc.

Then I got chewed out for bylining too much, because it was becoming obvious to people that only one person worked in the department.

Nice place to work.

 

We routinely have sports stories held for lack of space. HR now believes we can rectify that problem by having us write for the news section. The LIC conversion and this two-stories-per-day thing, as you'd expect, prompted a truly epic exodus. We've lost more than half of our news writers since LIC was announced early this year. I think it's actually 75% or so. They're incredibly short staffed over there. I'm a team player. I don't mind helping. The dissonance comes when I realize management voluntarily created this problem, management isn't hustling to fill the positions and they'll still want me to do news stuff next summer -- fully staffed news side or not.

I read several of the threads about layoffs. Dallas. Bay Area. I'm glad I have this job.

Byline counts still suck. I hate em.

 

the other thing we have to consider in sports is that many of the medium and small sized papers have desk duty. It's one thing for 2 stories a day, it is rather impossible when your staff also serves on the desk helping with layout. That's the difference between sports and news. I don't know of many news side reporters that also get pulled for desk duty. In the summer, much more desk shifts.