Is anybody else finding it hard to tear away from the biz?

Great post, golfnut. Thanks for sharing.

 

I have a question for you guys. Is the news side of the business better than the sports side, in terms of being able to live a life? I'm still in school, and I'm debating whether to aim for sports or news.

 

Tough call. I never worked in news so I can't definitively say but I'm sure there are others here who have and can offer more.

Often times in news you are placed on a beat, just like in sports. It could be city government, school board or whatever, and those beats can include shitty schedules as well. At my two stops there were definitely reporters working similar schedules as the sports guys because they had to spend their evenings at a school board meeting or city council meeting and then come back and write on deadline just like us. And as a news reporter you can be on call so you may have some free time interrupted because there was a car accident or something and you had to drop what you were doing and get out to it. (Good thing about preps sports is for the most part our news was scheduled and we knew when it was going to happen; regular news often happens when it happens).

But I know we also had general news reporters who worked a day shift and they reported on anything during those hours and then they punched the clock at 5 and went home.

My guess is that it probably goes both ways for news.

 

I worked (and still am working) in news for about three years, and this is a pretty accurate description. It varies from shop to shop - Some will only want you to work a regular eight-hour shift each day, with some occasional night meeting and weekend event coverage. Others will expect you to work every single night meeting and be on call for anything in the town you're covering.

So, there is no guarantee that just because you're doing news your schedule will be any better. I do think the pay and chance for advancement are a bit better though, and it's typically easier to be a news reporter who contributes to sports from time to time, as opposed to a sports reporter who chips in a sports story, at least in my experience. (At my place before Patch, I worked as a news reporter 30 hours a week, and in the extra 10 each week, I covered either URI or PC hoops, or took gamers on the phones if they needed me to.)

 

I thought education would be recession-proof, but it's not. The economy has caused massive layoffs.

It's hard to get hired -- it took me more than a year after dropping $10K on grad school to get a license, and with five years in, I'm still not layoff-proof because our district hasn't hired any more social studies teachers since me (when three such teachers left last year, they just shifted people around or didn't fill positions). That I have an unusual license -- journalism & social studies -- helps, but only if journalism isn't seen as expendable when the next round of budget cuts hits.

That, and the education reform movement hitting several states (including mine, where teachers are thought of as a bunch of lazy incompetent leeches sucking at the taxpayer teat BY THE ELECTED STATE SECRETARY OF EDUCATION) doesn't exactly give one much job security anyway.

However, there are lots of opportunities -- charter schools are opening like wildfire (longer hours, terrible pay, no union representation, but they're also more willing to hire people with alternative teacher prep than many traditional public schools), school reform means private schools (which also pay like crap) will be expanding. Now, though, is a terrible time to get into public education, much like journalism.

 

Go with whatever one interests you the most, because the "benefits" of a news schedule are negligible at best.

Even if you have a "daytime" beat such as the courts, big trials or other events inevitably will come up ... and you'll have to stay late and cover them.

Plus, many papers rotate their night reporter or weekend reporter duties, so you can count on having some shifts at night/on weekends even if you're in news.

Not to mention night meetings, breaking news stories where you are called in ... the news side means fewer nights and weekends, but much more unpredictability.

 

Took me almost two years, but I just landed a job in marketing at a university. Has nothing to do with sports. I was turned down for a technical writing job, a social media specialist job and a tourism marketing job in the past two years, so it's been a long road.

I'm a little nervous about totally changing directions, but I've just become so jaded about newspapers the past two years and can't bank on there being opportunities to move up in the future. With more and more layoffs it's just becoming more and more stressful to be one of the "survivors," and even though I'd like to think I can be part of the solution, I just feel like I've got to make the best move for my family. More money, better hours and the freedom to do more things outside of work definitely make this the best move.

 

Aim for where you can get a job. If you're in news, it doesn't mean you'll be stuck there forever.

 

Very interesting stuff on this thread. I missed it first time around. I have almost gotten out of this business twice but when I took new jobs, ultimately stayed in it. I have a very good fulfilling job now in the business that allows me to have very regular hours, albeit at night. But that has enabled me to improve my social life and find love at last. I would like to find something worthwhile, with good pay, out of the business in another city. And if I do, I think I'd be ready to say good-bye to the newspaper business.

 

Sounds like you've made some poor life choices.

 

Yeah, but he's got such a positive outlook that he'll surely be successful in his next chosen endeavor.