Overtime pay

No they won't.

What do you make right now?

 

So I'm guessing you don't want any credit or recognition if the company's paper wins an award in your department?

After all, it's not your paper.

 

My annoyance comes when the bosses try to shame you into not claiming your overtime, or don't seem to comprehend basic math and time management.
When I was a one-man band this spring, I went six weeks without a day off and had three straight weeks of 60 hours-plus. Claimed every bit of it and did some good work. Filled the section every day.
Bosses asked why I had so much overtime, so after explaining it to them I consciously tried to watch it for a week or two. I didn't not claim it, I just skipped an optional assignment or two so I worked 53 hours instead of 60. That, of course, led to a day or two where the section was a little thinner on local news.
Bosses complained about the lack of local content for those one or two days.
Either they don't grasp that all of those local stories take time to produce, or they're trying to make you think you should be able to bend the laws of time and space to write 20 stories and paginate seven sections in 40 hours, and thus Jedi Mind Trick you into thinking you haven't "earned" the overtime and shouldn't claim it.

 

No industry devalues its own product like journalism.

And no profession thinks so little of itself like journalists.

For some people it is like being in an abusive relationship.

The paper loves you, so just because it punched you in the checking account, that doesn't make it bad because it loves you.

 

I've won a lot of awards, gotten tons of compliments from readers and been a steady force at my shop for almost two decades.
My paper almost went under a couple of years ago and I haven't gotten a raise in six years. The only reason I made more money last year than ever before was because I worked gobs and gobs of paid overtime after my SE left and they didn't hire anyone -- not just another SE, but anyone -- for five months.
I sure as hell hope somebody starts paying pretty soon.

 

I risk outing myself here but several years ago, everyone on our news staff was required to document how long it took us to do our job. The rub? Some things weren't eligible. For me, searching the wire for stories didn't count and something else that while it befuddled me then I can't seem to remember what it was.

For my boss? Slotting out the section and making the schedule (which could easily run a full shift).

The end result? We were only able to document maybe four hours of "work" and that was after being very liberal. (yeah, I can do a page in 15 minutes if my stories and art are there and everything's been proofed but if I had to proof the stories and track down the art, it will be more than an hour)

 

What is involved in the credit or recognition? Anything tangible? Or just a pat on the back?

 

You guys should move to news, where everything is settled by 6 p.m.

 

And you know what? Searching the wire for stories counts as work, regardless of what your bosses say.

If not, then just grab the first thing on the wire and make it your lead wire story. Who cares if it's a WNBA game on the opposite coast, or some random island in the Pacific had a shooting death. After all, searching the wires isn't work.

 

Can't take a pat on the back to the bank. Nor any of those awards. Can't take them to the bank, can't pay the rent with them, can't buy food and clothes for your kids with them.

And yes, I respect personal pride and desire to do your job well, but doing your job has value, and there are laws that govern that value. If your company isn't paying you for overtime, it is breaking the law, plain and simple.

 

Idiocy. Sheer idiocy. Why is there such a disconnect between management and the grunts on what it takes to get the job done?
When they started doing byline counts at my shop, we were told anything that got a "staff reports" byline didn't count.
So, those six call-ins that I turned into 12-inchers? Those state college gamers written off of box scores or rewritten from poorly-written press releases, because there's no other way to get them?
Don't count.
So instead of the 15-20 stories I wrote a week in-season, I got credit for about eight and the stink eye for having overtime because it doesn't look like I'm doing that much by their metric. I've also heard grumbling since that pace has slacked off in the summer.
I think they've come to their senses a bit on what constitutes a byline, but they're still tracking them. It annoys the hell out of me.

 

What SBR and MNgremlin don't realize, don't believe, or are forgetting, is that most of us did exactly what they are suggesting, for the same reasons, throughout most of our careers.

That's why our perspective is now different than theirs.