Shortest stint at a paper

My time at that rag was the longest two years of my life.

Shortest stint was 14 months at another paper in Montana.

Longest I've stayed is about 27 months in the Haute.

 

Wow. I'm loving the one-day story.

 

I've been pretty bouncy myself. Four jobs, the longest stay is 25 months. Current job is 22 months, though I'm hoping to get going pretty soon. Not a bad place, all things considered, but I need more money and I have daily papering in my blood.

 

I've never worked shorter than two years at any stop, but one place I worked had unbelievably bad luck with agate clerks. One such hire went out for dinner and never came back. Another was hired to begin the next day, never showed up. Shortest tenures I can remember.

 

I got my best friend (a biology major) a job at the college paper as a copy editor. He worked his way up to night editor. When he graduated he was struggling to find a job and we were struggling to find a sports copy editor. So, I suggested he come on board, make a few bucks while continuing to search for Bio jobs.
On his first day he designed the section, made deadline -- all was well.
The next day he walks in and the HR lady and the ME are whispering about something.
They say he can't start working (he already had worked a day) because he still has some paper work to fill out (even though he was told he could start and had spent the past two weeks filling out paperwork and showing up to meet with the HR lady and she wasn't there). So they sent him home.
The only reason he didn't want to quit was because he thought it would reflect poorly on me. I said screw it.
So he "worked" exactly one day in the newspaper industry and will NEVER receive a pay check for it.
Then, he put this job on his resume (because he was "hired" before this whole fiasco) and gets an interview with a big bio company. The company calls our paper and asks if this guy ever worked there. The HR lady said she's never heard of the guy. So working at the newspaper for one day cost him his dream job at a bio place.
He currently has a biology job. And this story to tell.

 

A year, that felt like five. I knew after a week that I'd made a huge mistake [\gobbluth], but I didn't want to quit my first job out of college that quickly. I was miserable and gained 20 pounds during the year, but I was able to bolt for a much better gig.

I hated it, but I don't regret it because it eventually led me to where I am.

 

One month at the Roswell Daily Record. The morning after my first shift, I resumed my job hunt. Had another job in two weeks; gave RDR my two weeks' notice two weeks after I was hired. Didn't hurt my career and gave me a few funny stories. The paper that hired me wondered why I wanted to leave the RDR after only two weeks. Fortunately, I'd brought in a copy of that morning's Roswell Daily Record. It answered all their questions.

As to why I took a job at the Record in the first place, let's just say I was in need of a job, it was nearby and I truly had no idea what I was getting into.

 

I also worked a month at my shortest gig. I was full time there (a weekly) and part time at a daily in another county, which made for pretty long weeks. I quit the weekly when I became full time at the daily.

 

How about no days?
When I was editor at a small daily, there were three instances where I hired someone who accepted the job, gave their notice to their current employer then called me the day before they were to start to say they accepted a job elsewhere.
One guy had the nerve to call me a year later to say he made a mistake and wondered if I had any openings. He could have won a Pulitzer and I wouldn't have hired him again.
I ran into another at a paper I moved to, and he was shocked when that editor asked him about bailing on the job during his interview.
So while in many cases leaving early won't hurt your career, it could bite you in the ass.

 

The first place I was at was for 1 1/2 years to the day. I got some good experience, some decent clips and got to know some "interesting" people to say the least.

So after a year I'm up for my review. It went well, but these bastards are cheap asses evidenced by my $8.75 an hour pay. I shit you not, but it was an economically depressed area so I got by. After not seeing my raise (which would have been a quarter, 50 cents tops) in my paycheck for a while, I ask my SE to see what's going on. He comes back to me and says I didn't get one b/c they said I didn't deserve it.

He told me if I started writing 10 stories a week (along with doing pages three times a week) he could MAYBE get me a dollar. I didn't even say a word. A week and seven stories later, he calls me and says, 'I thought I told you to write 10 stories.' I said, 'I know, but I didn't think I deserved to have my name in the paper 10 times.'

I was gone in two weeks.

 

Were you actually that much better than No. 50?

 

no, being stupid enough to try to pad his resume with his 1-day newspaper career cost him his dream job at a bio place.