Shortest stint at a paper

Hey, if it's been 19 months, no reason to look back.

Look ahead. Always look ahead.

 

Thought I posted this ....

We hired an SE once who never showed. Turned out he was using us as leverage in his old job. They had his name on an office door and a luncheon setup with editors and all of us on a Monday ... no show Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. Finally on Thursday, word leaked down to us that he wasn't coming. For the next couple of years, we gave out a mock award each week named after the guy.

Had a part-timer quit after 5 minutes once. We hired him to yank prep phones, he couldn't understand why he had to do that and couldn't write columns.

 

6 months in Kingston, Jamaica. Great gig. Couldn't have picked a more historic time to be there.

In July, I'll have been at this weekly for 4 years, my longest stay. I like it, but I feel the winds of change whispering in my ear. Any SE's want someone who can write, photograph and Quark? I'd rather be part of a team than be the entire team.

 

I moved a lot of times in my first 7 years in the business. Let's see, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven ... about one a year, including two at one place.

Then I spent 8 at the big city metro ... and this year, my 30th year in the business is going to just about exactly coincide with my 10th at this company, within two months. So all those moves, and now a third of my career at one place. Just occurred to me.

 

My first job out of college, I got word that my boss wasn't that happy with me, so I quit. No notice. I was out of the business for a year, then returned to the same paper I'd quit. Worked there several years, moved on and next thing you know, ol' OTD's a thousandaire.

 

45 days, but my resume also features four papers with stays of 90 days.

My family always said I was impatient, but I didn't agree.

 

We have ourselves a winner. Four papers with stays of 90 days? Wow.

 

Five of under 90 days, if you want to spin the numbers.

Want the tick-tock?

Paper A - Age 19, my hometown paper, where I'd been a stringer while in high school: 20 months.

Paper B - Took a management job a quarter way across the country. Paper was sold to Thomson. My job was eliminated in three months.

Paper C - Sports editor job closer to home but I wasn't the right fit for an uptight community. Fired after three months.

Back to Paper A - A homecoming of sorts. Left because the editor -- the former sports editor who'd given me my chance -- was a drunk. That was eight months.

Paper D - Sports editor at a 10K close to home, but learned after taking the job that the staff of four actually meant me plus three stringers. (And learned the circ number was only accurate if you rounded up to the nearest 5,000; it was 5,700.) I was gone in three months.

Back again to Paper A - The drunk got fired, I came riding in on a white horse to be interim editor, but thought I was too young for the job permanently. The eventual editor was a jerk. So three months later, I was out again after three months, this time, for good.

Paper E - A suburban paper where I also had wandering eyes but ended up sticking around for 18 months, working a cool four-day schedule.

Paper F - I started spending my three days off days from Paper E here, helping this big suburban paper implement its redesign (training staff and a lot of template building, mostly; it wasn't my design) and ended up becoming design editor after two months. A month into that, the editor was fired and my boss was demoted because the redesign is was flop. I saw the writing on the wall. That was 45 days.

Paper G - Hired for a great editing job by a great editor who gets fired by the fairly new ownership after three months. I stuck around another six months to get the paper through a 50-inch web conversion and redesign before the editor who hired me was able to get me in the door at his new paper.

Paper H - Now married with a child, I spent five years in the same seat doing the same job. But I answered the calling of a new editor friend who needed an M.E. at his smaller paper.

Paper I - My new friend became an old friend quickly. After a year of trying to burn down the unethical bridge he'd built between advertising and editorial, I gave up after being told to share advance story budgets with advertising so they could coordinate their sales with who we were writing about. That was the hardest 13 months of my life. The best part was watching my No. 2 and another top editor follow me out the door.

And it's back to Paper H - And I remain there. Content, too.

So i know it sounds bad, but were it not for that so-called friend, I'd probably have spent seven years in the same job. So those 90-day stays are way in the past.

 

Three months. Worked in Editorial News at small 6-day paper. Great environment and city. Loved the people there ... in the city. Made lots of wonderful friends. But ... the M.E. (a well-known small-sized Texas newspaper woman M.E.) just didn't think I was a good fit for her paper. I do remember that her A.M.E. gentleman (now an M.E. at another small-sized Texas paper) really was eager to get my door key from me before she showed me the back door.

But my life (and career) weren't hurt by it. I learned a lot ... from the experience I went through there. Eventually, a good friend of mine who was S.E. there was booted out, too. Just a weird environment.

Reading others' experiences about stints in newspapers, though, does give me relief to know that I'm not the only goofy one around here.

OK ... so maybe I tossed out a softball on that line.

 

Knew a guy once who was employed at the Marrietta Daily Journal (Ga.) for four hours. He abruptly quit on his first day because of the work environment. All those who know the MDJ can attest.

 

I used to work for this insane publisher. I figured out he was insane the day Ronald Reagan died.

it was a deadline day at this weekly, and the publisher, in all his wisdom, decided to delete all of our local copy and he replaced it with pages and pages of wire copy on Ronald Reagan. He told no one about this, and we discovered it the day the paper came out.

The publisher wrote a sickening op-ed in that edition that began with the following sentence:
"Ronald Reagan single handedly brought down the Soviet Empire."

Anyway, that got me curious. Why was I working for such a lunatic?

Searching through eight years of back issues, I discovered that this publisher had 46 managing editors in that time. The paper had rolled through around 140 reporters in that time and 68 sports editors. One sports editor worked there for one issue. One managing editor worked there for two issues.

I guess I was a big idiot for staying there for a year.

 

Folks, I believe we have a winner.