Stretched-thin folk: How do you deal with no overtime?

Cosmo is right.

I think some places do a lot things -- capsules, season previews, etc. -- that they think are necessary or being fair to other sport or have been done since 1900 and they just have to scale it badck.

 

It's wink-wink nod-nod here in that regard. And I'm only kosher with it because there's a wink-wink nod-nod in regard to the comp time.

 

That's the nut graf. We've had this talk with our prep guy, who wants to continue to everything the same way that's been done in the past. Just can't happen. We don't have the same staff we had even two years ago. He'll sit in the office, trying to track down every coach for every sport so we can have preview capsules on softball, track, baseball, wrestling, etc. That's commendable. But let's be honest. Outside of football and boys basketball (at least in our area), those other sports are fringe. His time is much better spent working on feature stories that will attract a wider audience than finishing that capsule on a random softball team, which requires you to sit around by the phone waiting for call after call from coaches to get minimal information that maybe 10 people outside of the team care about.

It definitely is about working smarter.

This all gets back to the discussion that we have time and again with Fredrick (sorry to call you out, but you're passionate about it ...) about how most sports writers work 70 hours a week. I don't. I've learned how to trim the fat and spend the time on the important stuff. Most weeks I put in 40 hours. Some weeks I put in 45. Others I put in 35. I ask for overtime if things get really, really crazy. Some things just don't get covered. And that's OK. It's the reality of where we are right now in the business.

 

This, this. A thousand times this.

Or, you can pour extra hours of blood, sweat and tears into a job that will not reward you for that extra work in any manner, shape or form.

Your choice.

 

This brings back some not-so-fond memories. It always bothered me that even when newspaper times were good compared to now, they were never "good" according to management. Back when I was sports editor of a two-man sports staff at a 20,000 circulation paper, we were told one day there would be no overtime pay. To make sure we had hours available to work busy weekends, our wonderful management switched our pay periods to being on Friday - thus, no one was out of hours on the weekend.

That didn't bother me as much, since sports guys know they will work weekends. Still, I felt a staff should be large enough so that guys in sports could have an occasional weekend off to take the wife or girlfriend to dinner or go to an important family wedding, etc. We had no such luxury.

I was on salary, so they could get a zillion hours out of me. My sportwriter had to work 40. I used to tell my sportswriter that I couldn't officially tell him to work past 40. I certainly wasn't supposed to tell him he could work less than 40. Basically a blind eye was put forth to the following agreement: I told my guy that I didn't expect him to leave in the middle of an event if he was out of hours because it was unfair to the readers, although management didn't seem to give a shit. All of the guys who worked under me over the years were really dedicated to the job and that was no problem. Many times they worked more than 40 hours. What I used to tell them that when things were lighter in the summer, I didn't care if they worked 20 hours, they were still to put 40 on the timecard. It was illegal as hell, but management didn't give a damn about sports. That hardly made up for the over-40 hour weeks since because of all the things going on in sports, we had to squeeze vacations in between the start of June until perhaps the first week of August. Because of the length of time I was there, I had three weeks and the other guy two. So, most of the summer, only one of us was available, so you know there weren't many 20-hour weeks.

We also used to get 10 sick days a year. In 12 years, I might have used 10 total and that was for two occasions - a car accident and a kidney stone attack. In sports, we were just not allowed to get sick, it just put too much of a burden on the only remaining guy in sports. We were a p.m paper Monday-Friday and a.m. on Sunday. Because of our deadlines, I had to get up at 4:20 a.m. during the week, many times after covering a game the night before. Our Sunday paper was at least 12 pages. One of us would work the desk and the other would cover an event. For one person to put out 12 pages, you basically had to get in right after lunch and work until a bit past midnight. If one person has to take up that amount of time just for the Saturday desk, you knew management had to know we were working well over 40 hours a week. Looking back, I don't know how we put out a 12-page section with only one person.

Well, in year 13, I got to the point were I was always tired, couldn't sleep, and wasn't eating much. Management had gotten as much blood out of this turnip as possible - I went to the doctor; my bloodpressure was through the roof and the doctor ordered me to take two weeks off of work. I felt so guilty for the other guy in sports for me being gone so long.

Perhaps about a year or so before year 13, we were finally allowed to hire a part-time person. Within a month of getting back to work because of the bloodpressure situation, our part-timer abruptly quit. I snapped. I couldn't take it any longer. I told management I didn't have what it took to break in yet another person (we had use of stringers, but as soon as they got somewhat decent, they left and I had to start all over again). I was in my mid-30s and on the verge of a heart attack. It just wasn't worth it, so I quit. I'm sure they were happy to see me go. I bumped heads with management because I was the only one fighting for the sports department and I knew they would bring in someone making even less than my paultry salary.

It used to anger me so much to see that news had so many more writers and editors than we had, plus they had copy desk people. With two guys in sports and a few stringers, were were putting out just as much local copy, if not more, than the news side, and had to lay out our own pages.

I hate to think how many stories like mine could be repeated here.

I had three basic rules for the sports department: Don't get sick, don't leave in the middle of an event, and regardless of how many hours you do or do not work, put 40 on your time card.

 

No one, outside of a very small group, cares if you bust your butt working 50-60 hours per week covering everything. For the OP's situation, shared copy could be an option.

Other than that, you can't have two people putting out 15-25 pages per week in 80 hours of total work all by their lonesome.

 

My feeling always was that since management was in charge, that it was their responsibility to make sure there were enough resources. Not mine.

At my first job, I worked an average of 47-48 hours a week with no OT. I was new, so I figured it was part of paying my dues. Yet, I was told by more than one co-worker that to do the job, previous people put in 60-70 hours a week. My feeling was that if it took that many hours, then a part-time person should have been used.

As far as advice for schiezank, I echo what others say on here about larger photos. Also, more photos. Instead of having one photo per event, put in two or three. It gets more faces in the paper, which shuts up the parents, and you won't have to write as much.

 

There's some very good advice here, and much of it boils down to this: focus on what really matters and discard the rest.

 

Since I'm kind of familiar with the area, I suppose I can add in that maybe you can shift coverage a bit to schools in your coverage area playing one another that week, and using the same article in both papers, even if it's not a marquee sport. I don't know how much you're doing this already - I don't really get that much of an opportunity to look at your papers now that I'm at another shop - but many of the teams are in the same divisions in this region of the state.

Regarding freelancers / interns, I'm not sure how many you'll get from the surrounding area. There are some college kids always looking for some paid work, but the local college paper isn't really abundant with talented sports writers. And unpaid internships don't go over well either.

 

Thanks for all the advice guys.

I've thought about this all day and have decided that my coworker and I will start keeping detailed hour-by-hour accounts of our work weeks and, every Wednesday or Thursday when we put out the last section of the week, we'll take those accounts to our boss and say, quite simply, here's how many hours we have left, here's the events we need to cover. You decide if it's getting done or not.

If they don't want to pay us overtime, that's fine. But enough is enough. I'm not working one bloody minute past 40 hours and neither is my coworker. And if that means we'll miss a state championship meet, well, that sucks but, if they don't care about the product, we can't care about trying to please everyone.

 

I'm with you 100 percent with your idea and wish you the best.

My instincts tell me your bosses will say "OK" and then freak out when the phones start ringing about missed games or events.

Do come back and let us know what they say.