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

Very good choice, IMHO.

Oh, and don't forget to update your resume, start studying for the LSAT or whatever escape plan suits you. A place run like that ain't gonna keep its chips long.

 

Congratulations on your stance. It is a good one.
At our shop, it is the wink, wink system. Every writer works at least 50 and gets paid for 40. Some work 60 to 70. Sad but that's the case and I know of several other papers/websites in this area where the wink wink system also is in place. Do it or you are gone.

Keep us posted on how it goes. My guess is you will face a strict set of rules reporting to the boss every day on an account of each hour worked. You also will be criticized for not using the free lance writers more efficiently. I find it difficult to believe that the boss with no clue will suddenly get a clue and realize how hard you 2 work. Good luck with this. You will be fought hard by management on this I believe. They obviously will need to be educated on how many hours you 2 actually work. They obviously have no clue about that right now.

 

The thing is, my coworker and I have gotten to a point where we've trimmed all the fat from our 40-hour work week and, as such, we've gotten in a grove that I guess makes it look easy.

To us, writing six 600-700 word stories in one night is nothing new and we often make deadline easily because we choose to do our layout during overnight hours instead of clocking out at 5 p.m. like just about everyone else in the office.

I'm curious to see how this whole affair goes and I'm willing to bet we'll be back to having overtime three minutes after the bosses see that we couldn't cover the state gymnastic meet (which is on a Sunday) and the competition did.

 

I put 40 hours into my job each week, and there are some high school games that go without a reporter present. Somehow, the Earth still turns on its axis. Amazing, no?

 

Well, I don't have much to add, some good things have already been thrown out, but if you are responsible for the layout, you can do some things that will help.
You might design a weekly sports calendar that would be good to run in all your sections.
Take all the area teams and anything that resmbles a sporting event and dump it all in together. Jazz it up with some graphics, headers, subheads, etc., and design it where it fills up a 2x20 hole each week.
I don't know where you live, but some states have a pretty aggressive wildlife media people. If hunting or fishing is big in your area, you can get weekly fishing and hunting reports, stories, photos and a calendar for the different seasons.
Then, with all your sparetime you have at the office, design a prototype with a hole for a sponsorship ad. Take it to your bosses and if it is a winner, you just made your shop some money, and then have a common page for all your sections, cutting down on your workload.
You can also buy print ready NASCAR pages. They come designed in blocks, so ads could be inserted. The designed pages used to be super cheap and one ad covered the cost and made money. But the deal, again, is if the same page ran in all your sections, you got a common page and it cuts down on your workload.

And off topic and maybe thread worthy, for those of us, like me, who follow the 40 hours and go home rule, have any of you noted a bubbling pot of resentment by the salaried managers who are working drop dead hours?
It is becoming a little bit of an issue at my place. Because not every reporter is strict in their time, so some work over. Then you get this weird little dynamic of the 40 hour people not being team players as the salaried people are grumbling because they want you to be as miserable and sick of work as they are.
My point is clear: I work for a multi-billion dollar conglomerate of a company that said they can't afford to pay me time and a half, so I go home.

 

I'd think that would happen in almost any industry.

Thing is, most managers in other professional industries are making a heck of a lot more than the people underneath them. So they can at least console themselves with the bigger paycheck.

Newspapers of course, don't pay their managers as well. Or, they give them a $20 a week increase and make them a manager.

 

I don't really see the resentment at my shop. But I'm with you on this point. I'm well past the point where I let this job get to me. I have a great group of friends (most of them outside of work now) and a good social life outside of the office. I get away. I don't bitch about my job because frankly they don't want to hear it. The only time the job comes home with me any more is if I have a bit of breaking news that I haven't got sourced quite properly yet and I'm worried someone else might get it first. But that's it. I spent way too much time in my younger years being stressed about over this biz. Maybe I've matured in that respect.

 

I have begun to notice this. Particularly because we are a union shop and all the non-management people get paid either OT or comp when they work over. But I think most of the management types are worried they have to go over and above because they laid off a few managers last year and they're worried. Of course, they're paid pretty handsomely, I believe, for being a manager.

 

This comes down to management -- YOUR MANAGEMENT. You are required to do certain things with certain resources. You can't stretch those resources too much because it is unsustainable.

Stop covering everything. You work for the paper, not the mommies and daddies or the "kids." It's not your job to cover every aspect. You do what you can.

More importantly, you have to plan and adjust editorial coverage based on your resources. One week you don't want to cover everything, then next week nothing. That makes little sense. Develop a sustainable amount of coverage and stick to it.

 

You mention six hours for a track meet and all day at a wrestling meet ... even though you specifically said those are places you can't cut, I think those are places you should cut. Show up when you can watch the best kids' events in track (or the kids you plan on writing about anyway.) Snap some photos of the other kids and instead of waiting until the end of the night to talk to the coach and the end of the night to talk to a kid after he competed in all his events, call them the next day. If you show up at wrestling in time to see the semifinals and the finals, you'll see 95% of the stuff worth writing about anyway and it takes 90 minutes, not 8 hours. I'm sure that means you'll miss kids who didn't make it that far and maybe even a few schools that didn't make it that far, but call them and you can still pretty easily crank out a short story. Then cover one of their basketball games to make up for it and to generate some art for your section.

Or -- and this is probably the way it really should be done, even though I never really did it very often -- splash features and game previews across your page, stuff that is related to game results but not dependent on seeing every minute of every meet/game all season. Set up feature photos, then maybe call the coach after the game and put together a 50-100 word brief on the actual game. Then do actual game coverage of the one or two biggest events all week. This generally takes more foresight than I ever invested, but it's the way I should have done it when I was the sports editor for two weekly papers.

And when you do show up at an event, be seen by the players, coaches and parents. They're not dumb. Most of them know you produce all six papers. Make sure they see you giving a fuck about their kids, even if it's not as often as before, and they'll be fine.

I don't miss those days. Have fun.

 

I feel your pain, but this will not end well. As Ace indicated, your previously falsified time (however well intentioned) can be used as grounds for firing. Your current plan is a form of blackmail -- can't imagine the boss responding well -- and your leverage beyond denial of OT is what?
The good people of this board's smart time management advice can help you find a better balance.
Job hunting can give you a new perspective - discomfort with your current shop can push you to finding something better or appreciate your current gig.
Good luck with everything.

 

Do you have local teams in the state gymnastic meet? Is it a high school event? On a Sunday? I wouldn't cover it out of principle.