The hammer drops at my shop

Hey everyone...

Well.. add my shop ... a three-paper chain of dailies in northeast Indiana ... to the growing list of papers slashing our wages. We received a memo today that effective June 1, our salaries are being cut 10 percent ... from the top down, allegedly... in addition to the suspension of the company match for our 401Ks.

This follows up a wage and hiring freeze they put into effect in January. I lost my assistant sports editor position in that cutback.

Oh, but they did give us an extra week of vacation. Nice gesture ... but I won't be taking any vacations soon .. not with a $200 monthly bite out of my already meager paycheck.

And the hits just keep on comin' ...

 

Condolences. Very sorry.

 

Ugh, man. That sucks.

 

Ooops sorry!!! Posted to the wrong section ..

Yeah ... it does suck ... I keep telling myself at least I still have a job ...

I've been in and out of the business several times over the years ... something keeps bringing me back. I'm probably a lifer .. as long as there's still a newspaper left to work at, I suppose...

 

so sorry, dave. yeah, ownerships all over the country mzke us feel "lucky to still have jobs" after slicing the balls off our already puny salaries. what a world. :

plenty of support from your friends here, fwiw. it's helped me sort through some similarly dicey financial times -- emotionally, anyway. let us know how else we can help.

 

I hate to beat the dead horse, but how could any kid in J-School stay in J-School right now? If there are any jobs, any at all, newspapers would be foolish to pay more than minimum wage. I mean every week hundreds of jobs are slashed. J-School profs better be warning these people there ARE NO JOBS!
Condolances to you getting your pay slashed.
I mean it used to be you'd get promoted and a raise in pay with hard work. Now you are LUCKY if your pay is not slashed. This profession will never rebound salary wise. I'd love to sit in on a job interview at a paper today. How the fuck could an ME make the job sound appealing??
Telling the candidate he/she will not be up for a raise after a year unless conditions improve. Can you imagine getting a better offer these days at another paper? That's what used to happen? The whole climate is awful.

 

This is factually incorrect.

 

There are still places to go and get a raise. Some of those papers are in locations that 99 percent of journalists wouldn't live in, though.

Now, I don't have any allusions of moving to a larger city in this climate, but there are small towns that still need decent journalists.

 

That's the only reason I'm employed.

 

Hang in there.
Don'tcha just hate it when they tell you to bend over and take it like a man?

 

Thanks for the support everyone...

Yeah, Drip .. it sucks ...lol. What can you do, tho??

Just some background: I'm divorced with three kids: 13, 11 and 7 ... After child support .. before the pay cut .. I bring home about $305 every other week. I supplement my income with a part-time job at Taco Bell, which brings my take-home pay up to about $1,000 a month.

As I said before, I'm probably a lifer in this business... I've been in and out several times over the course of my career. The siren song of the Friday night lights keeps bringing me back ... something does. My last foray out of the business ... to get into teaching full-time .. ended in disaster after a month, and I was lucky to get back in relatively quickly ... three weeks worth of unemployment.

It worked out for the best, because I got out of a dead-end situation at my prior shop with a boss who I absolutely could not work with and undermined my every move.

We do what we have to in order to survive, don't we? I think my next move is to go back to doing what I did a few years ago to supplement my income: Substitute teaching. We recently went to AM cycle, and I now have my days free, not having to begin work until 4 in the fall and spring, and about 6 in the winter.

Thanks again for the encouraging words guys ...

 

$1,000 take-home a month?

I'm all about the "living on as little as possible," but even I have trouble imagining that one. Efficiency apartment, no car, no cell phone, maybe it's doable.