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Travel cutbacks?

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by micke77, Jan 14, 2009.

  1. playthrough

    playthrough Moderator Staff Member

    One major-metro columnist I know isn't going to the Super Bowl for the first time in 20 years now that his team is eliminated. Probably going to be a ton of those cuts this year for Super Bowl, Masters, NCAAs, etc.
     
  2. Big Buckin' agate_monkey

    Big Buckin' agate_monkey Active Member

    Fuel is $1.99 here and our mileage just dropped, but I don't know to what because I rarely see the bright lights.
     
  3. Mizzougrad96

    Mizzougrad96 Active Member

    We had that as well. National events, which we used to cover no matter what, we stopped covering unless there was a local team or in some cases, a local athlete who was participating.
     
  4. Mizzougrad96

    Mizzougrad96 Active Member

    I'll be very curious how many papers cover the Tour de France, British Open and Wimbledon this year as compared to a couple years ago.
     
  5. micke77

    micke77 Member

    One of the six inductees last summer in the Pro Football Hall of Fame was one I covered since his high school days. i asked my boss right after the HOF class was announced in February to file back the weekend of Aug. 3-5 in Canton and see if, by that time, our travel expenses could be taken care of. he said "we'll have to see, but i doubt it very seriously because we're trying to cut back as much as possible."
    long story made short here: because of the obvious significance of this honor (there's only like 260 inductees in the entire history of Pro HOF), i was hell-bent to cover it. so rather than keep getting put on hold or getting the "bad news budget" word, I took a week's vacation and went to Canton.
    call me either a dumbass or the most loyal SOB scribe in the world, but i paid for the entire trip. all of it. and get this and everybody out there reading it will surely respond, "you have to be crazy": i filed 8-to-10 stories from Canton on the whole deal. features, notebooks, the works and had stuff on our guy nobody else did, what with our experience in covering him.
    as i have noted elsewhere in some of these threads, i am one of those dudes who lives,breathes and practically sleeps my sportswriting gig and will go out of the way and far beyond the call of duty (and sanity) sometimes to get somthing done. i felt, and believed, i owed it to our readers to have a local writer there to cover this huge honor.
     
  6. Cosmo

    Cosmo Well-Known Member

    There's just no way I would do what you did, not with the way the newspaper business rewards loyalty with cutbacks and layoffs.

    Now if my paper asked me to use accrued points for hotel rooms, I would do that. For the most part, all of my Marriott points were picked up on company trips that the company paid for. They're well within their rights to ask for you to use those points for rooms. But that's about the extent of it. I am completely unwilling to travel someplace on a company assignment without being compensated. No free rides. I get paid too little to bend over backwards for someone who won't do the same for me.
     
  7. Mizzougrad96

    Mizzougrad96 Active Member

    I did things like that early in my career. It took me about three years before I realized that such antics would only be taken for granted.

    I got really sick of my SE coming to me and say, "Hey don't you have family in City X, why don't you cover this game and save us hotel money."
     
  8. playthrough

    playthrough Moderator Staff Member

    What Cosmo said. I did my share of gratis work back in the day, with the same desire to give readers the absolute best product possible, but now that I'm married with a kid I see that time and money in a totally different light. Doesn't make me less of a journalist, I hope. But it makes me a better businessman, and in this era that's all it is. A business.
     
  9. spnited

    spnited Active Member

    Congratulations, Micke. You will not be laid off in the next round of cuts.
    Instead, we will allow you to stay on staff as long as you work for free and pay your own expenses on the road, since you seem so willing to do so.
     
  10. Mizzougrad96

    Mizzougrad96 Active Member

    Not to be a dick, but if you thought you owed it to your readers you're a fool.

    If you wanted to cover it and this was the only way you could, that's still bad, but not as.
     
  11. Joe Williams

    Joe Williams Well-Known Member

    I always felt bad for the adults who grew up as orphans and became sportswriters. They never had family anywhere to stay with for free and therefore lost out all sorts of plum assignments to lesser journalists with more relatives.
     
  12. hankschu

    hankschu Member

    I have to quibble with the Marriott part of that post. We do not get compensated nearly enough for our time when we are home, much less when we travel. Some years back, Congress agreed. There was a lot of noise, as I recall, from companies wanting to take points from employees. Congress said, "Fine, if you do that we're going to start taxing them as income." Companies backed off.

    Fortunately, my company agrees. Once, I offered to "sell" some of my points at a discount to help us save some money in a particular city where hotel rates were through the roof. My boss said no, just pay for the hotel as usual, because the company does not want to get involved in employees' points.
     
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