Travel cutbacks?

Micke, I don't think you're a dumbass, but I'd like to offer this advice: Never care more about your product than your bosses do. It can only lead to heartache.

 

You're crazy paying for that HOF trip.

hankschu is right. Never care more about the product than your bosses or you'll get screwed to the mat.

How many readers thanked you for doing that out of your pocket? Did your editor? Sports editor? The publisher?

 

Here's where I figure the hotel points and the airline miles come into play:

A journalist who gets sent on a week-long road assignment is gone from his home 120 hours (5 x 24 hours) and gets paid for 40 hours.

A journalist who logs five office shifts that same week is gone from his home 40 hours and gets paid for 40 hours. Even allowing for hellacious commuting, it's 50-60 hours gone, max.

So a few thousand hotel points and airline miles -- none of it out of the company's pocket -- seems like a pretty slick way for an employer to get those extra 60 or 70 hours out of you. And you want to give them back?

 

Never use your own money to cover an event.
Never use your hotel points to cover an event.
Never use your airplane miles to cover an event.

Staying with family while covering an event is a little different, but if you do it, do it because you'd rather be there than a hotel.

Don't love your newspaper because it won't love you back.

 

Joe, I can see both sides.

For the most part, I wouldn't get those hotel points unless I was sent on assignment by the company.

But you're right. Time away from home should be compensated somehow, and it sure isn't compensated in paid hours.

 

To me, the silliest part of all of this is -- you can cut an entire travel budget out down to the last penny and it isn't a drop in the bucket towards the problems papers face these days.

I mean, I hope nobody ever loses a job, I want everyone to work, but given that travel is a big part of putting out a quality section and remaining competitive -- and in many ways it is what seperates us from bloggers -- if I were told to choose between losing my travel budget or one employee -- I'd have to lose the employee.

And losing one employee in terms of what that saves a company when you consider salary, benefits, etc. -- is worth two or three or four times what the travel budget is at most places.

Cutting travel back to ridiculous levels (I understand you can trim some luxury trips -- like covering the Master's or some of the all star games you have no players involved with) is exactly the kind of cutting off your nose to spite your face decisions which have brought this industry to the ground.

We are all working for AP clipping services with local ads.....

 

When I did overnights, I had to put the hotel on my card and company reimbursed me afterward. In my mind, any points accrued would be mine.

But if you use a company card to for hotels, airfare, etc., wouldn't those points belong to the company? They did pay for them ...

 

There's a reason why hotel companies and airlines will not let corporations get points or miles. If you get them, whether it's for work or pleasure, they're yours.

Traveling is a pain in the ass. It's one of the few perks.

 

We have been talking about this "doing it on your own" for as long as I can remember.
At one time, me and another guy covered the two D-I colleges in town. He was doing extra shit on his own that I didn't want to do. It made me look bad, which I wasn't overly concerned about because I knew I was doing as good a job as time allowed. But I told him that the shit he was doing, the next guy on his beat might not want to do. He was setting a bad precedent.

 

The reason is, they don't want to cannibalize their most lucrative business -- that next work-related trip.

But an office worker who wants my miles, or wants me to flip them to the company, can put his butt in 24E for a five-hour (plus 90 minutes delay getting off the ground to begin with) sweatshop flight filled with Grandma and Grandpa and a hundred screaming kids and all sorts of smelly food and people and jammed overhead space. All before, during or after I begin my actual "work day."

 

I think what micke did was crazy and could set a bad precedent, but it's an exception that had to be made. How many times does a hometown guy go into the Pro HOF? Micke saw a great story and wrote it; I can't fault him/her for that. I wish micke the best in writing for some better shop (or a shop at all) while I'm back in grad school or bussing tables.

 

Sorry. Doesn't matter.

If the company won't pay for it, you don't pay for it out of your own pocket for the goodness of the company or any loyalty to readers. They don't give a shit about you.

The only way I would do the trip out of pocket is if I could freelance something for another publication and write it all off. Even then I don't believe I would give the newspaper much. It's a terrible precedent.