USA Today Sports Blasted by Layoffs

I think that's it. Remember -- this is part of a giant reorganization. They'll probably give this a couple of years at least. (Please don't hunt me down and kill me if I'm wrong.)

What surprises me is that Sports was hit this hard even though the department is more or less spinning off from the rest of the org because it's seen as a growth opportunity. It looks like they were intending to cut people who didn't "get" the online world. If so, they got it right in some cases and wrong in others.

Other departments have had a lot of attrition in recent months, so they didn't have anyone to cut. Still, they're adding "new" jobs in those departments and not in Sports. Very strange.

But the fact is this -- very few people leave USAT Sports voluntarily.

Mizzou -- the trip you're referencing must have been a while ago. They really don't travel all that much these days.

 

It would be interesting to see a poll on how many people at newspapers have been in the industry, let alone their current stop, for 20 years or more. I've got to think the percentage has probably dropped by two-thirds in the last 15 years.

 

There is no one whom everyone loves, by the way. Take Jesus, for instance. Or Barney.

That said, there are plenty of people at USA Today whose departure might actually help the newsroom. None of the people listed above are on that list.

Guys like Sal and Mel and Jerry, all of whom I have worked with, have given significant parts of their lives to the great cause. A damned shame.

That tangled thicket of USAT upper-middle managers are the ones who need to be cleared out, not folks who are producing actual useful content.

 

And yet USAT Sports continues to have multiple assigning editors for many beats. Brilliant.

 

Yeah, I can't explain that. Plenty of good editors there, but at some point, don't you need more people on the front lines?

 

I will never forget the managerial flow chart they showed me during the first five minutes of my interview. Looked like the Kennedy family tree. Made the remaining seven hours and 55 minutes of that process extremely painful. Had they told me the deal during the phoners, I could have saved everybody a lot of time and money.
I would have gone from one of seven assignment editors at 1HP to about one of 20-something there. You report to this guy, who reports to this guy, who has an assistant who knows somebody who answers to Monty.
Really easy decision to stay at 1HP.

 

*** And yet USAT Sports continues to have multiple assigning editors for many beats. Brilliant. ***

Sorry, can't ride with you on that one.

Unless things have changed, NFL, MLB and colleges were the only desks with multiple assignment editors. Given the responsibilities and structure, that setup is needed. There's no way one person could handle the meetings, planning, line editing, etc. for those sports on a national coverage level on a daily basis.

I know of what I speak.

 

I have heard first-hand from employees there that there are way too many middle managers --- or the wrong middle managers.

 

Know Jerry well. Talked to him at the PGA and he was pretty much guessing this was coming. Jerry was someone who I could always call with an interesting story and he'd usually dive right in and knock out something on it.

Not good. Not good at all.

Nor is seeing Skip Wood's name on that list. Skip's a pro's pro and another member of the Chris Simmons Harrisonburg DNR Alumni Society.

"Never has a business shown such contempt for its product" -- David Simon.

 

Certainly some of the middle managers may have been the wrong middle managers. I was speaking -- first-hand -- about assignment editors and how it is blown out of proportion about individual sports having multiple assignment editors.

 

I don't know what things are like now, but for quite a while Jerry was asked to "cover" pro golf from his home in, Virginia, I think it was, on a somewhat regular basis. Someone at the tournament would fax or e-mail him interview transcripts and hole-by-hole notes and that's what he'd use to write his stories.

And though a lot of people would be able to pound out five or six inches this way, it was just a bizarre way of thinking this was an adequate way of serving your readers.

 

That's true. Middle managers aren't always assignment editors, of course.

I won't get into which reporters were surprising cuts and which weren't, other than to say some had good attitudes about the multiplatform work USA TODAY needs to pursue and some didn't. But in general -- it's a little curious that an organization that's going to emphasize sports in the future cut four *writers*.

That's not to say by any means that the other losses are to be celebrated (incidentally -- I'm hearing now that they did NOT cut a copy editor, contrary to what many of us apparently heard earlier). But someone has to produce all this content they're going to need.