Design/layout from home

[Rusty Shackleford]

Do any newspapers allow their page designers to work from home? If you have the necessary programs on a home computer, it's possible to connect that computer to the paper's network, which should allow you to do layout from home.

I think it would be great to do layout from home one or two days a week, or do part of each shift from home.

 

[Starman]

I'm sure it's coming soon. I'm sure Mr. Publisher will allow everyone to do extra pages in their "spare time" from home.

 

[FileNotFound]

I'm sure it's coming soon. I'm sure Mr. Publisher will allow everyone to do extra pages in their "spare time" from home. 

What Starman said. The technology exists, but telecommuting will absolutely never catch on for daily designers. Too much need to have the people in-house (communication, etc.)

Now, if you wanted to grab a few advance pages AFTER your shift from the comfort of your living room ...

 

[JBHawkEye]

Is it possible to connect to the system from home and lay out pages? It is at my place.

However, even with high-speed Internet, I've been told it would be very difficult to do.

 

[Mystery_Meat]

I may have the opportunity to do this with our new computers. I don't know how comfortable I'll be with it, until I get comfortable with the new design program and the new computers, but we'll be working with laptops that, in theory, mean I can do my weekly sections from the office, my apartment or the Panera. That'd save a bit on gas for sure.

 

[somewriter]

Just think how much money a company could save if it sold its office building.

 

[shotglass]

The last time I had the PCAnywhere software to duplicate the paper's front-end system on my computer, my ISP was so slow that it was totally fruitless.

Now I'm up to speed, but the company has become much more touchy about logging into the system from the comfort of one's home.

 

[Stupid]

I'll be doing our agate page for tomorrow afternoon's section from home tonight

 

[RedCanuck]

I do some of my pages at home, but certainly that's fairly easy in a small shop like ours. In a bigger place, I'd think you'd need to be there from a communications standpoint.

 

[EE94]

I work at a large daily and I would never allow pages to be edited and designed at home. Production needs to be done in a central location, where there is constant communication - reporters need to know where to phone, editors need to know they can talk about last-minute changes, guarantees made that stories aren't being duplicated.
Just because you CAN do it, doesn't mean you SHOULD do it.

 

[SF_Express]

Except in a pinch or occasionally, this is a trend I'd be against (nothing wrong with an agate page here and there, stupid).

I think the interaction and give and take with people helps the product.

On the other hand, I still think writers should show up in the newsroom on a regular basis for the same reason, and we know how that's going these days.

 

[shotglass]

Stupid, I cringe every time I reply to you ... because it feels like I'm insulting you when I use your handle.

 

[House]

Oh, great, give them another way to work us off the clock. No thanks.

 

[txsportsscribe]

i did pages on quark from home for more than a month while recovering from cervical spine surgery and i always did friday night sports at home because i live 30 miles from the office. the worst part for me was e-mailing a quark document with multiple color photos using aol dial-up. sometimes took almost an hour. only page problems i ever encountered was occassionally the third line of a three-deck subhead would be in hiding but all it took to fix that was pulling down the text box a little.

 

[beefncheddar]

As much as I'd love to see the wife and kids more, I think I need the hours away from them that the office provides. No way I'd be able to concentrate on work if I was at home.

 

[DyePack]

It's a bad idea. Listing the reasons would take up several pages of the thread, but the primary one is it goes against Darwinian principles.

 

[wheels89]

I do advance pages and projects from home because we have a PC2go-type software. Have never had any problems with our software while working from home and it is great.