Travel cutbacks?

[MoeLarryCurly]

When the higher ups see my travel expenses next week they're gonna **** a brick. Might as well take it while they're dolling it out though, yeah?

Exactly

 

[Hellboy]

When the higher ups see my travel expenses next week they're gonna **** a brick. Might as well take it while they're dolling it out though, yeah?

Can you half your expenses and turn one in next week and another the week after?

 

[HejiraHenry]

Here at the 36K stuck between two SEC programs, we'll do as we have always done – evaluate travel on a game by game basis.

We travel to all football games – I don't see that changing – and approach basketball on the basis that, as one team or theother starts to fade (if they do), then maybe we dial back a couple of the longer trips. Baseball we mainly cover on a home-game basis, but we might hit the road for something really special.

And, of course, we'll travel for bowl games, NCAA men's basketball tourney games and NCAA baseball regionals/CWS.

I've had no real inkling that we'll alter that plan at this time.

Stuff happens, though, as we all know.

 

[FileNotFound]

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.

In an odd twist, ticket prices to Europe are way lower than I've seen them in the past. A trip I take regularly and usually budget $1500 for is coming in now at around $800.

 

[FileNotFound]

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.

There is no reason he would have to go to Canton to write that story. He wanted to go. If you pay your own way to cover an event, you're a glorified fanboy. If he was straight out of school, I think you could say he didn't know any better, but I get the sense that's not the case with him.

Amen. Think of the last time some company provided a service to you for free. That plumber who's coming to fix your sink? You're paying him. Tree guy? Check. (And don't forget to sign it.) Car mechanic? You're paying. You're providing a service to your employer. They owe you for it.

Giving away work helps NOBODY in this business, including and especially yourself.

 

[joe_schmoe]

I could totally see plans to cover the team on the road again only to be told at the last minute that travel plans are being scrapped. That's how our operation is run.

Our operation is pretty similar, only often we only find out we are covering events the day of or the night before if we are lucky.

One quick example had the SE tell me at 11:30 p.m. on Thursday that I would be covering an event two states over that began Saturday at 9 a.m.

 

[micke77]

Mizzougrad....you're not being a **** at all. don't think i haven't thought of myself as a "fool" to have done this, but--get the violins ready--i honestly felt like it needed to be done. call it corny, mushy, stupid, whatever adjective you prefer, but i had know this guy since his high school days, knew how much it meant to the city and our readers and felt it needed to be covered personally.
i don't mind anybody piling on for incredibly naive approach of believing that mankind will be better off for me having been in Canton last summer, but i can live with it at the same. even if i am still making payments on those credit cards i used. ha.
oh, by the way, and honest to gosh: not that i was expecting anything at all, because--again, i did this because i felt like it was an event that needed to be covered--but i never got one "atta boy, we really appreciate you going up there on your own and covering that for us" or whatever from the bossman. i wasn't expecting one, of course, but hey..if i had known somebody had done that, i would have been embarrassed as hell that they took it out of their own pocket and yet still covered the dang event for us.
but yea, i am either a fool, stupid or dedicated to this craft and my job to the point of being ridiculous.

 

[FileNotFound]

i did this because i felt like it was an event that needed to be covered--but i never got one "atta boy, we really appreciate you going up there on your own and covering that for us" or whatever from the bossman.

Micke, I admire your dedication, etc., but you weren't doing it for them. You were doing it for you.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's not going to keep you fed or keep your lights lit.

 

[micke77]

nope, the No. 1 reason it was done was because of the significance of the event and the guy being from the city where our newspaper is located. repeat: Pro Football Hall of Fame. not just "another" event. and had i been a writer just new on the block and in town for just a couple of years and not known that much about the inductee, i would have never had that hell-bent-to-cover-it mindset.
it would have been oh-so-easy to have tried and located a stringer or gone the wire service route, but this particular situation--in my apparently foolish view--warranted special coverage.

 

[Stitch]

nope, the No. 1 reason it was done was because of the significance of the event and the guy being from the city where our newspaper is located. repeat: Pro Football Hall of Fame. not just "another" event. and had i been a writer just new on the block and in town for just a couple of years and not known that much about the inductee, i would have never had that hell-bent-to-cover-it mindset.
it would have been oh-so-easy to have tried and located a stringer or gone the wire service route, but this particular situation--in my apparently foolish view--warranted special coverage.

I'm going with "It was for me". Why, because you just had to be there. It was ego because you thought you could do something no one else could. I just hope you haven't been "encouraged" by the bosses to go on more trips on your own.

Now this is piling it on, but if you thought you were so great to do all of this, shouldn't you get paid to do this. The newspaper you worked for committed a crime by publishing your work. Seriously, it is a crime to have someone do work off of the clock. Search Wal-Mart and overtime on Google.

 

[Mediator]

I can see why you did it Micke, and it's something I'd do, too, for a once in a career kind of thing. (Not sure I'd file 8 to 10 stories... maybe one or two and then go bask in the Canton sun.)

If you go into this business counting dimes or feeling like you're getting one over on the company every time you pay for your vacation with Marriott points, you'll never get even.

As for the bigger issue, our travel budget has been gutted. We don't cover most pro teams away anymore, and 10 years ago we were at most major sports events from the Super Bowl to the Final Four. If they stop taking AP, as is one of the rumors out there, we won't have a section.

 

[micke77]

understand the feedback totally. You are right. Remind me to contact Ego to get compensated for what that stupid scribe paid to cover such an insigificant event as the Pro Football Hall of Fame inductions.

 

[Stitch]

understand the feedback totally. You are right. Remind me to contact Ego to get compensated for what that stupid scribe paid to cover such an insigificant event as the Pro Football Hall of Fame inductions.

I don't know if you want an echo chamber or not, but you won't get too much sympathy here for forking over the dough for the privilege of working.

 

[micke77]

Stitch....no echo chamber is required and pardon me if this whole thing has gotten totally away from our original post regarding the cutting back for travel. i take the blame for digressing in this whole topic, but used the Canton trip as some sort of alleged example of what we were wanting to discuss. trust me, i have been through enough "rodeos" in this business not to require echo chambers or sympathy therapy sessions.
and if i set a bad precedent, i am sure President Obama can bailout any future guilty parties.

 

[micropolitan guy]

Our basketball travel for Microville Tech has been eliminated.

For several years we used to send two on football trips. That's been pared to one, even on bowl games.

As a result, the major metro up the road kills us on road games.

 

[micke77]

the major metros to the east and west of us no longer go on road trips, either. so the three papers--including us--that covers the D-I team in our area are no shows at road games. the SID at the school we cover said that he is always being asked, "where are the out-of-town media?", but such are the cutbacks these days.

 

[SixToe]

You don't love the D-I team enough to cover them on the road out of your pocket?

;D

 

[Stitch]

If metros can't cover major league sports on road trips, it isn't a surprise that college travel gets cut.

 

[Screwball]

From an SI blog ... http://blogs.golf.com/presstent/2009/01/sportswriters-a.html

By Alan Shipnuck
SI Senior Writer

Golf writers have been on the endangered species list for a while now but 2008 was a particularly brutal year.

Longtime scribes from big-time newspapers in L.A., Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Oakland and elsewhere took buyouts or were otherwise downsized, casualties of a dying industry and cratering economy.

The Mercedes was when all of this hit home for me. I’ve been coming to the tournament since the mid-90’s, and it was always a fun chance to catch up with colleagues in an intimate setting after the long off-season.

This year there might as well be tumbleweed blowing through the press room. Excepting the Hawaii contingent, the New York Times is the American newspaper that has sent a writer here. The AP is on the scene, and Art Spander, an ink-stained wretch for half a century until he, too, got a pink slip last year, is on hand but is writing for a Web site and a few outlets in Great Britain, where newspapers still matter, a little.

 

[micke77]

SixToe....good line.
nah, guess not.
my ego doesn't allow it and i would probably set a bad precedent.