Travel cutbacks?

[micke77]

With all of these cutbacks and economic meltdown going on, was curious to know how many out there who cover local universities no longer travel for games. or have such assignments drastically cut back.
four years ago, we went on every road trip with the D-I team we cover. no longer. save for possible bowl trips or within reasonable driving distance, it's strictly relying on stringers or, at the very worse, the SID's.

 

[pseudo]

Talked to a local SE at a college game tonight. His writer was also stringing the game for the visiting team's hometown paper -- not the first time it's happened this year, and won't be the last.

 

[jlee]

We follow the only major D-I program to every game. That, however, has recently cost the preps writer(s) trips to state championship tournaments -- among other travel cutbacks in the department.

 

[SnoopyBoy]

WE outsourced two major D-I mammoth programs to another paper, and we no longer travel for the two local D-I schools. Unbelievable.

 

[SixToe]

How is that outsourcing working out and have the local D-I schools complained?

 

[Cosmo]

I was told in December I would travel to all league road games for the mid-major in town. I made hotel reservations. Then I was told later in December that overnight trips were out, which eliminated five of the nine league road games. I had to fight tooth and nail to cover one of our home teams tonight (60 miles away) against a top-5 team. So yeah, our budget has been slashed.

 

[doctorx]

On a somewhat related topic, how many have had mileage scaled back with the drop in gas prices?

 

[Cosmo]

Hah. Went down from .39 to .32 Jan. 1. Gas has risen .35 a gallon since then. When I asked the HR director if it would make a corresponding rise, she didn't sound confident.

**** this entire business. In its ear. Twice.

 

[Big Buckin' agate_monkey]

With a rusty pipe.

 

[JackReacher]

If I'm not mistaken, our mileage just increased. Weird, but nice for the writers.

Cosmo, how much is gas up your way? That's quite a rise in the last two weeks. We're hovering around 1.74 here.

 

[Cosmo]

1.75. It was about 1.40 when the decision was made.

 

[Mizzougrad96]

Before I was "bought out" my paper was cutting back considerably on travel.

The previous year we sent three to cover the big local school in its bowl game. Two writers were there the whole time the team was and the columnist flew in the day before the game. The following year, we sent one writer for two days, which essentially meant game coverage and nothing else.

 

[playthrough]

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.

 

[Big Buckin' agate_monkey]

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

 

[Mizzougrad96]

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.

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.

 

[Mizzougrad96]

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.

 

[micke77]

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.

 

[Cosmo]

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.

 

[Mizzougrad96]

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."

 

[playthrough]

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.