How far have you been cut?

tommangan · **Posted:** Wed Dec 13, 2006 1:37 am

Just curious: We had 40 copy editors (not including sports) a few years ago. Now we have 23.

Does this seem extreme to any of you?

paulwiggins · **Posted:** Wed Dec 13, 2006 9:34 am

Yes. A good paper should not form the potential basis of a postgraduate dissertation on what not to do. Various folks here have put your employers on stupidity watch.

tommangan · **Posted:** Wed Dec 13, 2006 11:17 am

I sorta enjoy the challenge of getting pages out on time under these conditions, but I would not describe what I'm doing as "editing." More like fact-checking, spellchecking and head/caption writing.

Redaktor · **Posted:** Wed Dec 13, 2006 11:22 am

I came to my current paper after some major cuts, hiring freezes and an ugly promotion/mass exodus, then went through the KR debacle. A few weeks ago the publisher sent an e-mail around saying, essentially, "With all these layoffs that are going on in the business, aren't you all glad we already cut into the bone and don't have to worry about job losses?"

Gee. Uh, thanks.

LAEdtr · **Posted:** Wed Dec 13, 2006 7:55 pm

Such chatter is constant here, of course. At a previous (privately owned) shop, we managed to avoid any layoffs despite some choppy revenue. The days of unedited copy being the baseline are not that far away.

Wabberjocky · **Posted:** Thu Dec 14, 2006 3:26 pm

Especially in the coming era of "dynamic spellcheck" software like Tansa, which my paper is getting early next year. I believe that's part of how we'll make up for the fact that in our current downsizing, we're likely going back to a universal desk and no longer having "pure" copy editors.

"Virtual copy editing" is dangerously near.

Nessie3 · **Posted:** Thu Dec 14, 2006 8:01 pm

tommangan wrote:

Just curious: We had 40 copy editors (not including sports) a few years ago. Now we have 23.

Does this seem extreme to any of you?

Absolutely. I'm sure you could get by with half that number and a decent spellcheck program.

Wayne Countryman · **Posted:** Fri Dec 15, 2006 2:02 pm

Tom, now that you have far fewer people, how have your duties changed? Any new ones? Any subtracted?

It's one thing to shift people to other work, but if, say, the web site will require more of your staff's time, then losing so many people seems to contradict the goals of continuing to put out a good paper while building up the web site. (Perhaps I presume incorrectly that those are worthy goals, let alone your paper's.)

Bumfketeer · **Posted:** Fri Dec 15, 2006 4:34 pm

I don't think we've been cut in the last few years, though I think there was a reduction back in the early '90s. But the problem with that reduction is that while we lost numbers, we gained the production work that'd been done by the compositors.

tommangan · **Posted:** Sun Dec 17, 2006 2:03 pm

Wayne Countryman wrote:

Tom, now that you have far fewer people, how have your duties changed? Any new ones? Any subtracted?

A couple sections have gone away but mostly everybody' s just working a lot faster.

Heartodixie · **Posted:** Mon Dec 18, 2006 3:04 am

According to management, we're at "full staff," even though one copy editor has been permanently shifted to put out a couple of new publications and we haven't replaced one of the three people who quit last year. The big bosses shuffle things like crazy to try to make us feel like we have enough people. No layoffs though, so there's that.

End result is everyone paginating and reading copy as fast as they can, with most of the editing falling onto assigning editors who are lucky if they spellcheck the stuff.

gabinohio · **Joined:** Thu Oct 19, 2006 9:16 pm **Posts:** 18

We have three copy editors/paginators on the copy desk at my paper, and one of them is my boss - the news editor - who acts as a copy editor/paginator most nights. We rotate who has to work alone on the weekends. It seems we are lucky if all three of us are working on the paper two nights a week. Last week I did the news section of the paper -- between 8 and 12 pages -- alone four nights in a row. One night I did 16 pages in 10 hours. I don't think the people in charge understand burnout. I know I didn't give a full read to half the stories I put in the paper during that time and by the end of the weekend my brain had shorted out.
My boss recently announced his resignation and the last time his position was open it was open for almost a year.
Any advice on how to keep myself from burning out completely?

kren · **Posted:** Tue Dec 19, 2006 11:49 pm

Uh, leave?
Seriously, that's a crazed workload and you'd be doing yourself (and your stomach) a huge favor by getting the hell out.

gabinohio · **Joined:** Thu Oct 19, 2006 9:16 pm **Posts:** 18

I'm looking, but I'm not willing to get back into restaurants and retail, though I'm sure I'd make more money. I think this place has killed my desire to work in newspapers. What else can I do?

Wabberjocky · **Posted:** Wed Dec 20, 2006 12:29 am

It's honestly not that bad at most places. At least not in my observation and experience.

Locutus · **Posted:** Wed Dec 20, 2006 12:51 am

"One night I did 16 pages in 10 hours."

Ouch. And I thought I had it bad when two of us were responsible for a 16-page A section in 8 hours. (Don't go OT by the way) Design, copy edit and punch it to WorkFlow. (And troubleshoot any tech bumps) Of the two other regularly scheduled to work, one was off and the other called in sick.

I had to swallow my pride and accept an offer from the off co-worker to come in or we would have had a big deadline problem.

"I think this place has killed my desire to work in newspapers."

Dang, that feels a tad familiar.

copynomad · **Joined:** Wed Feb 08, 2006 12:07 am **Posts:** 623

gabinohio: Wow, you are seriously overworked. I don't know what your clips look like if you're rushing that way. But if you're looking, PM me with some of your headlines and we can go from there if they're good. (I will want to see hard copies later if they're good. If not, no point going further.)

I oversee hiring. We've sped up things at my paper, like everywhere else, because of shrinking resources. But we're a midsize paper and don't do the kind of rushing you're talking about, that's for sure.

No matter how overworked you are, focus your effort on your headlines when you must do triage. Good headlines can get you out of there. For instance, if I see good headlines and so-so editing and know your crazy workload (say so in your cover letter), I can check you out with a copy editing test. But if you have weak headlines, I won't get past that point.

cobra_kai · **Posted:** Wed Dec 20, 2006 9:50 am

gabinohio wrote:

We have three copy editors/paginators on the copy desk at my paper, and one of them is my boss - the news editor - who acts as a copy editor/paginator most nights. We rotate who has to work alone on the weekends. It seems we are lucky if all three of us are working on the paper two nights a week. Last week I did the news section of the paper -- between 8 and 12 pages -- alone four nights in a row. One night I did 16 pages in 10 hours. I don't think the people in charge understand burnout. I know I didn't give a full read to half the stories I put in the paper during that time and by the end of the weekend my brain had shorted out.
My boss recently announced his resignation and the last time his position was open it was open for almost a year.
Any advice on how to keep myself from burning out completely?

This almost perfectly recaps my first management job a few years ago. I often put out A sections by myself in my capacity as news editor/special sections editor, and that's not including 36-to-52-page non-daily pubs twice a month for which I was assigning editor, copy editor, sometimes the reporter and always the designer. Of course, I made sure when I took the job that I would be receiving "relatively" reasonable compensation.

My advice would be to just plow through, doing the best you can and gathering enough evidence of your work to go somewhere else. The one thing about crazy workloads is they give you many opportunities to create tangible proof of your talent, but when faced with that load, people are often in just-get-it-out-and-make-sure-everything's-spelled-right mode. Don't fall into that habit, and you'll be fine.

My small-paper experience taught me a lot, especially how to juggle responsibilities and handle just about anything. Don't give up, take what good this job can offer you and you'll end up in a better place.

JulieS · **Posted:** Sun Dec 24, 2006 3:56 am

"Editing"/paginating 12 to 14 pages in eight hours is a normal night here, lately. That includes the front page, the Local front, wire, sports and sometimes a feature front. I think I maxed out at 19 pages.

It's not that we've cut back, it's just that it takes so damn long -- months -- to hire people when we have an opening up here. And in a small paper in an isolated market, that happens at least once or twice a year. We have to keep reminding the managing editor that it's an extreme situation, but it's been going on so long he's started to look at it as normal and doable.

He wants to hire someone, but no one's applied, and we pay pretty well for a paper our size in our market.

Heartodixie · **Posted:** Sat Jan 13, 2007 3:21 am

Sounds like a few of you have similar experience to mine. Here we have one copy editor per section. So you can be in charge of inside A section (wire copy) with two pages for Monday and then get a 20-page section to do yourself for Sunday. (And by "be in charge of" I mean get your stories from the wire or city desk, edit them, lay them out on the pages, print 'em out, hope someone actually reads them before handing the proof back to you, make corrections and save them into the platemaking program.) The best part is, our pageflow is the same every night, with 6 pages after 11, whether the paper has 16 pages or 40 pages. Crazy.

Worst part of our cutbacks has been company's refusal to replace an ME who left last fall. Big experience/management vacuum. Upside is, everyone's learning and working harder than they would have. But it often feels like every newsroom department ought to have a babysitter.

Wabberjocky · **Posted:** Sat Jan 13, 2007 6:25 pm

Wow, you people work in some insane places.

I was promoted some months ago to be the night newsroom manager precisely because the top editors were tired of having to be on call for late-night news judgement calls. I did that in addition to slotting the local news section (anywhere from 6 to 10 pages) for a designer. But in our recent downsizing, I was bounced back out of management and will more or less be expected to exercise the same judgment and/or prerogrative. It'll be interested to see if people argue with me more openly on judgment calls now that I'll be sans a fancy job title.

Connfused · **Posted:** Sat Jan 13, 2007 9:01 pm

Wow! That really blows. Hope the resume's updated.

That brings up the age-old issue of making managerial decisions when you're not a manager.

Our night news editor is our main slot. When he's off or on vacation, I'm his backup. It's nice to know people think I have the knowledge to make those kinds of decisions -- and I don't mind making them.

But the reality is that when I tell a reporter to fix a hole in a story or kick a story back to the metro editor, the response is a bit different from what it would be if my boss did the same thing.

My boss is a good guy and I know he'll have my back. But let's face it -- people respect the managerial tag more than the person.

ndugan1 · **Posted:** Sun Jan 28, 2007 7:07 pm

Wabberjocky wrote:

Especially in the coming era of "dynamic spellcheck" software like Tansa, which my paper is getting early next year.

I've been working with Tansa for more than a year and a half now. It's nice to be able to spell-check everything on a Quark page at once, and the database can be updated to fit your house style, but I still just don't trust a product that claims to spell-check English but was written and produced by a Danish firm.

HedHunter · **Posted:** Tue Jan 30, 2007 11:30 pm

Testy, that is.

The forecast came early last year: mostly cloudy with a chance of staff reductions.

Months passed. The desk lost an excellent supervisor and three copy editors. None of the positions was filled. News and business desks were consolidated. Add in a few maternity leaves and months of emails alluding to "big change."

Now, shifts are vaguely disorganized maelstroms of business, opinion and news proofs. Copy flow is poor; morale is low; recognition is nonexistent.

And more changes are still to come.

Good times, eh?

tommangan · **Posted:** Wed Jul 11, 2007 10:08 am

Remember when I thought we were understaffed at 23 (down from 40?)

In a couple weeks we'll be at 14.

The good news is, we're still slotting section front copy.

HedHunter · **Posted:** Wed Jul 11, 2007 2:57 pm

Wabberjocky wrote:

Especially in the coming era of "dynamic spellcheck" software like Tansa, which my paper is getting early next year. I believe that's part of how we'll make up for the fact that in our current downsizing, we're likely going back to a universal desk and no longer having "pure" copy editors.

"Virtual copy editing" is dangerously near.

Be very wary of Tansa. I'm one of a handful of beta-testers at my newspaper. There are some pret-ty ugly bugs. The biggie is that it has a tendency to insert corrections in the wrong place in the text. The corrected word or phrase usually lands in another paragraph, in the middle of a word, thereby creating new errors.

Before our conversion started, Tansa was touted as the "next-generation" spellcheck. I like that it can be configured to check for AP and in-house style. But it should not be making our jobs more difficult -- on deadline, no less!

Heartodixie · **Posted:** Wed Jul 11, 2007 8:03 pm

Our newsroom has not had to lay any journalists off, but the company is cutting other departments to the bone. It has automated most of HR, outsourced customer service and fired the advertorial writer. So now the newsroom is the only place readers can find a live person to deal with half the time, and we're responsible for generating content for ad sections. Careful what you wish for, I guess.

longwords · **Posted:** Wed Jul 11, 2007 8:37 pm

Rumor has it that our editor was called on the carpet because the stringer billings went over budget in June by a modest amount. The stringers were hired because we are down seven people (they've left for a variety of reasons), about a third of the staff, and although we're told they'll all be replaced, no ads were placed for at least six weeks after the first three left (coincidentally within 10 days of each other). Apparently payroll savings do not offset other expenses, no matter how much is "saved" by having editors work unpaid overtime.

There was also a rumor a couple of years ago that corporate had required each department to include in the budget an estimate of the amount of time positions would "go black" in the course of the year. When there was no turnover in the newsroom for a year, the "goal" was not met. This may be an urban legend, but I do think it represents the problem of having short-sighted managers fixated on short-term results.

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Wed Jul 11, 2007 8:41 pm

One problem I've seen repeated in newsrooms large and small is that "editors" responsible for budgets usually are assigned that work to keep them away from editing. Good for the daily product, but bad for the long run.

Heartodixie · **Posted:** Thu Jul 12, 2007 1:50 am

Want to hear something creative? We're still down an ME. But we hired an AME. I guess it was cheaper to create an assistant to a vacant position than to hire an editor with that title.

proofer_dare · **Posted:** Thu Jul 12, 2007 11:16 am

At this metro paper I worked for, after they pared down the copy desk, they mandated that the reporters, line editors and photogs craft their own heds and captions. "We're pushing responsibility upstream," the managers said. Designers' shifts were moved up earlier so that the upstream folks had spex to work with. The copy eds were (and still are) repeatedly told that if the display type is "publishable," leave it alone - there's really no time to "make it better." Many of the inside stories go straight to slot.

tommangan · **Posted:** Thu Jul 12, 2007 2:08 pm

This is what I love: about a half-dozen people were laid off, the other 20 positions were left absent by attrition -- and these job positions simply vanished into thin air, so every time there's another round of cuts, none of the people who left count as jobs already cut.

longwords · **Posted:** Thu Jul 12, 2007 7:14 pm

Last year we heard repeatedly how we had to cut expenses, how we were losing certain big advertisers, how tough things were, etc. (We have quarterly meetings about our public company's fiscal results.)

At the end of the fiscal year the publisher tells us that we are one of the few papers in the chain that made plan.

Most of the newsroom walked away from the meeting sullen, and he didn't even notice. Our assumption? He's getting a bonus for all our unpaid OT, and we're getting nothing. (His predecessor closed a bureau office to get her bonus, so we're pretty sure bonuses are awarded.)

When I complained to an ad rep, she said she didn't really feel things were "that bad." Then I told her my salary, and she was horrified. As far as I can tell, the clerks in the front office who do bookkeeping earn more than starting reporters, and editors make slightly more than the telemarketers in circulation. The sad thing is, so many people have left the newsroom where I work that we're losing our competitive edge and the subscribers have noticed, as have the advertisers, and our competition is appparently thriving.

Wayne Countryman · **Posted:** Thu Jul 12, 2007 8:13 pm

proofer_dare wrote:

... The copy eds were (and still are) repeatedly told that if the display type is "publishable," leave it alone - there's really no time to "make it better."

Was "publishable" ever defined? That could mean, please check that there's no libel or misspellings. It could mean the headline or cutline doesn't run beyond its allotted space in the layout.
We could hope it means the display type should be accurate and make sense, too.

I ask because many vague policies are inflicted on copy desks. (Leaving policies vague allows the policymaker to dodge and shift blame.)

Wayne Countryman · **Posted:** Thu Jul 12, 2007 8:18 pm

tommangan wrote:

This is what I love: about a half-dozen people were laid off, the other 20 positions were left absent by attrition -- and these job positions simply vanished into thin air, so every time there's another round of cuts, none of the people who left count as jobs already cut.

A previous employer had a policy of abolishing positions that were vacant a certain number of months. If nothing cataclysmic could be blamed on the job being vacant, then the job was not essential.

proofer_dare · **Posted:** Tue Jul 17, 2007 11:10 am

Wayne Countryman wrote:

Was "publishable" ever defined? That could mean, please check that there's no libel or misspellings. It could mean the headline or cutline doesn't run beyond its allotted space in the layout.
We could hope it means the display type should be accurate and make sense, too.

I think they did spell out the first point - no libel or misspellings. The second and third points were implied. The slots usually still try to work on heds that could use finessing - if there's any time for it.

When I worked for them (on the rim), I'd almost ALWAYS rewrite the display type - particularly the cutlines. Even if it meant cutting and pasting from the story, which was admonished but to many of us still better than the photogs' typo-filled cutlines and creditlines.

Heartodixie · **Posted:** Thu Jul 19, 2007 12:12 am

It's our time, I guess. After chopping up and outsourcing the work everywhere but in the newsroom, they're offering buyouts to all our older employees. Just the thing to help boost the institutional memory and experience in a newsroom where at least 75 percent of the staff are younger than 30.

Wabberjocky · **Posted:** Thu Jul 19, 2007 11:52 pm

That's exactly what happened in our newsroom last winter. Among those taking buyouts were a reporter who had been with us since 1967, another reporter who joined us in 1986, a city editor who came aboard in 1984, and two others of 10 and five years' standing.

The first readers on stories are now a city editor who came here from Utah last fall and a Web copy editor who came here a year ago from Washington D.C.

Good thing I'm the last reader on everything, because I'm a native of the area. It's stressful as all hell to be the filter at the very bottom of the catch basin, though.

tommangan · **Posted:** Fri Jul 20, 2007 1:09 am

My hunch is that what's happened in my shop is coming to yours.

Just saw on Romenesko that the Tampa Trib was a significant drag on earnings for Media General.

Get your waders on, kids, there's gonna be a some high water.

Heartodixie · **Posted:** Sun Jul 22, 2007 12:23 am

Wabberjocky wrote:

That's exactly what happened in our newsroom last winter. Among those taking buyouts were a reporter who had been with us since 1967, another reporter who joined us in 1986, a city editor who came aboard in 1984, and two others of 10 and five years' standing.

The first readers on stories are now a city editor who came here from Utah last fall and a Web copy editor who came here a year ago from Washington D.C.

Good thing I'm the last reader on everything, because I'm a native of the area. It's stressful as all hell to be the filter at the very bottom of the catch basin, though.

That's how my role ended up too. Moved off the copy desk, which barely stays afloat blindly paginating the paper, and onto the news desk where I bust my tail to make sure I get a last read on everything and give the paper a good proof before it goes to press.

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