Needing Answers

Several Cox Ohio employees today received letters in the mail notifying them that they would no longer have personal days and that sick days would not accumulate (read: use 'em or lose 'em).

I didn't hear about this until late after noon -- after a batch of reporters discussed it over lunch -- because I was on the bus ... more on that in a minute.

Tension was high in the newsroom, as is expected with several disgruntled employees and no answers. E-mails, some snarky and others not, went out on a union-wide mailing list that included top editors at the Springfield News-Sun. Wait, did I just say "union"?

It seems like an oxymoron that a band of unionized employees would be getting such a shaft. After all, don't union contracts typically protect employees against this sort of heavy-handed, unilateral decision making? Not in this case. In fact, the last sentence (I'm told because I never saw the union contract myself) essentially says that if the company so chooses that it can wipe out some of the clauses in the contract, including those dictating the number of sick and personal days afforded to employees.

Further, this same contract doesn't allow employees to strike -- the company refused to agree to a contract that would allow a full-scale, picket-line strike (again, I'm told).

Some union contract ...

The crux of the deal is that half of the people who negotiated this contract are retired. They took buyouts as part of a large-scale business remodeling Cox did not long ago. Was it really fair to let people on their way out negotiate a contract for a group of people that would be left behind?

So what do journalists do in the face of adversity? Mixed drinks. Margaritas. And Killians. Those were the orders of the day at least. I attended a social event after work where the hot topic was, of course, the day's events.

A lot of the comments surfaced around what employees could do in the face of what they see as an unfair decision that was handed down from above without discussion. The more interesting dialogue focused on what message this sends to reporters and how they will react (mind you, this decision does not only affect reporters, but employees in other departments as well. I was just with a group of reporters though.).

One reporter noted that for all the praise the reporters get, this sends a mixed message and will influence people negatively. The corporatization of the newspaper industry is leading to more streamlining and more generalization and less individuality -- employees are becoming just that, employees, not writers and reporters and advertisers and photographers. And when people start to view themselves solely as employees, they start to view their day-to-day efforts as a job and not a career.

That hits home. When people are no longer making a career out of this industry, it will die. The only thing that keeps us alive now is a passion for what we do and a devotion to our audience. But even that passion and devotion should not usurp a necessity to look out for ourselves. These are trying times, and while nobody is losing their job over this particular instance (they'll lose anywhere from about $1,000 to $2,000, I'm told), there is something to be said for the long-term psychological effect this will have.

Rewind. Why was I on the bus? I'm doing a story about why people ride the bus. It won't run until Sunday (expect a link then), but it's worth commenting on now. In the course of talking to a lot of different people, I had several ask me about my job and the industry. Some even pointed out the large-scale changes that Cox Ohio has seen, such as moving a lot of the production to Dayton, Ohio, as part of a universal desk.

Readers -- people outside of this industry -- are noticing. They know jobs are being lost. They know people are being forced to relocate. And to some degree, that's comforting. It's not changing things, but it's comforting to know that people realize newspapers are bleeding out. Answers don't seem to be coming from the inside, so maybe one of these bus riders will have the answer that will save us.

I hope they have that epiphany soon.

Inaugural post

I used to know what it was like to be creative. In fact, it's been 47 weeks
and 6 days since I was last creative, according to a Web site I used to frequent.

It's this whole journalism thing that's to blame, really. What happens dictates the medium, not what I want to happen or how I feel about it happening. My day-to-day life in the last year has been about chronicling that which I see and giving it to an audience. It's no longer about me, and I'm mostly OK with that.

Almost 48 weeks ago now, I apparently took a self-indulging writer behind the garage and put him out of his misery. I haven't seen him since, and, though I miss him, I know it was for the better. I still treasure the memories of his thoughtful reflections -- I hold them in my hand now and remember the time he sat beneath a tree in the park for the first time to write in a new journal. He was eager, wronged and hopeful. I ... I mean "he" ... never lost those qualities, but he stuffed them deep down somewhere to rot rather than refine.

It was the inability to generate original content that did me in. Everything I wrote was the same as something someone else had felt. Emotion is universal. It is for the same reason that I scroll to the same songs each time I open iTunes (blink 182's "Going Away to College" for those who care and will make fun of me), ignoring the extensive song list I've developed over three years. The same reason I recently purchased my seventh pair of Adidas Superstar 2Gs. The same reason I painted my car the same color it was before.

I like consistency. The news provides that, believe it or not.

At a recent meeting during my internship a top editor mentioned a great way to find story ideas is by replicating that which is printed in other newspapers. I smiled and puffed out my chest in pride as I recalled that I get most of my story ideas that way. Then I thought of the monotonous cycle implied by his suggestion. If the Washington Post does a story, then 10 large daily newspapers localize it, then 20 mid-size dailies do the same, throw in a few weeklies and community newspapers, and pretty soon the story has been done almost 100 times that week.

I came to grips quickly with the fact that the news I report tomorrow will be the same as a reporter 20 years ago, and I wonder if readers are starting to see the same thing. Sure, the Internet is killing newspapers -- every day, more and more people are getting their news from a primary source (problematic in its own right) -- but is part of the problem is that it's the same old song and dance every day for the reader?

Probably not, but it's worth thinking about. The news, for the most part, is out of our control, but I'm not so sure that we won't get our chance to fight. After all, we control how we present the news, and if we can find an innovative way to relay an age-old message, then maybe, just maybe, we'll make it.