As a refugee from the fantasy world of corporate jornamalismus, I'm getting a kick, etc. Screw the suits.

/Economics don't kill newspapers, corporate managers kill newspapers.

Not FTA: "Going forward, all men will be required to wear coque rings with codpieces and all women will wear bottom plugs. Contact Human Resources if you have any questions."

/Might as well be FTA.

<i>"Standard office hours will be, 8:30 - 5:30,</i>

Because news only happens between 8:30 - 5:30.

My experience of field reporters has been they usually dress scruffy, mostly because they don't get paid shiat and can't afford to dress up like a pimp. And if you're not a field reporter, if you do all your work by phone and computer, who gives a fark how you dress, and why not do the work from home anyway.

Here's a paper that has it's priorities right:-) I've seen these kinds of assholes before in management: they don't really know what's wrong or how to fix it, but to give an illusion of having a plan, to keep busy, and to exercise their authority, they order a bunch of superficial, shiatty and unrealistic policies and make-work projects. The result is further disruption of whatever WAS still working in the office. Which they invariably think is "push-back" or "insubordination".

runwiz: <i>"Standard office hours will be, 8:30 - 5:30,</i>

Because news only happens between 8:30 - 5:30.

Most news isn't breaking news and can easily be written about during normal working hours. You've got the smaller evening and overnight shifts for the surprise stuff.

Corporate dress codes are inversely proportional to the companies security in the market.

The more secure the more relaxed they are.

The less secure the more strict they are.

tomWright: Corporate dress codes are inversely proportional to the companies security in the market a fairly reliable way of detecting assholes.

/ Some of them actually enjoy playing dress-up

HawgWild: ceejayoz: runwiz: <i>"Standard office hours will be, 8:30 - 5:30,</i>

Because news only happens between 8:30 - 5:30.

Most news isn't breaking news and can easily be written about during normal working hours. You've got the smaller evening and overnight shifts for the surprise stuff.

"Why do school bus crashes always happen in the morning and afternoon?!"

Ah, the Bus Plunge. Most usual in the mountains of India and Pakistan. I knew an editor who kept a notebook collection of bus plunge stories.

this will attack the fresh young minds newspapers need to breath new life into the industry.

Journalists can't afford to "dress sharp," unless they pick up sharp 1980s duds at Goodwill. The jackstands in advertising could afford to dress nice because they made so much more money. I always hated their gloating when our jobs were as much, if not more important. I always wanted some publisher to level the pay grade across all the departments & not pay some hottie in sales more because she flirted over lunch w Mr Business Owner. I hated seeing two of my reporter friends who were married to one another realize that with their combined salaries, they still qualified for food stamps.

I hate the lack of respect for journalists.

PsychoLaurie: Journalists can't afford to "dress sharp," unless they pick up sharp 1980s duds at Goodwill. The jackstands in advertising could afford to dress nice because they made so much more money. I always hated their gloating when our jobs were as much, if not more important. I always wanted some publisher to level the pay grade across all the departments & not pay some hottie in sales more because she flirted over lunch w Mr Business Owner. I hated seeing two of my reporter friends who were married to one another realize that with their combined salaries, they still qualified for food stamps.

I hate the lack of respect for journalists.

You have violated the Prime Directive. The consequences cannot be foreseen.

HotIgneous Intruder: As a refugee from the fantasy world of corporate jornamalismus, I'm getting a kick, etc. Screw the suits.

/Economics don't kill newspapers, corporate managers kill newspapers.

the same lessons can be applied to corporate radio

This is going to come as a shock to most of you, but the majority of people working at a newspaper have nothing directly to do with news gathering. Mosbare Ad Sales, accounting, circulation, IT, Online, etc.

Very few "reporters" as a percentage of staff. And many copy desk people do dress poorly because they work under high pressure on deadline in relative isolation.

ceejayoz: runwiz: <i>"Standard office hours will be, 8:30 - 5:30,</i>

Because news only happens between 8:30 - 5:30.

Most news isn't breaking news and can easily be written about during normal working hours. You've got the smaller evening and overnight shifts for the surprise stuff.

I wish.

I wish.

#Occupy 2012

If you're a manager/owner of a traditional news medium and you can't get more work out of your employees in these dire times WITHOUT taking "the dress code" route, then you don't know what your business is about.

If more work somehow can be done, I bet I could impress that point upon people without making them wear ties and white frocks.

So, knowing how crappy being a journalist is, I ask:

Why do people choose to major in Comunications or/and Journalism in college?

So I guess they'll be more identifiable for hunters?

zenobia: ceejayoz: runwiz: <i>"Standard office hours will be, 8:30 - 5:30,</i>

Because news only happens between 8:30 - 5:30.

Most news isn't breaking news and can easily be written about during normal working hours. You've got the smaller evening and overnight shifts for the surprise stuff.

I wish.

Most daily newsrooms have smaller staff at night, just the editorial/production people putting together the paper to go to press. It's not uncommon for four or five people to put a city paper to bed. If a breaking news story comes across the wires, it's an easy matter to pull another story either from the front page or inside, depending on how important the news might be. For local breaking news, there's always somebody to call to handle it, get a picture, whatever.

Beyond that, it's "Working today to put yesterday's news in tomorrow's paper!"

CSB:
I worked for a small city paper the night Diana got killed. I'd been out drinking with a reporter on my night off and arrived home to see the news spattered all over the teevee. I promptly went to work to see if the guys needed help with the page one replate and jump pages. The night editor (in charge) opted to only pull a six-column inch story off the lower right corner of page one to put in the Diana death story. They gave it a 24-point head over three columns of copy. There were people who, when they received their papers that morning, cried when they saw how the paper had played the story, not because Diana was dead. Plus, since it was the weekend and the other sections of the Sunday paper had been put together ahead of time, nobody could do anything about the snarky entertainment section story about Dody el Fayed and his unseemly affair with Diana, complete with picture. yerps.

PsychoLaurie: Journalists can't afford to "dress sharp," unless they pick up sharp 1980s duds at Goodwill. The jackstands in advertising could afford to dress nice because they made so much more money. I always hated their gloating when our jobs were as much, if not more important. I always wanted some publisher to level the pay grade across all the departments & not pay some hottie in sales more because she flirted over lunch w Mr Business Owner. I hated seeing two of my reporter friends who were married to one another realize that with their combined salaries, they still qualified for food stamps.

I hate the lack of respect for journalists.

I learned early working in the newsroom that the news in the paper is merely filler, like tile grout, that seals up the spaces around the advertisements. At one national paper, there could be no stories that mentioned World War II opposite of or on the same page as Honda Motor Company ads. Really.

UNAUTHORIZED FINGER: I used to work as a pressman for USAToday. We got a new production manager with lots of bright ideas. His first day, he toured the pressroom then decreed that if you're sitting you can't possibly be working, therefore ALL CHAIRS MUST GO! So we had to stand to work at lightbooths designed for sitting, and eat our lunches standing. I waited a few days, then while working graveyard shift, I went up to his office, took his $800 Herman Miller Aeron chair and tossed it in the dumpster. What's good for the goose...

Thanks for the laugh, dear new Favorite.

Standard office hours will be, 8:30 - 5:30, with an hour for lunch

I always hated this shiat. I'd rather work 8:30-5:00 and have a half an hour for lunch. But 8:30-5:30 means I'm there for 9 hours and of course the job assumes I'll be flexible with my lunch hour. And who actually takes the full hour?

Why is it that the jobs with dress codes are the same jobs that don't pay well enough to dress up?

CSB:

The dress code at our office went away when I put a pair of dress shoes, pants and shirt on my expense report after covering a brush fire.

Tricky things those brush fires, especially when it's just a rural fire department responding. Anyone on the scene gets pressed into service.

Publisher had to explain to the owner why the company was paying $200 for a reporter's clothes.

/My idea to hold back 5 percent of advertising commissions for everyone else at the paper didn't go over so well.

Real reporters wear yellow jumpsuits.

PsychoLaurie: Journalists can't afford to "dress sharp," unless they pick up sharp 1980s duds at Goodwill. The jackstands in advertising could afford to dress nice because they made so much more money. I always hated their gloating when our jobs were as much, if not more important. I always wanted some publisher to level the pay grade across all the departments & not pay some hottie in sales more because she flirted over lunch w Mr Business Owner. I hated seeing two of my reporter friends who were married to one another realize that with their combined salaries, they still qualified for food stamps.

I hate the lack of respect for journalists.

You all earned it. The AP has turned you all lazy and every newspaper now resembles USA Today. People used to make fun of that rag.

Oh, oh, I have a newspaper story.

I used to work for the local rag in IT. It was kind of fun since IT covered anything that plugged into a wall.

One day the pressmen got the plates wrong for the sports page. C - M mix up, I think. The main pic was a jump shot of a few black basketball players. The result was two obviously black players jumping for the ball... which looked like a watermelon due to the color from the plate mix up. No body caught the mistake and out it went.

Wish I still had that one.