Here's why I wanted to get obliteratedly drunk last night.
I design three newspapers, a daily and two weeklies. One of the weeklies gives me so much trouble mainly because the woman who runs it knows nothing of journalism (although she tells me she got a degree in it).
A little background: Around the end of April we redesigned the weeklies to look more the daily. Each paper now is mostly templated. This means you'll see the same type of stories on the same page (for instance education stories are usually somewhere around A8, opinion pages are some where near A6, etc.). The space for the inside pages doesn't change too much. For the front page and jumps it can change a lot, but that's not too important at the moment.
This week the city editor for this weekly had three stories budgeted for A4 (our inside news page). That's the right amount of storied, but two were more than 100 lines(one was about a music festival and had four pieces of art and the other was about a councilwoman deciding to run for reelection) and the third was 268 (a council wrap up - meaning here's what happened at the meeting). To put this in perspective, the average story is 50 or 60 lines. Any thing more is usually something complicated and big and planned in advanced.
She tells me to move the reelection story somewhere else (doesn't tell me where and I have to point out there is no where else as she's filled the jump pages with crap) so we don't have to cut the council wrap to the bare bones. Mind you, I had allocated 96 lines to the fucker originally.
I said something to my boss and he said to take it up with a higher up boss who is also the woman's boss. That boss called a meeting and tried explaining to the woman we cannot have stories like this. It's ridiculous and no one will read it. It just wastes time and energy that could be devoted to other things.
She starts bitching about her reporter having gone on vacation and not wanting to work while on vacation (what a concept!). She never said anything to any one else about needing help which was dumb because we have three interns who all need stuff to do. She also complained that her space fluctuates and she doesn't know how much content she'll need. I tried suggesting talking to the guy who dummies up the pages and if she feels she doesn't have enough room or has too much to tell him to remove or add in house ads. Not that hard, I do it for the other two papers all the time. She snaps, "You're thinking production, I think editorial!" It was fucking insulting. I'm trying to help her out and she yells at me.
The big boss suggested having another meeting next week to work out solutions. Fine I start to leave his office and the woman says, "Oh and if you're going to send tips to my reporters you'd better CC me on them. I have to know what you're telling them to do! [My intern] said you sent her an e-mail!" Well no shit, I'm the fucking god damn Internship Coordinator. I take it as my job to help all the interns get the most they can out of this. I want them to walk away being better writers/editors/designers/photographers. That's the whole god damn point.
It was at that point that I hurriedly walked back to my desk on the verge of tears.
I love my job, don't get me wrong, but days like yesterday when I'm just trying to make the product the best ii can be and I get made to look like the bad guy in front of two of my bosses (I have like four) really make me question why I'm even bothering. I could easily ignore how shitty the paper looks, how crappy the writing is, etc. and just not care. But I do care. I want a good paper. My name doesn't even appear on the damn thing. I do it because it's good for us, because we need to be better than everyone else so everyone will read us, so we can sell more ads. Really I'm ensuring everyone's job security. Don't they get that?
I design three newspapers, a daily and two weeklies. One of the weeklies gives me so much trouble mainly because the woman who runs it knows nothing of journalism (although she tells me she got a degree in it).
A little background: Around the end of April we redesigned the weeklies to look more the daily. Each paper now is mostly templated. This means you'll see the same type of stories on the same page (for instance education stories are usually somewhere around A8, opinion pages are some where near A6, etc.). The space for the inside pages doesn't change too much. For the front page and jumps it can change a lot, but that's not too important at the moment.
This week the city editor for this weekly had three stories budgeted for A4 (our inside news page). That's the right amount of storied, but two were more than 100 lines(one was about a music festival and had four pieces of art and the other was about a councilwoman deciding to run for reelection) and the third was 268 (a council wrap up - meaning here's what happened at the meeting). To put this in perspective, the average story is 50 or 60 lines. Any thing more is usually something complicated and big and planned in advanced.
She tells me to move the reelection story somewhere else (doesn't tell me where and I have to point out there is no where else as she's filled the jump pages with crap) so we don't have to cut the council wrap to the bare bones. Mind you, I had allocated 96 lines to the fucker originally.
I said something to my boss and he said to take it up with a higher up boss who is also the woman's boss. That boss called a meeting and tried explaining to the woman we cannot have stories like this. It's ridiculous and no one will read it. It just wastes time and energy that could be devoted to other things.
She starts bitching about her reporter having gone on vacation and not wanting to work while on vacation (what a concept!). She never said anything to any one else about needing help which was dumb because we have three interns who all need stuff to do. She also complained that her space fluctuates and she doesn't know how much content she'll need. I tried suggesting talking to the guy who dummies up the pages and if she feels she doesn't have enough room or has too much to tell him to remove or add in house ads. Not that hard, I do it for the other two papers all the time. She snaps, "You're thinking production, I think editorial!" It was fucking insulting. I'm trying to help her out and she yells at me.
The big boss suggested having another meeting next week to work out solutions. Fine I start to leave his office and the woman says, "Oh and if you're going to send tips to my reporters you'd better CC me on them. I have to know what you're telling them to do! [My intern] said you sent her an e-mail!" Well no shit, I'm the fucking god damn Internship Coordinator. I take it as my job to help all the interns get the most they can out of this. I want them to walk away being better writers/editors/designers/photographers. That's the whole god damn point.
It was at that point that I hurriedly walked back to my desk on the verge of tears.
I love my job, don't get me wrong, but days like yesterday when I'm just trying to make the product the best ii can be and I get made to look like the bad guy in front of two of my bosses (I have like four) really make me question why I'm even bothering. I could easily ignore how shitty the paper looks, how crappy the writing is, etc. and just not care. But I do care. I want a good paper. My name doesn't even appear on the damn thing. I do it because it's good for us, because we need to be better than everyone else so everyone will read us, so we can sell more ads. Really I'm ensuring everyone's job security. Don't they get that?
VIEW 3 of 3 COMMENTS
fixer:
and sorry for being such a guy, not knowing how to commiserate without offering solutions.
urblueygrl:
even though he didnt commiserate he was right on with the solution.. Its hard to be like this alot of the time but it actually works.