Sunday, May 30, 2010
Week May 24-30 | Your News & Comments: Part 2
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39 comments:
Jim says: "Proceed with caution; this is a free-for-all comment zone. I try to correct or clarify incorrect information. But I can't catch everything. Please keep your posts focused on Gannett and media-related subjects. Note that I occasionally review comments in advance, to reject inappropriate ones. And I ignore hostile posters, and recommend you do, too."
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Part 1 of this comment thread is here.
ReplyDeleteThat there are more senior level departures in Gannett Digital that will happen in June.
ReplyDeleteThere is no decision making. They are floundering.
I set up new user accounts at our site. I have NEVER seen so many (unpaid) interns... Are we turning our newspapers over to the untrained and unpaid? This is crazy.
ReplyDeleteAnybody have any news about the content centers? How they are working, what sorts of mistakes are being made, which areas might be "next" to be folded together?
ReplyDelete10:21 a.m.: Yes, it's crazy. What's crazier is that well-paid college professors--some with tenure that requires they be convicted of murder to be removed from their jobs--who possess gold-plated retirement and benefit packages are continuing to churn out journalism grads eager to fill these intern spots so that they can then compete for nonexistent jobs.
ReplyDeleteIf I see you walking into the path of a train and do nothing to stop you I can be held criminally liable in some states and circumstances. Who's warning the kids? I believe that the lack of a conscience is a prerequisite for the instruction of journalism these days. I couldn't do it.
Who are the senior level folks at Gannett Digital that are rumored to be leaving in June?
ReplyDeleteGuess we don't have it so bad. We don't have these clause yet:
ReplyDeleteThe company plans to institute new measures it hopes will prevent additional employee deaths. In addition to installing safety nets on Foxconn buildings, Foxconn chairman Terry Gou said more counselors would be hired, and explained that "employees were being divided up into 50-member groups, whose members would watch for signs of emotional trouble within their group." The Sydney Morning Herald reported yesterday that the factory had also asked their employees to sign a "no suicide" pledge.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/05/27/foxconn-suicides-continue_n_591616.html
There are unpaid Gannett interns? WHERE do they work? I didn't know any of the newspapers had unpaid interns -- I know there's a bit of tradition for that in broadcast, but I thought that had at least been weeded out of print. They should be unacceptable to students and to their college profs.
ReplyDeleteUnpaid interns have been common at Westchester. In turn for working without pay they get credit from their schools.
ReplyDeleteThe kids get course credit and Gannett gets free labor. What a deal!
It is amazing that people are still flocking to journalism, given the layoffs, etc. But, in one form or another, the news will be distributed.
I hope they all find their niche.
USA TODAY has a gazillion unpaid interns during the summer. Actually, I think they're given a small travel stipend to cover the commute. They're all there for college credit.
ReplyDeleteUnpaid internships have been around for decades in all kinds of industries. I would say the value of what you can learn -- IF you wind up working for good people who view you as more than a lackey -- is well worth the effort and much better than spending your summer working at Foot Locker.
Of course, if you can find a paid internship then by all means ...
The colleges are the ones that should stop the unpaid internships. It doesn't take a genius to see that encouraging students to work for a company like Gannett without pay is bad for the entire industry.
ReplyDeleteThere's no way a college can prevent a student for working free, but it can refuse to cut deals where the students get college credit for doing that.
Encouraging students to pay you for journalism classes and then purposely devaluing the profession that you are training those students to enter is unethical and just plain stupid.
10:01 -- The problem isn't that the students aren't learning. You can definitely learn something from an unpaid internship, just as you could learn a lot about construction by working with a framing crew free of charge.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that colleges that offer credit for these free internships are essentially subsidizing Gannett's labor force. This hurts journalism in numerous ways, most notably by allowing Gannett to continue layoffs and furloughs.
It also drives salaries down because the pay scale for jobs is based on supply and demand. If you have a steady supply of people who are willing to work for you free of charge, there's not going to be much demand for trained journalists, including those who want to land a job after they've finished college and all these unpaid gigs.
From a story early last month in The New York Times, about state and federal investigations of unpaid internships:
ReplyDeleteThe Labor Department says it is cracking down on firms that fail to pay interns properly and expanding efforts to educate companies, colleges and students on the law regarding internships.
Many employers failed to pay even though their internships did not comply with the six federal legal criteria that must be satisfied for internships to be unpaid. Among those criteria are that the internship should be similar to the training given in a vocational school or academic institution, that the intern does not displace regular paid workers and that the employer “derives no immediate advantage” from the intern’s activities — in other words, it’s largely a benevolent contribution to the intern.
Ah, what a joke: Getting interns to substitute for the missing labor force. That seems to be Gannett's forte. They are already underpaying the regular workers and now they are hiring "slaves" to do the work what a layed off/departing employee leaves behind.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, these interns are fed the crock that they have a "career" as a journalist. What a bunch of bs! Wow, irresponsible by the colleges and any other school that support the slave machine of Gannett! Haven't all these interns seen the light bulb blinking when newspapers in the last couple of years got rid of their journalists???? And we wonder why these interns after school stand on the street and can't get a job in their vocation.
Every college professor worth their salt could read behind Gannett's back alley deals and see the truth that print is as good as dead. Online newspapers are the future and Gannett is only delaying the inevitable until the grand masters at Gannett stripped the carcass of a former grand company bare.
@8:34. Slaves? Stop being melodramatic. It damages all our credibility. You can quit. I did.
ReplyDeleteFederal officials look to the following six guidelines to determine whether an unpaid intern is a "trainee" and work without pay. Note particularly the "no immediate advantage" provision for an employer in No. 4 and the "do not displace regular employees" provision in No. 3.
ReplyDelete1. The training, even though it includes actual operation of the facilities of the employer, is similar to what would be given in a vocational school or academic educational instruction;
2. The training is for the benefit of the trainees;
3. The trainees do not displace regular employees, but work under their close
observation;
4. The employer that provides the training derives no immediate advantage from the
activities of the trainees, and on occasion the employer’s operations may actually
be impeded;
5. The trainees are not necessarily entitled to a job at the conclusion of the training
period; and
6. The employer and the trainees understand that the trainees are not entitled to
wages for the time spent in training.
If the internship fails to meet all of the factors listed above, then the Fair Labor Standards Act’s minimum wage and overtime provisions apply to the worker. And past workers would be able to get back pay.
Each of these guidelines is spelled out in some detail here:
http://wdr.doleta.gov/directives/attach/TEGL/TEGL12-09acc.pdf
Take a close look at this one:
Displacement and Supervision Issues
Employers with bona fide training programs typically do not utilize trainees as a
substitute for regular workers. If the employer uses the workers as substitutes for regular
workers, it is more likely that the workers are employees as opposed to trainees. As well,
if the employer would have needed to hire additional employees or require overtime had
the workers not performed the work, then the workers are likely employees. Conversely,
if the employer is providing job shadowing opportunities where the worker learns certain
functions under the close and constant supervision of regular employees, but performs no or minimal work, this type of activity is more likely to be a bona fide training program;
however, if the worker receives the same level of supervision as employees, this would
suggest an employment, rather than a training, relationship.
You also may want to check out this federal fact sheet:
http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs71.htm
The guild should challenge these "unpaid" interns by filing complaints with the U.S. Department of Labor. There undoubtedly are more unpaid interns in TV stations than in newspapers, but the rules apply to both.
At the Gannett paper I work for, all interns -- paid and unpaid -- provide "an immediate" advantage to the paper.
ReplyDeleteNow, proving that they don't displace other employees is tough. They definitely do work that other employees no longer have to do, but I'm not sure anyone has ever been fired with the assumption that an intern would do the work.
Rather, interns seem to lighten the increasingly massive workload that remaining employees are burdened with.
Under these definitions, it seems to me that a paper that has an unpaid intern do anything other than meet with staff for educational sessions has a problem. If an intern writes something that is published, he/she has provided an immediate gain to the company.
Beggar Hopkins is a slave to his insanity.
ReplyDeleteHonolulu staff stiffed on severance:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.kitv.com/news/23705740/detail.html
Memorial Day gathering at Jim's.
ReplyDeleteHe's serving watercress sandwiches, hot dogs, ladyfingers, and nuts and crackers.
Pants are optional, as always. After dinner, Jim will dance Agamemnon.
I'm tired of leaving work on Fridays feeling depressed and hopeless.
ReplyDeleteWhy are Fridays especially bad for you?
ReplyDeleteStop the dumb attacks on Jim already. Enough is enough. Who cares?????!!!! No one...only the Aholes at Gannett who want to discredit this blog.
ReplyDeleteI'm a big fan of internships. I got two jobs early in my career after interning for a company. I've also hired former interns for freelance and full-time employment. Internships are great!
ReplyDeleteI say keep the dumb attacks on Jim coming. It shows that he has once again made the "powers that be" uncomfortable. Notice that these attacks were missing for quite awhile. Now that the blog seems to be picking up steam again, the trolls have come out to play.
ReplyDeleteJim should view each troll comment as a pat on the back for a job well done.
Keep it up Jim!
10:22 -- At the time when you got jobs after internships, were full-time employees being released at a record rate? Did you do work that the companies didn't need to pay full-time employees to do?
ReplyDeleteI'm not against internships, but I am against companies like Gannett taking advantage of free labor while handing out millions in bonus money to executives.
Craig Dubow won't get out of bed in the morning unless somebody's willing to pay him to do it. Why should anyone work for him without pay?
5:56 -- I can feel your pain. But for me it's the start of the week that's roughest.
ReplyDeleteI love weekends with my family. Then, Sunday night the stress sets in, as I come to terms with the fact that I have to put in another week in an increasingly dismal newsroom.
This is not how I imagined the mid-point of my career.
And 3:31, here's the kicker:
ReplyDelete"People will get their severance. We just need to get a resolution to their grievance," Francis said.
There's a grievance, you corporate shill, because Gannett's refusing to pay the severance. Obey the damn contract, and there's no grievance.
http://daringfireball.net/2010/05/tynt_copy_paste_jerks
ReplyDeleteAnyone familiar with this new trend and Gannett using it on any of its sites?
Tynt is a company that uses javascript to embed links into text users have copied and pasted onto somewhere else.
If working for Gannett is getting you down, start looking for work with another newspaper or in a related field. The work is there, even for mid-career people, often especially for mid-career people who have valuable experience gathering information and covering high-level government. The last thing you want to do is waste away working for a soulless corporation that doesn't give a damn about you, regardless of what its leaders force themselves to say in Gannetteer and the annual report. Start networking with potential employers and examine other career possibilities. Quite a few ex-newsfolks have landed jobs with employers who treasure having ex-reporters on board. The opportunities for editors and desk types are less, but they are there. The big challenge for many is getting out and making cold approaches to potential employers. They don't have the byline recognition but have a lot to offer nonetheless.
ReplyDeleteMy paper has at least 23 interns. It's a travesty here in Cumberland County.
ReplyDeleteThe severance dispute in Honolulu is outrageous. There are earned benefits, and I would think protected by federal law. The unions are on the case, and they have lawyers. But laid-off former employees have to wait when there is no longer a paycheck.
ReplyDeleteIs that a Gannett paper, 11:48? Where is Cumberland County?
ReplyDeleteJim: Vineland, N.J., is in Cumberland County. http://www.thedailyjournal.com/
ReplyDeleteI apologize if this has already been posted, but it's another aspect on the future of newspapers.
ReplyDeleteUC Davis study predicts newspapers will survive
Page 2A in The Sunday Free Press (Detroit Free Press) today reads that the Freep and MediaNews' Detroit News will soon allow for Monday-Wednesday and Saturday delivery through independent contractors. It's called "Premium Home Delivery" Can't find a link on Freep.com for it though.
ReplyDeleteThis could be HUGE... Gannett is reversing the "digital only" decision. Of course the cost premium still has yet to be worked out. How much will it cost to have your paper delivered? Will it be more than the cost of the paper? Once again, exciting times lead in Detroit...
I knew something was screwy when the News and Free Press started running their papers closer to 30 pages than the 24-25 we'd come to expect. Of course, the Detroit News is still usually reporting more "news" on a daily basis -- ironic since it's a MediaNews publication.
2:17 -- Interesting. I said some time ago that it was pretty obvious that Gannett had abandoned the "digital-first" model. You just can't support a newspaper-sized staff with a digital only product at this time. Plus, there's still a lot of money to be made in print.
ReplyDeleteThat's why we're seeing this turnaround. I think the powers that be realize that by emphasizing digital as early as they did, they missed out on a lot of potential profit.
I suspect the company will continue its digital efforts but that digital will become the stepchild that print has been in the past. By using that approach, they can ramp up digital as it becomes more of a profit center without missing out on the money that print can bring in today.
I'm just surprised that they didn't figure this out sooner. No, wait a minute. Really, I'm not. This is Gannett after all.
Yeah, 4:58, you saw it coming. That's why you waited until it happened, then told us about it.
ReplyDeleteYou are fooling no one.
6:37 -- I'm not saying that I have the newspaper conundrum worked out. I don't. What I have told friends for years is that it doesn't make a lot of business sense to pump millions into a model that you don't know how to make money at while simultaneously weakening the products that do make money.
ReplyDeleteYou don't have to believe me because I frankly don't care. The bigger question -- if you're so smart -- is why didn't you have similar thoughts.
I know many, many people in the industry who have expressed the exact same ideas as me. You didn't need a crystal ball to see this coming. You just needed to have your eyes open.