The Humboldt Herald

It may a dark dungeon, but it's our dark dungeon. Frankly, although Andy is a good friend of mine, he's got it all wrong here. Working at the old T-S has its bad moments, certainly, but most of the time I have a great time with a great crew of coworkers. We put out what I believe is a great product and we have fun competing with that other daily.
 

While I always appreciate Andy Bird's support, he paints a different picture of our newsroom than I am familiar with. It's true that we have no windows; that's one reason we get out of the newsroom to report like we do, and like we should. While the heat was broken for a long time, Dean sunk hundreds of thousands into a new heating system; the problem is solved. While other newspapers around the country are laying off news staff in droves, our staff has remained stable. Pay for most of us is at or above the county median, and we have excellent benefits. Is it perfect? Hell no. But I can tell you with all honesty that our morale has never been better. We have a solid crew dedicated to producing news, and we do it not to meet some artificial quota, but because we see it as our responsibility. We enjoy routinely beating the free daily that has unlimited resources but still cannot seem to get it together. They have windows, clean carpets, laptops and the rest of the works, but still cannot produce like we do. This tells an interesting story. Truth is, we have more fun and are more enterprising, and that's reason enough for us to do what we do.

John Driscoll
 

Thanks for the defense Andy, but I actually haven't "worked" in months.

Got any ideas?
 

Chris, go back to school and get a nursing degree. You'll be paid less than half your worth in this county, but still be earning $10-20K over a local journalist's salary. Plus, due to the nursing shortage, you have to be pretty bad to become unemployable.
 

Needles scare me.
 

Well at least you don't have to worry about becoming a heroin addict.
 

"We enjoy routinely beating the free daily that has unlimited resources but still cannot seem to get it together."

That is certainly a subjective opinion. I enjoy both dailys, and really could do without the ER's tabloid headlines, but other than that, both papers are fine.
 

Ha! Half those losers at the T-S are always high on something anyway. The Eureka Reporter is THE place to be for any self-respecting journalist in Humboldt County.

Now you all know why.
 

One thing I left out of my original comment is the parking situation. Singleton doesn't provide enough parking for Times-Standard employees because he leases a number of the spaces to the county for their employees who work in the building. They always have spaces to park in...and the spaces are clearly marked. Times-Standard employees are forbidden from parking in them. But reporters are REQUIRED to drive their cars to work, lest they are called out a cover a breaking news event. Newsroom employees generally start their shifts later in the morning than the rest of the newspaper and often there is no parking available in the lot. That means they have to park in the street and if they get a parking ticket they are SOL.

You see the pattern here. Singleton treats the minions who staff his newspapers like cattle. You understand that you are considered a second-class citizen the moment you are hired.

With all due respect to James and John, both of whom I do consider my good friends, they have been working at the Times-Standard for so long that it's all they know. They have forgotten what it's like to work for a company or organization that values its employees and considers worker morale important enough to spend money on.

I admire them for building up their own morale among themselves and using the competition with the Eureka Reporter as motivation to keep up the daily grind in Singleton's journalo sweatshop.
 

11:55 just realized opinions are subjective, and he felt the need to point that out.
 

The Eureka Reporter is THE place to be for any self-respecting journalist in Humboldt County.


Riiiight... because, as we all know, money and material things are what matter most in life!
 

And people mocked the new EPD Chief when HE mentioned dirty carpets..
 

"money and material things are what matter most in life!"

Of course! And being a loyal and obedient pet of the Arkleys increases one's political and financial prospects in Humboldt Cownty.
 

Is this the right place to complain that the best feature of The Eureka Reporter, its bright white paper, has been phased out?

Now, the ER is almost as dingy and hard-to-read as the Times-Standard always was.
 

It's the damned Arkley Eye. They've been hogging all the good paper since they started printing on their mentor's press.
 

Yeah, Rob Arkley is a "philanthropist" alright! You scratch his back, he'll scratch yours.
 

What I want to hear now is the comments from current and former ER staffers on the horrors to be found behind those shiny glass panels downtown.
give us dirty laundry people!
 

Andy, I appreciate that you were miserable here, but having now been here four years and some months longer than you could stand it, and having worked with three different managing editors and three different city editors, I have to address a few of your points.

First, morale: We all know that morale sucks at the ER. They can't even eat food at their desks and are discouraged from having personal items in their cubicles, and one high-ranking manager allegedly throws out their mugs if they accidentally leave them on the kitchen counter or their Tupperware if it's still in the fridge on Friday night. And we don't have quotas of how many stories we have to write each week.

I agree with John, that morale here is good. I have never had so much fun with so many people who are as smart as me (OK, some smarter). Everyone pulls together as a team, from one side of the room to the other. There have been numerous times when a sports writer or copy editor will grab a camera at 9 p.m. and run out to shoot photos of a fire. It's not in their job description, but such actions speak highly of their dedication. If they didn't give a shit, they would ignore the scanner after the cityside crew leaves.

The real measure of camaraderie, one of the largest factors in building morale, is what happens when a member of the gang has a crisis. When my mom died, I received overwhelming support, multiple flower arrangements and umpteen hugs. When one of us was ill for several weeks, we had to get her two "get well" cards because there wasn't enough room for everyone who wanted to sign it, upstairs and downstairs.

Second, the carpet: Who cares? What's a real newsroom without that "lived-in" look of a dingy carpet with coffee stains and inky footprints leading from the pressroom door? Personally I would rather they keep shampooing it once a year than install new carpet and have to take two weeks off because I can't handle the offgassing of new carpet odors.

See, here we're allowed to decorate to our heart's content, unlike the ER, so we have all kinds of things on the walls to look at and the carpet just kind of fades into the background. Everybody contributes to the decor, whether it's John's Bigfoot Sightings Map to the dartboard with Tony Soprano's face on it. I have four stuffed animals, plants, a mini-Zen garden, photos, cartoons, art and plenty of tchotchkes on my monitor and desk that it's clearly "my space" and not the company's only.

Oh, and by the way, thanks for leaving your artificial Christmas tree here for us to use. We had fun decorating it last Christmas and will again this year!

Third, the benefits: Again, John hit the nail on the head. The benefits here are comparable to every company I've ever worked at in the 34 years since graduating college, and that includes a huge household products company, one of the hospitals in the St. Joe's system, several very wealthy private corporations and several large nonprofits.

A lot of employers still don't offer domestic partner coverage, but Singleton does, and it's saved my partner and me thousands of dollars a year.

Getting three weeks vacation after only working 2 years here is also not common among lots of employers. Usually you have to put in 5 years before you get 3 weeks.

Fourth, about the "morale fund" we had for coffee and snacks - you are wrong, it was $135 a month (for the newsroom), not $50. Again, not a perk often offered by large companies - maybe they supply coffee, but not much more. Everywhere else I've ever worked we took up collections for birthday cakes, but here they're supplied by the company.

And when the $135 a month was canceled due to budget cuts, guess what we got instead? Everyone who needed one got a company-paid cell phone, which is just about all of us. If we already had a cell phone, we get a monthly allowance toward the bill. It pays my entire bill. Seems to me it made a lot of business sense to put the coffee/snack money into technology instead.

And, we put our heads together and decided those of us who wanted to would contribute a few bucks a month to buy our own coffee and snacks. They give me the funds and I do the buying, and it's worked out great. $6 a month gets us all the coffee we can drink and an assortment of snacks from fruit and cheese to granola bars and yogurt and crackers.

Fifth and finally, about the heater. They had people come out almost monthly to try to fix the boiler. When it wasn't working, they went out and bought at least 5 space heaters that I know of and stationed them around the newsroom. When it was too hot in here, they went out and bought us an equal number of fans. We learned to dress in layers. Gee, just like anybody else in Humboldt County learns after they move here! Show me any old building in Humboldt County that doesn't have mechanical problems. Yes, we complained about it daily, as you know, but we lived through it and hung in there, and finally enough squeaky wheels got the company to fork over the grease.

In short (ok, in long), working at the Times-Standard might have been "awful" for you, but please don't presume to speak for the rest of us who are still here, getting a regular paycheck and not dreading coming here every day. You're a good writer and you were an asset here, too, and part of a great team. But the team goes on, changes formation and plays different strategies, and every new face brings something great to add. Maybe that's why James came back here, and Charles, and another former employee who's on their way back. Not to mention the refugees from the ER who saw the light of day ... so to speak.

Take care,
Jen
 

You want dirty laundry? The buzz in the hood is that the scotch bottles continue to pile up outside the manse but that the white wine bottles have altogether vannished. Can it be that the little trip to New Mexico was a success?
 

Good luck, everyone!
 

hey you guys. there's never been a better time to read a newspaper in humboldt county than now. i love the stuff faulk, durant, hamill and muller, are writing. driscoll's earthy stuff occasionally draws my interest but my wife digs him. maybe its his youthful photo (I guess award-winning skill might be a part of it, too...)

Keep up the good work and thanks for being the perfect compliment to a fine cup of coffee in the morning.

Joe Blow
 

Hmm... the T-S newsroom has no windows, yet somehow they manage to let more daylight in than the ER on many issues.

Go figure.
 

What I want to hear now is the comments from current and former ER staffers on the horrors to be found behind those shiny glass panels downtown.
give us dirty laundry people!

All employee bathrooms at the Eureka Reporter are under covert micro-cam surveillance. (The fight against "drugs" and "terrorists," you know.)

Also, the place is totally bugged. Everywhere. There is no place you can have a private conversation.
 

You want dirty laundry? Glenn Franco Simmons sometimes wears Rob Arkley's used underwear on his head when he types his columns.

Really! I kid you not!

Somehow it brings out the muse in Glenn, helping him get his head into the Right space. Fine-tuning his understanding of Rob's editorial policy and war strategy.
 

I worked at both the Times-Standard and the Reporter for a combined six years or so. I still have good friends and pals from both places, and I have little to add that the T-S staffers haven't all said very eloquently. They're great, talented, hardworking people; sure, they could be making scads more money doing slightly less work per day with better free muffins in places like El Cajon or Orlando or Tustin or Virginia Beach, but then they'd have to live ... well, you get the idea.
The lack of windows never bothered me at the T-S. In fact I loved the fact tht the walls were soundproofed so it was like being in a bunker somewhere. Apparently there were climate problems, but my body has no hot/cold meter so I never noticed that either. And I still have good friends at the Reporter who are working hard and doing great work, but they're getting deprived the chance to mess up their desks like Sara did (or I tried to do), or have things like a map of Bigfoot sightings on the wall -- or that county map showing how to get to the secret Scientology vault, or a refrigerator free to be cluttered to a scandalous degree, and the right to eat at one's desk, preferrably as unhealthy as possible (or baked potatoes with catsup, if that's your thing). And when at the Reporter I longed for the silent hum of a windowless bunker when met with the periodic outbreaks of loudmouthery from meth-addled strangers out in the shadowy periphery of the parking lot (not with many available spaces, much like the T-S, but with a more thriving black market in something, apparently).
Blogs and Media Mavens and anonymous wags can come up with all the poorly informed, ill-advised sniping that they can gleefully generate, but the folks at the T-S (and the Reporter as well) get to be part of a great thing -- a newspaper war in a city too small to imaginably even have one -- San Diego, San Francisco and Sacramento are single-paper cities, so their staffs don't even get that competitve sense of fun (which also causes both newsrooms to work harder and better), and these city mice get the long commutes, the bad air quality, the job cuts and the uncertain futures.
Dean Singelton and Rob Arkley ain't great shakes when it comes to, respectively, being ideal top dogs regarding visionary capital investment or a desire to shrink from petulance and meglomania, but they're off golfing and/or duck hunting a zillion miles off while the newsrooms do all the work, the denizens of which are doing the best ink-slinging this area's seen in years.
 

Spider said...
Good luck, everyone!

Ohh thank you Spider! Yes, and good luck to you too!
 

Can I play too? Silkworm briefed me on the gameplan.
 

10-4, Moth. You're in. We're playing in the daisy field tonight. All systems "go" for Operation Lawnmower.
 

>So the next time one of you anons feel the urge to take a cheap shot at Faulk, Driscoll, Durant, etc., please understand what they are enduring already.


Awwwwwwwww. As if we are supposed to care about OTHER people's RUTS that they drive themselves into.

Whine whine whine sob sob sob

If your job sucks so bad - GET A NEW ONE!

Try Burger King... or MacDonald's.

What? No? Why? Cuz it's worse than your job is now?????? Awwwwww.

Then quit whining. It's not OUR fault you don't look for employment elsewhere.

maybe if you "journalists" wrote less FLUFF pieces on "crap-tin buhne" you might get some respect and be able to land a job elsewhere.

Duh
 

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You wanna talk drugs? The ER has no drug testing policy whatsoever. You can be addicted to meth, heroin, and crack and still get a job there.
The T-S tests on hiring and also if you are in an accident. This is pretty standard for most businesses that test their employees.
So on drug testing, the Times-Standard is at industry standard, and the ER doesn't even have a standard. If they drug tested all their employees today, there wouldn't be a paper tomorrow.
 

Funny how the ER is touted as being the conservative answer to a liberal T-S.
Yet most of the ER staff comes from HSU, a notoriously liberal university that the conservatives claim brainwashes and indoctrinates its students into agents for the liberal side.

The ER is intentionally staffed with mostly women, and staffs more gays and lesbians than any other paper, so that they can claim to be more "diverse" than the T-S.

And I'll bet the conservatives are so happy to hear it! How's that fer ya, good buddy? Does that git er done for ya? A bunch of liberal women and queers runnin' the show over there at the ER! A bunch of Bush-hating, anti-war, hippy dopers, with some pole-smokers thrown in to boot! Yeah, those are the perverts who you let into your schools, around your kids. They're liberal, they're stoned, they hate Jesus and America and they want to molest your children!

Ah smell me uh lynchin'-- YEE HAW!!!
 

All employee bathrooms at the Eureka Reporter are under covert micro-cam surveillance.

Oh my gawd, and I got my pole smoked in their bathroom just yesterday! I feel violated!
 

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"The ER has no drug testing policy whatsoever."

They don't need one. They've got quality surveillance.
 

This has been an interesting thread.
 

ER employee computers are closely monitored too. They know better than to send sensitive private emails from work. Whatever they type on a blog is recorded too.

They get good marks on their records for defending Arkley and the ER on blogs like Buhne or anywhere else, whether they know it or not.
 

You're welcome, Carol. I always gravitiate toward the boring blogs to try and spice them up with provacative posts. It works most of the time, as was seen on the Buhne. Other people got out of hand there but I kept chugging along anyway until he quit. His North Coast Post is horrid but I can't have fun over there because he hates free speech and loves Rob Arkley.
Heraldo still beleives in free speech. And his blog needed some flavor. So here I am. I won't always be identifiable but I'll usually poke in on the more interesting threads.
See you around!