Thursday, February 5, 2009

Beacon Journal taking an early vacation

Everyone -- reporters included -- looks forward to vacation time, but how would you feel if you were encouraged to take your vacation right away.

That's what's happening at the ABJ where staffers tell me that a mass push is underway to get every employee to take one week's vacation in the next month or so.

The paper's bottom line can apparently benefit from being able to show that vacation time is being paid and not accrued. Represented employees can say "no" but one writer told me that he's planning to go ahead and do it to "be a good sport" and help the company.

Still, for an organization that isn't quite staffed by even 50 percent of what it once was, how can it afford to have larger quantities of folks out on vacation at the same time?

And by the way ... Bob Dyer's comments about the NewsNight Akron set were right on the money. Some viewers hate it that I stand (or used to stand) while others aren't bothered; some folks hate the moving traffic in the background while others seem to like it. I'm just pleased that the show has a large enough audience (#1 on Western Reserve Public Media) that complaints warrant discussion.

By the way .. Friday's show includes both Ed Esposito and Jody Miller on the panel. David Giffels and I might just play cards again .. so we can watch the fight up close.

4 comments:

Village Green said...

The night you had just Esposito and Hoffman on was deadly. Aren't any real lefties ever allowed on your program?

Ed Esposito said...

Green, why you put this hole in me?

Ben said...

I like the background as is. Just my opinion.

Anonymous said...

SO glad we still can see you on NewsNight Akron because we can't get a signal through our converter box from NBC in Cleveland. That's the kitchen tv, which sits on top of the fridge. There's room for a converter box, but not for a giant cable box.

All we can get now is ABC and Kent PBS. No Cleveland PBS. No NBC. No CBS. No Fox. We can get Univision and PTL.

We're just the women in the kitchen, but we do determine how a big chunk of the household income is spent, so maybe the advertisers care that we have been cut off.

Will this continue to be the case after 2/17 because analog signals are stronger than digital, or do we just need to be patient.

There's always radio, but we miss Eric.