Why are you angry today?
Tell us what’s making you upset at your journalism job.
Anonymity guaranteed. One rule: no real names.
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10,095 Responses to “Why are you angry today?”
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Pages: « 505 … 405 404 403 402 401 [400] 399 398 397 396 395 … 1 » Show All
February 3rd, 2009 at 6:44 pm
I am getting out as soon as the new school year starts. I have applied to grad schools and been accepted. Trying something new now because I hate working so hard for so little and doing others’ work.
February 3rd, 2009 at 5:13 pm
I’m angry because I’m bored. The job description said online journalist but in reality I spend my day doing production, taking stories written by other people and putting them on the website. And the news editor is only interested in stories about sex crimes and kids getting hurt.
February 3rd, 2009 at 5:12 pm
I’m angry because my paper is on a hiring freeze and we can’t afford to replace the reporter who left.
I’m angry that they’re switching us all to salary so we can’t collect the overtime we’re going to have to start putting in to cover the ex-reporter’s beat.
I’m angry that my paper only let me cover one side of a recent news story and won’t let me follow up to cover the other side.
I’m also angry at the jackass cops I have to work with who treat me like a baby, call me Sweetheart and send me to interview their sergeants who yell at me to get away from the crime scene just so the jackasses can laugh at me.
February 3rd, 2009 at 4:56 pm
I came in the morning (half an hour early) and found a note scrawled on yesterday’s newspaper about how how no one cares about the content I picked for my lifestyles page. I understand the need for criticism, but leaving hateful notes on my desk so I can read them first thing in the morning? Wtf? Why not come to me and talk about it? Then my editor totally doesn’t back me up and says “we need more local content in your section.” To which I promptly hand her a list of all the local content I’ve run in the past month. I pointed out that A. Most of my stories last week fell through because our state was facing the largest natural disaster in recorded history and B. I went out in the damn ice storm and wrote stories and took pictures and aided the news department, and then helped the copy desk by designing my own pages in the advance.
But does anyone care about all the extra work I did last week helping out our understaffed newsroom? No. Then I get a lecture about “bending over backwards” for readers and having better customer service because an anniversary wasn’t in last week’s paper because the READER missed the deadline in submitting the photo with it and the READER never indicated on the form when he wanted his announcement run. The editor didn’t even know when we lay out the announcement page, much less who designed it (me).
I love the actual work of my job. But I can’t handle the incompetent leadership and poor management much longer. I don’t know why I care so much …
February 3rd, 2009 at 3:00 pm
I’m angry because journalism is supposed to the voice for freedom of speech, yet we have to resort to anonymous rants to express ourselves. More to come…
February 3rd, 2009 at 2:30 pm
i´m angry because i am close to do it for free, but like it anyway
February 3rd, 2009 at 2:16 pm
I am angry because I am a young journalist working part time at an award winning newspaper, I thought I had a passion for journalism until working here and being a piss-on for almost two years
February 3rd, 2009 at 1:51 pm
Dear Newspaper,
Fuck you. I’ve worked for you now for four months. You’re losing readership, but you don’t care because ad revenue is up. There are no new ideas. I feel like the publisher has been in a cave for the last 10 years. Where is our online video? Where are the interesting, thought provoking story ideas?
Newspaper, you’re a tool. I hope you go under, because I already have plans to start my own news website, and I will blow you right out of the fucking water. For $12 an hour, I could care less what happens to the piece of shit you’ve become.
February 3rd, 2009 at 1:17 pm
I’m angry because some of my colleagues are being layed off today… not a fun day!
February 3rd, 2009 at 12:04 pm
In an editorial department meeting this morning, I told my editors that I was working on a story that is investigative in nature. I made the mistake of walking to my desk after the meeting to check my company e-mail, however, and one of the editors came up and gave me a story that someone else had been working on that I knew absolutely nothing about. So, my story got pissed into the wind because I walked to my desk.
What is it about managers that if they see you at your desk they just assume that you have nothing to work on? Did they really forget what I had just told them I was working on 15-minutes ago in the damn meeting?
Oh, and we are also having to put out a stupid Progress and Development section right now, that no one will read, and they expect me to write several stories for that as well. But all without working overtime, of course. And don’t let progress cut into all the other work being piled on me since positions got cut a few months ago.
Investigative reporting is dead. This industry, at least where I work, could care less about the quality of stories or reporting. All they are worried about is the quantity of stories they can get us to crank out. So, screw the investigative piece. I’m dropping it. Or, better yet, maybe they can give it to someone else who is sitting at their desk waiting on a call back or checking their company e-mail account which is, as they assume, wasting time and having nothing to do.
I hate this industry. I will not stay here much longer. The day I turn in my two-week notice will be the best day I’ve had at this job in the past two years.
February 3rd, 2009 at 12:03 pm
Does anyone have the link to the article about how to leave the business? I saw it on this site and can’t find it anymore…
February 3rd, 2009 at 11:28 am
I’m angry at ITV regional news for making us redundant before Christmas, but work through into Feb, without giving us an official leave date, or a letter confirming we’ve actually been made redundant/got rights…
…..screwing every last drop out of us until we drop down dead.
w@nkers
February 3rd, 2009 at 2:54 am
“The Internship”
“Listen kid, we know that you’re the best candidate for this position. There’s no question about it. It’s just that, well, I’m gonna be completely honest with you kid – you deserve at least that much..
It’s just that we’re total whores for money, all the managers here. Every single one of us would suck a dick hard for a million bucks you see, but within reason of course. Know what I mean?
The truth is that every single one of us managers here, we’ve all got these rich friends of ours who have these spoiled kids that are essentially unemployable. Most of them are actually total dumbshits, but their parents are willing to pay us thousands upon thousands of their hardly earned trust-fund dollars to make it look as though their kids have real work experience on paper, for simply making our coffees and stroking our massively undeserved egos for a couple of months at a time.
As I’m sure you already know, our company is more than likely collapsing, and we really have no choice but to stoop to any low humanly possible to protect our seven-figure salaries by slashing costs, even if that means charging our interns to work for us.
We know that you’re the best candidate, but to be honest, you’ll never have any chance in this market because you’re poor, and quite frankly, that’s the way we think it should be in this world run by whores. You know, real whores for money and power – pigs, swine like us – the plutocracy.
Now if you had a nice pair of tits and low enough self-esteem to suck my dick every morning for nothing in return, then I might be willing to give you a chance, but in this market, no, you’d never have any chance at all even though you’re the absolute best candidate for this position.
See kid, your problem is that you’re too good. When you’re a privileged and powerful imbecile such as myself, nothing intimidates or threatens you more than a poor, talented young man like yourself with exceptional leadership abilities. Every single supervisor here, including myself, is afraid that you will take their job away from them, because none of them are nearly as talented, hard-working, or capable as you are. We’d much rather give this internship as well as any possible future promotions to some bumbling idiot who represents no threat to our authority or egos – a real go-getter who will do or say absolutely anything that we tell him to do or say without question, whatsoever. That’s just how prostitution – I mean capitalism – works. We want somebody who we can pin the blame on whenever we fuck up real bad, as we usually do, so that we can continue to collect our seemingly undeserved multi-million dollar bonuses as well as travel to exotic places on our personal jets. Jet fuel isn’t cheap you know, especially nowadays.
You see kid, how it works in the real world is that people like me don’t get into our positions of power by being nice guys or making the right decisions or hiring the right people or being honest. No sir, we get to our positions of power by lying, cheating, stealing, and killing our way to the top. We get into our positions of power by sabotaging our more capable co-workers by any and all means necessary. It’s a dog-eat-dog world kid, and that idealistic disposition of yours will get you nowhere fast. Hell, I used to be an idealist myself when I was your age, but then I had a family and joined the military – which got me over my ‘freethinking’ real fast. Having to kill dozens of crying children who are running towards you – children who may or may not be bearing grenades – will teach you a thing or two about ‘fairness’ real quick.
It’s a dog-eat-dog world kid, and unless you’re extremely rich or willing to play dirty – then you’re never gonna make it in this industry. Ever.
Now go away kid, I’ve got an important meeting with the mayor.”
February 3rd, 2009 at 1:28 am
Dear Angry Journalist #7976:
That sucks, but you should get advice from a lawyer, not a message board.
In the mean time you need to document ALL abuses of copyright, and get info on ad rates for the sites that are robbing you.
If your employer doesn’t want to at least get a cease and desist written, you are wasting your time being angry and should probably be hanging out at happyjournalist.com since your stuff is good enough to steal.
February 3rd, 2009 at 12:11 am
60 hr weeks paid for 40.
February 2nd, 2009 at 10:02 pm
it could be worse. you could be an assignment editor.
February 2nd, 2009 at 7:22 pm
I’m angry because I call myself a journalist, but, actually, I’m an ex-journalist who occasionally blogs. The Kool-Aid kid. And now and then I write features for crap publications who pay me lots of money. I can’t imagine going back into a newsroom: no room, no ideas there. And yet, and yet I’d loved it once.
February 2nd, 2009 at 5:58 pm
i’m angry because i can’t afford my car insurance thanks to overtime cuts.
February 2nd, 2009 at 5:57 pm
I’m angry that this career makes me need lots and lots of expensive medications.
February 2nd, 2009 at 4:50 pm
I’m angry because we reorganize every year to better serve our core readers and increase circulation. And of course every year it fails miserably.