The Novel Ways of Newspapers
Hedge funds continue to burn it all down
My favorite character in The Trailer Park Rules is Jonesy. He’s a single guy living in a crappy trailer park, delivering his soul every day to the newspaper he loves. The newspaper does not love him back. It’s being eaten alive by a hedge fund and Jonesy knows it.
I’m a married woman who lives in a house and no longer works at a paper, but I identify with Jonesy. He’s me. And I can't help but wonder if the non-journalists who read my book understand that when I tell Jonesy’s story, I’m not exaggerating.
Not one bit.
I have many newspaper stories
Some of them are hilarious. Others are heroic. A few are tragic. Here I’ll tell a newspaper story in which I don’t come out looking very good at all.
I was put in charge of producing a summer tourism guide. I had to contact dozens of small newspapers in my region and get each of them to contribute a certain amount of copy and art about things going on in their area. I’d compile this into a gargantuan pile of crap so the company could sell ads. The ad money would enrich the hedge fund, not the workers, and we all knew it.
Nobody had time, on top of getting their own paper out, to mess with side projects, but I was charged with doing whatever it took. Essentially, I was ordered to take the turnips and squeeze blood out of them.
One of our weeklies had not contributed anything to the project, so I gave the editor a call. She explained that her paper was a one-woman show, and her newspaper office, located near a river, had flooded.
She’d relocated everything possible to her own living room and continued putting out the paper under horrific conditions. You can imagine what a shit-show she was dealing with.
So obviously, I told her not to worry about it. I’d find some other way to fill the tourism guide. Right?
No I didn’t. I was given no choice but to squeeze that turnip a bit more. Sure enough, I got blood! She found time and energy to contribute to the project after all.
I still feel like shit about this. I deserve to feel like shit about this.
If I could go back in time, I’d tell somebody higher up to go fuck themselves because there was no way I was going to force that woman to do one more thing.
This kind of thing is rampant today. So please understand that while Jonesy is a made-up character, the kinds of things he deals with in the book are absolutely real.
Here’s the first chapter of The Trailer Park Rules.
Chapter 1
Jonesy
The bowling alley had been on fire for some time before anybody noticed, and flames were shooting through the curved roof when Jonesy got there. That would be considered a bad thing by everyone in town except Jonesy: Nothing photographed like a good fire.
A lot of times, he’d get there after firefighters had already beaten back the flames. Especially if the fire broke out late at night, there was every chance he’d arrive too late to capture great photos.
Not this time. He pulled out his camera as the flames brightened his face.
He’d covered the Loire City Council meeting earlier that evening. After he finished writing the story, he stayed late to meet the quotas that wasted hours of his life every week. He always put off doing the required videos, photo galleries and social media posts as long as he could, but he knew the regional editor would have his ass if he didn’t post them tonight. The paper had already had a round of layoffs six months ago. If he wanted to delay his own eventual layoff, he understood, he had to meet the quotas.
The paper’s website was glitchy as hell and it took him several tries to get his videos — a boring snippet from the council meeting, an even more boring bit from a Loire Chamber of Commerce ribbon-cutting ceremony — properly edited and posted. But he finally got everything done while eating his dinner, a bag of chips and some beef jerky from the vending machine.
Exhausted and looking forward to a drink and a smoke and some sleep, he shut down his computer. He was getting too old to work these kinds of hours, running on junk food, spite toward the system and a fast-fading belief in journalism as his calling.
But driving home, he had to pull over to let two fire engines pass. Part of him toyed with the idea of pretending he hadn’t seen them and just driving home — he had already put in a long day, much of which would be unpaid. Chances were good the fire would be much ado about nothing anyway.
But he was old school, so he’d turned around and followed the fire trucks to the scene of the fire. Just in case. With any luck, it would be nothing and he could go to bed. Instead, he saw the flames from a block away.
Instantly, excitement replaced his exhaustion and disillusionment. He started shooting while the fire crew was still setting up the scene.
“Jonesy.” The fire chief nodded at him as he walked by.
“Hey, Chief. Fancy meeting you here.” They’d just seen each other at the council meeting a few hours ago. Jonesy would talk to him more later.
Jonesy knew how to stay out of the crew’s way while getting his pictures, and they all recognized and ignored him. They did their job and he did his. They hurried to extinguish the flames while Jonesy hurried to preserve them, if only digitally.
The newspaper owned an old digital camera Jonesy carried everywhere but his own cheap phone actually took better pictures. The only reason Jonesy used the paper’s obsolete camera at all was to conserve his personal data plan, which he routinely exceeded and for which the paper refused to reimburse him.
As soon as he knew he had his bread and butter fire shots — flames shooting through the roof, firefighter silhouettes seen against the brightness of the flames, a closeup of a firefighter aiming a spray of water, a shot of the department’s most expensive aerial truck streaming water from above — he stopped shooting long enough to post a few pictures to the paper’s social media.
Next, he texted one to his editor, just to give him a heads up, although the bastard was probably sound asleep at this hour. Jonesy hoped the text woke him up.
The paper had finished printing hours ago, so it was far too late to make the morning edition. When Jonesy was younger, that would have meant he could get what he needed and go to bed, with plenty of time to craft a story in the morning.
Not now. The paper’s website was a hungry beast that demanded to be fed 24/7. He got his pictures and then shot several videos. Fire videos always got lots of clicks, and that was all upper management cared about anymore.
If clicks actually brought in any revenue, it’s not like any of it trickled down to the reporters. Although, now that he thought about it, the reporters did get a $25 bonus for Christmas last year. His bonus came to something like $19 and change after taxes.
Finally, images secured, he used his phone to look up the county property tax records to learn the property’s assessed valuation and owner. Charles Darby. Jonesy vaguely knew him as a local slumlord. Only then did he ask the fire chief a few questions.
“Have a cause yet?”
“Too early to tell. We’ll see what the fire marshal finds in the morning,” the chief said. “It’s a total loss, but I’m pretty sure you can see that.” He swept his arm dismissively at the ruined bowling alley.
“Maybe you can add this into the story about the need for a budget increase. This makes my point, right? Check it out. It’s like the city manager doesn’t value the guys who are out here looking after the city while he’s sleeping. You can’t expect people to bust their asses all night for nothing, right?”
Jonesy didn’t bother telling the chief that was exactly what he himself was doing.
At the city council meeting both men had attended a few hours ago, the chief had requested more funding for equipment and salaries, money the city manager maintained could not be found. The firefighters received a cost of living increase every year, but the chief thought they deserved more.
Jonesy agreed with him. He could see fighting a big fire like this was a strain on the department and he had plenty of sympathy for anybody who regularly lost sleep doing his job. There was always money in the city budget for the city manager’s annual raise even when there wasn’t much there for anything else, he’d noticed.
Similarly, the CEO of the company he worked for pulled down millions even as many of the newsroom employees depended on things like their parents, a better-paid spouse, food stamps, or, in one case Jonesy knew of, a dominatrix side hustle to make it. That was the way of it everywhere, wasn’t it? But he kept his opinions out of his stories. Anyway, that story was done and now he needed quotes for this one.
“How does the size of this fire compare to others this year?” He knew this was the biggest fire in Loire for at least a couple of years, but he wanted to hear the chief say it.
“Pretty big,” the chief said. Jonesy sometimes wondered if he went out of his way to be as unquotable as possible.
The department had called in everything it had for this one; it obviously was the biggest fire they’d had all year, by far, so would it have killed the chief to just say that? Jonesy had the uncomfortable feeling that the chief had already read his city council story online and was irritated that Jonesy hadn’t championed his effort to increase the fire department’s budget.
Jonesy asked more questions, waiting for the chief to say something memorable he might be able to jazz things up with. The chief was done talking tonight though, so Jonesy scanned the scene, looking for someone else to interview. But there were few gawkers this time of night, and Darby wasn’t present, so he gave it up. That could wait for the next day’s follow-up.
He was writing the story in his head as he drove back to the office, let himself in and booted his computer back up. It only took him a few minutes to write the story. It was brief; he’d flesh it out in the morning, when he might have more information about the damage estimate and cause. Or maybe he’d track down some sad bowlers who’d talk about all the good times they’d had there.
Fire strikes Loire Lanes was the hed. Jonesy liked puns and he’d thought of this one as soon as he’d pulled up to the scene. “By Gilbert Jones” was the byline. He used his actual name for his byline and for signing legal documents, but never for anything else.
“A major Loire landmark was not spared by a fire that broke out around 1 a.m. Tuesday morning” was his lede. He prided himself in using the old newspaper lingo, although the younger reporters tended to say “headline” and “lead.” You could always tell who was and who wasn’t in any club by whether they knew their slang.
Jonesy had taken a year of conversational French in college, so during his interview he’d pronounced “Loire” properly, as little more than a soft breath of vowels. The French love to lard their words with unused letters they never bother to pronounce.
But the editor interviewing him had corrected him immediately. “We pronounce it ‘Lori’ here, like the name,” he’d said.
Jonesy never got over feeling conflicted about that, and when he met an outsider, he’d say he worked in Loire, pronouncing it correctly, and then explaining the pronunciation the locals used.
After posting his story, three videos and about thirty photos to the paper’s website, he shut down his computer again. Now he had way more videos and photo galleries than he was required to post each week, but if he hadn’t been here posting the throw-away stuff, he never would have known about the fire in time to get the good shots.
He hated how important the online quotas were now — not to his editor, Carl, or to the readers, but to Dani, the chipper little twenty-something regional editor installed by the hedge fund that had bought the paper several years back.
It didn’t matter if you were working on a stellar piece of investigative journalism that the wire services and TV stations would all pick up. It wouldn’t have mattered if he’d just won a goddamned Pulitzer Prize — God forbid you not post the required shitty videos every week.
He’d seen the writing on the wall about newspapers a long time ago and had started applying first at business magazines and later for business organizations that needed copy churned out for their websites. But he learned fairly quickly that having years of experience as a reporter at small newspapers did not impress anybody except other newspaper reporters.
So he pressed on, doing what he knew how to do. Sometimes he thought about jumping ship and just tending bar or something. He knew some former journalists had gone on to make good money doing communications in the corporate world, but he had no idea how they’d done it. He had applied for all those jobs and had never gotten a nibble.
He knew far more ex-journalists who were delivering pizzas or working at nursing homes. Sooner or later, he knew, he’d be forced into doing the same. But for now, by working sometimes as many as sixty hours per week and posting tons of pointless content to social media, he was able to hang onto his job.
He was paid for exactly forty hours per week. The company was very strict about not allowing any overtime, but was equally strict about requiring at least six stories per week, four social media posts per day, three videos per week and three photo galleries per week. There was no way to get it all done in forty hours, and it was seldom that anybody in the newsroom worked less than fifty.
Complaints to Dani did not end well. “Use your time more wisely,” she’d chirped. “Think about whether journalism is the right career for you.”
How the hell had she gotten that job? She had no meaningful experience. She’d never worked as a reporter. Her degree was in human resources. How did a dozen seasoned editors end up answering to somebody like her?
“You’re thinking like a dinosaur, Gilbert,” Dani had said the last time Jonesy had offered some pushback. “You want to think like a digital native. Videos bring in the clicks. Have you been tracking your analytics? Compare the numbers for any one of Bob’s football videos with that lame video of the city comptroller you posted last week. You need to do better.”
“That video did a pretty damned good job of explaining why property taxes are going up this year. Did you watch it? The city hasn’t properly funded its pension obligations for at least thirty years, and now that they have to catch up, ninety-five percent of all property taxes goes straight to police and fire pensions. There’s literally nothing left to run the city, unless they increase taxes.”
“I watched the first fifteen seconds. It was boring, Gilbert. Look at the analytics. Your videos are too long. Your last one got like thirty views. Bob’s football videos are short and snappy and get thousands of views. You need to pick more interesting topics and you need to incorporate more B-roll. And for God’s sake, add some punchy background music.”
Jonesy had stopped arguing then, because it was pointless. His city council videos were never going to get the same number of views as Bob’s sports videos, and he knew that even Dani understood that. She would eventually eliminate the city reporter position altogether. That used to be the meatiest beat in the newsroom. Now it was a target for the bean counters.
He took off his smeared glasses to rub his eyes, which were red and watering from both the smoke and his nineteen-hour day. He’d be paid for eight. The chief cared about his crew’s working conditions and so did Jonesy’s editor, but Dani and the hedge funders did not.
Then he raked his fingers through his graying brown hair, touching the spot on top where it felt noticeably thinner than it used to. It was nearly four in the morning now, and he’d have to be back at eight. Time to get some rest.
He kept the windows of his car up and blasted the air conditioning and his music until he rolled into the trailer park. Then he turned off the radio so he wouldn’t disturb anybody, although his neighbor Darren, the guy in the first trailer on his street, was still up and playing old heavy metal that Jonesy could hear just fine through his car windows. Jonesy got along with everybody, and he and Darren shared a taste for vintage metal, but Jonesy had quickly learned Darren could drink him under the table. Darren didn’t have to get up early to work, but Jonesy did, so most of their interactions now were limited to a passing wave.
Jonesy felt too wired to go right to bed when he got home. Instead, he sat on his front steps smoking a cigarette and drinking the last of his off-brand whiskey mixed with the last of a two-liter bottle of store-brand cola.
His refrigerator’s ice maker had been broken when he moved in a year ago and he had forgotten to make any ice, so when he added the room-temperature booze to the flat cola, the whole drink was warm.
Every sip tasted of disappointment. The unfulfilling drink was a perfect metaphor for his journalism career. This wasn’t the satisfying culmination to his day he’d been looking forward to.
But the night’s last cigarette was good, replacing the particular reek of a burning building’s smoke with the more familiar tobacco stink. He would have to wash his clothes before he could wear them again, which was too bad because his work wardrobe was small and he hated spending time in the trailer park’s damp, mildewy laundry room.
The cigarette was gone before the drink was, though he’d tried to get them to come out even. Darren’s lights and music at last went off, just as the lights came on in his next-door neighbor’s kitchen. Jonesy had considered himself the hardest-working guy in the trailer park, but Jimmy Jackson gave him a run for his money. Here it was — he glanced at his phone — four-thirty in the morning, and Jimmy was already heading to his factory job.
Jonesy always meant to get to know his neighbors better, especially Jimmy, who could work like a sonofabitch. But as with Darren, his interactions with Jimmy seemed to be limited to friendly waves. At least one of them always seemed to be on his way to work.
“Good morning,” Jimmy said, waving as he walked to his car.
“Good night,” Jonesy called back. And then he went back inside and put his dirty glass in the sink. He headed down the hallway to his bedroom but then turned back. If he didn’t make the damned ice now, he wouldn’t have any tomorrow.
He filled both plastic ice cube trays with water and carefully returned them to the freezer. Then he stripped off his smoky clothes and showered before going to bed, because if he didn’t, his sheets would smell like that until he got around to washing them. Anyway, it would mean he could skip showering in the morning. He was going to feel like death when his alarm went off at seven-thirty.
He briefly toyed with the temptation of emailing his editor to explain he would come in a couple hours late because he’d been at the fire, but he knew that would never fly.
Or, he could call in sick. He had plenty of sick days; he’d never used a single one. When he’d had the flu, he’d come in. When he’d had a bad toothache, he’d come in. When everybody in the whole newsroom had had the same crud last winter, they’d all come in.
Coming in sick was part of the newsroom culture, and he didn’t have the stomach to be the one to deviate from it. If he didn’t come in, everybody else would suffer for it, and nobody wanted to be that guy.
So he’d go to work on time, but he’d try to slip out after eight hours if possible and then go to bed just as soon as he got home.
His last thought before he went to sleep was how much he was looking forward to the following night’s sleep.
Thanks for reading! The Trailer Park Rules is available in paperback or Kindle edition.
Hedge Funds are capitalism on steroids!
JONESY!