Judith Davidoff working on vacation
Cabin, check. Fireplace, check. Pup, check. Work computer, check.
Many of us who work for small news outfits — and shrinking ones too — have stories about taking time off, but not really getting away from work.
“We travel, but we are never really on vacation,” says Shereen Siewert, founder and publisher of Wausau Pilot & Review, which has four full-time employees and one part-timer. Last month I wrote about the financial and emotional toll on Siewert and her team from a defamation lawsuit against the online news site.
“I have worked on trains, planes, in cars, in airports, on the subway in New York City, in parking lots of funeral parlors, from my hospital bed after knee replacement surgery,” says Siewert, and “posted stories from my phone while on a kayak on the Wisconsin River. (Happy for waterproof phone bags!) As my sister was dying, I stayed at her home and worked from her dining room. Readers never knew the difference.”
Like Siewert, I’ve written and edited stories in airports, airplanes, trains, hotel rooms and cars. Most recently I edited stories from a rented cabin up north. Isthmus associate editor Linda Falkenstein recalls a trip to Iowa that involved “driving around looking for reception and pulling off on the side of a road in a cornfield.”
Taking time away from Isthmus was always a challenge — even when the editorial department was three to five times the size it is today. There was always pressure to work ahead. But now that we are so small — 6.5 full-time sales, editorial and design staff — the real pain point is that there’s little to no backup for certain tasks, like keeping up with our extensive calendar.
I thought I’d crowdsource the question of how other Wisconsin journalists take breaks — or not. Several said controls were in place at their shop to make sure they unplugged. Some suggested they were their own worst enemy, unable to stop chasing a story or get offline. Others said it just wasn’t worth ignoring emails because the pile-up would be too much upon return.
Joel Patenaude, producer for The Morning Show on Wisconsin Public Radio’s The Ideas Network: “My executive producer at WPR is very careful to make sure that I’m off the clock outside of working hours. It may mean other members of my team pitch in to get a talk show segment ready for air, but I would do the same for any colleague who can’t do everything necessary before taking vacation or personal time. In this regard, WPR is the most sane news organization for which I’ve worked in my 25+ year career.”
Logan Rude, assignment editor and a digital producer for WISC-TV News 3 Now and Channel3000.com: “I’ve found myself checking email during my off-time more and more frequently over the past year… Luckily if I’m posting/emailing, some of my colleagues call me out for it, telling me to sign off and enjoy my time away.”
Natalie Eilbert, reporter with USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin: “No, I never feel like I can truly be on vacation. I feel very spread thin because my newsroom is spread thin. Despite being a mental health journalist, I feel like I must make myself available for other breaking news stories. And because my beat is specifically mental health, I feel like I can never truly turn off my brain from thinking about stories that are truly horrific and traumatizing.” The constant worry of layoffs, she adds, is also “exhausting.”
“If I need to travel, I usually just work through my travel time — whether on a plane, train or in the passenger seat of a car.”
Barry Adams, reporter and columnist, Wisconsin State Journal: “I think my bosses would like us to completely disconnect but I find it difficult. You’re always ‘on’ as a journalist and the ideas or quest for ideas never go away regardless. I’ve actually reported on and taken photos for several stories with Wisconsin angles while on vacation because I’ve been inspired or an idea has presented itself. I’ve waited to write the story until I get back.”
Joy Powers, host and producer for Lake Effect on WUWM-FM (89.7): “I definitely keep an eye on the news when I’m away, even though that’s a bit discouraged in my office. But if you don’t, it just makes more work on the back end.”
TJ Dysart, journalism major at Marquette University: As part of the Marquette Wire program, Dysart gets real-life experience working in radio, television and on a newspaper and magazine. Even as a student journalist, he sees how the demands of reporting and writing are hard to keep compartmentalized. “I often find myself doing more journalism work in my classes than my classwork.” He’s not discouraged by this, but says he observed some burnout among the professionals at a local television station where he interned last summer, and recalls one staffer’s attempt at taking time off: “I remember this guy being on vacation, but could see his emails coming through.”
Burnout is defined by the World Health Organization as “chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.” It results in feelings of exhaustion, negative feelings about one’s job, and reduced professional efficacy. It’s a syndrome experienced by lots of working folks today, and very much by journalists.
Researchers at the Center for Innovation and Sustainability in Local Media at the University of North Carolina’s journalism school recently surveyed 500 local journalists to assess the level of burnout across the industry, publishing the results in late April. The results are sobering: 70% reported experiencing work-related burnout.
The researchers write in an introduction that, after a “tumultuous decade in the local news industry” of layoffs, consolidations and the COVID-19 pandemic, the results “highlight a looming human resources crisis for news organizations that have leaned on employees to perform throughout the industry’s well documented revenue and audience declines.”
The survey found that journalists under 45 experienced more burnout than journalists over 45. Women and non-binary people experienced more burnout than men. Somewhat surprisingly, journalists were not as impacted by being trolled and harassed online as might have been expected: Less than half as many journalists experienced source-related burnout (31%) as experienced personal or work-related burnout.
And in a statistic that has personal significance for journalists and implications for all news consumers and citizens, 72% of respondents said they had thought about leaving their current job; 39% said higher pay would make them stay, while 17% said set working hours or more time off would do the trick.
People who write on the topic say it’s important to define burnout as a systemic, not personal issue. That is, the workplace, not the employee, is the culprit.
So while it would certainly help if journalists could unplug completely from work while taking time off, that respite won’t necessarily make up for realities on the job — too much work and too few people to do it — when they return to their desk.
Christina Maslach, a psychology professor emerita at University of California-Berkeley, has been studying burnout for more than 40 years. “You can do all the self-care in the world,” says Maslach in an interview about her latest book, The Burnout Challenge, “but at some level, if the stressors are the same, you’re still going to have the problem.”
More often than I like, I hear people deriding local media for what is not being covered or how stories miss the mark or lack depth. I think there are many individuals who still have no idea about the current state of the industry, or the reality of working conditions for those of us still in the trenches.
