Should we hold a canned food drive for local pro-jo's?

From Poynter Online, with a hat tip to 30threads.com for pointing this one out--

"Please be polite," wrote Susan Spring, the News & Observer's director of newsroom operations. "If you are working elections, you may have up to TWO slices" of pizza. A few hours later, executive editor John Drescher vetoed the limit, but added that "if Susan Spring chases you with a knife in her hand, you are on your own."

Folks, we all know the cutbacks in newsrooms have been severe. The Herald-Sun's reporters are now forced to resort to journalism's version of a competitive eating contest, churning out as many stories as they can in a week without hitting the "dreaded OT" (i.e., overtime pay, strictly verboten in the Paxton world.)

Meanwhile, rumors down in Chapel Hill are that the N&O's Durham newsroom-in-exile has made no progress in its negotiations with UNC's planetarium; the McClatchy scribes had hoped to turn the university's powerful telescopes on the Bull City to let the paper report on Durham from afar, but they've been rejected on grounds that the 7,000-watt Plensa light would burn up the 'scope's lenses.

But the note above concerns me most deeply. We hear about the starving children in the poor places in our world, yet what are we doing every day for the metro newshounds, the sportswriters, the beat-up beat reporters? Yes, the N&O's Sue Stock can clip coupons; but who will help those who toil away long nights in the newsrooms, under a strict and heartless two-slice limit?

There's clearly only one solution. A canned food drive.

Yes, folks, I'm going to propose that we need a canned food drive to feed our journalists. The simplest way would be just to drop off cans of food in your local Herald-Sun or N&O dispenser the next time you drop a quarter or six to buy some ads with a newspaper around them.

Or we could gather them in one place, and bring them together to the Triangle's newsrooms, and distribute them to the hungry, the needy, the carpal-tunneled.

Who's with me?

Comments

[GinnySkal]

You are too funny. The part about keeping an eye on Durham via telescope made me laugh at my desk. But really, this pizza thing is pretty sad, if it's true. Either way, a food drive for journalists isn't a bad idea. Certainly, reporting doesn't pay well, so a few boxes of mac and cheese would probably be appreciated.

[Arthur ________]

Truly a Modest Proposal.

[KeepDurhamDifferent!]

Oh please. Real journalists subsist on gin and cigarettes -- they don't eat except at the bar.