Categories: OLD Media Moves

A Reuters editor presents another perspective to the PIP brouhaha

Talking Biz News received an e-mail Thursday night from a Reuters editor that provided a different perspective to the newsroom issue of the performance incentive plans.

We have known this editor for quite some time, and asked this editor if we could post the comments in the spirit of providing an alternative point of view.

Here they are:

As a manager who is involved in this process, I just wanted to say there are two sides to this story… Starting with the fact that I can’t think of anyone who has been unfairly targeted (perhaps, but not any I know of) and the fact that upper management made it very clear to managers who had employees on a PIP that the goal was improvement — and they have held us accountable for that. Many managers have spent many hours each week working with these reporters with a genuine goal of helping them improve, myself included. I know of at least two or three managers who have also spent hours outside the office writing up story ideas or creating source lists for reporters on PIPs.
Trust me, this isn’t fun for us, but it’s necessary. Managers aren’t robots who don’t care about the people who work for them or who don’t empathize with the fact that these reporters have families and mortgages. (And we certainly don’t lack integrity or honesty.) Most of us have taken very seriously the effort to help the reporters on PIPs improve because it’s the right thing to do and because we really need these reporters to get better at what they do. But we also have a job to do delivering the news/insight/analysis that is expected, we have competitors to stay ahead of and we’re trying to raise the bar on quality. Many, many reporters have embraced that — and not just new ones — and some haven’t or can’t or won’t. We, as managers can try to help reporters improve their performance, but we can’t do their jobs for them or make sources for them or come up with every idea for them.
We, as managers, have a lot to lose in this process. It’s not a given that if a reporter who leaves or is dismissed that we will be able to replace that person. And the union grievance process at Reuters is, by most accounts, grueling for managers. What’s more, the union leadership has made it pretty hostile for managers day-to-day already. From placards they’ve handed out to reporters to tape to their desks to the secret taping of all conversations with managers by employees on PIPs (managers who figured it out mostly asked reporters to be upfront about it, no need to hide) and twisting facts publicly. A story got held? Well, perhaps it’s because an editor asked for it a month ago and it took so long to get it ready that now it isn’t news anymore.
But again, above all, I’ve not seen a punitive attitude here or any objectives assigned to reporters on PIPs that aren’t already expected from – and being delivered by – other reporters. In some instances, I have heard that PIPs have been extended because reporters were making progress and the expectation is that some of those reporters will sustain that improvement enough to be off the PIP entirely.
Reuters will probably will remain silent publicly on this and the union will continue to spin its side of the story. I wish the union would put as much energy behind helping these reporters improve as they do the efforts to discredit management. Then we’d all be more likely to get an outcome that was good for everyone and this would be a non-issue.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.

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View Comments

sallyH says:
June 1, 2012 at 11:21 am
Here's why this editor's words don't really ring true: If the reporters' work has been substandard for so long, why are they still around? Clearly, their work has been good enough for Reuters in the past. If the mission has been changed, then new training or workshops on new goals ought to be offered. If the reporter's output doesnt change after that, then perhaps there's a case to be made. But the current effort smacks of using an arcane office process to weed out reliable editorial personnel who probably draw higher salaries. They ought to be treated with more respect