Tag: The Charlotte News

Motivating With Money

A year or so after I graduated  from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and went to work for The Charlotte News Dad asked me to go to his warehouse in North Charlotte one Saturday afternoon and assemble some corrugated box partitions, see how many I could make in an hour.

He and Brother Dave had decided to get into the partition assembling business and he wanted to know how much they were going to have pay for labor.

So I put some together. The table I worked on –a sheet of plywood on top of a drum– was wobbly and the corrugated partition board I was assembling was crooked, but I was able to assemble 23, 24 partitions an hour.

I told Dad that, with practice, on a better table, with straight board, I could probably make 30 a hour.

At that time the minimum wage was $1.40 so I told him that he and Dave were going to have pay a nickel a piece. People would not do that kind of work for minimum wage, they were going to have to give them a chance to make a little more.

So that’s what they paid, five cents per partition.

A few weeks later Dad told me that they had a man making 40 partitions an hour. I was surprised. A little later he said the guy was making 60 an hour. I was a really surprised. Then he said the guy was making 80 an hour. I was amazed.

That’s when I asked for a job, working three nights a week and all day Saturday, assembling partitions. I got to where I could do 120 an hour in short spurts and average 100 an hour all day long.  The  News had paid me $120 a week to start — $3 an hour.   I was making $5 a hour working nights and Saturdays assembling partitions, fabulous pay for unskilled labor, the equivalent of $38.18 an hour in 2018 dollars.

Postscript: There’s a lesson here somewhere, about how productivity goes up when productivity and pay are linked.

Coming Monday:  The Intruder

NOTE: The Final Edition was one year old last week.  I’ve posted two stories a week and I thought you might be interested in seeing a list of the 10 best read posts.  Three of the top four are newspaper stories. Two are river stories and two are hiker stories.

Obviously, the earlier a story was posted the better chance it had to made the Top Ten but, anyway, here they are:

  1. “PIZ ZA! PIZ ZA! PIZ ZA!” Padding the Roanoke – 6/23/17
  2. Those Mean Old Newspapermen – 3/20/17
  3. This Was Not A Real Job – 9/4/17
  4. “Oh, Copyboy?” – 1/30/17
  5. Lost on Blood Mountain, Part 1 – 2/16/17
  6. Mind Game [Video] – 11/25/16
  7. Bear Bryant Called – 3/13/17
  8. “F” – 5/8/17
  9. Are You Boys Armed- 5/5/17
  10. He Might Be A Redneck – 12/26/16  

“Something Like?”

Richard M. Nixon came to Charlotte campaigning for president in 1968, when I was a reporter at The Charlotte News.   When Nixon made a stop at the local television station, WBTV, I was there.  I was assigned by my newspaper to the death watch, to be nearby in case someone shot him. Or shot at him.

This photo was made on that same trip with the national reporters did have an opportunity to question Nixon.
The Big Boys gather around Nixon at an impromptu press conference on that same trip.

Thank goodness that didn’t happen, but that assignment gave me my first closeup look at national reporters who follow presidential candidates around the country, some of the Big Boys of my old craft.  Back then almost all of them were males.

The speech Nixon gave was embargoed, which meant it couldn’t be reported until it aired.  So some of the national reporters left to get something to eat and left a friend to cover for them.

I was there when the Big Boys began returning, meeting their colleagues in the lobby of the station, asking what Nixon had said.

I heard this exchange:

Big Boy #1: “What’d he say?”

Big Boy #2: “He said, a, a, wait a minute,” and he turn the page of his notebook. “He said, ah, can’t read it.” He turned another page. “He said something like…”

It was pivotal moment in my career:   Something like?  Something like!  “Something like” isn’t good enough.  Word for word, what did the man say?

From that day on, for almost 40 years, I taped recorded almost every face-to-face interview I conducted. 

Postscript: I was only accused once of a misquote and that involved a telephone interview — I never recorded phone conversations.  I don’t criticize reporters who do tape phone calls, didn’t then and don’t now. They have their way of doing business, I had mine.  Here’s the problem. If you record phone conversations pretty soon you get to be known for that.  That kind of reputation would have made some sources reluctant to talk with me on the phone for fear I might be taping them.  I didn’t want that.

Coming Friday: Handling Bad News