March 13, 2024 at 11:56 am

Newspaper Scolded A News Writer For Volunteering To Cover A Sports Story , So When They Needed Them To Switch Departments To Help The Business They Said No

by Matthew Gilligan

When did winning become a bad thing?

I wasn’t aware of that, but according to this story from Reddit’s “Malicious Compliance” page, it doesn’t always pay to come out on top.

So what to do…?

Check out how this person dealt with it.

Wrote me up for winning an award, I’m done helping.

“This story started about 15 years ago.

I transitioned out of sports writing into news writing, at a small paper though, so occasionally I’d volunteer to cover a sporting event or two to help out and keep those skills up.

I covered two events that first year, so not a lot. But one of them was a really good story.

So I submitted it to an awards contest the next year, and won.

Huh?

Two days later I got written up because I wasn’t “assigned to the sports department and therefore made our sports writers look bad by beating them for this honor.”

Flash forward about three months.

Between layoffs and a person quitting, the entire sports department is gone. And corporate hadn’t authorized any hirings.

They asked me to cover a few events a week until they replace the sports staff.

Nope, sorry!

I refused, pointing out that I’m not assigned to the sports department.

They ask me to transfer to that short term.

I said I’d consider it, but would not cover anything off of my news beat then, as I wouldn’t be assigned to news.

Rules are rules!

They ended up leaving me in the news department.

I didn’t work there much longer before jumping to the other paper from my other story.

Moral here is while I love newspapers, corporate owners of newspapers are ridiculous.”

Now check out what people had to say about this story.

This individual asked a good question…