Thirteen years ago today — December 18, 2000 — I received this email from reader Mike Woods:
Can we do a little poll on holiday bonuses? Do any newspapers slip employees, especially the rank and file ink stained cads, a little something extra during the holiday season? I work at a big New York paper, and don’t even get so much as a lump of coal.
I received dozens of responses from readers. Here are some of their holiday bonus tales, originally posted on my site (at that other place I worked) in 2000:
From CRAIG LANCASTER: In 1992, I worked for the Texarkana Gazette. Our Christmas bonus was $15, minus taxes. Several months before Christmas, when the Lakers’ Magic Johnson announced the first of his many comebacks, I ran a centerpiece about his impending return. In my mailbox the day was a note from the newspaper’s vice president: “Magic Johnson is nothing but an immoral HIV carrier, and our readers don’t care about him.” As you can imagine, I took my $12.63 or whatever the hell it was and bought beer, which I drank to ease the pain.
From RICHARD A. MARINI: Back in the late ’80s I worked at US Weekly. Come Christmas that year, I received a $500 bonus check handed out by editor Carole Wallace, who’d taken over the position only a couple of months earlier. The first workday after New Year’s I was asked to vacate the premises (a.k.a. fired). I’ve never been able to figure out that particular disconnect, but the check cleared and, to this day, it’s the first and only cash Christmas bonus I’ve ever received.
From DAVID K. WRIGHT: I’m a former city editor for the Elkhart (Ind.) Truth, a daily of about 30,000 circulation in northern Indiana. Modest Christmas bonuses were passed out by owner John Dille, who also saw to it that all employees and spouses were given a holiday party. At the party, held early in December one year, a drunken employee lurched up to Dille and demanded to know when the bonuses were to be distributed. That marked the end of the bonus scheme at the Truth, though the annual Christmas party continued.
From LARKIN WARREN: Back when Chris Whittle and Phillip Moffitt owned Esquire (pre-Hearst), there were a few years when the mag was “closed” between mid-day Christmas Eve and the day after New Year’s; it was paid time, and didn’t count against vacation allotments the rest of the year. Of course, editing and production schedules got completely squooshed on either side of the break — and it was probably informed more by pragmatism than generosity (the theory being that nobody was going to get much done anyway), but who cares about the motivation — time plus money = a very nice gift./CONTINUES
REQUESTS ANONYMITY: Uncle Scripps didn’t pay a bonus to the workers at his Memphis plantation, but the Guild leadership gave its members certificates good for a free turkey at a local grocery. I always thought that was sort of quaint, given that the turkeys came from the dues we paid. It was about the only thing of value we could count on back then.
REQUESTS ANONYMITY: What is it about magazine owners that they think that a big all-you-can-drink party is a sufficient way to say “Happy Holidays,” especially when, according to my own anecdotal evidence, college-educated, office-working professionals in most other kinds of companies actually get real, negotiable, take-it-to-the-bank bonus checks? When I was at US News & World Report in 1998 and 1999, the magazine would take out a bar somewhere and let everyone eat and drink to their hearts content for a few hours — though as I recall in 1999, the food was so lousy (roast turkey undercooked, baked ham overcooked) that most people barely ate and as such there was much drinking, dancing, and predictable hilarity ensuing.
From EVAN McGLINN, Executive Editor, Polo.com: When I worked at IDG covering the computer business in Boston, owner Pat McGovern would spend the entire day walking around the offices, shaking people’s hands, and forking over $100 bills. Malcolm Forbes used to do the same thing when I worked for him in the late 80s. They both had great style – and it sure was better than a frozen turkey.
From DAFYDD JONES: I worked for the New York Observer the year Arthur Carter gave us all turkeys. ( I think it was 1992.) Supporting a family in New York on $35,000 a year was a struggle and I do remember gratefully carrying my huge turkey back on the subway to Brooklyn to feed my wife and two young children. I’ve always appreciated Arthur Carter’s generosity.
REQUESTS ANONYMITY: When I worked at the New York Observer, owner Arthur Carter once spread the holiday cheer by arranging for a truckload of frozen turkeys to be delivered directly to the paper’s headquarters in an Upper East Side townhouse. Everyone on the staff received about 15 pounds of frozen poultry, but not everyone was delighted by the gift. There was something Dickensian about it: the rich and erratic owner so out of touch with reality that he imagined his workers toiling away, worried that this year they might not be able to put a nice fat golden treasure on the table for the missus and all the lil’ urchins at home.
The staff consisted primarily of young, single journos living in cramped New York apartments where the stove probably wasn’t big enough to cook a turkey and there wouldn’t be room to serve it–even if they were inclined to cook up the bird for themselves and a few friends, in which case they could have ponied up the 18 bucks to buy a turkey in the first place. In the end, somebody phoned a charity group that gives food to poor AIDS victims and asked them to come around for a pick-up. Word got around that you could unload your turkey this way, rather than dragging it home on the subway, and a room downstairs quickly filled with rapidly defrosting meat awaiting rescue. By the afternoon, the turkeys still hadn’t been picked up and the entire building took on the odor of a badly run butcher shop.
REQUESTS ANONYMITY: The publisher of the New York Observer, Arthur Carter, annually sends a Christmas card to every employee’s home — and inside is a check for $250. Pretty swell compared to other examples listed here considering that he has written off many millions and still isn’t making money on the paper.
From TED GIDEONSE: I’ve had a part-time job at Time Inc. custom publishing for a little over a month and last week received as holiday gifts both a Sony Sports Discman and a Lexon clock radio. And this after four parties! In comparison, at Newsweek, where I worked for three years, I got not one Christmas gift — unless you count a ticket to the Big Apple Circus.
REQUESTS ANONYMITY: At a local weekly business journal in Florida, we were pleasantly surprised with $60 gift certificates to a local restaurant — quite a gift for a company that never was in the black. The gift turned quickly to a gag when the restaurant changed ownership the next month, rendering the gifts worthless. Later, when the business journal came under the Scroogish [Newhouse family-owned] chain American City Business Journals, the only holiday “bonus” was an annual hour-long holiday pep talk from the publisher. Thanks for nothing, please!
REQUESTS ANONYMITY: For years at Inc. magazine, editor in chief George Gendron bought everyone on the editorial and art staff a bottle of wine which he’d distribute in the company library during the annual Chinese food Christmas luncheon. Big pans of takeout Chinese food from a local restaurant, nice comments on everyone from George, and a wrapped bottle of your choice of red or white wine. Pretty sure the bill for the fete was ultimate footed by owner Bernie Goldhirsh who recently sold the magazine and generously gave bonuses to all employees who stayed on based on their years of service to the magazine. This was in addition to the annual Christmas party for the entire magazine which was always at a different locale: the transportation museum, the Kennedy library, the computer museum, and this year at a hotel at Logan airport.
From STEPHANIE SAUL, formerly of The (Jackson, Ms.) Clarion-Ledger: The many journalists who wandered through The (Jackson, Ms.) Clarion-Ledger two decades ago will remember the innovative Christmas gifts handed out by the Hederman family, who owned the newspaper before its purchase by Gannett. Each year, the Hedermans circulated a Green Stamp-type book from which employees could chose a gift. The gifts ranged from inexpensive watches to blenders, toasters, luggage and hardware. Just before Christmas, the WRAPPED gifts were assembled in a conference room for collection by the workers. We all laughed about these gifts, which seemed miserly at the time. Yet 20 years and three newspapers later, those Hederman family gifts remain the most generous Christmas bonus I’ve ever received!
From ANGELIA HERRIN: Of course employees groused every year at Christmas when the Wichita Eagle-Beacon handed out the gift certificates for a ham or turkey. Not only did the company offer a certificate for a SMALL ham or turkey, but you had to trek to the Safeway to pick it up. But my ever-wise state editor Gerry Ratts, rose above the complaining with a memorable life lesson: “There’s one thing I’ve learned in this business,” he said. “Never look a gift ham in the butt.”
REQUESTS ANONYMITY: USA Today, one of the largest and most profitable newspapers in the world, does not give holiday bonuses to editorial staffers. We did, however, enjoy an all-you-can-eat-and-drink soiree last weekend, about the only freebie we’ll ever see from Mother Gannett.
From ELLEN GRAY: From 1979-80, I worked at the Hartford Courant, which in those days was legendary for its generous Christmas bonuses (which often worked out to about six weeks’ salary). It was a nice chunk of change, but since the pay at the time was relatively low, it wasn’t difficult to give it up 20 years ago to go to the unionized Philadelphia Daily News, where my weekly paycheck was immediately about 90 percent higher.
I still, however, recall fondly the turkeys the Willimantic (Conn.) Chronicle used to hand out to employees in the late ’70s, when I worked there as a stringer while attending UConn. It probably wasn’t much of a bonus for the managing editor, but for a college student living on the 60 cents an inch I was paid to cover school board meetings and the like, it looked pretty good. My apartment mates and I cooked and ate it, froze the leftovers (which found their way into all sorts of dishes for the next few months) and even made soup of the carcass.
Frankly, I’m for a system where the employees share in the profits all year round, rather than hoping for some “bonus” at the holidays, but if you’re not paying your workers a living wage, the least you can do is give them something to eat!
REQUESTS ANONYMITY: Working at the Gannett-owned Palm Springs Desert Sun during the 1990s, I just missed the year the publisher gave out logo windbreakers to the staff for Christmas, but I was there for the years they gave out the logo sweatshirt, the bright orange logo gym bag, the logo drink glasses and the logo beach towels. (Mind you, Palm Springs is in a desert two hours from the beach.) Some sports reporters collected towels from a bunch of staffers and were going to pile them up in front of the publisher’s door in protest, but someone reasoned the publisher might then ask employees to produce their towels as evidence they hadn’t participated. Windbreaker, sweatshirt, drinking glasses, gym bag, towel — I always thought they were getting us ready to be homeless.
REQUESTS ANONYMITY: At the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette in the mid-1980s, the holiday bonus was always a gift certificate for a turkey or ham from a local grocery chain. One year, in the envelope those certificates came in was a letter suggesting we donate our holiday “bonus” to the Christmas charity the paper sponsored every year. As one of my co-workers noted when he saw the note, he already earned so little he could qualify for help from some of the local charities. But it did take balls to give us a bonus and at the same time ask for it back.
REQUESTS ANONYMITY: At the St. Paul Pioneer Press, a Knight Ridder newspaper, it’s the vending machine company that serves up the most cherished holiday bonus: a donut — one with sprinkles if you get there real early — and a cup of coffee.
From STEVE FRIEDMAN: At the Columbia (Mo.) Daily Tribune in the early 80s, reporters (I was one) received gift certificates to a store called Price Chopper for $12.50. I am not making this up.
From AMY WORDEN: I’d like to add my 2 cents (actually more than I’d ever received in a holiday pay before I joined the ranks of cyber scribe) to the X-mas bonus discussion. I spent 14 years in the newsbiz — working for a major newspaper, a television network and two wire services — before receiving my first holiday bonus: A $50 gift certificate to Amazon.com from APBnews.com, my employer last Christmas. It was a small, but welcome gesture from a company that treated us well — up until it filed for bankruptcy in June and we all lost our jobs.
REQUESTS ANONYMITY: At the Washington Times, newsroom staffers get grocery store gift certificates for Xmas. The Moonie-owned publication, which has been losing fistfuls of money since it began in 1982, gives larger gift certificates to editors than reporters. (I got a $25 gift certificate.) The paper also throws an elegant night-time bash in its in-house ballroom for all employees. (A few miles away, the family-owned and more advertising-rich Washington Post suspended its big Xmas bash years ago and now just hosts a potluck lunchtime party.)
FROM “AN EX-PHOENICIAN”: When The Arizona Republic was owned by the Pulliams, they handed out Christmas checks for $150 (after taxes, about $75) to the newsroom churls. It used to be only $100, but they decided to combine it with the $50 “vacation” bonus (after taxes, good for one tank of gas and a road trip to Ajo). They also had a really, really sad during-work Christmas buffet, with employees providing many of the eats. If you had to work a “big” holiday, they usually provided a spread from a deli or Boston Market, plus you got paid double time and a half. Don’t know if this is still the case — once the evil Gannett empire took over, I joined the exodus. At my first paper — part of the ultracheap Howard chain — forget about bonuses — you barely got a paycheck! This was a place where if you wanted a pen, the publisher’s secretary doled one out to you. Another “bonus”: You had to bring treats on your birthday — for everybody in the building. The publisher’s secretary kept track of that, too. And if you didn’t pony up, it was dagger looks all day.
REQUESTS ANONYMITY: Years ago I worked for a small Gannett paper in New York. The holiday gift came at Thanksgiving rather than Christmas. Every employee was offered a turkey or ham. So Thanksgiving morning, a big truck pulled up behind the loading docks and dispensed sealed boxes of main course to all those planning dinner for later that day. I chucked my boxed turkey onto the back seat of my car and roared down the road 50 miles to some friends who had been cooking up all the side dishes in anticipation of my Gannett turkey. I arrived, carted the box into the house, pulled back the cardboard and revealed the bird… frozen solid. We convinced a local grocer to trade for a thawed Butterball.
REQUESTS ANONYMITY: In lieu of a Christmas bonus, the Philadelphia Inquirer throws a lame annual holiday luncheon buffet in its newsroom for editorial employees. This year it resembled a damp and somber wake more than a festive party because of the number of staffers taking the buyout. In previous years, a rogue editor of the Weekend section sent contributors a tiny chocolate typewriter for Xmas as a token of his appreciation. It was a remarkably generous and touching gesture compared to his bosses’ largesse. On the other hand, the spunky Philadelphia City Paper hosted a lavish and spirited sit-down Christmas dinner this year at a local jazz/blues club — complete with an open bar and entertainment for its entire staff and free-lancers.
From ROBERT NILES: I concur with the theory that smaller papers give better bonuses. Of course, I also recognize that’s damning with faint praise. (In my entire life, I’m still waiting for my first CASH bonus. For anything.) Here’s my bonus break-down…
35,000 circ daily – Coupon for free turkey or ham (Limit: $15). Sit-down dinner at a local restaurant with the publisher (In groups of 30 – spouses invited. We joked that this was how the publisher wrote off his meals for December.)
250,000 circ daily – No bonus. Holiday party for entire staff at local hotel. Prime rib, cash bar. No dessert. Live band, but it was lame.
400,000 circ daily – No bonus. Publisher throws party for managers at local restaurant. (Stand-up buffet with finger sandwiches, etc.) Live band, but once again, lame. Newsroom and web site each throw their own parties. An open bar – no food – for the newsroom, and sit-down restaurant dinner for the web site. IT department does workday pitch-in lunch, with the company buying the turkey. Gee, thanks.
In comparison, the best bonus I got was working at Disney World: Two free one-day tickets to any Disney park. (And you could go from park-to-park with them. Since Disney didn’t sell one-day park-hopper passes to the public, you could scalp these tix for a bundle. You got a pair at the Fourth of July, too.) Plus, the holiday party, where the company rented out, duh, Disney World for its employees for the evening. (I usually worked the party for the OT pay rather than go.) Alas, both the bonus and the employee-only party are gone now, I hear. Looks like managers don’t have to work in journalism to be heartless cheapskates.
REQUESTS ANONYMITY: Here at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the folks who hand out the bi-weekly paychecks used to give us Chocolate Santas for our Xmas bonus. We found out later that the payroll folks actually paid for the candy out of their own pocket. Now that’s cheap. This year, I’m told (I missed the performance), the same payroll people handed out candy canes. Now that’s a bonus.
From PAUL HUTCHINSON: In 12 years writing for Dean Singleton’s Denver Post, I never saw a dime of Christmas money, nor ever heard of bonuses for anyone but managers. The Post was large enough, though, to allow us to organize our own buffet lunch, with food purchased and prepared by the folks in the trenches. Often, the big shots would drop by and help themselves to a plate of goodies. You can guess who got stuck with the clean up.
REQUESTS ANONYMITY: The Cincinnati Enquirer always managed to give us something useless every year: a cheap umbrella, a flimsy tote bag, drinking glasses that broke while you washed them, all branded with the paper’s name and some years, the paper’s seal: a naked guy working an old hand press (ouch!). One particulary bitter year, when Gannett management declared the editorial employees’ union contract null and void and imposed working conditions, it was a box of that Hickory Farms-type cheese and sausage junk, which people mostly either handed back or gave to charity. (Their worst gift was a vanity “special edition” paper tribute to retiring publisher Bill Keating filled with praise and accolades from the Cincinnati business community, but that wasn’t a Christmas gift) I still use my faux-leather travel bag but took black magic marker to the white “Cincinnati Enquirer” lettering; why disgrace myself? It was pretty well-known that managers there got chunky bonuses at Christmastime and it’s still true, I’d imagine.
REQUESTS ANONYMITY: One year when I worked at CNN, pre-merger, they gave out blankets covered with logos from all the Turner networks at the time. They were constructed from the thinnest, paper-like material. A number of employees gave them to the homeless and for weeks afterwards you could spot them around the city.
REQUESTS ANONYMITY: At American Banker (owned by Thomson Corp.), only editors get bonuses. Everyone else gets handshakes. I don’t know exactly what the bonuses are, but last year one of the editors had the nerve to gloat to reporters in the newsroom that it was “four digits,” which all the reporters appreciated.
REQUESTS ANONYMITY: Hachette gave all employees gifts: My last year, a Coach watch. Before that, a Sony CD boom box thingie. There might have been a cordless phone at one point, too. Weider Publications (Shape, Men’s Fitness, Fit Pregnancy) gave edit employees cash bonuses based on salary and term of service. All edit types seemed to get one. Almost forgot: A certificate for a free turkey, too.
REQUESTS ANONYMITY: A newspaper at which I was formerly employed gave holiday bonuses, in a manner of speaking. The source of the bonuses: Excess revenue from the break room soda machine. The paper owned the machine and purchased soda for it at local grocery stores and Wal Mart, getting the best possible price, which was usually less than the fifty-cents per can employees were charged. At the end of the year, the “profit” was divided among the employees in the form of so-called bonuses, except for my last year there when the money was used to buy a new refrigerator for the break room.
REQUESTS ANONYMITY: The Palm Beach Post gives reporters and editors $120 before taxes. I’ve worked at another paper that gave a full week’s pay, but at that paper a full week’s pay was peanuts.
REQUESTS ANONYMITY: Before the Tribune purchase, the LA Times used to cash out unused sick days for reporters in mid-December. Not a formal holiday bonus, I’ll concede, but it was a free week’s pay if you were a healthy sort. As an LAT expat, I can’t say if the new owners are continuing the tradition.
REQUESTS ANONYMITY: The Austin American-Statesman continued its x-mas bonus tradition this year. I got $225 before taxes. But before anyone out there gets too jealous, the Statesman also decided to have its annual holiday party in-house this year, during the workday, in the newsroom. Nothing like getting some cookies and punch before heading back to your desk to pound out a daily. Word is that managers attended a holiday party (with open bar) at a local swank hotel the night before.
REQUESTS ANONYMITY: The Daily Camera in Boulder, Colo., makes money hand-over-fist, especially when compared to its sister Scripps Howard publication in Denver, the failing Rocky Mountain News. Yet management offers no Christmas bonus. Over the last several years, the city editor has graciously tried to make up for this obvious slight out of his own pocket. Each reporter gets three $1 gift certificates to Ben & Jerry’s — a nice touch but, in the end, pretty insulting. A year’s hard work must certainly be worth more than $3 worth of ice cream.
From ALISON ROGERS, The Daily Deal: Steve Brill sent wine — good wine — from Sherry-Lehman, and a holiday card of the kids.
REQUESTS ANONYMITY: All Macworld employees got $500 bonus checks for Christmas this year. Even better, Mac Publishing takes your annual income into account when writing the checks. So the checks are made out for $500 after taxes. It’s a great deal. Of course, Mac Pub has a fantastically generous benefits program to begin with. I think it’s pretty unusual.
REQUESTS ANONYMITY: At the Chicago Sun-Times, where most of the furniture harkens back to the ’50s and reporters still don’t have Internet access at their desks, holiday bonuses don’t fit into the scheme of things. But managers last year did get bonuses of several hundred dollars each.
From SCOTT HENSLEY: My former employer Crain Communications (publisher of Modern Healthcare, Advertising Age, Automotive News and a ton of other trade mags) gives a real holiday bonus: an extra paycheck. In 1999, my last year there, the company had such a bang-up year for ad sales that everybody got an additional, one-time bonus of $1,000 to boot. The Crain family still owns the company, and I think this lovely tradition wouldn’t cut it for long at a publicly traded company.
REQUESTS ANONYMITY: Bonus — what’s that? An alien concept at the Chicago Trib, unless you work for the corporate, advertising or interactive divisions. News staff must ‘feel the love’ vis-a-vis our capped 2.5% raises and boxed turkey dinners on Christmas. By the way, raises averaged about 2.5% last year as well, though CEO Madigan took home a sweet 64% increase.
REQUESTS ANONYMITY: David Pecker’s American Media, Inc., owners of the National Enquirer, Star, Globe, Country Weekly, Auto World Weekly and others distributed very nice Bose stereo radios to all of its employees. After years of Christmas parties, the stereos were a welcome change of pace that resulted in — amazingly enough, considering we are journalists — few complaints and lots of thanks.
What about holiday bonuses in 2013? Did you get anything – or expect anything? Please post in comments.
* Read the comments about bonuses on my Facebook wall