Daily News a 'journalistic sweatshop'

It's true. Authorities finally cracked down on the word factory in Los Angeles in which journalists are forced to work in adverse conditions, long hours for low pay and levied fines against the owners. Ok, it was one of those other Daily Newses out there, the Chinese Daily News in Monterey Park, and a federal judge fined the company $5.2 million. Here's an excerpt from the Editor and Publisher story:

Reporters testified in the case that they were forced to work six days a week at 12-hour shifts that could extend to 17 hours at times with no breaks for meals. Supervisors altered time cards to make it appear that no overtime was worked. Reporters were also given quotas of stories to come up with, according to the lawsuit.

More than 200 reporters, ad salespeople, delivery drivers, secretaries, and production workers ultimately joined the class-action lawsuit that was first filed in 2004.

And I thought long hours was jut part of the 24/7 news cycle!

The newspaper fired workers who dared to complain about the workload or overtime situation, the lawsuit contended. Lynne Wang, a former reporter who told the New York Times she was fired in 2005, said workers felt unable to complain because of the non-stop work, a culture of intimidation, and their ignorance of U.S. labor law. ...

"Reporters were required to produce five stories a day, Ms. Wang said, which meant they had to race between news conferences and interviews for hours without a break. Production workers and packers did the same indoors, spending hours before presses and stackers. Quotas for advertising salespeople were unreasonably high, she said, and drivers were forced to navigate rush-hour traffic with long lists of delivery addresses strewn across the sprawling city."

Curiously this story says it was first reported by me, Mariel Garza, in the Los Angeles Times, which I found amusing because a) I don't work for the Los Angeles Times and b) I never even wrote about this for the Los Angeles Daily News.