The furlough effect: what forced breaks are doing to education coverage

Intended as alternatives to layoffs, furloughs frustrate reporters, interrupt coverage, and create unexpected challenges. But they seem here to stay — and reporters are learning to work around them. Cover image credit Liz Dufour.

By Leo Schwartz

As he entered his second and third weeks of furlough at the end of May, Cincinnati Enquirer education reporter Max Londberg said he felt like he was seeing fires all over the city, but he could only watch them burn. “To take time off feels morally wrong,” he said.

Londberg was among the first wave of reporters to experience the recent use of furloughs, right in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic and the nationwide school shutdown.

In March, Gannett — the country’s largest newspaper chain, which owns the Inquirer — announced it would be attempting a furlough system to avoid layoffs, where reporters and editors would take an unpaid week of leave every month for three consecutive months. Since then, other publications have followed, including NPR, the Los Angeles Times and Tribune Publishing, which publishes the Chicago Tribune and the Baltimore Sun.  Gannett announced the end of its furloughs in July, but they remain a constant possibility as journalism grapples with coronavirus-related questions of profitability.

For education journalists like Londberg who are directly affected, the furloughs have created a unique challenge: reporting on what is likely the biggest story of their careers with regular interruptions in their coverage.

From interviews with several education journalists, it’s clear the furloughs have been a mixed experience. From a morale perspective, the furloughs are yet another mental hurdle adding to the precariousness of the industry. From an operational perspective, mandated time off has become one of the myriad obstacles reporters have dealt with – and overcome — over the past decade.

From a morale perspective, the furloughs are yet another mental hurdle adding to the precariousness of the industry. From an operational perspective, mandated time off has become one of the myriad obstacles reporters have dealt with — and overcome — over the past decade.

 From a continuity perspective, furloughs create a break in coverage that some reporters experience as gutting.

“You feel a commitment to the readers and the community you cover,” said one education reporter at a daily newspaper owned by Gannett, who preferred to remain anonymous. “Any time away from that work makes you feel like you’re falling short of that commitment.”

For many journalists, that commitment goes deeper than not writing stories. When reporters are on furlough, they are not allowed to do any work, from checking in with sources to even opening emails. “I’m completely off the grid,” the Gannett journalist told me.

Enquirer reporter Londberg told me he was concerned his sources would think he was ignoring them, even though he sent a form email alerting them to his forced time off.

The transition back to work after a furlough is also difficult, Londberg said. When he returned from his first week, he would get a story idea before realizing a colleague had already covered it while he was out. It would take him several days to feel like things were back to normal.

The furloughs also created small but tangible effects on the type of journalism he could produce. He had to postpone a long-range project backed by the Education Writers Association on Ohio’s report card system. He also hasn’t been able to revisit COVID-related topics, such as a story he did about how child abuse reports had decreased without teachers as mandatory reporters. In response to the furlough interruptions, many of his stories are shorter, harder news pieces, including articles on non-education-related subjects to cover for his furloughed colleagues.

Other education reporters at newspapers affected by furloughs appear to be covering non-education-related stories with greater frequency, including Linda Borg at the Providence Journal.

Despite these added pressures, there is no evidence so far that outlets are missing major education stories because of the furloughs. Reporters are staggering their days or weeks off to ensure their beats are covered. Even though Londberg is the only dedicated education reporter at the Enquirer, he’s had a former education reporter in the newsroom cover for him when he’s off.

Related coverage: Furlough journal, day one; staring at the screen

“You feel a commitment to the readers and the community you cover… Any time away from that work makes you feel like you’re falling short of that commitment.” — Anonymous Gannett education reporter.

The financial strain of furloughs has been alleviated by unemployment and the federal CARES Act — a safety net that, in theory, evens out the lost paychecks.

Londberg said that with unemployment and CARES funding, he would be able to make up close to what he was losing. Even so, the unemployment process is far from reliable, especially with more than 40 million people making claims over the past three months. Because Londberg took his first furlough week over two calendar weeks, he had difficulty filing his first claim.

And, while the downsides are clear, there are a few small benefits to being furloughed, according to those who are going through the process. For example, the forced break can help reporters balance demands during the lockdown. In an interview with the Education Writers Association, Detroit News education reporter Jennifer Chambers said she is homeschooling her two kids, and the furlough gives her an opportunity to “light a fire under them,” as she described it. Londberg echoed that he’s using his furlough weeks as much-needed mental health breaks, although the respite is outweighed by the anxiety of missing stories.

A major component of that anxiety, for many reporters, is the future of newsrooms.

“It’s frightening, and I don’t think this is the end of it,” the anonymous Gannett reporter told me. “The strains in the industry compounded with the economic downturn caused by COVID bodes ill for our industry.”

Several journalists declined to speak for this article. One said they were unclear whether they were allowed to talk about the situation but was on furlough and unable to check with their bosses because they were technically not allowed to even be on their work emails.

And the furloughs are revealing some already existing challenges. Howard Blume, a longtime education reporter at the Los Angeles Times, told me over email that the 32-hour workweek his newspaper adopted as an alternative to furloughs has exposed that LA Times reporters were working far more than 40 hours before the pandemic.

“Most of us worked far more than that – it can be almost embarrassing to admit how many extra hours we work without compensation.”

Most of all, the furloughs are a reminder of increasingly difficult work conditions journalists are facing. Gannett may be ending theirs for now, but furloughs still loom as the new normal for the industry—one that journalists must reckon with.

As the anonymous Gannett reporter told me, they’re just another in a long string of setbacks that reporters are expected to overcome. “We’ll continue doing the best stories we can with the resources we have.”

Related coverage from The Grade:

Furlough journal, day one; staring at the screen

How to survive being laid off from your first newspaper job

Furloughs, PPP, and new hires; how education news is responding to the COVID crisis