Popular Rochester columnist once asked readers if he deserved a raise. Did it work?
One of the joys of retirement, or even semi-retirement, is you’re no longer evaluated.
You’re freed from the agony of being called into an office and told you’re doing very well, but ...
When you hear “but,” your stomach begins to knot. Your brow begins to sweat. You know a heavy anvil is about to fall upon your head.
Afterwards, you call your loved ones, let them know you survived and that you may even get a raise, though perhaps not a significant raise.
Or, if you were Dick Dougherty, the longtime columnist for the now defunct Times-Union in Rochester, you would fire up your computer and write a frontpage column about your performancereview session.
You would make fun of the process, and you would use that column to launch a tongue-in-cheek (I think it was tongue-in-cheek) campaign for a pay hike.
In Dougherty’s case, the campaign worked.
The proof of success was on the front page of the Jan. 5, 1989, Times-Union. My wife, Cindy, recently found a copy of that day’s paper. There was the story of the raise — “Bosses heed Dick’s fans” — over my byline.
I was the paper’s managing editor then, and, yes, I and the other editors had caved. Dick got his money. All was well.
What were we thinking?
Basically, we were having fun, enjoying the bond that Dick Dougherty, who died in 2008 at age 88, had created with his readers, if not his editors.
Dick had always had an ambiguous attitude toward authority and toward his annual evaluations. I know this because as his editor for a few years, it fell to me to write his performance review.
“Dick, I’ve done your evaluation,” I would say.
“Why?” he would ask.
“I’m your editor,” I would say.
“Oh,” he would reply, surprised.
After such a session, Dick began his efforts to secure a raise with a December 1988 column that lampooned the “selfappraisal” portion of his evaluation.
(In appraising himself, he had said that “prestige and power” were among the things that would make his job more “effective and satisfying.”)
I’m not sure what I was thinking, but at my suggestion, Dick accompanied his column with a form readers could fill out and mail in indicating whether he deserved a raise.
You could vote “Yes” and endorse a 45% raise. You could check the “No” box, which was labeled, “Are you kidding? You actually pay Dougherty?”
Dick then followed the first column with another column headlined, “Bosses alarmed as pro-Dougherty columns mount.”
In this column, he promised that all those who supported his cause would receive a hand-written New Year’s greeting and 25 cents for the stamp they used to send in their ballot.
Finally, on Jan. 5, 1989, editors threw in the towel and gave Dick a raise.
In announcing the pay hike, I did not give the amount of the raise, citing “company policy and fear of embarrassment.” However, I did say the increase was “handsome, by newspaper standards.”
I also reported that of the 84 coupons readers had submitted, 79 were in support of Dick and/or his wife, Pat, and dog, Feeney. (Dick wrote a lot about both, sometimes even interviewing Feeney.)
Only two readers had given the raise a thumbs-down. “He’s silly and shallow and should be replaced,” wrote one critic.
Other readers liked Dougherty because he was silly. “Nuttier than a fruitcake,” wrote one.
Another reader suggested that Dougherty was “the most creative writer you clones have working there.”
Yet still another reader wrote that Dougherty was worth more money than his editors. “God knows they’re overpaid,” the Dougherty fan wrote.
In an accompanying column, Dick did not seem exuberant about a raise that was handsome, by newspaper standards. But he did thank his readers who “paid 25¢ each in stamps to bring the Times-Union management to its knees.”
Dick continued to write for the Times-Union until it closed in 1997. By that time, his column had also moved over to the Democrat & Chronicle, and it appeared there until his retirement in 2004.
I don’t think Dick put his raise up to a reader vote again, but, if he had, I’m sure readers would have rallied to his side. Editors would have caved, and a “nuttier than a fruitcake” columnist would have been rewarded handsomely, by newspaper standards, of course.
Retired senior editor Jim Memmott writes Remarkable Rochester, who we were, who we are. He can be reached at jmemmott@gannett.com or write Box 274, Geneseo, NY 14454