Time clocks now an LAT fixture

L.A. Times staffers have been grumbling for the past month or so about the arrival of time clocks in the newsroom — the "KRONOS time and attendance system," it's called. Logging how many minutes a copy editor spends at lunch or the bathroom reeks of Tribune desperation (but then again, they are in bankruptcy and take their innovation inspiration from this guy.) In any newsroom, if editors and reporters actually stuck to their officially listed hours, the whole enterprise would creak to a halt. When the Times was highly profitable, won awards and had much later deadlines, they got by just fine with even the relatively few hourly employees filling out their own time sheets. In any case, pressroom veteran Ed Padgett posts a new internal memo about how it's shaking down.