The newsroom overtime wars may not be over, but in a pair of key battles reporters have prevailed. As Allan Freedman reported in the July/August 1992 issue of CJR, labor laws exempt from overtime pay "learned professionals" who do "work that is original and creative in nature." This has forced reporters and newswriters into the odd legal strategy of arguing that their work is unoriginal. In two major long-running court cases, judges have agreed.

In November, U.S. District Judge Shane Devine finally resolved the twelve-year-old U.S. Department of Labor v. The Concord Monitor case. Devine awarded $ 21,000 to a dozen Monitor employees who successfully claimed that they were not professionals, and thus were entitled to overtime pay. While Judge Devine wrote that his decision was of "limited precedential value," attorneys, editors, and newspaper owners have differed over the case's impact.

The Monitor ruling came on the heels of the August Freeman v. NBC News decision in which U.S. Magistrate Judge Kathleen A. Roberts found that NBC newswriter Jacob Freeman's work depends on such things as skill and experience, not on "invention, imagination, or sheer talent." Freeman and his fellow plaintiffs, Judge Roberts wrote, were not professionals and thus entitled to overtime pay.

The Sherwood v. Washington Post case, in which nearly 100 Post employees sued the paper in 1986 over its overtime policy, has yet to be decided. U.S. District Judge Gerhard A. Gesell dismissed the case in 1988, but an appeals court overturned the dismissal soon after. The case was reheard last February by U.S. District Judge Norma Holloway Johnson.

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