Are you SURE you need a new pencil? iStockPhoto/Digital Savant LLC

By JOE GRIMM

A reporter sent a question to my Ask the Recruiter column on Poynter Online asking how to tell if a newspaper is in trouble.

As that is a serious column, I wrote her a serious answer.

But this is what I wanted to say:

You can tell a newspaper is in trouble when:

• The newsroom paper rack is coin operated.
• Copy editors must turn in the stubs of their old pencils to get new ones.
• The city editor checks to make sure reporters use both sides of the pages in their notebooks.
• The ad calls for someone who is, “A self starter who sees journalism as a calling and who doesn’t mind long hours or have a family.”
• The publisher calls it “the interwebs.”
• The editor eat soup at his desk — right out of the can.
• They give the mobile journalist a paper route.
• Reporters are required to wear jackets with advertisers’ logos on them.
• When you are introduced as a job candidate, someone asks, “What’s that?”
• Reporters may show their business card, but are not allowed to give it away.
• You ask about overtime and everyone busts out in hysterical laughter.
• The editors tell you, “If your mother says she loves you, have her put it on our blog. We need more reader-generated content.”

Do you have more danger signs? Post them in a comment and they will be appended to this article.

On her Twitter account, Amy Richards added this danger sign: The editor calls the newspaper “the dead-tree edition.”