$15-20K/year FT position

Parents, too.

 

Graduated college in 1991. Hired full-time at a small weekly in northwest Iowa and paid about $14K per year. Luckily my apartment was a block away and cost $170 per month, which included free heat and cable (with movie channels — illegally spliced by the owner, I believe) and off-street parking.
Had to moonlight at a local bar a few nights a week and even worked for the county one winter at the local sledding hill.
My most recent full-time paper (a weekly) closed shop last September and the most I ever made there was just over $29K a year.
The last time I can remember NOT working more than one job was back in elementary school when my stepbrothers and I shared a paper route.

 

In late 2012, after Aaron Kushner bought the OCR and beefed up the editorial staff as part of his plan to revolutionize the industry, the paper began offering 12-month positions for $10 an hour. That kind of wage doesn't go very far in Orange County, so to help offset the cost of living, the paper also provided an apartment to share with others in a dorm-style living arrangement. Yet I remember some still took the jobs because they provided a way to get a foot in the door. Likewise, people will still apply for a $15-$20K job, even if the wages are a scandal.

 

I've worked in my chain for nine years and still only make $20,000. I enjoy the slow pace of a small newspaper and I've always lived a spartan life, so I've learned to live on it. It means always having a car with more than seven years and 150,000 miles on it. I'd go years between buying new clothes. Luckily, my paper is okay with jeans and a button-down shirt on a daily basis. There's no way I would ever be able to afford to buy a house on my own, but I lived debt-free for about seven and a half years on 18k to 20k in rural Ohio. I had health insurance throughout the recession. So I actually consider myself pretty fortunate, even if a lot of others would balk at how much I get paid. I got to write about sports, pay my bills and didn't work 12 hour shifts in a dirty, dangerous, soul-sucking factory like my parents did for 45 years. I now live with my fiancee, who is an attorney, so I'm not hurting — but I cannot imagine having a child or trying to live a middle-class lifestyle doing this job if it was just me. I also feel like I've lived a good life while working this job. That's why I don't tell college grads one way or the other when they ask if they should take one of these low-paying jobs. It depends on lifestyle, location, consumption and expectations.

 

Making that type of money should not require a college degree.

 

The funny thing is when I was in college, a $25,000-35,000 salary seemed like it would be an alright middle class wage. These days I am involved with a program at my alma mater where the students call me for informational interviews, and I tell them most of my friends make at least $10,000 more per year than I do. I always wonder if that really means anything to students living the broke college life.

 

No shit. I latched on part-time (freelance editing) at a good-sized daily not long out of college and had to work in a gas station to make some extra cash. So, yes, you could get work on the side to help out. But $15-20K for a full-time job? Hell no. Unless you're planning to jump ship pretty quickly.

 

Kind of a happy/sad post here. Sad cause after nine years in the same chain you are making 20,000 which is basically nothing. Think of all that work they are getting from you for pennies. I mean does your fiancee think it's pretty silly what you are doing? I'd assume even in small towns attorneys make OK money. Basically your situation is how journalism has always worked. By nature the work is interesting (if you can get out of the office nowadays) and normally fun (again when you are out of the office covering something) but the pay is embarrassingly bad and the expectations are usually ridiculous for the amount of pay the employee receives. The bottom line is you (like me and others) are getting used big time, but it's a fun profession and as the suits have said through the years if you don't like it, leave.

 

Sadly, this is true. They can set that wage because they know they can get someone to take it. And if you take and put in a lot of time and hard work and ever feel entitled to a raise, they can swiftly remind you how easily it is to replace you.

I have to believe expectations for quality cannot be too high when you're barely paying someone minimum wage. That hurts the product.

 

I say you should at least make your age in newspaper jobs.

25 = $25,000, 40 = $40,000, etc. I wouldn't stick around for a lousy salary.

But I've never worked for a small paper. The simpler life has plenty of appeal now.

 

My first newspaper job was freelance. I worked at Walmart to make ends meet. Moving to a full-time gig ($18K annually) only meant that instead of working full-time at Walmart, I could work parti-time at Old Navy. Over the last 12 years, I've worked retail, stocked shelves overnight, freelanced as a photographer, tutored kids, delivered newspapers, packed bottles in a factory and been a been a nanny. For the first time, I now have one job to pay the bills. Would a recommend someone starting at a low salary just to get into the business? It depends on the person. After years of struggling to manage time and money, I now feel like I have things easy, even though my family is still making less than the median income for our state. It worked out for me, but I don't know that I would want to do it again.

 

It really depends on the area and cost of living where you live.

15 years ago, I was making $20K in a small town where I could get a nice two-bedroom apartment with utilities included for $460. Granted, it was in the middle of Podunk. But compared to many in the area who were happy to work in a supermarket or at K-Mart, I was middle class.