Average journalism major starting salary is...

A TV station anchor who spoke at a Rotary luncheon I was at stunned me as to how good a public speaker she was. I asked her forgiveness for the question but I asked why she seemed so different on TV in this small market station. She said "if you had to deal with the crappy teleprompter I did, you'd understand." Station never spent money, even on its people. Photojournalists toting a TV camera make minimum wage. Seriously.

And it was an ABC affiliate, which as I'm told, is the lousiest of the network news operations at the local level, equipment-wise and pay-wise.

 

My first gig, $17,000 -- and that was at a pretty good-sized paper (which like every other one has since decreased in size)

 

summer between freshman and sophomore years of college I made $5.75/hr working overnight stock at a grocery store. A few months later I interview for my first TV job, sports gig a a small town NBC affiliate, and when they ask about what kind of wage I'm looking for I figure TV is a better gig than a grocery store, so I ask for more than I was making over the summer, $6/hr.
Then they told me "well, the job pays $5.25."
I've never been within a country mile of $41k

 

My name is Elmer T. Fudd, Copy Editor.

I own a mansion und a yacht.

 

I'm happy to say I will be earning $41K soon. It will be as a seventh grade English teacher.

Fuck Poynter.

 

In what state? 41K could put you near the poorhouse in some.

 

One more time for you morons that don't get it ...


You don't do it for the money bitches.

 

Virginia. Well, I'm in the poorhouse, presently, so I guess that's an improvement.

 

I get what Doc's saying, though. If you choose journalism as your vocation as an undergrad, you kind of sacrifice your right to complain about the salary. You can certainly be unhappy about the lifetsyle it affords you. But the answer to that is to seek another vocation, not to blame journalism. It is what it is, and we knew what it was.

 

And hopefully you're doing your job to help raise a family.

 

Twenty years ago when I started, you could look at a run-of-the-mill desker or middle manager -- the kind of person you think you'll become in the worst-case scenario -- and that person was living a damn fine middle-class life. Owned a house, kids in good schools (often private), college was attainable without any particular strain. So you could reasonably expect that too.

Not possible today.

There is an enormous difference. I didn't get into it back then to do it for the money. Nor was I taking the vow of poverty that is common today.

 

I made $34K my first full year out of school. I think my salary was $28K, but we were way understaffed at a union paper, so quite a few of us pulled quite a bit of OT.

That was 17 years ago, and it's probably gone down since then.