Average journalism major starting salary is...

Again, the $41K figure:

1) Includes advertising folks.

2) Includes people who graduated with journalism degrees but immediately jumped into other fields.

3) Does not include people who are unemployed.

I'm sure that if the J-schools broke it out into types of work (newsgathering/TV/etc.) the numbers would be a joke and the immediate conclusion would be that anyone getting into the business must be a lunatic or have family money. And I'm sure that for that reason, and because they're making so damn much money from the record enrollments, the J-schools will never publish that breakdown.

Reminds me a little bit of the time the University of North Carolina said its geography grads averaged $600K starting salary. It was the year Michael Jordan graduated.

 

Is that a real story? Jordan's rookie salary was $630,000, and he didn't have that many endorsements at that point.

 

That Poynter story is a mix of fantasy and crap. I call it, "fantacrap." (thank you, Jay Sherman). It took me almost a decade (after a layoff and a miraculous move into a management role at another shop) to clear that $41K barrier. My first job started at $25K near a major city and, believe me, I was ecstatic at the time. So many people I graduated with (and this was about 15 years ago, when it was still happy times are here again for newspaper company bottom lines) were pulling down $18K or $20K and living in tiny armpit towns in the middle of nowhere.

 

And he didn't graduate, did he?

 

I was off on the number, but it's still astronomical for effect. From a 1999 whoops, 1987 SI story (Jordan went back in the summers and got his degree):

The driver of a car sent to pick him up by the sponsors of a local charity basketball game informs Jordan that he graduated from the University of North Carolina, as did Jordan. Majored in geography, as did Jordan. "Mike, you remember Dr. Florin?" the driver asks pleasantly. "He got us all fired up for map ID. He told us the average starting salary for UNC grads in geography was $250,000. Later we figured out he was including yours."

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/basketball/nba/1999/jordan_retires/archive/871109/

 

Is there a single person on this site who made $41K during their first year out of school while working for a newspaper or website?

I'm sure there are a couple, but not many...

I went to a seminar in 2006 or 2007 where they said that 95 percent or 97 percent of newspaper journalists would never make $50K in a year.

 

Well, gee. Many of us started our careers in the early 1980s, when $41K out of school would have been unheard of.

I passed $41K for good in 1991 ($69K in 2013 dollars) --- my 8th year in the biz. Working for a paper that was decent size . . . but never higher than 37th or so in circulation. We were hiring a bunch of young designers in the late 1990s-early 2000s, all well north of $40K. If they were not straight out of college, they weren't more than a year or two removed.

 

Actually, you're not a journalist now are you?

So you did it for the money and quit, proving my point, bitch.

 

If whomever wrote the story knew anything about journalism and perspective, they would know that the MEDIAN salary would be more relevant. See the Jordan story above.

 

Any respectable survey of large numbers removes outlying data, often the top and bottom 5 percent.

 

Probably true, especially the way things are going in recent years.

 

In a small market, the network affiliate won't matter in terms of pay and equipment. The station will be owned by a media company that has nothing to do with the network. I'm in a pretty large market, and even here only the FOX affiliate is an O&O. The CBS station is owned by Meredith, NBC by Gannett, and ABC by Scripps.

And more than anything, her speaking shows that reading a teleprompter is a strange, dark art. Reading a teleprompter well is freakin' hard.

Dead on about the pay, though. Small market TV is a rat-hole. I started out in Eugene. The young, fairly green reporters at the Register-Guard were making about 10 grand a year more than our main anchor. Wendy's built a restaurant next door to the station and when they were hiring they posted their starting wage in the front window. It was more than any of the photogs were making. I got laid off there; those who kept their jobs got 15% pay cuts except for the photogs, because it would have put them below minimum wage.