Milwaukee Journal Sentinel -- Green Bay Packers reporter

Can we update the best-under-40 thread to clarify which guys are hungry? #crossthread

 

I think we can all agree Tyler Dunne is the best 25-year-old national NFL reporter to have four jobs in the past two years.

 

Guy does some fantastic work. I envy him.

 

Its an NFL job and we all run to our computers to send in the resume.

But I hear that the Packers fan base are very outspoken about the writers that cover the team.

 

Is that really a problem, though? You want your work to go to a wide audience and have people actually read/care about it. That's part of the fun of the job. Hate mail is a sign you're getting read. Someone can find a bone to pick on pretty much every story.

 

You know, I'm a little puzzled. When I got out of university some years back, all I heard from anyone I talked to was "you gotta pay your dues and get experience. Don't even waste your time trying to cover major college or pro sports. Go to a small market and work hard."

OK, fine. If that was the way the game was played, I was willing to go along. I went to a small market and made a TON of sacrifices. My first job paid around $14.5K per year (yeah, I know, everything was cheaper then, too). I paid my dues. Covered the high schools, little league and all the attendant crap that goes with it. Had no social life whatsoever. Somedays didn't have two nickels to rub together.

I accepted that as just part of the process and never complained too much.

Fast forward 20+ years and I've got plenty of experience covering everything under the sun. What I don't have in stamina anymore or technological knowledge I make up for with that vaunted experience. Now what I hear is "you're too old, everyone wants someone who is young".

Well, what gives? Once upon a time I was young, too.

 

The business has changed in that the Internet, new media, etc., have made being young valuable to some extent. There are obviously still gigs where experience is invaluable, but a young guy willing to work for cheap who is able to communicate across all mediums has a different type of worth.

 

I never said it's a problem that a community and or area love the team and send hate mail or love letters to its beat reporters and columnists.

Now, I believe that experience in an online medium means a lot to publications that want its new hires handle social media as well as blogging and video reports for the website. So, yes at one point you working at small market chronicle and moving to medium post and ending up as the Patriots beat reporter for a major metro is the way to get a beat like the one above a few years ago.

But it looks like they are hiring younger guys and girls to handle it and being that this job is for a number 3 writer and not the main reporter on the beat a younger guy may work as they can teach and mold him/her into the reporter they need and possible have him/her take over the entire beat at some point.

 

A few years ago, a guy like Dunne likely would have had to wait a few more years for a job like the one he just left. Bedard had several years of NFL experience when he got the job, but by some counts, after he left for Boston, the JS decided to cut the salary for that job by 40-50 percent. That's the biggest reason why Dunne got his shot, and give the kid credit, he made the most of the opportunity.

 

Nothing to do with anything.

 

And young people are never rejected because they need more experience, right? It all depends on what the editor wants for the position.

 

The Journal is a Guild paper. Salaries start at 800 per week and go up to 1100 something per week. Oh, the laziness on this board. No where near the salary for the San Diegeo paper.

http://www.milwaukeenewsguild.org/guild-contract/#article-18