Nats beat writer asks blog readers to send him to spring training

I'll send you a postcard from the Olympics if you help me offset my airfare to Vancouver. I accept Pay Pal.

 

Likewise, I guess we're horrible people.

 

I applaud the effort and the desire to stay active in the business. But this should scare the hell out of every working journalist. Alan Mutter says it better than I can, because Alan Mutter says it better than anybody in the biz, but he wrote recently that journalists simply have to stop letting these executives think they can get away with paying zilch or close to it.

http://newsosaur.blogspot.com/2010/02/stop-exploitation-of-journalists.html

And now what do we have? A guy who is willing to trudge along on $200 a week (based on the difference in his collections vs. his costs and the six-week duration of spring training).

So if you're a beat writer, and you're making more than $10,000 a year, watch out. Your boss now has compelling evidence that someone with professional credentials equal to yours is willing to do your job for that price.

 

He presumably gets ad money in addition to the subsidy.

 

I'd be shocked if the ad money amounted to $100 a week. But even if he gets $200 a week, fine, make $20,000 a year as the bottom-line number you're competing against in your bosses' eyes. Does that make anybody feel more secure?

 

Excellent column. Why pay a salary and provide benefits anymore when you can find an experienced freelance writer for the cost of a plane ticket and a lousy per diem? Better than that, a publisher can find a local guy who might work for a credential and a byline.

 

As long as there are 8 bajillion people willing to do the work, how on earth can you stop them from lowering the pay?

 

Will only happen if consumers discern and demand quality which, historically, hasn't happened very much in the newspaper industry. What little meritocracy existed went out the window about when the downward spiral began.

 

First of all, he's not going to make diddly on ads from his blog. I think if he makes $200 a month, he's killing it. You need a national audience to make any serious money on the web. That's why the only web sites that offer free content and still pay their writers a decent wage are national ones.

As for this somehow being a bad precedent that going to hurt the industry in the long run, I don't see how that's possible. The reason that Mark is willing to do this is because the industry already sucks, and there are a lot more people out there that need jobs than have jobs.

I can't speak for Mark. I can only tell about my experience in trying a similar venture last year. The idea is not "Hey, I love being a baseball writer so much that I'm willing to do it for practically nothing." The idea is "I am a baseball writer, and I'm unemployed. I can sit on my couch and make no money, or I can write a blog and make no money, but the latter may be my ticket to a paying job."

Worked for me. Hope it works for Mark.

 

He's broken the 10k mark. Good for him.

 

Absolutely. Why worry about this:




When you need an analysis of the Nats' middle relief situation?

 

Pretty sure my $20 to Red Cross isn't going to fix that poor kid's life.