Pay

Bravo again, Gold. And Jack, this isn't just a *sports* journalism problem. This is a problem in journalism as a whole. This is a profession-wide issue.

So again, I ask: Is SPJ (or any other group) currently involved in "red-flagging" papers like this? Or do we need a salary survey first? Are there no salary surveys out there that are credible and/or current?

(I'll do my own research later. Just wanted to ask around first, so I'm not reinventing the wheel.)

 

Nor did I mean to imply it was. But it's more pronounced in sports.

 

I remember a story that a sportswriter got a letter or a call from a kid asking him how to become a sportswriter. The kid was smart, so the sportswriter told him to become a doctor - more money, more value to society. The kid did become a doctor, but he told the sportswriter there were a lot of days he wished he had become a sports writer.

I think things find their own level and things seem to work out. I was good with numbers and, while having the knowledge of sports and am a good writer, I probably don't have the sort of temperment that can deal with the problems newspaper people have to deal with - I get too frustrated. So I earned a degree in Finance and have a decent job in that field, but I often think maybe it would have been better if I had tried a little longer.

 

That's fine. On an individual basis, maybe a smart kid will be better off as a sportswriter. But I wouldn't be too happy if it was a general trend of the smartest going into the profession just so that sportswriting would be better than it is.

 

Another problem is that columnists have become multi-media stars. Papers now overpay them and figure they have to save the money somewhere, so the beat guy who no doubt breaks way more news than the columnist makes far less. I bring this up only because sometimes we see a big-name pro athlete defer money in order to bring more talent into the fold. What's the chance of a columnist doing that? Even pro athletes look out for one another better than we do. And yet we rip those guys all the time.

 

Okay, let's say you have three finalists for a job. All three are equally able to do the job, but for whatever reason (experience, salary history, whatever), one person won't do the job for a penny under $40,000, and the other two will do it for $25,000. What reason, other than fighting the system, would you have for giving it to the person who wants $40,000 (or giving $40,000 to one of the other two)? I mean, I'm feeling y'all on the shit salaries (I fell under the $1K for one year mark on my birthday in May), but unilaterially giving out more money just for the hell of it isn't going to happen in this industry or any other.

 

Nice example of management-speak. But it doesn't justify paying somebody that type of salary. :

And that's exactly why, as Gold said, if you're waiting for it to come from the top ... keep waiting.

The pressure has to come from the bottom. There is no choice but for it to come from the bottom. And in case it's not clear -- we're on the bottom. Yes, even the sports editors. Don't buy into this shit that being an SE makes you part of "management." All it means is you have a title and you get no OT pay. Plus, you have to sit in on managers' meetings. But you get your name on the S1 flag. ... You're as expendable as anyone else, and you can get lowballed like anyone else.

The pressure has to come from us. It won't come from the people who *decide* the salaries or balance the books. It has to come from us. If we want it to change, it has to come from us.

 

Look at the words you wrote "giving away money" - that's the problem. You're not "feeling y'all", you're part of the problem. The example provides no specifics. If you think you can get the same skills for $15,000 less, you obviously have no respect for the skills that it takes to be a capable journalist.

You could find people to cover NFL beats for $25,000, but my guess is you are going to spend a lot more time editing them, that there is going to be a learning curve and if you are in a competitive situation your paper is going to get beat on a lot of stories, and that if you are lucky enough to find somebody to do the job for $25,000 and they are very good, they aren't going to be happy for very long. Using your logic, you should get rid of everybody making more than $50,000.

However, let's say it is a paper with a good size circulation. Paying the higher salary would be likely to result in less turnover. Let me put it this way - a newspaper pays somebody $20,000 to cover a city council meeting. It would mean a publisher is sending out somebody to report on an important government agency, and the agency's lowest level clerical staff member makes more than the reporter. If you don't see a problem with that, I suggest you read Foster Winans's book about how he was making $28,000 and writing the "Heard on the Street" column for the Wall Street Journal. Granted that was in the 1980s, but that was a ridiculous salary for somebody writing that important a column. The result was predictable - somebody paid Winans to see what was going to be in the column and it became an insider trading scandal. That's the sort of thing that happens when pay does not equal responsibility.

 

So you're telling me that if you have three finalists for a job and one demands $15,000 more than the other, that person must be a better choice? I know people that make $40,000 and don't deserve welfare. I know people who make $22,000 and should be at least doubling that, even within the context of what journalists typically make. I also know that when you get to the finalist stage of a job filling process, unless you have a breakout awesome person in the mix, you're looking at people who all can do the job well, and any differences in ability to do it are likely to be small to the point of non-noticible.

So yes, you can and usually DO have three finalists that are equally able to do a job, whatever that job is. If Option A is worth the extra $15,000, then by all means pay that person the extra $15,000. If all three can do the job equally well and two people are willing to do the job for significantly less money, then what is your reasoning for spending money that you don't HAVE to? That IS giving away money, like paying $20 for a $12 case of Yuenglings because you want to experience solidarity with the mom-and-pop convenience store from which you're purchasing it. If the more expensive option is worth the money, then yes. Otherwise, again, what business is going to pay someone $40,000 for a job they're willing to do for $25,000?

You could find people to cover NFL beats for $25,000, but my guess is you are going to spend a lot more time editing them, that there is going to be a learning curve and if you are in a competitive situation your paper is going to get beat on a lot of stories, and that if you are lucky enough to find somebody to do the job for $25,000 and they are very good, they aren't going to be happy for very long. Using your logic, you should get rid of everybody making more than $50,000. Jeez, way to triple jump to an incorrect conclusion there. Chances are that yes, an NFL beater willing to take $25,000 isn't going to be good, but not because he's making $25,000, but because he doesn't have the experience to make more. Obviously, someone with precious little experience probably is not on even keel with the writer who won't do it for more than $50,000. Therefore, the people who warrant more money through their experience and talent are going to get it. I don't know where you got the idea that everyone who makes more than $50,000 should be fired; seriously, I have no fucking CLUE where that comes from.

The writer in the example you provided accepted the salary. We can say "well hell, it's not right that person get paid less than a clerical employee," and you're right, but this person took the job at that money. You pay the people what the market is willing to bear. This is not a newspaper-only concept. The clerical employee didn't get whatever they're making just from the government's lagresse -- they posted a job that had a salary or wage range, and whoever got the job got it for a figure somewhere in it. They're not in the business of paying money that they don't have to, and few people or companies are. I'm still waiting for someone to give me the justification of paying someone $15,000 more than another person without proving that they're worth $15,000 more. No industry does that.

The problem is simple and cold economics: Fewer jobs + more applicants = buyer's market. If you want to solve the problem, help start more papers that compete directly against monopoly papers, which are the overwhelming majority now. Or start a series of smallpox outbreaks at every major journalism program in America's colleges, or whatever it'll take to convince the next crop of would-be wage jockeys not to enter our already-Balkanized turf.

 

and there's another thing, Mystery Meat.

If you are a sports editor who pays something which is that less than fair, your staff will see that and you might lose a couple of people - they will look at the writing on the wall. As a SE, you have to be able to defend paying $40,000 a year if that is a market salary.

When you go cheap, it would be like mixing a gallon of water with 5 gallons of gas in your car. Down the road, it will hurt you.

Paying below a market wage by a great deal is bad management. You have failed the people you supervise, and somewhere down the road, they will fail you.

If somebody is making $22,000 a year and they stick with it for more than a year, they are a lousy journalist. They aren't paid professionally, the aren't treated professionally, they aren't professional. If they can't stick up for themself, how can what they do have any integrity. In El Paso, Texas, one of the poorer areas with lower wages in the US, a starting teaching salary was $30,000 two years ago.

Mystery Meat, you don't understand the first thing about economics. You gave a foolish example. You seem perfectly OK with journalists making so much less than teachers - it's a proud newspaper tradition. And that might work for an apprenticeship year. If somebody is making half of what they should, they need to do something. Maybe it's taking the extra courses to be a teacher.

So what are you, a fool or someone who aspires to be a suck up?

You don't know the first thing about cold and simple economics. This is real life, not economics class.

 

I have $50 in my account until Thursday afternoon, when I get a check from my part-time job. I have $50 in pending debits that will likely come off the bank account tonight. I have more than $15,000 in credit card debt due to constant moving, car problems and being fucking stupid. Yes, I'm clearly a manager with gold in my eyes and contempt for my fellow man.

No doubt. There's few if any industries where that's not the case.

Okay, Che Guevara, what do you propose? Massive walkouts? Sitdown strikes? Most people who study print journalism in college did so knowing that the pay is not great -- they had friends in the real world tell them, they had professors tell them, they saw it in freelance assignments and internships. Most people stuck with it and got jobs at less-than-living-la-vida-loca salaries and wages that they knew was coming -- maybe not as low as they were preparing themselves for, but they knew it was coming and they met it head on anyway. You (singular) has met the enemy and it is you (general). Like I said to Gold, it's a matter of cold-blooded economics wherein less jobs + larger job applicant pool = buyer's market, and that's going to be the case whether it's print journalism, teaching, accounting or any other profession or trade. There's a difference between fighting an obvious wrong like a six-year wage freeze or a mileage rate that won't even cover the cost of gas and fighting the culture of relatively low salaries for journalists, because it's not just a case of unilateral meanness by your employer that you don't make $10,000 a year more than you do, it's a product of business, and everyone has to deal with it. It's a matter of there being plenty of people who can do the job as well as someone who costs more, and a company that has to make the choice between the two. How many people are going to choose the more expensive option IF there's no difference in the way they do their job?

 

I didn't say you're a manager. I said that's "management-speak." And it is. It doesn't seem to make much sense for you to look at things from that perspective when you yourself are not benefiting from that perspective, does it?

I disagree that there is no difference in the way they do their jobs, but that's another story for another day. ...

Yes, from the company's standpoint and from the business standpoint, sure, that's the route they're always going to take, pay as little as you can to get as much as you can. It's why many, many newspapers are making such insane profit margins as they are.

And it's also why the status quo is going to remain the status quo if "everyone has to deal with it" and doesn't do anything about it. Your attitude in these posts is the status quo. You're justifying management by explaining why they shouldn't give a writer $25K when he'll accept $21K. And yes, part of the problem lies with the supply over the demand. But as Gold said earlier, management *wants* us to believe that they can pull any Joe Schmoe off the street to do our jobs. I don't buy it. You justify management -- and you justify the status quo -- if you believe that.

No offense to you, because this isn't personal ... but the status quo sucks. Hence all the complaining, and the fact that people are willing to take jobs for shit wages, and are willing to get treated like dirt by their employers, because they think that's the way it has to be. Well, it doesn't.

I'm not advocating sit-down strikes and shit like that. I am advocating awareness, and information, and more open communication about the "culture of journalism" and what we can do to make it better. Surveys help. Discussion helps. Arguments help. Education helps -- immensely.

Hopefully, it'll help to foster discussion (more than just on here) about raising the standard wages for an average employee at an average company, about not settling for shit wages when you're going for a job, about changing the culture of journalism from within, instead of a) settling for the status quo; or b) waiting for it to happen from above; or c) just leaving the business all together when you get fed up with it. Like so many do.

I don't want to leave the business when I get fed up with it. I love what I do. But I also need to make a living. We all do.