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Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by OkayPlayer, Aug 14, 2006.

  1. Mystery_Meat

    Mystery_Meat Guest

    Okay, who's defining "fair"? There's probably people who make $75,000 a year doing a piss-poor job that think they're being paid an unfairly low wage. Hell, look at the .220 utility infielders who go to arbitration hoping for an extra $400,000 over their team's offer. Obviously the large majority of sportswriters (I hope) don't line up with either example. But if I offer a job to someone who will take it for $25,000, a) obviously I still think this person is more than qualified for the job and b) I'd have a lot more to explain to people if I hired someone at $40,000 who wasn't worth the extra $15,000. You can say "pay the cheaper guy $40,000 because you think that's what he deserves," but I don't have unlimited resources and if I'm going to shell out money, I have to justify it.

    That assumes that talent and ability are equally proportional to salary requests. Sometimes they are, sometimes it's a case of someone with pie-in-the-sky expectations. I never said "always hire the cheapest man for the job," either. I could probably find someone in the alley of the Big City Times who'll do the national college football beat for $20 of food stamps and three boxes of wine, but I'm guessing his or her credentials won't warrant giving him the job. But if everything else is equal, you're going to go with the person that costs you the least. That's why governments and businesses farm out jobs to the lowest bidder, and that's why you (general) hold your nose and shop at Wal-Mart because their odious practices may not be enough to sway you from saving $30 on the week's groceries or a stereo system.

    I could be wrong, but I suspect I'll have a lot more problems with my writers if I hire someone that's making more money than them than I will if I bring in someone making less. And that person accepted the job. If the wage doesn't meet their standards, they'd pull out. I've turned down jobs I thought I'd like because I knew it would hurt me to take less money than I thought I was worth, both in day-to-day living expenses and in building a salary history so that my next job can pay more.

    (more in next post)
     
  2. Mystery_Meat

    Mystery_Meat Guest

    I'm going to guess there's a segment of SportsJournalists.com readers who make the money you described and are insulted by the idea that you find them sub-standard because of it. Or at least they SHOULD. Professionalism isn't measured by your paycheck. This isn't a defense of poor wages or the people who accept them, it's a laugh at the idea that money = righteousness.

    Are master's degrees a requirement for a teaching job in Texas? If so, then the comparison is apples and oranges. Plus I'd be willing to wager from the people I know that teaching is an exponentially more stressful and harrowing job than what we do. They SHOULD be making more than a lot of us.

    So do I not know economics or am I incorrectly applying the concept of economics? Also, how exactly did you try to disprove my point, other than through ad hominem? You have yet to answer the question of why you would pay Option A $15,000 a year more than Options B or C if all three are equally able to do the job. And in the middle of that, you come up with the solution -- if the money to work as a journalist is not sufficient and there's no hope for significant salary increase, you find a career that does. People leave to go to teaching, to law school (which has its own problem of supply beating demand like demand was Duke football), to sales, to whatever. People do this in all sorts of professions. I've thought about doing it myself if I think the end is nigh. But short of complaining about it on a bulletin board, leaving your job, starting a strike or waiting for Robin Hood to snag $20,000 from the publisher's money market account and depositing it in your checking account, realistic solutions aren't going to be easy, and the answer may not be as rosy and soft as you'd hope.
     
  3. Mystery_Meat

    Mystery_Meat Guest

    Two things: 1. I'm looking at it from all perspectives. As a writer/editor, I think I deserve more money. But I also know that my business has X amount of money they can give someone in my position. I also know that when I leave, the person they get to replace me probably will make less money, because I'm near the top of my payscale (which isn't much, but then you're not going to make $50,000 as the SE of a weekly paper anywhere where 50 large is considered good money). I'm being a realist. 2. Isn't the whole notion of fair and impartial journalism predicated on looking at things from perspectives that we don't live or even agree with? Otherwise I'd write about nothing but fat, ugly white guys with no friends and no life.

    I've only had a hand in one hiring decision in my career. It came to two writers, both of who were remarkably talented. They weren't identical; one had better experience and came from the area, the other came from Mizzou and was a very nuanced writer and reporter with tremendous upside. We ended up giving the offer to the first person, who turned it down (not enough money) and then to the second person, who took it. But what if the first person had taken it? I would have called the second person and told him he didn't get the job, but you know something? He wasn't noticibly worse than the first person at all. We would have been a much better publication regardless which one we hired. But sometimes you have to go deep down your list of tiebreakers, all the way to coin flip. And though this wasn't an issue, sometimes money required to make the move is going to be an issue. And there's no way you're going to hire the more expensive person just because he's more expensive.

    (more on next post)
     
  4. Mystery_Meat

    Mystery_Meat Guest

    But you're not looking at it clearly when you say you'll give someone more money than they ask for. No business, regardless its profit margin, is going to do that, unless the applicant and the interviewer are sleeping with each other (note to self: buy Trojans and Boone's Farm for upcoming interview). The problem isn't that management thinks "Joe Schmoe off the street" can do our jobs, it's that Johnny and Susie College Graduate CAN do our job, and can do it for less money. It'd be nice if salaries were handled by a meritocracy -- best people get the best money, worst people get the worst money -- but that never happens and it's not tenable to think it will happen, because there's no tangiable way to rank all reporters and editors.

    None taken. And yes, getting paid less than what we think we deserve does suck. I would bet that most journalists, for what they do for their publication and the community it serves, deserve more money. I would bet that's the case with a lot of people in all walks of life. And there's deadwood all around, and there's also people who make money based on their relative worth to a business that doesn't translate at all to the betterment of the world around them (professional athletes, who draw seven and eight-figure yearly salaries because of what they mean to their organization but do nothing to make the schools better, the water cleaner and the streets safer in the neighborhoods of the people who watch him play). Problem is, as long as people are accepting, without coercion, salaries we find distasteful, then that's not going to change.

    (STILL more on next post)
     
  5. Mystery_Meat

    Mystery_Meat Guest

    Problem is, as I pointed out earlier, pretty much everyone knows what they're getting into money-wise and we still go to j-school. We had a thread where we were to dispense one nugget of solid-gold wisdom to the next generation (my vote was originally "make Counselor Troi take off her clothes"). What I wrote was "make sure the degree you're going after is worth the money you're paying for it." People know what financial cross they'll bear, but bear it they will all the same, and the only j-students who don't know it are the ones who delude themselves into thinking they'll be the exception rather than another brick in the rule wall (example: me).

    I hear you -- seriously. I agree with the heart behind the points, even if I don't think the points themselves are feasable or realistic. But for better or for worse, our jobs are getting dumbed down in the name of a last-gasp gambit towards reversing circulation drops. It's called hyperlocal journalism: everyone can be a reporter, every story deserves to be written, every picture should be displayed in technicolor and with effusive accolades bulging in the cutlines. I don't personally believe it, but the people that matter do, and at least for now, that's the wave of the future. The problem is, if we're going in that direction, it's hard to expect people to go to school for four years to get a degree to do it. I suspect that if we could do this coming straight out of high school, we'd be fine with the salaries because we didn't have to buy/borrow four-six years worth of tuition to get a entry ticket. That, I think, is the problem, and it makes me fearful for the future of journalism, more so than salaries we don't think are good enough. The present is bad enough, but the short-to-mid-term future is pants-pissingly scary.
     
  6. Gold

    Gold Active Member

    Mystery Meat -  If you got paid by the word, your financial problems would be over. 

    Read your posts and think about it and maybe evaluate what you said and evaluate your life.

    You spent all this time writing this stuff.  You're telling me how much you know.  You're telling me how you had these people who had so much talent.

    Reality check - you are at a weekly newspaper. You are at a disadvantage if you apply to a daily newspaper. You are pretty much at the bottom of the food chain - I don't say that to be mean but that's the way it is.

    If somebody is at a daily newspaper and are making $22,000 a year after their first year, they shouldn't be offended by my comments they should be offended by their publisher. It might be one thing to start somebody low, but once they can do the job you have to show some respect.

    No, you don't need a masters in El Paso, Texas. Texas is one of the lowest states for teachers salaries. The salary I quoted was for a starting teacher with a BA.

    You want my answer about a hiring decision? I'd find another job where it would be important and I wouldn't be paying a professional with experience $25,000. I wouldn't spend about six long posts defending a system which takes pride in underpaying journalists.

    You have a loser's mentality. You make ridiculous arguments abut ridiculous examples. Like I say, change starts from within. If anybody can do the job, then it isn't worth much money. I tell people when I go to cover a football game on Friday night, anybody can write what I write. What they can't do is do it as quickly as I can do it. That's the difference - we can turn a story in 20 or 25 minutes. It doesn't matter if a person is "remarkably talented" or has a "nuanced style of writing and reporting".

    You are either part of the problem or part of the solution.
     
  7. Mystery_Meat

    Mystery_Meat Guest

    Um ... okay?
     
  8. Lollygaggers

    Lollygaggers Member

    I'm surprised I haven't heard the dreaded 'u' word yet (that's 'union', in case you were wondering) because that seems like it's what a lot of people want, but you just aren't willing to say it. There are already papers out there with guilds, and if you feel so strongly, work your way to one of them. There are also some papers that are owned by quality companies (i.e. Cox and NYTRNG) that pay very fair salaries and provide great benefits. This is more of a company to company thing than a total blanket condemnation of the entire newspaper industry. I like the idea of making salary information readily available and speaking up about what you think you deserve, but that's something that should be done at an individual or sports section level. We don't need some kind of 'movement' to right all the wrongs we are enduring in a profession we freely chose to join and freely can choose to leave.
     
  9. it took me 20 years unti i finally make $10 over my age, and then i finally got there.

    and yet i'm still getting screwed by fair market value for what i do...........not living large, but doing ok.

    so i would say this: tell your boss you know you're not getting fair market value, and you heard it from an industry analyst that's very prominent on this subject.

    wait for him/her to ask the name of that analyst.

    then lean back and say: Heywood Jablome.

    hell, it can't hurt. tell 'em you read it right here.

    i got your back on this one..........
     
  10. Mystery_Meat

    Mystery_Meat Guest

    I see you weren't quite done up there. Fair enough. When I made that hiring decision, I was the sports editor at a small daily, and yes, the two people for the position I had a hand in hiring would have been spectacular additions, both of them. Y'know, just because I'm at a weekly paper NOW doesn't mean I couldn't have been at bigger papers before this (by the by, thanks for reminding me that it's not the New York Times; I was wondering why people in the office were looking at me funny when I asked why our presence in the Middle East was so lacking). And I've gotten an interview with a daily newspaper in the last week with one for a second paper likely on the way, so I guess I overcame the disadvantage somehow. But please, feel free to look down your nose at me because I don't snap-to to your worldview.

    So when you say they're bad journalists with no self-respect, they should take their angst out elsewhere? The raise a first-year reporter gets is the one that comes with a job at a bigger paper. Rarely do people want to stay at their first paper unless it's a perfect fit.

    Again, their job is intense and stressful and sometimes dangerous, and whether we like it or not, they have more of an impact on our future than we do. So it makes sense they get paid more than we do as a whole.

    God above, you CANNOT be this dense in real life. You're going to quit your job instead of making the hiring decision, in the process delivering a self-righetous and pious lecture to anyone who doesn't agree with you. Yeah, that'll solve EVERYTHING. Why didn't I think of that?

    How about this: I wish there was this button, and when you hit it, everyone gets paid what they deserve. You seem to think the answer is that easy and obvious, and of course it's not, but you're only going to listen to what you want to listen to, namely that writers don't get paid due to a conspiracy of newspaper management twirling their evil mustaches and rubbing their hands in glee at the prospect of keeping you dressed in barrels and sleeping under newspapers. There's plenty to bitch about when it comes to management, but if we agree to a salary, then we don't really have a lot of leverage to affect change when we realize that hey, our salary isn't that good!

    Tell you what. I have a 2000 Jeep Grand Cherokee in front of my apartment. 100,000 miles, just hit that mark on the way to the aformentioned job interview. Blue book is probably like 8 or 9,000 bucks, I haven't looked. Got a new battery installed by the fine folks at Advance Auto Parts. I'll sell it to you for $20,000, because if you get a better deal, clearly that means you're getting a lesser car.

    At what point did I say ANYONE could do the job? Oh right, I didn't, but again, you're listening to what you want to hear, even if that means you have to dub over the other voices. I said that if you have three people who can do the job equally well, and one demands $40,000 while the other two will do it for $25,000, you'd be a fucking fool to hire the $40,000 person. And in the real world, anyone who makes a hiring decision is likely going to agree.

    Or I can be a dispassionate observer who tries to get both sides of the story instead of whining about how it's unfair that I don't get the money I think I deserve and that we need to force people to pay us better. I guess that's what passes for a "winner's mentality".
     
  11. If you think a fresh college grad can do your job as well as you ... then you need to do better.
    (I know there are many outstanding grads with talent oozing out of their ears, but experience sure means a lot).

    Let me give some more advice: the supply and demand thing is true. And there are jobs in the newsroom where supply does NOT equal demand. You might want to think about those.
     
  12. Mystery_Meat

    Mystery_Meat Guest

    SportsDesigner: Depends on the job. A college grad, with extremely rare exceptions like Jeff Darlington or Chris Snow, cannot be competitive in a big-boy job search. But they can be right there in an entry-level job against someone with enough experience to warrant thousands of dollars more.
     
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