Prep sports writer, Tallahassee, Fla.

I was given some inside info to stay away from this for various reasons. I'm still relatively new to the sports writing world, so why Gannett is so hated is a mystery to me. I've yet to break away from the weekly and bi-weekly papers, which I really need to do, but from advice, this doesn't sound worth an application.

 

Unless it's a JRC or CNHI or Morris pit of despair, if you're at a weekly, you should be jumping for joy at the chance to move to a decent-sized paper in the capital of a major state. God knows I would be.

 

So going to a Gannett pit of despair would be a worthy jump from one of those three?

 

From a non-daily? Unless you're at a paper with well above-average pay and/or you're content there, absolutely.

 

A paper this size should be paying at least 40K for its prep writer. Ya, I know it might be wishful thinking, but this isn't Podunk we're talking about. Tallahassee's a major city, fer cripes sake.

If lower salaries are the wave of the future in bigger cities, then we might all be in trouble.

 

I'm not disputing that salaries are low in this business, or that Tallahassee -- the capital of a big state, after all -- is a "major city."

But it's beyond a stretch to call the Democrat a major newspaper, at least by Florida standards. Courtesy of ABC:

DEMOCRAT, TALLAHASSEE (LEON CO.) AVG M (M-F) DLY 50,392
DEMOCRAT, TALLAHASSEE (LEON CO.) SAT M DLY 51,365
DEMOCRAT, TALLAHASSEE (LEON CO.) SUN DLY 62,804

Those numbers are smaller than Naples, Florida Today, Sarasota, Fort Myers, Pensacola, and Treasure Coast, to say nothing of Jacksonville, Palm Beach, Tampa, Orlando, St. Pete, The Sun-Sentinel and Miami.

Heck, El Nuevo Herald by itself claims more than 81,000 Monday-Friday readers.

 

This just in!

 

It's not a major paper in any sense. It takes about five minutes to read the rag now. I've seen weeklies with more depth and direction.
This is all you need to know: Steve Ellis is now the best writer in the department. He's a solid reporter, of course. But unless you like five-sentence, 80-word leads -- all connected by "And" -- he's a struggle to read.

 

Word is they are making a hire today

 

Impossible, they haven't even called me to set up an interview!

 

A boy can dream. But it's supply and demand, as usual. Every J-school in the country churns out a new class of recruits each year and those folks are competing for a dwindling number of jobs. And, oh yeah, they're willing to work for peanuts.

 

I wonder if the numbers being churned out by these journalism schools are rising or falling.

I can't believe these professors, many of whom got out themselves because they saw print journalism as a sinking ship, are feeding their students garbage about how it's the field into which one should go.