What do you make?

I'm a reporter... Sports features mostly... 45K, but in California.

I'd anticipate that would be significantly less most other places. I think that's important to this whole conversation, where the location is that you work. 25K in middle America is a hell of a lot more than 25K on the coasts.

 

25K isn't much anywhere.

 

Sports "editor" at a 3K circ. weekly in the Midwest in mid-2000s: $9/hr., bumped to $10/hr. (I was told it was one of the biggest raises they'd ever given) after the first year
SE at a 7K PM daily in the Northwest in the mid-2000s: $11/hr.
Sports writer at a 13K daily farther west in the late 2000s: $19/hr. (union shop, so not an exact comparison)
SE/deputy chief copy editor/international news guy at a start-up daily in Jakarta in the late 2000s: $3,000/mo.
Copy editor at an established daily in Beijing in the early 2010s: $2,500/mo. (roughly as at least 70 percent of our pay had to be in yuan)

I make bupkis now as I've been unemployed for the last eight months, though I'm in the process of rectifying that. Not having a spouse or kids and leading a fairly boring lifestyle helped generate enough savings to allow me to get away with such idleness.

 

Quite a few of the SoCal papers — and there are only a few owners in that market nowadays — are still offering $30-$36K for experienced reporter and desker positions. If you're single and want to live without roommates, that's damn near impossible on that salary.

 

$9.75 an hour as sports editor at a 5k paper in 2009. Did that for 6 months. Work in editing at a department store giant now. Much happier.

 

First job out of college in 1991 went from about $8.25 to $9.10 three and a half years later.
Second job, $11 and change.
Third job, union shop, $28,500 up to $50,000 after six years. Did whatever I wanted but lived above my means and started racking up revolving credit card debt.
Fourth job, $20 an hour, making more than everyone else on the desk besides the SE and ASE. And making more than pretty much all the reporters — but way, way less than the well-known columnist.
Fifth and last job, $12.99 an hour to $13.68 an hour after two years.

 

Is there anyone who hasn't left the media industry and not improved themselves financially? I'm not talking about people who remain unemployed or even are working "in the meantime" jobs, but people who have gainful long-term careers.

 

Well, I quit a $44k a year media job to join the Peace Corps. That was at the end of 2007, and I've yet to find a "real" job.

Currently, I make about $200 a week (plus housing and food) in an AmeriCorps gig doing disaster relief. I work about 60 hours a week and I LOVE it. It was supposed to be until June but I've extended because it's the most fulfilling work I've ever done.

The next step is more real; in January or so I am lined up to join the foreign service and will be back to about $40k-$45k, plus housing and COLA and hardship post differentials.

 

Started at a 35k daily making about 8.25/hr, then moved on to my current gig at a large metro starting at about $27K. In 15 years I am up to about $52K, which is less than I made the previous couple of years after pay cuts and furloughs.

 

Excellent. The bar is set as to who can voluntarily take the biggest pay cut.

Who Dat!

 

And I LOVE my job right now. Don't lose sight of that.

I was treated like crap where I was before. Now, I am appreciated and my talents are being utilized. I can see the good I'm doing, and I am being thanked for my work. No price tag for that.

Money isn't everything. I have never had this amount of job satisfaction.

 

Props to you, KJIM.

I took almost a 40 percent pay cut -- I work in retail now -- from what I made in my last regular newspaper job, so also a pretty substantial drop -- but I can relate to what you're saying.

I didn't take my job as an answer to any nobler calling or because it was anything I dreamed about doing for a life experience, as I think people often do when they join the Peace Corps. Really, I did it because I just needed to work after long-term unemployment and sporadic freelancing, and I took what I could get.

But I, too, have found that while I "have" less than I've ever had in some material/financial respects, I am more relaxed, happy and content, I am far less anxious or stressed, and my work is appreciated and I am growing and developing as a person and an employee more than I did when I was in newspapers.

It could just be a timing thing and a matter of perspective -- a case of something happening when you're really ready for it. I believe there is probably something to that. But the thing is, it is happening, and it has occurred despite making less and being in a field that probably would be considered by most in the media profession to be a step down from where I once was.

But, more and more, I don't look at it that way.