What do you make?

That's awesome. And encouraging. Good for you!

 

On paper, I make decent money for where I live.
Given the number of hours I work, the daily headaches and dealing with upper management, I don't even want to know what it would come out to on an hourly basis. My problem is two-fold: I don't know how to do anything else; I still occasionally love what I do.

 

Against my better judgment, I'll bite... I'm an NFL beat writer for one of the nation's larger papers. I make about $69K. I have about 15 years of experience. It's been a long road to get here, and I often hate the hours and unreasonable expectations of the job, but I realize I'm really fortunate.

 

Forgive the tangent, but what does everyone get paid for mileage?
Our paper was sold recently and the new owners whacked the mileage rate from a respectable 45 cents per mile, to 21 cents. Even by newspaper standards it feels low. We were getting 25 cents back in the early 2000s and that was low then.
They claim they use AAA data to come up with the number, but I think they're using the number from 1968. The most recent AAA number is almost 60 cents per mile.

 

Get all your co-workers together, each of you find the 60 cents a mile thing, print them out and send them multiple copies.

21 cents a mile is an insult. You're losing money going out to cover things.

 

If you file long form tax returns, you can deduct the difference between what your employer pays and what the federal government allows for mileage.

 

But can you do that if you take the standard deduction and don't itemize?

 

I get 45 cents a mile

 

For no reason whatsoever, I would have thought this would be higher. Still a really nice salary, but I would have assumed at least $80K, especially w/ the experience factor and the large paper factor.

 

Negative. They're banking on that when they throw that low-ball number. As a friend of mine in the community said when I told him about our poverty mileage rate.
"I couldn't fuel my lawnmower for that."
My mileage rate at a paper in 2003 was 5 cents better.

 

Then the reporters need to get together and tell the editors they're not going to go out and cover anything because they would be losing money instead of making money. They'll just report by phone.

Ridiculous? Of course. So is 21 cents a mile. Put it this way. Say you have to go cover something 10 miles out of town. 20 miles roundtrip. That's $4.20. That, depending on where you are and the time of year, may be one gallon of gas. Say you get 20 miles per gallon. All that reimbursement does is cover the gas. Doesn't cover maintainance, or, if necessary, tolls, or anything else.

 

There are always a few who would pay the newspaper for the chance to cover sports.