I've been out of the business for several years, and around 2021, I got a cold call from a former editor who was at a different paper and was hard up for a stringer to cover a high school football game. I really wasn't interested, but listened because we had a prior relationship.
He said they were willing to pay, for a game story and photos, for a game that was about 45 minutes away, the grand sum of $30. I was probably more polite than I should have been when I turned it down. He couldn't believe that $30 was a ridiculous price to expect someone to cover that for.
Anytime I get frustrated in my current non-newspaper world, I think of that.