Why I’m Glad I’m Not A Journalist, Part II

Remember when (and I) I said I was glad I didn’t go into journalism?  Here’s another reason why I’m glad I didn’t pursue it:  the pay sucks.

Via PopMatters.com:  According to the Annual Surveys of Journalism and Mass Communication, enrollment in journalism programs has increased every year since 1993.  In 2004, journalism schools sent over 52,000 graduates into an economy that supported only 66,000 news professionals.

I’d heard anecdotally that the journalism field was way overcrowded, but I’d never seen hard numbers before.  Wow. 

Those figures go a long way towards explaining the piss-poor pay that journalists get nowadays.   To be fair, a lot of students with journalism degrees want to go into PR, or advertising, or law, or other fields, so the “buyer’s market” explanation of poor entry-level reporter’s salaries doesn’t completely account for the current low salaries.  But I’m sure it has an impact.  Too many people competing for a limited number of jobs means very low salaries for the average job in that field.  And remember, the elite jobs in that field–network anchor, senior correspondent for a major newspaper or magazine–are very few and far between; there’s no guarantee that even a skilled journalist will have a shot at one of those positions in his lifetime.

I must say, though–and I admit it’s self-congratulatory for me to do so, but hey, it’s my blog–that when I was in high school I saw this coming.   The low salaries that I heard about when I interned at a central Kentucky TV station seemed not even remotely commensurate with the long hours, the holiday work, the non-existent vacation time…yet here were all these journalism students from the nearby schools, fighting for jobs there.  

I thought it was a trend, but then I backed off my instincts.  It’s just me, I reasoned at the time.  I just don’t have the drive to be a journalist–I’d hate working every weekend for such low pay, or interupting my tiny vacation to cover a story that’s not really important but has to be covered because the competition decided to cover it.  That’s what I told myself.   Those arguments came back to me  as I looked at the forums at Jim Romenesko’s Media News blog–the gossip site for professional journalists.  Turns out today’s journalists are fretting over the very same things I walked away from in high school. 

Check out this post by Charles Bingham, a veteran journalist laid off last year:

I started scanning JournalismJobs.com and similar sites to see what was out there. What I saw was shocking.  Even though my last wage was barely one where people could make ends meet in my town, it still was much higher than what most papers of the same size pay elsewhere in the country…For example, I found a couple of jobs in northern California that wanted someone with a degree and experience, and then only pay $15,000-$20,000 a year. Let me do the math, $15,000 a year works out to  $7.21 an hour.  The state of California has a minimum wage of $6.75, and  the city of San Francisco (within 100 miles of these jobs) has a city  minimum wage of $8.50.

For this we went to college?  The fry guy makes  more money.

An editor  posts:

I happen to know of a copy editor job at a small daily not far from where I live that will pay a maximum of $13 an hour to an experienced candidate. Before withholding and other deductions, that’s $520 for a 40-hour week, $31,200 for a year. Lop off 20 percent for federal income tax withholding, Social Security, Medicare, local taxes, benefits, parking and other deductions, and I’ll be making $24,960. Subtract $500 a month in rent, and I’m down to $18,960. Knock off another $200 a month in car payments, $300 a month for groceries, $200 a month for utilities, and I’m down to $10,560. That’s what I have left for everything else — including kids, which clearly I would be unwise to have….

The same poster points out the effect low salaries have on the quality of reporting:

Only people who have absolutely no other options in life would choose to live that kind of life under those kinds of strictures.  Is that who you want to hire…?  People whose skill levels (or, God forbid, lifestyle choices) have left them in destitute entry-leveldom?  Because those are the only kinds of people who are applying for those jobs.

I know… A few years ago, I was the editor of a small paper and sorted through an ever-thinning sheaf of depressingly bottom-of-the-barrel resumes for a reporter job for which I could pay no more than $11 an hour (budget constraints, you know). And, with no better options, I got what we paid for — poor-performing, attitude-addled malcontents who didn’t think “writing” was such hard work with so many annoying little rules about how to do it…The kind of people you would want to hire — experienced, self-managing talents — have too many better options to be reduced to seriously considering working nights and weekends for $13 an hour (or much less, as is often the case).  They can go into PR, or into Internet work, or technical writing, or freelancing, or fast-food management. They don’t need crap-paying jobs for buck-squeezing publishers.

In the same forum, a reporter at the Orlando Sentinel suggests adopting a subsistence lifestyle, apparently oblivious to the reality that the salaries which require one live that lifestyle are not likely to go up.  Corporate ownership of the news media drives a bean-counting bottom-line mentality that results in poor salaries and we-only-cover-a-story-if-it-helps-profits editorial philosophy.  Combine that with oversupply of eager young journalists, the latest wave of mergers and layoffs,  and the fact that the under-40s ignore traditional media in favor of Internet news sources, and you can see why no one  in the traditional media feels the need to raise base salaries. 

It’s a short-sighted strategy on the part of old media, because the smart reporters have decided that it’s time to get a new gig.   Some abandon journalism entirely (see Bingham’s post above) for more fertile ground.   Others come up with a side business–the smart ones pick a business that allows them to sell their original content while maintaining IP control.  Witness Nina Munk, whose UrbanHound.com website is expanding even as she continues her career as a freelancer for national magazines (see this feature on her at the NY Times web site). 

But by and large the salary picture is pretty grim for journalists, at least in traditional media.  Like  most American factory jobs, the days where a journalist could work for the same newspaper or magazine for forty years until retirement–and get decent pay doing so–are over.   The inability of traditional media to adapt to the rise of new technology is driving down salaries, and driving their talent into other areas–and hastening old media’s demise.

Once again, I’m so glad I didn’t go into journalism. 

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