You're looking at it from the owner side. I'm talking about the person looking for his first job. Two different POVs.
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MMJ Reporters in E. WA Making Less Than Working Fast Food
- Thread starter Kelly A
- Start date
You're looking at it from the owner side. I'm talking about the person looking for his first job. Two different POVs.
I'm looking at it from both sides in current times. The cost of living is much higher than it was when TV was the only game in town. Back in the day, going from intern to street reporter took several years because you needed to be ready. When you eventually became an actual reporter, you made a living wage. Now, if you make an audition demo and post it on YouTube with a link in your application, you're hired! So, then you have to decide whether you can make ends meet in an area with pretty severe seasonal weather conditions knowing full well that just about the time you start, you'll be immediately looking for something that pays more than a waitperson. Back in the day, a reporter even in a smaller market was guaranteed to make at least more than someone waiting tables.
Once again, you're talking about two different types of work. Would you take a job waiting tables if you couldn't make tips?
I was at a restaurant the other day where I ordered off my phone. I got to the table, there was a QR code there, I bring up the menu, and order from my phone. Someone brings the food from the kitchen. No tips. In a similar place, I picked up my own order. I'm my own waiter. This is a restaurant with a full bar, not fast food.
I'm comparing jobs that barely pay basic living wages, or not. It's simplistic to be sure, but if you receive adequate to good service by a human politely taking your order, delivering food to your table, monitors and refilling your drink, then you don't expect they should receive a tip considering their base hourly pay is much less than yours? If that's what you think, then your seemingly callous view on what people starting in any industry in times of higher costs of living should earn makes sense.
As I mentioned what surprises me, or maybe it shouldn't, is how you don't seem to care about the potential that going in the direction of MMA's off the street for Walmart Associate wages will likely degrade the overall news product.
I don't agree that taking one example from Yakima WA is representative for an entire industry. You should be happy that the state of Washington requires employers to pay $16 an hour. Because I promise you there are people working in radio in Alabama or somewhere in the south now making HALF as much. Why? Because they can. Plus there are a lot of people in government right now standing in the way of raising the minimum wage. The LAST thing they want to see is people in the news business making a living wage. They want to shut it all down.
Everybody is looking to cut their labor costs, whether it's restaurant owners to big box department stores. Those WalMart associates you talk about are taking jobs because the better paying stores were forced out of business by WalMart. It's a much bigger problem than you present.
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That $16 an hour would go twice as far here in the Midwest. But, there are many in broadcasting here making $8 an hour while Burger King pays $15 an hour.
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You likely know as well as anyone that the broadcast industry follows trends created by another. When I was the first to build a large CentralCasting operation among a station group, one of the requirements was that it wouldn't degrade the news product. Fast forward to today, and I can't think of a TV group that still has un-centralized master control and traffic functions.
The difference with tossing untrained reporters in front of a camera that they've set up is they likely look like reporters who are amateurs. There is a direct line in the viewer's eye between unprofessional-appearing talent and loss of reputation that will take any station takes years to recover from, if at all. If other smaller TV markets can get away with exploiting young inexperienced talent to work for non-living wages, they'll try it too if they haven't already. I maintain the problem with that theory is; that short-term savings can permanently damage TV news in smaller markets by also harming the product to save a buck.
But that's right, the quality of the product doesn't matter, nor do you seem to care about people who make less than you. But I'd bet you'd be the first to chortle while sitting in your recliner watching some green reporter stumbling through reporting a story.
I don't know. That's pretty conspiratorial thinking now, isn't it?
Nobody I know is looking at Yakima as a trendsetter. This is one TV station owned by a small owner in a small market. Period.
I guess things would be so much better if we had a minister of media who set hiring guidelines and wages for the industry. The unions try to do that, but when I was in AFTRA, they didn't ask me about my job qualifications. They just wanted my initiation fee.
For the most part, we have private media ownership. Those owners get to decide who goes on TV. The places I've worked have news directors who set the standards for new reporters. Maybe that doesn't exist in Yakima. Of course you could also work for KUOW where the staff is in AFTRA and they get state benefits.
I've been lucky to have never worked in small or even medium markets, and I never had to work in fast food or wait tables.
I just wanted to let that stand on its own.
It may have been earned privilege, but privilege it still is.
and most of the places ive worked dont even approach small markets.. lol
Buehlah and williston, ND... Ord, NE... Marks MS, Abbeville SC... and the smallest of them all.. where i am now.
Pay is fairly decent given the cost of living.
But in my particular, very unique one of a kind situation... theres alot of intangible benefits as well.
This is not to say I didn't work for minimum wage. I did for one year, but at the time I worked three different radio stations under three different names to make my car payments. Days, nights, and weekends. I know a guy doing the same exact thing now.
Exactly. And that money that we were paid, Scott---my $53k adjusted, your $75k adjusted....that wasn't end of the world money.
It simply allowed us to live like the adults we were, not bum money from Mom and Dad, not have to have five roommates, or worse, to have to live in our cars.
To live with dignity, have the wherewithal to have social lives, build relationships and not be neurotic. To live (to some degree) like the people we were bringing the news to every night.
So, today, 40-ish years later (less in your case), the fact that people in that field are doing more work for considerably less compensation---and let's not forget that their journalism or communications degrees likely saddled them with student loan debt---something we (mostly) didn't have in those days----is a very real problem.
As BigA says, we have choices to make---but if this is causing people who would otherwise be excellent journalists (which we desperately need) to enter other fields just so their address isn't "Blue Honda Civic, license number 9ABC123", that's a real shame.
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Once again, people seem to be basing their opinions on one station in Yakima. It might be helpful to look at a few other places:
These are averages. To me, 45K in West Virginia sounds like a lot of money. I wouldn't live there for 100K.
The average salary for “Journalist” gets dragged up by anchor salaries and veterans. And $45k is still eight grand less than I started at (adjusted) 43 years ago—-and thirty grand less than what Scott started at (adjusted).
---and in the right hand sidebar of the ZipRecruiter link you posted is this ad for a "Multi-Skilled Journalist" at the CBS O&O right here in Sacramento (market #20):
A temp gig paying $18-$25 an hour, depending on experience.
You're not going to make $50K doing temp work. It's temp work, not Walter Cronkite.
You want me to tell you that everyone in broadcasting is rich? At a time when Audacy is in bankruptcy? No.
It's not easy making money doing what you want to do. It doesn't matter what that job is. It's much easier working at UPS.
When I joined AFTRA, the initiation fee was a month's salary. Plus a percentage every week. That's the cost of making a good wage.
You can tell the difference here between who's actually been in these trenches and who's pontificating from above, can't you?
It's not just one station in Yakima. It's everywhere, not just smaller markets but the ones that used to be a second or third rung up the ladder.
As recently as 20 years ago, it was possible to come to a Buffalo or Rochester or Spokane or Boise with 5 or 10 years under your belt and build a nice reporting career in one town after that. I worked with a lot of people who pursued that path in the 80s and 90s. They knew everything and everyone in town, viewers knew them, and they ended up with decent houses and usually decent retirement plans.
If you actually talk to the people still grinding it out in the business now, instead of just relying on Indeed averages or whatever, you'll hear very quickly about how grim it is now.
Those bottom-rung jobs don't lead anywhere. Sure, you can go up in market size, but the pay is still incredibly bad, the contracts still only last two years and you're out, and you're still living with a roommate and doing DoorDash after hours to make ends meet.
You know where the ladder does end up leading? PR and marketing, mostly. I can't even count the number of good reporters I've known who have ended up in PR gigs after a few years... and then find themselves having to try to craft stories for the latest batch of new reporters who are 8 months into their stay in town and 16 months from leaving.
It's brutal in a way that's completely different from what Hagerty and I experienced in the 80s and 90s. You don't ever really have much opportunity to move up to something stable and meaningful no matter how hard you work. You burn out and you move on.
It's not just one station in Yakima. It's everywhere, not just smaller markets but the ones that used to be a second or third rung up the ladder.
As recently as 20 years ago, it was possible to come to a Buffalo or Rochester or Spokane or Boise with 5 or 10 years under your belt and build a nice reporting career in one town after that. I worked with a lot of people who pursued that path in the 80s and 90s. They knew everything and everyone in town, viewers knew them, and they ended up with decent houses and usually decent retirement plans.
If you actually talk to the people still grinding it out in the business now, instead of just relying on Indeed averages or whatever, you'll hear very quickly about how grim it is now.
Those bottom-rung jobs don't lead anywhere. Sure, you can go up in market size, but the pay is still incredibly bad, the contracts still only last two years and you're out, and you're still living with a roommate and doing DoorDash after hours to make ends meet.
You know where the ladder does end up leading? PR and marketing, mostly. I can't even count the number of good reporters I've known who have ended up in PR gigs after a few years... and then find themselves having to try to craft stories for the latest batch of new reporters who are 8 months into their stay in town and 16 months from leaving.
It's brutal in a way that's completely different from what Hagerty and I experienced in the 80s and 90s. You don't ever really have much opportunity to move up to something stable and meaningful no matter how hard you work. You burn out and you move on.
I've done both, thank you. Nobody forced me to do this. It was what I wanted to do, and I was the first person in my family to do it.
I spent time living in group houses, sleeping on the couch, all the horror stories everybody else has. But I'm still working in the trenches, except now I live a lot better. Is it grim for some people? I guess it is. I wouldn't want to do anything else. A day in radio is better than a day flipping burgers or delivering packages.
I worked for a guy who was once a TV reporter for NBC News, who left to take a job in government as a PR guy. So yes, PR people make good money, get good benefits, and don't have to work outdoors. Great job, but not for me. As I keep saying, we all have decisions to make.
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We're doing some real apples and oranges here. I quote an hourly, you jump to annual.
The figure is $18-$25 an hour for a CBS O&O in market #20. Bottom of the range is only one to two dollars an hour more than the range for the Tri-Cities gig that started this thread. Market #116.
I can tell you that $25 an hour would be considered poverty wages in this market.
Which is why people rack up student loan debt to get a Bachelor's in Journalism---to have that choice.
I'll agree with you here---a gig like the CBS Sacramento temp posting is a GREAT argument for unionizing.
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Going to radio in my area, a syndicated show was shown the door in favor of a local host, who voicetracks his show after his regular gig. Maybe doesn’t go with the regular topic, as it’s not his primary job, but this station and this gentleman are making it work.
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