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A look at the local symposium debating the future of news in Chicago.
At the Chicago Journalism Town Hall today
communitymediaworkshop.org - 38 weeks ago - 2019 views
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City News Bureau was not staffed by elite, expert reporters, and neither are the majority of the city desks at newspapers across the country.
Virtually all are staffed by people from 0-5 years out of college. They make between $22k and $40k a year, and they do fine work.
You don't need Dan Rather to cover this week's Board of Ed meeting. And Dan Rather doesn't want to cover this week's Board of Ed meeting anyway.
Local news is not rocket science, and it's not as expensive as a NASA program. I don't know why people make this more complicated than it is.
For those of you wondering about whether I'd really back up my statements about the $2 million newsroom:
http://www.chitowndailynews.org/Ravings_from_the_editor/The_2_million_ne...
thanks so much for posting this at Windy Citizen, I'm sorry I just realized via Craig K that this lively debate is going on! As someone who started out in news and kinda gave up for a couple different reasons, I can't agree on the "bloated salaries" part.
In fact, I would say that while most of the conversation yesterday was about disruption--"we might not get paid anything for our work now!" it seems more like a continuation of a longterm trend--not paying journalists is like an age-old tradition.
Just one example: anyone remember all the court fights about freelancers not getting any rights to their words? Well, maybe that was 10 years ago now. Sure, you guys are right about the stars, but it's generally well known that the entry level salaries for news are actually even lower than for nonprofit work. Last time I checked at AJR, a couple years ago, starting salaries were like mid-20s.
The point is, news organizations have been sort of silly about things like rights to old archived stuff--it's almost impossible to get to it except at the library, or a library web site if you're authenticated --while they give the stuff away for free on a day to day basis. There's really no rationale, or rational idea, behind it. They have been miserly with their riches of online information, generally. And I say this knowing it's easy to criticize, not sure what I would do if I worked in a newsroom. so yesterday's event was a welcome break from just continuing to do the same things, which are not working.
Not at all. In fact, I would hope that makes you more entrepreneurial in your thinking.
There are all sorts of places out there who ARE making money on the web and are looking to hire people who can write stuff that they can sell advertising against or out to subscribers.
Example: http://blockshopper.com is one of the cleverest, most ruthless journalism startups out there. They pick a neighborhood, set up a journalist, and that person covers who's buying and selling houses in the area, stuff that's VERY "adertise-able" and also crazy interesting to people in that neighborhood. Also, it performs very well in Google searches because of all the addresses.
yesterday, Ars Technica was mentioned. They're based in Chicago. They're making money. They have opening for things like copy editors.
When I learn of these openings and pass them along to friends of mine, I get the sense that they don't think they're real jobs, because they're not at things called "newspapers" or "magazines." Those terms are going to keep losing weight while new things pop up, things that will want to hire good reporters.
I'm a Chicago journalist making a bit less than $40K—and I don't think it is a living wage. I recognize that I'm doing better than 99% of Americans and I feel lucky to have a job at all. But I've been living frugally for several years and I'm still struggling to pay off my student loans. I can't save enough for retirement. I could never afford to buy a (modest, not yuppified) apartment without my husband's $100K paycheck. And even with that, we don't know how we'll afford to raise one public-school-educated child. I don't expect $100K, but $50K after I've been in the field for several more years, if I've proven myself, would help a lot. Knowing I'll never, ever get a raise makes me want to jump ship at the first opportunity. I love my job, but not enough to give up on the rest of my life and face old age in poverty. Does that make me greedy?
Geoff, thanks for putting that together. There's another great post online about funding/structuring a journalism startup that people might find interesting:
"How I would staff a news startup"
http://www.runningdesign.com/2008/05/28/how-i-would-staff-a-news-startup...
1 developer
1 designer
3 reporters
1 editor/boss/jack of all trades
His thesis: Finding 6 incredible people is easier than finding 12. So start small and hire the people who will mesh.
Part 1 of the WBEZ audio recording (the part that doesn't have me making an @$$ of myself) is up and on the web:
http://www.chicagopublicradio.org/Content.aspx?audioID=32307
Read for Free, Pay for Print or Stuff
http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2009/02/read-for-free-pay-for-print-or-stu...
The discussion about micro-payments and "pay to read" goes round and round because it ignores a basic fact. Most people, most of the time, do not read newspapers. They view, scan and search newspapers. Selling words to viewers, scanners and searchers is hard, but since viewers and scanners are always background-searching for stuff they might need, selling them stuff is much easier.
Boy, I've got a long list of ways I'd try to make money if I was at the Tribune...and it's really tempting to share them here, but I'll hold off on that.
Instead I'll just say that Kiyoshi Martinez's post from earlier this week has some really strong suggestions in it
http://kiyoshimartinez.com/nerdlusus/2009/02/23/chicago-journalism-town-...
clk019, I think newspapers might realize that if they close up their papers to spiders and create a killer API instead, they can then start charging Google and anyone else who wants to drink their news for the privilege.
Example: someone could write a spider that captures every twitter message and stores it somewhere. But why do that when their API is so great? Sure, it costs money to use the API after a certain point, but it's faster and more dependable than trying to spider it all on your own.
Another blog post on the conference, this one from Chicago Tech Report: http://www.chicagotechreport.com/2009/02/chicago-journalism-town-hall-br...
Eric Zorn proposes a cable TV model: http://blogs.chicagotribune.com/news_columnists_ezorn/2009/02/rescuing-p...
The funny thing to me about yesterday's discussion was that the idea of providing content that people want played such a small role in things.
Sure it was mentioned a couple times that people want to watch the O'Reilly Factor to have their opinions reinforced, and that online agg sites link to the best stories and lets the fluff fall away.
But many people danced around the biggest issue - how can news agencies provide content that people want.
Online, print, broadcast, papyrus, smoke signals. None of it is any different than the two liter bottle of soda, or the aluminum can or the 20 oz bottle of soda that used to be only 16 oz until they added four more ounces for free for a limited time and you got so used to drinking it that they could then start charging you extra for it.
For me, the fundamental problem is today newspapers have tried to become all things to all people while losing sight of their mission. Largely, they have become unimaginative pieces of recycled content.
We need to offer celeb news, because that is what people want -- even though they have 4,000,000 others places to find it. We will be the authority on Jessica Simpson. Or cooking or gardening and on and on and on.
What can we offer people on the local level? And it doesn't need to be huge expose pieces exposing corruption and the ill will of politicians. It can be something as simple as a daily story that provides context to a reader and lets them know this is the way your local world is and this is how it affects you -- why you need to care.
From fulfilling that mission the big stuff flows - like the no bid contract that the school district approved for janitorial services? The fact that township government is costing Illinois taxpayers millions of dollars? How about that some suburban residents pay taxes to three school districts because of the antiquated way that districts are laid out?
Geoff's post on the $2 million newsroom is dead right. MWRD, city colleges meetings... It's bread and butter if done in an engaging manner. Scrapping the critics and columnists -- isn't everyone a blogger anyway these day -- is another way. The resources are there in today's newsroom if they are used in a smart and efficient way.
It's dangerous to box yourself in on salary like that. I think journalists should be paid what they're worth to the organization. If a journalist is writing impactful, game-changing, agenda-driving stories that put the paper's name on the tip of your tongue every morning...then a newspaper is within its rights to pay that person well, so they don't lose their services to a competitor, and so that person can feel adequately appreciated by his/her employer.
Or perhaps someone isn't writing stuff like that, but has a wealth of knowledge that enables others to write those pieces, a killer editor perhaps. You might want to pay that person well, too.
There are some very good reasons why you'd want to pay a reporter $100,000+/year.
What's happened though is that the metrics have shifted a bit. We now have other ways of measuring a reporter's contributions, how many pageviews they generate on the web, or how many backlinks their work gets from other sites. This is all trackable.
That's where someone like Bill Simmons at ESPN comes in. The guy writes about the Karate Kid and Boogie Nights in almost every column he hands in...but he has a massive, rabid fanbase that will check out anything he makes (I'm one of them). I've heard that ESPN pays him around $1 million mark. And you know what, if he's the top attraction on one of the top web sites on the web, he's arguably worth it.
So right now, there are probably people making over $100,000 who aren't pulling their weight based on these new metrics of "what matters." But 5 years from now, there will be far fewer of these people. If you're an MVP, you'll get paid like one. If you're not, you won't.
Fascinating discussion here. Thanks for linking to my blog post Brad, and I agree with Anna, it's good to see Eric Zorn commenting all over the place.
The $100k blows my mind too. As Frank said, think about all the people making far less than that who are vital to the news operation. This may sound off the wall, but anyone making $100k at a newspaper in this economy is downright greedy...do the right thing and ask for a pay cut, even though no one would ever do that.
This is very true. But I do sympathize with people on yesterday's panel drawing a distinction between advocacy and journalism. It's a messy topic, but if someone's writing about something out of a philanthropic interest or out of a believe in some greater cause, then they're skirting on advocacy pretty hard there. Advocacy journalism can be great stuff, but it can't be all there is on local sites.
One of the reasons why we're doing the Windy Citizen is to create a tool that can eventually send serious traffic numbers out of local sites, just like Digg or Reddit does for technology sites. With online advertising, a site needs to be hitting 3-4,000 readers/day in order to qualify for major ad networks with respectable payouts. That's a hard size to reach for a new, local site without some tools to help make it happen. If making the front page of the Windy Citizen can send you 3,000 readers, then you can get into some of these ad networks, make a little scratch and we might see less ranting and raving on local blogs and more original reporting and research popping up.
That's the goal, to make a community that can be part of the sort of future I want to see happen, one where dozens of small local sites are bringing new information to the web, the big papers are picking it up, linking to it or sharing ad revenue with the writers in exchange for publishing rights and the people who want to be ahead of the curve can find the original stuff here on the Citizen.
And that's why we love you!
Maybe journalists should take the entrepreneurial route and self-publish online. As was said at the forum yesterday, good content will get attention. And attention means links and links mean traffic. Traffic equals ad dollars.
I'd also add that journalists could apply for grant money to do investigative work that could enhance their entrepreneurial efforts.
I've noticed your blog getting regular mentions on Capitol Fax Report. Has your experience writing it these last few months changed your thinking on this or shown you anything?
It's going to get easier and easier for people to do just that. Right now though, it's only within reach for sites that target national or international communities of interest: basketball, programming, being a mom, celebrity gossip.
But it'll eventually get easier to "go local" for those who want to do that. Dunno when, but eventually this will trickle down.
well said.
Lisa, your comment reminded me of a book I read a few years back that's very relevant here: http://www.amazon.com/Strapped-Americas-30-Somethings-Cant-Ahead/dp/1400...
While I don't agree entirely with its suggestion that government should somehow pick up the slack, it's a worthwhile read that might at least make you realize that you're not alone.
Personally, if anyone gives a fig what my take is, I think there is WAY too much focus on going to a traditional 4-year university. As a result of this thinking, a college degree has beconme totally devalued to the point of needed a graduate degree to stand out in the employee pool. And for most people, more education = more debt and a longer period to dig oneself out and start to build a life such as getting married, buying a home, having children. I value the education I received, but I sometimes wonder if it was worth the 4 years of being out of the full-time workforce, racking up dept and then reaping almost no benefits financially speaking.
Sure, I enjoyed my liberal arts education. But it prepared me for nothing but heartache in the working world.
Thanks for sharing this. There's going to be a lot of blog posts written about yesterday's event. People are welcome to add them here as they turn up.
Kiyoshi Martinez, (the fellow Eric Zorn called into the Q&A off of Twitter to talk about advertising models): Chicago Journalism Town Hall: Ideas to help news organizations bring in revenue
Diane Aden Hayes blog post: Save Newspapers? Or let the dinosaurs die
Craig Kanally: The Gap Between Young and Old
Jesse Greenberg: Fumbling Through the Chicago Journalism Town Hall
I was following fairly closely yesterday till Carol Marin suggested everyone having a big hug. I am not 100% that hugs are going to get the Chicago Media out of its rut.
JBP
Hi John,
I think it was very valuable to have folks like her, John Calloway and Eric Zorn up there. They've been through a lot and seen a lot of the changes in the local news industry over time.
Here's another write-up of the event, from Chicago-based freelance journalist Ryan Blitstein: The Chicago Journalism Town Hall. Ryan's big point: He was expecting/hoping for more of a barcamp experience rather than a effort to converge on some single idea that would save things
And here's the Illinois Review's take on the event: http://illinoisreview.typepad.com/illinoisreview/2009/02/chicago-journal...
By the way, Eric Zorn is all over all these blog posts, commenting up a storm. Wonderful to see.
But the hugs? Why? Seems like a crazed fallback when you don't have anything of value to say, but still want your voice to be heard.
JBP
Post from Geoff Dougherty of Chi-Town Daily News - http://www.chitowndailynews.org/Ravings_from_the_editor/The_100000_quest...
Thanks for sharing that, Frank. Geoff's point about the average salary of a Chicago journalist ($40,000/year) is useful. I too was a bit surprised by the skepticism at sub-100,000 salaries.
That said, the idea that was being thrown around was for a city new bureau comprised of 12 elite, expert reporters. That'd be the gold standard and would probably require salaries over $40k. What Geoff's saying is that you don't need the gold standard of reporter to do the kind of "damage" a newsroom like this would be tasked with. It's more of a startup mentality.
I definitely hear that distinction, I think most of those folks aren't familiar with what kind of funding you can get for a non-profit operation. Salaries of over 40k for a 'program' position, our non-profit reporters, are pretty rare. That's the expectation when you're doing something as a public service, you're not in it for the money, and hey, 40k isn't bad at all. Foundations aren't, generally, giving out grants to organizations paying salaries much above that because their biggest concern is getting the job done.
I'm not saying that folks don't deserve to be fairly compensated, but I think that there is a bit of elitism going on at the highest levels that these things can't be pulled off on slim budgets.
I couldn't agree more. I can't even begin to fathom some of the bloated salaries that people are probably making in the top echelons of the Trib and the Sun-Times.
Frank, you're exactly right. There's an unspoken understanding among people of certain professions that they're not exactly going to make a bundle here, but they're doing worthwhile, important work and so they aren't as concerned with money. It's a culture common to many non-profits, social service agencies, healthcare workers, etc. I don't see why journalism can't adopt a similar culture.
Exactly. I work for the Daily News as a community organizer. I recruit volunteers, beg foundations for money, and get to talk to lovely folks like you. I don't know a single person working as an organizer that makes over 40k, and the expectation is that you probably never will. Again, I'm not saying that folks shouldn't be paid a fair wage, but that when you're doing something for the cause (e.g. providing information to the public to hold institutions accountable) you have to be willing to make some sacrifices (though never at the expense of your rights).
I think another part of this conversation is that for every 100K salary at the trib, there's a ton of folks making less that are just as vital to the news operation. There were too many voices left out of the conversation yesterday...
Frank, I can say as a recent Medill grad, none of my colleagues are making $40k. Most are unemployed or making way less than that. Those making a decent wage are the ones who gave up journalism and went back to doing whatever it is they did before they dropped a bunch of money on a journalism masters degree. The question is, how are you going to get new blood into the journalism industry if there aren't any jobs, let alone $40k jobs?
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