Low pay, tough working conditions takes toll on journalism

Jimmer Fredette takes another step toward making 2024 Olympics

By Ken Tingley

My son and I were in a meeting recently with another professional. He asked my son how he landed his job at the World War II Museum in New Orleans.

My son’s answer surprised me,

He said he was leaning toward going into journalism until his internship at the Gettysburg National Military Park. That was the game-changer for him. It showed him there was a path toward a career in history.

Up until then, he had built a resume that would have made him an attractive candidate for newspaper employment. He had done an internship at The Gazette in Schenectady and worked a summer free-lancing for me at The Post-Star. His work on the experiences of local Vietnam War veterans along with another Post-Star reporter won them a New York State Publishers Award.

He was a good writer.

By his senior year of college he was co-editor of the school newspaper and was a part of a team investigating how his college handled sexual assaults on campus. It was good reporting on an important issue. He was the kind of person we needed in journalism.

But his father was worried.

I was going on my fourth decade in newspapers. Each day of work was different, challenging, invigorating and I looked forward every morning to going back to work and making a difference in my little corner of the world.

While I would do it all over again, I wasn’t sure I could recommend a career in journalism to my son.

The business model for newspapers changed. Resources were eroding.

The big corporations had taken on too much debt. For the last five years of my career, the newspaper suffered through layoffs and cutbacks to the news operation that made it more difficult to do the job and be effective in our community. Our newsroom, which once employed more than 45 people, was down to a dozen.

I told my son I would support him if he went into journalism, but I wasn’t sure there was a good future there.

It turns out I was not alone in that advice.

Matthew Powers and Sandra Vera-Zambrano, two college professors, had been studying another problem with journalism - keeping and maintaining young journalists. Their new book “The Journalism Predicament: Difficult choices in declining profession” explores that problem.

When they asked veteran journalists if they would do it again, like me, most said they would, but they also could not recommend the field to their children.

I listened to the pair talk about their new book on the “It’s all journalism” podcast recently. They talked about a profession plagued by chronic low pay - especially at the smallest  newspapers - stressful work conditions, long hours, a listless interest from the public and sometimes even open hostility to the work they do.

It resonated with my last five years in the business.

Yet, at its core, the authors found a “self-conviction every day that what journalists do is worth what they’re doing.”

That resonated with me as well.

“They’re waking up in the morning and thinking, `I get low pay, I don’t get good conditions, people don’t like me,” Vera-Zambrano said. “I do many things for them and I don’t get much recognition, but it’s worth it.”

But they also found the numbers disturbing. Some 40 percent of journalists had walked away from the profession during their first decade on the job. They weren’t laid off, they left voluntarily. That is a high rate of attrition.

Powers said he found journalists face a struggle every day to convince themselves that it is all worth it.

Over the years, I saw the problem play out repeatedly with the young journalists we hired. We had an extremely talented young photographer with a master’s degree who was struggling to get by on his entry-level salary. He finally resigned. He said he was going back to school to be an X-ray technician. He told me he calculated what he wanted out of life and realized he would never be able to have a house, family or go on vacation if he stayed in newspapers.

Another reporter was struggling as well, but he handled it in a different way. He was hooked on newspapers. During his two days off, he worked at one of the local outlet stores to help make ends meet. He is still working in newspapers, today.

Many of our top female journalists left for other jobs once they started families. They needed more time at home and more money.

The authors point out that single journalists in their 20s often do quite well, but once they reach their 30s and are faced with questions of whether to continue in their career or pursue a family. They often rethink their career.

There has been plenty of discussion about funding models, journalism platforms and technologies, how to identify fake news and misinformation but no one is talking about who will be the reporters and editors of the future.

It has become increasingly difficult to find good candidates to fill the jobs available in community journalism.

The good news is that while 40 percent of journalists never make it beyond that first decade, 60 percent did. When the authors asked veteran journalists what they would like that would make their job better, they almost always responded, “Give us the resources that we can do work we have pride in.”

“That puzzled us,” Powered said. “It showed us the way journalists are always perpetual optimists . They wouldn’t even bother to ask for more money.”

That resonated with me as well.

As long as I was able to do good work, work that made a difference in the community, the job was rewarding. When that became difficult, that’s when I started thinking about retirement.

As he considered his post-graduation plans, my son contemplated getting his master’s at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Journalism.

Eventually, one of his professors alerted him to the possibility of getting a master’s in public history and going to work for the National Park Service at any number of historic sites around the country. Places like Gettysburg.

That appealed to the long-time history nerd in my son. It was a loss for journalism. I’m sure there are hundreds of others we have lost along the way as well.

That’s the next crisis in journalism.

https://itsalljournalism.com/589-why-would-anyone-still-want-to-be-a-journalist/

Jimmer-Mania

Jimmer Fredette continues to make strides toward being an Olympian in the Paris Olympics.

Fredette led Team Miami to the championship of the 3X3 International Cup in Sacramento over the weekend.

It advances his team to the FIBA 3x3 Masters tournament Oct. 22-23 in Chengdu, China. Fredette is currently a top prospect for the USA Men’s 3x3 National Team for the Paris Olympic Games in 2024.

Fredette said that his goal is making the Olympic team and not an NBA comeback.