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Beat the Streak (not the MLB game)

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by Doc Holliday, Dec 13, 2015.

  1. Doc Holliday

    Doc Holliday Well-Known Member

    You know, I didn't even mention how my health insurance has gone up three times in the last five years and that my company sponsored retirement plan was killed off completely. There are other nickel and dime things that have been done to us as well. I'm not sure I could even do this job if I hadn't been especially good with my finances starting out. I don't see how someone with a family of four or more does this shit.
     
  2. John

    John Well-Known Member

    Before I quit my paper after seven years at the end of 2013, I'd gone more than 5 years without a raise. The company in my final few years there spent a fortune on a new press and new computers and phones for everyone, and I'm sure those things were needed to some degree, but it spent nothing on the people doing the work.

    I still recall with joy the moment I realized that I didn't have to do this anymore. It was during a 6 a.m. August preseason practice for the FCS team I covered like it was Alabama. It suddenly occurred to me that I had a dead-end job, and in that moment I knew I was done. A day later I told my SE that I was gone at the end of the season.

    If the paper had even offered a modest raise I might have stuck around, because I loved my job and I was really good at it, but I doubt it. And of course the SE didn't even try to get me one.
     
  3. Fredrick

    Fredrick Well-Known Member

    This thread should scare ALL folks in college majoring in Journalism right now to fricking GET OUT. Get your heads out of the sand, college kids. You are majoring in a profession where the person who signs your checks a.) is going to use his/her experience to hire you for pennies. b.) laugh all the way to the bank as you will never get a raise at said company. c.) work you 60 to 80 hours a week and pay you for 40. Oh there are ways they get you to do this. d.) if you are in sports, they'll make you do so many ridiculous things at the games you cover that you can't even enjoy an iota of the games. And if you managers say, "GOOD a writer should never 'enjoy' the games he/she covers, that's bullshit. Good reporters got in sports writing/editing because they read sports as a kid and got bit by the sports bug. It used to be you put up with all the bullshit office politics and all the bullshit stories you had to write partly because the games and the personalities were fun to cover. Now, the games are ruined by all the tweeting and minutia crap that goes into game coverage. If you want to be single all your life, fine, you might put together a vagabond newspaper/internet writer career. If you want a real life resembling ANY semblance of family, GET OUT NOW. You won't make any money and if you read this thread you'll see you'll never get a raise. You'll get no praise, only scorn and no financial gain at all. Considering you work 70 and get paid 40 you'll probably be making below minimum wage to start. Good luck with all that.
     
  4. TheSportsPredictor

    TheSportsPredictor Well-Known Member

    So how long since Frederick received a raise?
     
  5. SFIND

    SFIND Well-Known Member

    The last raise I got was the summer of 2010. My health insurance has gone up every year since 2012 (and will be going up again in a few weeks).

    I know it could be worse... my mother (an LPN) hasn't gotten a raise since 2005. Granted, she makes nearly double what I do.
     
  6. I Should Coco

    I Should Coco Well-Known Member

    Obviously, the key is for both parents to work.

    In our case, my wife is a teacher, and since I switched from reporting to desk work around the time we had our first child, we never had to pay for day care (a big positive). Of course, we also barely saw/see each other five days a week (a big negative).
     
  7. ChrisLong

    ChrisLong Well-Known Member

    Don't bother asking questions to Fredrick while he's at the 10 a.m. meeting.
     
  8. Bronco77

    Bronco77 Well-Known Member

    I've managed to receive raises every year since joining my current employer three years ago. But they've been minuscule (1 to 1.5 percent) and haven't been enough to offset the increases in health-insurance premiums at the company. And I'm still earning almost 25 percent less than my closing salary when my previous employer cut ties with me in 2008.

    Will have to check with friends of mine at Tribune papers, but I'm not sure they've gotten raises since the company declared bankruptcy under Zell's watch, which was about seven years ago.
     
  9. BTExpress

    BTExpress Well-Known Member

    Not sure about the last four years, but there were raises at the Sun-Sentinel in 2010. A very unexpected 3 percent bump for yours truly.

    Probably should have stayed there. But they pretty much told us in July 2011 that within a year our copy editing and page design was going to the centralized desk in Chicago (as happened with Newport News and Hartford previously). So I bolted. The outsourcing of our jobs never happened, though. Not sure why, although I did hear they had enormous problems when they took on Hartford.
     
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