Columnist salaries

At the APSE convention over a decade ago (actually probably about 12 years ago), a former co-worker of mine who was pretty high up at one of the Florida Tribune Company papers told me that The Sentinel and Sun-Sentinel were going to pool their resources to hire DLB, but that DLB gave The Herald the chance to match and they did. The number that he said Tribune Co. offered was $350K. That may have included radio, I don't know.

Orlando then hired Bianchi away from the T-U, so I'd say Orlando wound up much better off in the long run and probably at about a third of the price.

As Riptide pointed out, this was before DLB's hiatus, so who knows what his deal is worth now.

 

If true, that is really excessive.

 

In the late 1990s, first-class air travel was a very popular perk that quite a few columnists got. I worked at a place where two columnists and a beat writer both had it in their deals. I know at one point they amended it to "of flights more than two hours" because it was being abused.