Finally the answer: Why Journalists deserve low pay

Does what he's saying make journalists any different from most professions? When you go to a family doctor, is he or she rarely required to be more than adequate? Or lawyers or teachers or accountants?

Are there that many industries where most of the thousands of workers aren't comparable because they share a similar skill set?

Sorry, I just think this guy can mad-lib this speech, change a few words, and deliver it with equal accuracy at University of Oxford's "What's Wrong With Today's Tax Specialist" seminar next month.

 

I know it's easy to dismiss most of the claptrap he wrote, but there are nuggets of truth.

In 26 years in this business, how many times have I seen stories come in that looked like they could have been written by "anyone?" Hundreds. And while there is "value" in my being able to clean up the writing, the fact remains that the person who turned in the story never should have been hired . . . yet he was. And often, because "making deadline" > "getting it right", I am told to "just slap a head on it and send it" instead of fixing everything that needs to be fixed. And let's face it, "anyone" could have just slapped a head on it and sent it.

We say "anyone" can't do our jobs. Yet every day "anyone" is. Maybe they are bad stringers. Maybe they are people who have never covered a soccer game or tennis tournament who all of a sudden are covering these things because, well, somebody has to cover them. How many times has someone come on here and asked for advice because "I'm covering my first NASCAR race this weekend . . . "

Are that person's readers going to get educated, informative reporting from the race he's covering? Maybe. But I doubt it.

Several years ago the Miami Herald sent someone to cover the big tennis tournament on Key Biscayne. Included in this story was a note on how Anna Kournikova has "one of the best serves" on the women's tour.

Absolute nonsense, of course (maybe he meant "curves"). And any tennis fan reading such tripe would throw down the paper and say, "Why should I believe ANYTHING these educated, so-called, highly trained experts write?"

And it's only gotten worse as the truly knowledgable (and highly paid) veterans have been kicked to the curb.

 

First of all, the guy provided a first-rate lesson into why we are the professionals and deserve the good pay. Any academic asshole can sit down and spew out indecipherable crap like that. And it probably took him weeks and weeks to do it. Maybe months. Not many people can sit in a screaming arena of 70,000 people and pound out a well-written, factually correct 20-inch story in 20 minutes. That is why we deserve the money. I've been around a lot of people in my life and not many of them could hit three deadlines a night while editing 15 to 20 stories and writing headlines and cutlines on all of them either.

It always kills me when these people say oh well anyone can run a Google search. No, not anyone can. I've been around members of my own family (all highly educated with college degrees) who don't know how to do it properly to get the answer in two mouseclicks. Just take a look at other message boards or even e-mails from family and friends if you think everyone has the grammar and spelling skills we have. And no, spellcheck/grammar check on word or e-mail does not suffice. (In fact, I'm convinced that a bunch of the designers of the Microsoft products were high when they loaded this in since most of the grammar rules in there are flat-out wrong).

In fact, I'd challenge any idiot in our circulation area to come in and do my job at my level for a few nights. If you can do it, I'd happily hand over my paycheck. But since some of the people we hire who have journalism degrees can't even do it, I'm pretty sure a rank amateur can't. Please. These kinds of articles really piss me off.

 

Commoditized:

 

Absolutely. He just needed to hire a mediocre editor off the street to work on the copy.

 

Actually, I understood his point. Talent used to be required to gain access to a newspaper or a TV station the main on-ramps to mass media. Now, anyone can log on to a computer and have the same access as a Pulitzer winner. Traffic is congested, and it doesn't matter if you're a Porsche or '72 Vega, you're both going about the same speed.

 

I'm in the right lane, with my blinker on, wearing a floppy white fishing hat.

 

Umm, laugh all you want, but tell me where this is wrong?

Or this

 

You could say the same thing for many professions. Not very insightful.

 

No, but I think we (if not as a profession, then at least as a bulletin board) have become so balkanized in our thinking that we raise colors at any attack, regardless the skill or accuracy of the message. Take a look at the Wikipedia thread -- some folks were all but ready to drop their objections to waterboarding to punish the kid that fucked around with a Wiki entry1 while not making so much as a peep about those who fell for it.

I'm not a huge fan of the piece because it seeks a quantitative solution to what appears to be a qualitative problem. It is highly difficult and probably unwise to make a blanket assumption about the industry -- even if it's accurate -- and apply it to one property. Places where readers value the product because of prestige and quality (New York Times) or scarcity and familiarity (the Tinytown Times competing against nobody directly in established or new media) are going to prove this paper untrue. Others might. But as a broadside about the state of the industry? Not as compelling.

But there's legitimate points. One that stuck with me from the moment I read it is as follows:

Maybe this is the issue: There's more of a market for news than there is journalism. Since we no longer have the predominant hold on the info, we hope to attract readers with the way we present it. But more and more, we're going to have to adapt to a world where people are more willing to get information in 140-character bursts than 20-inch stories. And looking down on the former isn't going to bring people around to the latter. Easy to scream BLOGS! and reference Miss Lovely and Talented every time someone mentions Twitter, but we can't assume that because we're the quality option, we're going to win in the end or lose with dignity as the unwashed leave us for inferior sources. Turns out, the definition of quality isn't what it was 20 years ago -- or will be 20 months from now.


1 -- PROTIP: If someone famous just died, his or her Wiki entry has been vandalized. Repeatedly. That's what happens there. Never trust Wiki on its own, but double never trust someone's page in the minutes after they die. At least wait for the semi-protected lock to show up in the corner of the page to ward off the anon trolls.

 

I'm not saying this guy is right, but you can't help but feel expendable with all these mass layoffs happening and having to sit at home on your ass being furloughed and helpless.