Is it worth it anymore?

$18/hour? Wow. That's really, really good money for the work.

 

Not really but it does pay the bills. The job isn't easy. My sister did it for 1990 and 2000 and swore never to do it again.

 

Not so fast. Know that number because that's what I heard they're paying for outside workers in Trenton. Want that? With NO bennies?

 

*does math on benefits*

That's better than I make now by a bit, though without the job security. And given that what I do is theoretically skilled work that I went to school for, the fact that they are comparable seems pretty good.

 

No. It's not.

I cannot wait to leave this profession.

 

Is it worth it? Probably not.
I, too, know what it's like to spend 95 percent of my time paginating, running agate, taking prep calls, dealing with readers angry at us because their cable carrrier doesn't offer Peachtree TV (or they can't find it), blah, blah, blah.
In my case I've been doing it for 22 years and don't know how to do anything else.
So I'll keep doing it until the shop and/or industry goes teats up.
Unlike Drip I haven't dug ditches, but I have loaded and unloaded trucks full of tires. Will do it again if I have to, but it's not a dream.
The thing is, for most of us, this is a vocation and a passion, even though management has turned it into a job. Bitching about things won't help, although I fully intend to continue bitching about it on a daily basis because that's how I roll.

 

Some days it's worth it. Some days it's not. Seen one of my papers merged, one closed and now I'm at one that's trying a whole new way of doing business and crossing fingers it works. Some days, when I'm working weekends or holidays and everyone else is out having fun, I wish I worked in a different business. Some days, like Election Night or when we're putting a corrupt mayor in jail, I know I still have one of the greatest jobs in the world. So I'll stay, until they turn out the lights or I find something as fulfilling.

 

That's precisely it. All we have time for is the nuts and bolts. We're so understaffed that there's no way we can have someone spend a week on a project story any more.

 

Everytime I think, "my industry is the worst", I think of all of my friends and members of my family who are going through similar bullshit in their industries in jobs they never really loved to begin with.

Maybe, in a way, that makes it better for them. There's not the emotional investment involved.

 

No, it's not.

But there are no other jobs out there, so you'd better hang on to the one you have as long as you can.

 

Yea, I grew up hoping to do five people's jobs and getting paid one person's shitty salary.

The more maddening thing about this business is that most of us have bachelor's degrees, and the national average salary for someone with a bachelor's is close to $50K. Don't know too many sports writers, let alone editors making that.

 

Worth it?

Not in the current climate, and not with the future looking even more grim.