Jeff Jarvis: The days of "inflated paychecks" for journalists are over

Fine. Then we are the utility infielders, the 12th men, the special-teams meat. Largely replaceable, halfway expendable and lucky just to be employed given current market conditions, as far as the honchos see it.

 

Respectfully, people do buy the paper to see the ads. They also buy the paper to get the coupons. Read the comics and get a daily crossword/sudoko/word jumble.
They also read the articles.
But a purposeful (for lack of a better word) reader is entirely a different animal. Decision makers. Business leaders. People with a vested interest in a certain topic buy the paper to get and read and study the articles.
So you really have two different groups of readers and it's the second group, the people in the know, they are the ones you are trying to reach and that's how you prove your worth to the bosses upstairs.
I can make, right now, a compelling argument that the most-read, must-studied and most obsessed over regular item in the paper are the burglary reports that get printed.
If we were to eliminate that coverage, it might not be an immediate reaction, but when renewal time came up, the people who care, would cancel their subscriptions.

I kind of rambled, sorry, but, again, fuck Jeff Jarvis.

 

I think someone ordered a big bowl of dicks.

 

Hopefully that includes Jeff Jarvis, a guy who has NEVER ONCE accomplished anything noteworthy, yet has piled up huge consulting checks from newspaper companies including Newhouse.

And, no, I don't count "Buzz Machine", a website that is essentially a personal blog.

This is no bigger empty suit or paper tiger in media.

 

Jeff Jarvis, Mark Potts, Jay Rosen, etc., usually look at the very largest newspapers and then make their pronouncements for everyone else -- what applies to The New York Times applies to everyone else. Which is crazy and lazy, whether you're talking Web traffic or resources or salaries. None of them impresses me much with having done any homework.

In that rarefied air, some salaries can be shocking. An alt weekly in D.C. reported last year that a Washington Post copy desk chief was making $167,000 and that most AMEs made nearly $200,000. But to derive a blanket opinion from those figures would be silly.

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/display.php?id=35661

 

Too bad we couldn't have an across-the-board union where each and every paper in this country had to negotiate with one sole Writer's Guild in order to score content for its publications.

 

Is he talking about journalists, or the kid at the McDonald's drive thru? Under his terms, both are visible (look at me through the window, dammmmit. It's air conditioned in here), self-important (no ketchup for you), well-paying (OK, equal-paying), once-secure (actually, McDonald's isn't about to fold or go web only).

Target acquired. Preparing to launch F-bombs.

 

This clown can kiss my rosey-red ass.

I've been in the media in my small city for 25 years and I'll NEVER see the day when I make 40K a year.

I do what I do because I love being around young people, love being in the daily newspaper environment and I think I'm good at it. It also helps that I have a wife who makes about twice what I do. :

 

I have no idea what this blowhard is trying to say.

 

Lots of people look for ads too

 

Based on this idiot's logic, teachers are overpaid, too. All they're doing is passing on information to students.

 

That guy's a fucking moron.