Pay at a small town daily

What do you think is the going hourly rate for part time sports staff at a small town daily?

Most places I've freelanced for pay their guys around $40 for a prep story which usually breaks down to at least $10/hour

Any references or thoughts that can help me negotiate a wage until I find a full time deal?

 

Negotiate? That's funny. You don't have much leverage as you need them as much as they need you. Small papers aren't looking for masterpieces. They want a few hundred words that's readable.

 

Find out what your local McDonald's pays. Then subtract 50 cents.

 

I wish this was sarcasm, but it seems about right in this instance from what's being offered.

 

Consider yourself lucky to get $40.

A lot of smaller papers will top out at $30-35. That's what one of my last papers paid and we were a 20K daily.

 

Shit, I wouldn't even put my keys in the ignition to cover a game for $30. Ridiculous.

 

Anything under $50 to cover a game is offensive.

But that's reality these days...

 

I gave up freelancing for the local paper after I moved because they were too cheap. The funny part is the ME wonders why no one wants to string.

 

The aforementioned $30 at the above paper I mentioned was also about 10 years ago. Not sure what they are paying now, although you can't go much lower.

It was a Paxton paper.

Believe it or not, they actually relied on correspondent copy a ton. Some days it would be about 50 percent freelance-contributed. Which just means it was poorly managed.

 

Write for Patch instead.

 

The pay is so low for our stringers at my paper that I don't even recruit good writers to do it. It's embarrasing what I'm allowed to offer them. I've taken $10 out of my wallet before to make it even palatable.

Our photo stringers get paid by the photo, so I make sure to run an extra picture they took as a standalone on jump pages just to make their trip worthwhile.

You'd better like going to games just for the fun of it if you string for my paper. it's sad.

 

To the topic this was originally, a full-time employee who is just starting out at a small daily should expect $11-13 and hour. If you are part-time I would downgrade it to $10-12.