Rant: This business is not that tough

Agree. 100 percent.

 

My brother and I graduated from college with the same year. My brother got a job as a teacher in Podunkville, working days, with the weekends off making $32,500 a year. He also coached basketball. Make that $34,500. He also taught summer school since he had summers off and holidays, make that $37,000 a year. Oh yeah, he also coached track, $39,000 a year.

So yeah he did some extracurricular stuff, but still worked less at many points than I did at my first gig.

Anyway, my first gig in podunkvill $19,800. No overtime pay. Three days vacation, after the first year (none in the first year) some holidays- had to work Thanksgiving though and cover for a news writer. So anyway, my brother with the same degree basically B.A. from the same school, made 20 grand more than me in our first years working, with more time off, more holidays, better benefits.

So fuck anyone who wants to compare the two professions and fuck anyone who think it is easy. You don't get to cover a beat in a heated room, or press box when you double as the photog and you have to stand on the snowy, rainy field and take pictures, and then sit in your wet clothes after for the 30 minute ride back to the office, and stay there until 2:30 a.m., because it's football Friday.

Yeah it'd be easier if you worked for a big metro, but the way things are going, those opportunities won't exist for much longer.

 

I don't think this is a "tough" gig, but you find me a cop that's getting paid minimum wage and I'll feel better about looking myself in the mirror when I think about my pay grade.

 

Just talked to a cop the other day, he was making $80,000, not a chief either -- I never made that in the business. Teacher friend of mine makes $45K PART-TIME, another I know makes $60K full-time.

 

I'm also beginning to wonder if its better to do something else in the writing profession and be able to enjoy the sports. Something sucks about missing every major sporting event, and all of your team's big games because you are working.

 

I'm married to a wonderful elementary ed teacher. Her classes are hellish because more and more they are filled with future fucking felons.

She teaches second grade and the cops are frequent visitors.

She makes several thousand dollars more than I do and she deserves every bit and more.

But even she looks at my schedule, particularly when I come home and don't know what day it is or what town I blew in from or what town I'm off to next and says:

I could never handle that schedule.

 

Why?

 

Actually I'm thankful I no longer am transfixed in the fan sense of observing sports.

 

Weapons.

Drugs.

Physical behavior that is too violent for the teachers to control alone.

I love kids but don't have the patience to do her job.

 

As a part-time sports writer with a full-time non-sports, non-newspaper publishing job, I can see both sides.

On one hand, covering sports and writing about them is like not working compared to having a non-sports 9-to-5 office job. I happily cover high school sports at night for little money after 8-hour days and 40-hour weeks because I enjoy it so much. It's fun, and you can't say that about too many jobs.

On the other hand, many things about being a newspaper sports writer really suck.

1. There's almost no future in it because the newspaper industry is quickly dying. I think many major papers are going to be shutting down in the next six months. The ones that survive won't be good places to work.

2. The money is almost uniformly awful. It stinks not being able to afford housing, food, car, electric bills, etc., and to have to pinch pennies with tiny travel budgets. Living that way for too long wears you out. It's OK when you're 22. Not so much when you are 42.

3. There are way too many morons in newspaper management. More than in other industries, I think. Don't know why that is. They treat people like crap.

4. Some of the people you have to deal with in sports - parents, insane high school coaches and pro athletes, in particular - can be total a**holes. Again, more than in many other industries.

Sports writer is a great career and a terrible career at the same time.

Good luck to everyone out there.

 

Good observation, Reacher. I have wondered and wondered the same thing myself. My barstool theory is that we're in such a subjective business that who's good and who's bad, what's the best thing to do and what's the worst thing to do, all of it is just opinion with precious little loopback to hold the decision-maker accountable. Meanwhile, the business end of this profession doesn't understand the newsroom and frankly, doesn't take it all that seriously anyway.

So bad managers get promoted mostly for their ability to make their bosses feel good about themselves, and they can muddle along without any real days of reckoning. It's not like they're responsible for a certain level of sales revenue or anything. An award in some goofball contest every now and then seems good enough to the folks upstairs. Then they put on the music, take away a chair (or 30) and wait to see people scramble for assignments and job security when the music stops. Ta-dah!

 

Well yeah but when everything else about the job sucks too, what's the point. I'm about at that point right now, where I don't care anymore. Give me something to write or edit at a 9-5 gig, and I'll be happy.