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Slate's Jack Shafer: Don't let writers go on TV

Discussion in 'Journalism topics only' started by wicked, Sep 8, 2010.

  1. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    When newspapers and magazines pay reporters living wages and promise a certain level of job security, then they can start telling people what and what they can't do, to this degree, for some extra money.

    Until then, no.

    Yeah, yeah, I know. Calling! Purity!

    This is a business for everyone else involved. There is no shame in reporters and writers looking at it that way, as well, so long as you aren't crossing ethical lines with conflicts of interest with sources and such.
     
  2. Joe Williams

    Joe Williams Well-Known Member

    The moonlighting mania began well before newspapers' lean and death-spiraling times, in terms of job security. Wages rarely have been great, often have been livable and -- irony -- for the people who do the most side radio/TV work, usually are closer to the top than the bottom of the newsroom pay scale.

    I don't blame the money-grubbers themselves, since we all want more, more, MORE. Though I do admire those who acknowledge that they'd be cheating the primary job and decline such gigs.

    I blame bosses who fail to assert the newspaper's primacy in these situations, not just in total work hours but in availability in particular day parts and in the example it sets for those lower in the staff pecking order. If the folks with premium duties and pay don't work as hard as or harder than the clerks and preps folks, too much can unravel.

    Giving away the newspaper's product for their own personal profit, for marginal benefit to the paper? That's on my list too, but not at top.

    Also, Dick, there are a lot of businesses where the bosses speak up if someone's second or third job starts to infringe on the day job. I see too many newspaper editors failing to do that. Afraid of the star? Goose-pimply at having a multimedia star aboard? Deluded into overrating the promotional benefit? Grow up and do your jobs, bosses. The rest of your staff is watching.
     
  3. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    "Money-grubbers"?

    I love it. A reporter at the New York Times or Time probably makes less than a first-year investment banker or consultant with an MBA or 25-year-old big city lawyer. But because they aren't pulling poverty wages and still apologizing for it, they are money-grubbers seeking "more, more, MORE."

    This is the only business I've ever heard of in which its most talented people - some of the most talented people, by the way, in any business - are supposed to feel guilty about not working for free. It's utterly ridiculous.
     
  4. Joe Williams

    Joe Williams Well-Known Member

    No one holds a gun to anyone's head forcing them into the business.

    Once they enter, they respect the values and ethics, and don't cut corners. Social workers don't get paid much either, but that doesn't make it OK for them to go though their clients' wallets when they're out of the room.

    If you don't like the pay from the day job, get a different day job, Dick. Don't cheat it while chasing the other stuff. Go into investment banking. Your values seem more suited to it anyway.
     
  5. Ben_Hecht

    Ben_Hecht Active Member

    When the highly-paid brass at the majority of the nation's leading dailies have the guts
    to call out the scum at Goldman, etc., FOR REAL, and let the Devil take the hindmost . . .
    sure, I'll lay my body down for quarters.

    Not holding my breath. The monied circle-jerk is at its worst at the major TV
    networks, but print isn't immune.
     
  6. Twoback

    Twoback Active Member

    I'm so sick of this holier-than-thou crap about how those who do TV or radio on the side "cut corners."
    It's absolute crap.
    If corners are cut, those corners would be cut regardless. The "stars" you're talking about either have work ethic or they don't.
    Somebody want to tell me Bernie Micklasz isn't as hard-working as any sports hack in the country?
    And why doesn't any of this apply to those who write books?
    Having done minor broadcast and book writing on the side, I can tell you books take about 1000 times more effort and time.
     
  7. Joe Williams

    Joe Williams Well-Known Member

    I'm really puzzled by folks who willingly enter a profession, bitch about the pay, point with envy and resentment at others in other jobs or professions who might take home more money and use all that to rationalize cutting corners and more or less cheating the job.

    What's stopping you from getting out and doing something more lucrative? Did someone lie to you about the personal wealth enhancement of a career in newspapering? Are you locked in for 40 years just because you wanted to do it in your 20s or 30s? Do you bend or break other rules, codes or values as it suits you?

    I've been fed up with the newspaper industry for a long time, for a thousand reasons. All the usual suspects, most of all what I've seen as serial bad leadership. But if I ever felt I was underpaid, it was on me to seek a raise or a new job, or to get out. Not to start chasing second- or third-jobs while sloughing off on the first one.

    In other words, I think it's fine to hate the job, but it's not fine to cheat the job.

    But as I noted above, it's really on editors to call people on that practice when they do it. Too many don't.
     
  8. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    Don't have to. I've been able to cobble together a nice living for myself through my regular gig, free-lancing, and so forth. Amazing to me that "selling out" used to be going into PR or law or getting an MBA. Now it's working outside journalism gigs to put food on the table.

    Enjoy being a martyr. I'll be busy saving for my childrens' college fund.
     
  9. Dick Whitman

    Dick Whitman Well-Known Member

    One thing I think that it is important to recognize, while this thread is still on my mind.

    A lot of us go into this business at 22 years old. We know that it doesn't pay well, at least relative to other professional pursuits, and we convince ourselves that we are OK with that. In fact, we might even revel in it. As long as we have a roof over our heads and an old beater to get from place to place, what does it matter?

    Then we get a little older. We marry. We have children. We want to buy a house - a home. We want to live in a nice town where those children can be well-educated. We want to send them to college. We want to save for retirement. We begin to think about things that we didn't have to think about at age 22. Things that cost money. More money than newspapers pay.

    But guys like Joe want to hold us to the "values" that we committed to way back at age 22, when we didn't have a care or responsibility in the world. Otherwise, we're "selling out." You're right, Joe, and everyone else who has made a similar post through the years. We did know that this wasn't a high-paying profession when we went into it. But, having never paid a bill or supported a family, we had absolutely no idea what that really meant, on the ground.

    With that in mind, to start playing the "values" and sell-out card is just completely, completely unfair.
     
  10. friend of the friendless

    friend of the friendless Active Member

    Sir,

    I'll play along.

    Why?

    Self-serving answer: Because anyone who digs deep enough to do a decent book (not an as-told-to, but a properly reported sports non-fiction) almost certainly is professional enough not to short his day-to-day job. That is, broadcast hits are easy and lucrative and they give a sense of entitlement to those who will lapse from lazy to shiftless. With books, no one lazy needs to apply. Most people, industrious or not, find books hardly worth the time and effort. And it's not really entitlement that the book writer comes away with--more like accomplishment. No one begrudges you something hard.

    Indisputable answer: Books don't qualify as your employer's competition.

    YHS, etc
     
  11. Stitch

    Stitch Active Member

    Management loves the exposure writers on TV bring, whatever it's worth. Kind of like how management trumpets awards their paper gets, even though at least 90 percent of the readers don't care.
     
  12. Now thankful that I did a few TV things when I worked for a newspaper because it has given me a basis for survival in the aftermath of the death of the paper I worked for, I wonder if there is really any difference between doing free lance work for a magazine and doing a TV or radio thing. After all, the reason you are asked to do either is because of your knowledge you have gained by working for your newspaper, and it's not by using the expertise to write an article for another publication is proviidng any tangible benefit for your primary employer.
    Now understand, I am not against doing free lance.
    I am just wondering with a serious curiosity if you would approve writing for a magazine or another newspaper and why you would find that more acceptable than doing something on radio or television.
     
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