Check out these job postings for six reporters (including Charlie Savage‘s replacement) and an assistant metro editor at the Boston Globe. (Thanks to Media Nation reader T.W.)
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Wow, how do people live in the Boston area on these payscales?
Are those salaries weekly, bi-weekly or monthly?
Scoop: Doesn’t say, but they’ve got to be weekly.
Your headline is “younger and cheaper”. What evidence do you present for “younger”? It seems to me that you are implying but not stating the correlation, which should get one a red mark in J-school. Besides, our representatives (who apparently have much more faith in the ability of law to change human behavior than I do) have made age discrimination illegal.Seriously, Dan, how are the pay grades determined, and are these pay rates lower than past practice?
Harry: These jobs are posted on the Guild Web site, so obviously the pay scales are in line with the current contract. I confess to assuming that management will be looking to fill most of those slots on the lower end of the scale. It’s possible that I’m wrong. It’s also possible that the sun will rise in the west tomorrow.
Ouch. I hope the better reporters and editors at some of the state’s smaller dailies don’t get wind of this. The advertised salaries are a heckuva lot better than you get on the North Shore, for instance.
Anon 1:39: Not sure how this changes anything. Folks at Mass. dailies and weeklies have been knocking on the Globe’s door since time immemorial.
Harry okay, so just “cheaper”. I thought it was a “downsize” but (this hadn’t explicitly occurred to me until this post) they’re replacing (relatively) expensive, experienced reporters with cheaper ones, who must have such qualifications as “typing”. Why “typing”–does the reporter have to work in the “steno pool” too? How about knowing how to run the mimeograph machine, making coffee, and taking dictation? Those are important too.
Actually, somebody told me way back in 1981 that the Globe’s pay scales were on the low end of U.S. major metropolitan dailies.You could survive on such pay scales by sharing a rental apartment or house with other people, or marrying a spouse who makes considerably more than you do. (And, yes, at some point that lifestyle DOES get old.)
Dan:Note that these listings are on the Guild site, not on an externally focused jobs board. Note also that there’s no address for applicants to send resumes – a presumption that the applicants are in-house. That’s in line with other things one hears these days out of Morrissey. Which is to say, I wouldn’t count on these being filled from outside the Globe; more likely it’s shuffling reporters from one beat to another, leaving holes somewhere at the bottom (local news, one fears).Jim
Jim: You could be on to something, but some of these look like near-entry-level positions.
Do these jobs even require a college degree? Do those pay scales represent a certain level of education and experience?That short description requiring applicants to “write coherently,” “gather facts,” and “typing” seem to indicate to me that even a regular blogger could apply for that job. Is this the future of newspapers? Professional editors monitoring blogger-type writers in the production of a major newspaper?
Check out job posting No. 102 on that link. The zone reporters make substantially less than the daily reporters.
These aren’t entry-level jobs, despite the reference to basic skills like typing. Check out the job listings from two years ago. The Globe used the exact same language.