Digest 05/09/2022

Lower your salary expectations (or don't), BuzzFeed News contract news, WNYC exhales, and more.

GREAT SALARY EXPECTATIONS

Last week, a survey published in April by Real Estate Witch reignited conversations about salary transparency in media. The survey (somewhat hysterically) claims that “journalism students, in particular, are the most delusional” when it comes to money, “expecting $107,040 just a year after they graduate — 139% more than the median journalist’s starting salary.”

It should be noted that the survey isn’t very robust. Between March 23-26, 2022, the group surveyed “one thousand people who identified as college students pursuing a bachelor’s degree” so its conjectures are only as strong as the honesty of its fairly limited response pool. The survey, I should remind you, was also carried out by Real Estate Witch, a real estate site that doesn’t have (as far as I know) any preeminence in the studying 21-year-olds department. 

But the survey’s middling reliability didn’t stop people from using Twitter’s quote-tweet function as an all-night dunkathon, and many media workers shook their heavy heads at the naivetë of stupid idiot kids today. Eventually, dunking on hypothetical 21-year-olds turned into a similarly testy but more grounded conversation about salary transparency and the elusive six-figure salary in journalism.

“this isn’t a realistic starting salary, but i (& most of my peers in media) crossed the six figure line around 6-8 years in,” tweeted Alex Sujong Laughlin about journalism students’ supposed great expectations. Laughlin declined my request for comment. 

Laughlin’s tweet inspired some grumbling, particularly from local news writers describing salaries in the low-to-mid five figures even after six years of work. But some media workers based in New York City seemed to confirm that they reached six-figure incomes less than a decade after beginning their careers. Laughlin later clarified that she has never received a six-figure salary, but brought in six figures last year by teaching two courses in addition to working full-time. It’s fair to say that reaching the six-figure line around six-to-eight years in media is possible for workers with multiple jobs, especially when you remind yourself that income doesn’t necessarily mean salary (read Study Hall’s state of freelance reports for more on how a six-figure media income isn’t necessarily mythological, but does require an amount of hustling and support). 

The discussion around both salary expectations and real-world salary benchmarks seemed to be sprinkled with asterisks, so Study Hall reached out to writers about what they’ve made during their career and how it squared with their expectations. Kate, a reporter whose name was changed for this newsletter, told me she now makes $90,000 with a $9,000 signing bonus and an additional fifteen percent performance bonus after five years of media-related work, though this wasn’t what she expected.

“Honestly, I never imagined I would make this much money,” Kate told me. “When I was graduating college [in 2018], I gave up on the idea of working in media because it seemed like the only way to do it was to work at Condé Nast and live in NYC and get paid below a living wage. And I don’t have family money, so that wasn’t really a good idea.” 

Kate’s turning point came during the pandemic, when she started freelancing full-time and discovered that she could earn a living wage on her own terms. “Suddenly, I was making more as a freelancer than I had in past jobs?” she said. Then, freelancing gave way to her current full-time job, which she says “just sort of happened and, honestly, I am shocked at how much I get paid. But also, I’m like, ‘hey, I deserve it,’ and I wish more publications valued writers this way.” 

Anthony, another writer whose name was changed for this article, told me that he “always knew journalism didn’t pay well, so I was looking to get into PR, but I figured that journalism would strengthen my skills to go into PR.” He ended up never making the switch — a promotion and piqued interest kept him right where he was in journalism. Even after his promotion, though, he made less than $50,000, and used freelance assignments to beef up his salary while keeping his overall workweek to a manageable 35-or-so hours. 

“My salary expectations were like… $40,000 to start, and I hoped I would get to around $80,000 by the time I’m the age I am now (30),” Anthony told me. “In my current contract, though, I’ve eclipsed my salary expectations for the time I was 30.” He’s been working in media for seven years, and has held an array of media positions, including freelance news writer and branded content writer. 

For the sake of transparency, I currently make $62,000 under the minimum staff writer salary designated by G/O Media’s most recent contract, and $500 per newsletter for Study Hall. Please don’t yell at me, but this is fairly in line with my salary expectations two years out of school. I also live with my boyfriend, a data engineer who makes $119,500, whose salary I include here because I could not pay my rent or eat as much Kewpie Mayo as I do without his financial contributions to our household. 

This is the part where I’m supposed to talk about how I make more money than either of my Immigrant Parents™ and my debt pile and a sad story from my childhood, but I don’t think it’s helpful to make financial stability — something people with working class backgrounds push themselves to achieve — shameful. If we want media workers to be honest about what they make and how they made it, we have to stop upholding struggle as an inevitable part of the gig. But because of the pushback to her original tweet, Laughlin eventually shared details of her financial situation growing up. 

“that i have broken this barrier is evidence that it’s possible to do so, and all i want is for more people to be able to follow,” she tweeted.

Of course, Laughlin shouldn’t have to share intimate details about her financial past for us all to agree with the bottom line that media work should pay well. 

“It’s sort of a fraternity hazing vibe to be like, ‘I suffered through bad media jobs, so you have to, too,’” Kate said about the negative response to Laughlin’s tweets. “I think it says a lot that I am reluctant to go on the record about my salary, because I feel like people might be mad about it or think I don’t deserve it.” 

We should be able to tell each other what we earn so we know our options and how to pursue them. Sometimes options can only be pursued through pure luck or working too hard, but just knowing that reality gives us the most accurate understanding of our industry at large. “To an extent, I did get lucky to randomly end up at a publication that pays really well and has good management, but I also worked hard,” Kate told me. “And if people like me shared their salaries, then I would’ve known that making $90,000 as a journalist is possible. Because I didn’t think it was before.” 

Knowing our options helps us most effectively choose our work and ask more from our employers. Workers should not be forced to lower their expectations; employers should be forced to set standards high. That said, there’s no salary benchmark for success, especially when attaining six figures in media currently seems to necessitate multiple jobs and melting the boundary between your personal and work life. Sacrificing your sense of self just to be able to work in media and pay your bills shouldn’t be a requirement, but it is curious that $100,000 or close to it should be so slippery in an industry that worships long hours, college degrees, and the most expensive cities in the world. At the end of the day, the monster under our beds isn’t Twitter or well-wishing undergrads, but the existing framework created to keep us down and apart. 

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COMINGS AND GOINGS

— After four years at BuzzFeed News, Hamed Aleaziz will join the LA Times as an immigration reporter.

— Candace Jackson has left The New York Times for her first TV staff writing job. 

— Justin Bower is now a Screen Rant writer. 

— Dustin Bailey is a staff writer at GamesRadar. 

— The Washington Post announced Kareem Fahim as its “Middle East bureau chief, a broad role with a regional mandate” on May 5. 

— Kay Steiger will be managing editor at Grid News (and she’s looking for a senior editor to fill her soon-to-be former role). 

— Kate Wilson is now managing editor of Vancouver Tech Journal. 

— Today is Daniel Milligan’s first day as managing digital producer at CTV News.  

— Worker-owned, New York City-focused publication Hell Gate now exists and will be available to read for free until “sometime this summer.” 

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EVERYTHING ELSE

— First, the good stuff. The BuzzFeed News Union announced that it ratified its first union contract on May 6. According to the Union’s statement, the “five-year contract includes a minimum salary floor of 60k that goes up 2.5% every year, and significant enhancement and expansion on buyouts and severance.” 

— Then, the hard-to-swallow pills. Civil Rights Corps founder and executive director Alec Karakatsanis wrote a fascinating thread on May 5 about a hearing that same day “into how San Francisco cops manipulate the media through ‘strategic communications.’” Karakatsanis later testified at the hearing about documents revealing details of SFPD’s relationship to media. Those documents included a “bombshell revelation” showing that the SFPD employs a “‘full-time videographer’ to make video glorifying SFPD,” Karakatsanis wrote. “The videographer costs taxpayers $120,941.” The thread is upsetting, especially one section depicting the overly-familiar texts between a San Francisco reporter and the SFPD director of strategic communications, who thanks God for the reporter’s “great segment.” But it’s also an informative window into how just one police department manipulates media, and – perhaps – also motivation for reporters hoping to push truth over propaganda. 

— Following its leak of Justice Samuel Alito’s draft majority opinion to overturn Roe v. Wade, Politico instructed its employees “to be vigilant about who enters elevators with them at the office, and to consider removing any personal details from social media accounts that identify them as Politico staff,” tweeted New York Times media reporter Katie Robertson.

— The New York Times held on to its pitiful style guide section for pronouns and wrote about Maia Kobabe’s book Gender Queer: A Memoir without using eir pronouns once. The Times did, however, use the pronouns e, eir, and em once to note that using them made Kobabe’s parents “confused at times.” “What’s literally the point of this???” asked journalist Tuck Woodstock, who brought attention to the article on Twitter.

— On May 2, NBC News announced that a review found 11 articles written by one of its reporters contained “passages from other news organizations that were used without attribution.” The articles are still up, but the plagiarized passages were removed, and an editor’s note specifying the content of each removed passage was added to all 11 articles. WNYC lets out an exhale following its confusing plagiarism mess because there’s a new plagiarism scandal in town. 

— This looks yummy to me.