In a terrific blog post, UC-Berkeley J-School adjunct Alan D Mutter equated dirt-cheap “filler” journalism — the fluffy kind performed for “exposure” or some pittance of a fee — with empty calories. That kind of content fills pages but offers nothing to local, state and national conversations and devalues quality journalism. And it’s why journalists should demand compensation equivalent to their time and labor, he argued.
Can I get an amen?
Mutter’s argument against devaluation is why I fear the marriage of big news outlets with local journalism schools. For example, The New York Times last month announced it was partnering with CUNY J-School to produce content for two of its hyperlocal ventures in Brooklyn. The J-school students will be responsible for reporting as well as recruiting citizen journalists, while their professors will keep editorial tabs on things.
It’s great that budding journalists will earn experience, but will they be paid fairly for their work? I hope so, but I won’t bet the bank on that one. Instead, the Times-CUNY arrangement smells like the exploitation of a relatively skilled labor force willing to work for nothing more than a byline, exposure and a good grade.
Teaching student and citizen journalists that craft and livelihood are incompatible is the wrong lesson. Instead, quality journalism should be rewarded, unless the craft is willing to lose true talent to higher-paying positions in marketing and public relations.
And what does this say about The New York Times, a company that pays its staff reporters $92,500 annually, according to The Newspaper Guild? It tells me they’re willing to offer good hyperlocal news, if only because it’s the publishing world’s revenue flavor of the month. But it also tells me they’re not willing to pay for reporters who will stick around after graduation.
Transient reporters aren’t good for any beat, but especially for the hyperlocal one. It takes time to develop contacts and to learn a neighborhood’s quirks. If a newsroom flushes that away with each graduating class, then any prospect for hardcore investigative reporting is lost.
Let’s teach student and citizen journalists the true value of their work.
Photo courtesy of Flickr user Stephen Poff.
Full disclosure: The New York Times isn’t the only publication working with journalism students and citizen journalists, but I do enjoy picking on them.
I think it’s important to separate students from other sorts of contributors. Graduate students in all sorts of fields work (eg as teachers and research assistants) for less than the going rate, because some of their compensation is non-monetary – they need that experience and those publications to get a real job later. There are some skills in which an apprenticeship period is necessary. It’s unrealistic to expect full compensation before you’re fully qualified, but also, there are some things you can’t learn just by sitting in a classroom listening to someone else talk.
And yes, I know that some graduate TAs in those other fields feel their situation is also unfair. But speaking as someone who has been on both sides of the arrangement, when it is done right, it works. The students leave school with a degree and a record to build a career on, aside from the money they were paid. They’re ahead of their fellow grads who don’t have that experience.
Of course, if the students running these sites are learning that they should expect the ‘citizen journalists’ to work for free… that’s another story.
Thanks, Wombat. Good points on TAs and other grad students who cut their teeth in apprenticeships. In my opinion, those people deserve fair pay too, something commensurate with their experience.
But a newsroom of underpaid apprentices isn’t fair to anyone — the apprentice, the news consumer, journalism in general. The only one who benefits from cheap labor is the publisher. And it’s my opinion that publishers don’t always place quality journalism high on their list of priorities.
I agree with “…equated dirt-cheap “filler” journalism — the fluffy kind performed for “exposure” or some pittance of a fee — with empty calories. That kind of content fills pages but offers nothing to local, state and national conversations and devalues quality journalism.” However, the problem with digitized news is that readers expect content ALL THE TIME, hence the death of the periodical, which I discussed in my blog post today. The awesome thing about print newspapers is that the content isn’t on 24/7, and readers expect less filler.
The 24-hour news cycle certainly has made crap out of journalism, but online news isn’t totally hung up on that. If there are no “breaking” or “developing” stories to post, editors just change the lead photo or tweak the headline to make it appear like there’s a new post.
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