“Journalists like to think of their work in moral or even sacred terms. With each new layoff or paper closing, they tell themselves that no business model could adequately compensate the holy work of enriching democratic society, speaking truth to power, and comforting the afflicted,” wrote Robert Picard, professor of media economics at Sweden’s Jonkoping University, a visiting fellow at the Reuters Institute at Oxford University. “Actually, journalists deserve low pay. Wages are compensation for value creation. And journalists simply aren’t creating much value these days.”
Of late, I’ve become more concerned about the future of journalism and current best practices, business models that may sustain the industry. Picard’s comments come from an opinion piece Tuesday in the Christian Science Monitor.
wages are rarely linked to actual value creation unless you own the business and manage it really well. If it creates value for people than your investment of time and money will pan out for you and be worth far more than you ever put into it. If not then you get in line and file for bankruptcy like all the rest of the failed companies. Job performance doesn’t alway connect with what a person is being paid. The company’s goal is to pay you just enough to get you to stay and do your job and not a penny more. One would hope that if you work really hard at creating that additional value that the owner will reap the reward for that he will be kind in turn and share some of that blessing. This isn’t always the case and it’s at their sole discretion on if they pass any on to you at all or keep it all for themselves as a reward for the risk they have taken to start a company and risk their own financial future to do it. Journalist as a trade have become really high paid bloggers. Bloggers that put a lot more effort into what they write and are generally accountable about getting sources and things that some bloggers done concern themselves with but its still the same. They create 300-1500 words on a given topic regularly and expect to make a livable wage even if no one reads their content. Maybe they should start a blog and see if they’re as good of a writer as they think.