Comments on: Online journalism job titles, responsibilities and pay rates (Part 1 of 2)

By: Will Sullivan

Will Sullivan — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 04:09:04 +0000

Pat and Shawn, I absolutely agree with both your posts. Creative and curious people will be creative and curious, regardless if their employer wants to take advantage of that. It’s unfortunate we lose so many good people.

By: Pat Thornton

Pat Thornton — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 18:51:47 +0000

Shawn,

I use my blog and do additional Web work to keep my creative juices flowing. I also do freelance writing. At my job, there just isn’t that much room for creativity.

I have to post content to our Web site, select where contents goes and occasionally get to do something cool. But I, and a lot of people like me in the industry, feel there are not enough creative opportunities available to us online workers. Most editors at papers believe that only print people do anything creative. Us Web people are just around to put print content online.

My paper already lost one really talented Web person to another company because there just wasn’t enough freedom and creativity here. I don’t think it will be the last person either.

The Web staff often has some of the most talented and skilled people at a paper, but they do not get a lot of respect from the rest of the staff. This is probably mostly due to upper-level editors not understanding or really caring about the Web.

By: shawn smith

shawn smith — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 19:35:17 +0000

Great comment Hartnett. And really interesting post Will. I’d also be interested to see how this breaks down geographically (U.S.), but I know that wasn’t part of the survey. Nice point to the brain drain problem. I know this is something hounding some web workers. It’s sad too because I think some really talented people are either going to leave their companies or lose total motivation because 1) to learn something new they are told to do it out of their own pocket, like you said and 2) they’re too busy shoveling to really experiment and be creative. A lot of people would trade a little pay for just some more meaning in their job.

Talking with another web worker recently, I realized a lot of people turn to blogging and doing their own web work away from the site because they feel they aren’t getting anything back from the place they work. So the creativity that the online sites are pining for is actually walking away from them already, even if the jobs are still there.

See you at ONA!

By: William M. Hartnett

William M. Hartnett — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 16:01:07 +0000

I believe it was the philosopher Jay-Z who once said: “Pay us like you owe us for all those years that you hoed us.”