rethink

This post by Kristine Lowe is critical to starting this discussion. I'm curious about the implications:

...It is rather worrying when you can earn more delivering newspapers than cranking out the copy that makes them worthwhile reading.

In Norway, the best paid newspaper delivery folks at Aftenposten, earn about £65 – 75K – that's much more than your average journalist in this country. Apparently you have to work hard for that money, but even in a normal full time job you earn about £30 – 35K delivering morning and afternoon editions of the paper– still more than what many a journalist can bring home each year....

Speculation: shoddy research, soapboxing to make the job worthwhile, pointless articles and a preference to report the same stupid celebrity-based story everybody else is running.

There is a, well, she is actually a columnist not quite the same, in my hometown. Based on what she writes, she has either been given absolute free reign in her column or the paper hired her to constantly stir up racist sentiments. It would be hard to offer a guess as to how much they pay her, but I am positive it's not much. Assuming they have just given her free reign with the column, (as opposed to requiring that she write (well) on relevant newsworthy topics), I would guess that she had significant leverage in this decision, considering (and I am assuming, but it is highly likely that the assumption is true) she's basically writing the articles for free.

Probably a bad example, mainly because she is a small-time columnist, but I think this could- and probably does- apply to some degree on a large scale. Kind of like the Burger King employee who stares at you like a moron from across the counter because he wasn't assigned a register until you give up and leave without ordering (haha, yeah, great example, this is another personal experience); can you really blame him when he is 1. not enabled to do the job properly, anyway, and 2. has no incentive whatsoever to do the job when his paycheck probably doesn't cover the gas required to get to work.

But, eh, what do I know?

I wonder if it is the case that the market never has a clue how to value those who provide information. We certainly know how to value those who provide manual labor and technical expertise, but knowing generally is looked upon as a type of leisure, it seems.

Ashok wrote:but knowing generally is looked upon as a type of leisure, it seems.

That is definitely true. And nobody has time to find out.

Hello everyone this is my first post on this forum. On the subject of unpaid journalists you might like to check out http://www.digitaljournal.com/. This website is a online newpaper/forum that covers Mainstream and or Interesting news. The journalists (of which i am one) are paid very small amount of money ranging form 20 to 200 dollar a month depending on the quality and quantity of articals that they write. This website i would consider , provides accurate good quality news despite the fact its reporters are paid next to nothing.

Sorry about the spelling i know its terrible.