Thursday, June 02, 2005

Standalone journalists and salaries

There's a piece in Folio magazine about the multi-skilled, multi-talented, multimedia types that do the work of many at small magazines. The writer of the Folio article concentrates on the role of such people in production. I tend to think of the true value of the standalone journalist as his ability to produce news for different media -- video, print, audio and electronic.
Either way...both of us agree that this is the future.
I've said before that the traditional journalist -- tied to one set of skills in one medium -- is becoming obsolete. I wouldn't hire someone who can only write or only operate a camera or only design for the Web.
And there are indications that the marketplace agrees. Take a look at this salary survey from Mediabistro. Click on the section about the Northeast. You'll see that jobs in online/new media, where the software-based skills of multimedia are the norm, are paying considerably more than one-medium gigs in trade newsletters, local newspapers, local TV news, professional journals or the wire services.

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