How Much Do Bloggers Get Paid?

Take note, citizen journalists and mainstream media alike: bloggers get paid about $25 per post.

Or, in other words, at three posts per day, roughly $1,500 per month freelancing, according to an interesting article by ReadWriteWeb. And that's not including in-house or full-time bloggers:

Our respondents reported annual pay rates ranging from $45k and $55k with benefits (!) up to $70k, $80k and $90k with bonuses. We're tempted to say, based on the anonymously submitted but descriptive replies we got, that the closer to pure journalism our respondents were doing the lower their wages were.

What do you think? Is it enough, at 50-60 hours a week? Does this surprise you?

An Open Letter to Montclair State's Student Paper

Dear student journalists:

It is a terrible situation that the funds used to publish your newspaper have been frozen. It is unfair and done in complete disregard for our beloved First Amendment. The New York Times ponders if you'll be able to put out this week's paper; I say you will be. Here's how.

Students, you are a part of a generation that largely embraces technology, and though this is a far different crisis from that which happened at Virginia Tech, you can learn from their actions. When the going gets tough, and the printing presses aren't cooperating, go to the Internet. Your website, which is likely funded by the same source, is still live, and you have shown that you can still publish there. Continue to update it with images, and tell everyone who cares to listen.

Spread the word.

Tell your fellow students and Poynter Romenesko readers and New York Times readers that you have found an alternative source to continue your journalism, and it is on the Web. And if it so happens that your website access is pulled or denied, start a blog -- I suggest Montclarion.blogspot.com. In this age of citizen journalism, your words cannot be stifled -- just relocated.

Run with it -- post to your heart's content. Show everyone what you post, and repost the content that started this disagreement between you and your university's president, Ron Chicken, so that outsiders can understand the full extent of the conflict. Do not strike below the belt; do not play to "chicken" jokes. Keep your chins up and continue your journalism. And when the dust clears and the fight is over, you'll have been proud that you have upheld all of the values that fueled your desire to write for the student newspaper in the first place.

Good luck and Godspeed,
The Editorialiste.

Washington Post Swings At Citizen Journalism, Fouls Out

With a stomach full of turkey, The Editorialiste returns with a healthy dose of citizen journalism coverage.

In today's Washington Post, staff writer Jose Antonio Vargas reports on his own MSM versus citizen journalist tiff, backed by the words "anyone" and "Orwellian," among other things:

Aboard the crowded D train, rumbling into Brooklyn on the Manhattan Bridge, the inevitable rant explodes. A rant courtesy of Faye Anderson, whom we'll call Ms. CJ, a.k.a. Citizen Journalist. A rant directed at us, Mr. MSM, a.k.a. Mainstream Media, for all our perceived faults.

"It's not you, the journalist, it's the institution," Ms. CJ tells Mr. MSM. "You're not telling the whole story. . . . You've lost your credibility."

We listen, take notes, check if the tape recorder's working. No telling what Anderson might do if she's misquoted.

Phew! And they call citizen journalists the sassy, bile-spewing ones. Despite this retread of a story -- it is basically what this blog was originally founded upon -- it's put within the context of the 2008 election, and reads like a text version of CNN's now-canceled Crossfire. After intense discussion -- yes, still us versus them -- it ends this way:

On the night of the forum, Ms. CJ, sitting in the press room, wrote on her blog, "OK, I'm settled in and looking around. I see a lot of familiar faces from the mainstream media. As they deign to check out bloggers row, they may wonder who lets us in. I guess the debate about whether bloggers are journalists is over."

Says Anderson: "Look, everyone's trying to analyze what citizen journalism is, what its impact will be in this election. We, the citizen journalists, are figuring it out. You mainstream media folks are figuring it out. But whatever it is, there's no going back. We're here. Get used to it."

I don't know about you, but I'm disappointed. Why? Because this story has been published so very many times, and we're not any closer to closure on the issue. Hell, even I wrote this story -- two years ago. Are citizen journalists and big-J journalists ever going to get along?

Can't we just agree that the word journalism isn't exclusive? (But the word professional is.)

This article didn't add anything to advance discussion on this topic, and it sure didn't do anything for the reader. After all, isn't the reader a citizen journalist, then?

Think about this: As a reader of the Washington Post, you are reading that the Washington Post is having a hard time dealing with the fact that you, the reader, can indirectly contribute and shape it's coverage, and then you're being told that they're having a hard time dealing with that fact -- under the premise that it's news you should be reading. And yet, the "citizen journalists" in the article couldn't appear more distant from the reader.

In my book, the whole thing's backwards. Can someone e-mail WaPo and tell them not to write about citizen journalism anymore unless it's in the context of the reader? And while you're at it, tell them that self-coverage (like ProPublica) is irrelevant to non-pressheads?

Someone get Jay Rosen in here, stat.

Blogging Rick Santorum: Citizen Journalist, 'Snake Oil Peddler'

A big splash was made in Philadelphia last week: universally-hated and deposed former Sen. Rick Santorum began his first column for the rising-in-circulation Philadelphia Inquirer. And I can't help but think: you want a citizen journalist? You've got one, journalists.

While only an introductory column, Santorum proves to be clear and concise in his expectations and demands: He's conservative, the Inquirer and its readers are not, and by golly, can't we all just agree to disagree?

But this column, like many others -- the New York Press' Ed Koch column comes to mind -- are indicative of the on-the-fence citizen journalists of the world (well, the op/ed ones, anyway) -- they're not paid op/ed journalists, they're not faceless Joe Schmoes from next door, they're right in the middle -- people who are paid (or elected) to have opinions, just not for the paper.

A former senator like Santorum is educated in the politics of what he's experienced his entire elected career, but he's not "a big-J journalist" until he hangs it all up for his newspaper. And even then, he might not shake his old work history. Is Rick Santorum an op/ed citizen journalist if he backs his opinions up with researched fact?

Or does it matter that he was once a politician? Or that he's currently working for a think tank? How about if he gave up all of his ties and just started blogging?

I'm not sure. But this kind of informal legitimacy -- this fuzzy mental licensing of journalists -- is exactly at the heart of the citizen journalist debate. Hopefully, Santorum keeps to the facts and doesn't blow hot air without a fire behind it.

Aren't we all citizen journalists, by default?

Today's food for thought:

Who do journalists work for? Themselves, their employers, their readers, their country, their mothers?

Many journalists instinctually say the readers or listeners -- the citizens. But we're citizens, too.

So why do mainstream media, big-J journalists section themselves off -- i.e. "we're the journalists, they're the readers and listeners?" when we're all "citizens"?

Doesn't that make us citizen journalists, too, by definition?

Something to think about next time you hear someone talk about a "citizen journalist" as a separate entity.

Is Journalism Closer to Seduction or Betrayal? Are Bloggers Unifying?

I recently attended a discussion between journalists on what journalism's role is (for example: are journalists obligated to be the "verifier"? Do we need verification to produce journalism?) and how the journalist is supposed to play the field between the experts and the people. The forum, held at Columbia University, was a jump-off from discussion about the updated version of The Elements of Journalism.

Pretty heady stuff, as usual. We journalists just love to talk about ourselves.

But one question was posed that really perplexed me: Is journalism closer to seduction or betrayal?

The question, posed by longtime broadcast journalist and Columbia Journalism Vice Dean David Klatell, really threw me for a loop. Since when is journalism stuck between those two?

Klatell prefaced the question by explaining that every part of life contains some element of seduction or betrayal. We can be seduced by good food, or betrayed by a city council, or what have you. And I can see his point there. But is it possible for journalism to be stuck in between those two?

The question, posed among a slew of others, quickly was buried by a series of tangential responses and never really re-addressed. But the question was so interesting to me that I wished we were able to come back to it (we were not).

I personally think the question is slanted -- after all, why must journalism be stuck between the two? Can't it have elements of both (i.e. seducing a reader with a headline or lede, betraying a reader by not covering an important topic or not fully reporting a story)? Why one and not the other?

The whole question makes me uncomfortable, but maybe it's just me. What do you think?

Oh, and another question based on what, in my opinion, is a limiting assumption that didn't sit well with me from the discussion:

"Citizen journalists/bloggers are, for the first time in history, atomizing discussion instead of unifying it. Why?"

Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

If There Used To Be A 'Below The Belt' In Political Journalism, People Must Have Worn Belts Around Their Ankles

"There used to be a line between 'reportable' and 'keep this out of the papers,' but in recent years it's gotten rubbed out."

Is it just me, or does this strike you as naive?

These are the words of Matthew Felling, extracted from the CBS News blog. According to Felling, the media covers politicians much like the way celebrities like Lindsay Lohan are covered: Ruthlessly and nasty. He writes:

"There's no easy way to say this to candidates and their campaign staffs but to say it," Felling writes. "Put down your dog-eared copies of "The Boys on the Bus" and make The Smoking Gun your homepage.

"Media Darwinism is cruel."

Now I don't know about you, but political journalism has never been touch football. Often, when interests (or facts) contradict, it turns into a full-contact sport.

In this case, Felling is looking at the 2008 race, and he sees journalists ripping the candidates up for their personal lives. But he must remember that the lives of politicians have always been at the same level of scrutiny, and that in the Information Age, the political journalist may have more to write about because we know more about the candidate. As National Journal writer Carl Cannon writes, "YouTube, the blogs, and an unfettered cable culture did not exist in 1988 and 1992, the years that the privacy barriers came tumbling down. They do now."

Are the current candidates a crazier crop than ever before? No. We just aren't in the dark about it like we used to be. So it seems to me that political journalism is doing what it always has been -- covering politicians the way Us Weekly covers Lohan.

What is true is that political journalism goes through cycles, much in line with the state of worldy affairs at that time. An old post on Jay Rosen's PressThink blog notes the change over the last decade: "[10 years ago] there was a vacuum in journalism where political argument and imagination should be. Now there are signs that this absence of thought is ending."

So from time to time, political journalists get a little self-conscious. On the whole, however, they've been doing what they've always done.

Political journalism in America has gone on since (very nearly) Day One -- and I'm fairly sure George Washington was the Barack Obama -- or the David Beckham -- of his day. That is to say that celebrity and politics go hand in hand, and it would be impossible to state that the current way politicians are reported suddenly is without restraints that used to exist.

Have we forgotten about yellow journalism? Surely, such writing was sensational and at the time, very much "below the belt." But Felling seems to argue that we no longer charge such writing or coverage as out-of-bounds.

That, I suspect, may be because the Internet has come rushing into play -- and the average citizen journalist tends to be a bit more acerbic than the MSM reporter, at least directly.

Felling does note the influence of interest groups and YouTube and blogs on the voice of a political candidate. But he uses little proof to show that things have really changed. In one example, he mentions an Albequerque reporter who asked Bill Richardson if he had "a bimbo problem." Fifty, one hundred, two hundred years ago, that same question would have been asked by a reporter. People (and thus, reporters) are just as rough and forward and without decorum as they always have been. But in this age, there's the possibility that someone was able to record it, post it up on the web, and actually prove beyond an oral retelling that it actually happened.

So in terms of cruelty, political reporting seems to have always been the same. Likewise for political reporters. The difference this time is that we got it on tape. Scandal!

In his own words, "as a nostalgic media mind, I like living in the old days as much as anyone, but they're gone like the black and white of 'Pleasantville.' " I think, in this case, Felling undermines his own argument. He himself is looking back with rose-tinted glasses -- as he puts it, "recollect[ing] and romanticiz[ing] the past."

Has Citizen Journalism Become Elitist?

I was speaking with a colleague about Jay Rosen's NewAssignment.Net and Assignment Zero yesterday, and it struck me that I haven't yet seen much product from the much-hyped new way of doing journalism. In fact, I don't even know anyone who's involved in the project. And when I took a look at the sites this morning, all I could think about was how the big ship of Rosen's brand of citizen journalism was leaving port, and I wasn't on it.

What's more, I don't think I care, either. But I want to. Where's the disconnect?

Is the "new" citizen journalism really all it's cracked up to be?

It's not that I don't like citizen journalism -- part of this blog is dedicated to covering the phenomenon, and I'm all for it. But there's something limiting about this new form of grassroots participation. Does this new incarnation really have the level of involvement of, say, Wikipedia?

Could Wikipedia have succeded with deadlines and assignments?

Maybe a better idea would just simply be "Pressapedia" -- an ever-updating wiki that's moderated by the editors Rosen's hired. Then it would function solely as its own publication, and always be up to date (after all, no one wants a comment trashing their piece). It would, of course, police itself. (Which makes me wonder -- what if one of Assignment Zero's writers submits falsely reported information? Then what?)

For now, Assignment Zero is due out June 5, and it has struck a deal with Wired.com to run a piece by Jeff Howe. This too, makes me wonder, though I might have missed it when I read the original explanation for the project -- is Assignment Zero functioning as a newswire? A publication? Or just a freelance reporter with hundreds of brains?

Nevertheless, the more I look at the sites, the less "welcome" I feel in contributing to them. Hell, I'm graduating from the same Department of Journalism that Rosen works for -- why haven't I and my fellow classmates been recruited for such an endeavor? With all of these press releases and articles about it by other journalists (how meta), it's starting to feel more like a grassroots media corporation with a good marketing team than a grassroots reporting team.

I'm not trying to pick apart Rosen's new endeavor(s). I think they're a great new way of thinking -- I just don't feel compelled by them. And I like journalism.

How much of a splash could Assignment Zero have if it takes this long to put out a single story? In the world of round-the-clock news, could a slow turnover rate be the Achilles Heel of citizen journalism?

As my colleague said, it might work in theory -- but not in practice. We'll have to see in the coming months.

Tough Lesson In Ethics For Virginia Tech Student Reporters

College newspapers are a strange balance of the job and the hobby, where sometimes it can feel like making sure the newspaper gets on the stands is more important than anything else in the world.

But then some moment comes where it shatters every concern you had about the paper going out, and you suddenly feel like the newspaper is the least important thing in the world; an extracurricular hobby.

Death will do that. But yesterday, Virginia Tech student reporters showed us why they're the real deal, even in the face of expectation-shattering news.

Student reporters from the Collegiate Times at Virginia Tech showed us all the tenacity of a feeling of obligation to get the story out there yesterday when 32 students and staff were shot and killed on their campus.

The students didn't have to do anything. For approximately two hours, there was an armed student prowling campus and it was within every right to have ran for the hills for their own safety.

Yet they stayed, and they reported. And they are some of the unsung heroes of yesterday's tragedy.

With server down, the Collegiate Times continued to update on their parent company's website, wire- (and some might say blog-) style. National news outlets quoted the editor-in-chief, who had one reporter in one of the buildings in question. And I'm not sure who broke the first news, but I distinctly remember the New York Times quoting Collegiate Times reports early yesterday, when it was thought that only one person had been shot and killed.

Some of their friends could have been victims. And for a time, a threat was still present. Yet the reporters typed on.

A hobby? I don't know. Something surely must have banded those students together; some imperceptible ethical obligation to inform their students. And combined with some of the citizen journalism that happened -- the cameraphone video footage from the Middle Eastern graduate student, for example -- the way the MSM collected first reports from the campus (before the AP arrived) was indicative of how those people on the ground alter breaking news coverage.

Yesterday's coverage taught a lesson; what it is, I don't know yet. But what I do know is that those Collegiate Times kids should be given some sort of Collegiate Pulitzer Prize for continuing to break news better -- and faster -- than the other media outlets. They did their campus community a huge public service and they should be commended.