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This is why (college) old media is failing

collegian.psu.edu

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Re: This is why (college) old media is failing

#51

Post by ZachPruckowski »

scott_s wrote: post #47
ZachPruckowski wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simultaneously, the advertisement is for the position in charge of their website and online presence (which is to say a decent portion of their operations), and is thus a fairly senior position. Stuff just gets more complicated when money's involved. It's one thing to ask for a hand with something you're not making money off of, and another thing to ask for free help on a project that's paying you.

I think you and others are looking at it from a normal business transactions perspective. College papers aren't a business. I would be surprised if their advertisement revenue even covered operation costs. Students work on college papers for the same reason they attend class: to learn. Also, I think you're using "senior" in a different manner than I. I'm using it to mean seniority, or length of time spent working on…

As a learning experience, this sounds fairly sub-par. Having just finished college, I'll say that the thing that made extra-curriculars a great learning experience was the ability to work with people who knew as much as or more than you. As a reporter at that paper, you'd get a lot of low-risk practice writing articles, and get advice and critiques from people with a few year's experience. By contrast, this job for the college paper would be throwing yourself into a position where others depend on you, and you have no one to learn from. It's all the difficulty of self-teaching and working with the safety net of a mentor, combined with all the responsibility of having dozens of other people depend on your work.

Re: This is why (college) old media is failing

#52

Post by starev »

ZachPruckowski wrote: post #23

I don't see how this is different from the real world. I see lots of ads for "Unpaid Internships" that want extensive knowledge of the field and expect you to already have the skills and experience the internship is supposed to teach you.

The difference is that you assume that the learning + industry experience + chance at a job later will make up for the not-being-paid. In this case, there is no potential for getting a foot in the door, no industry experience, and the 'learning' is questionable, particularly when you could use the same skills to make $25-50 an hour freelancing.

Re: This is why (college) old media is failing

#53

Post by sobriquet »

adelevie wrote: post #2

If the post confuses you, I'll try and clear a few things up. This paper is still giving stipends to editors and senior reporters. They can't take even a small cut in their stipends to provide a modest stipend for someone whose skills are exceedingly more marketable than the ability to write in AP-style.

At the Daily Bruin all interns were unpaid. Typically after 6-12 months of part-time work (in any editorial department) there was opportunity to move up to senior staff positions and earn a stipend. That staff would put in 40-80 weeks on top of a course load, earning $2-3 per hour. I think it's very fair to bring on an unpaid dev intern and then let them work towards the stipend just like editorial positions. I wouldn't be surprised if the paper also employs a full time sysadmin/dev, for a real wage.

Re: This is why (college) old media is failing

#54

Post by philk »

imack wrote: post #38
ZachPruckowski wrote: post #23

I don't see how this is different from the real world. I see lots of ads for "Unpaid Internships" that want extensive knowledge of the field and expect you to already have the skills and experience the internship is supposed to teach you.

My other favorite is looking for a technical person for whom they will "split the profits". Your local CraigsList "computer gigs" section will be filled with these. My favorite recent: "We are a couple of mompreneurs who are launching a business geared to moms. We are looking for someone, preferably a mom so you will already have knowledge of the target market, to help us with website design, online promotion etc. et…

That's hilarious. Doubtless they'll be offering a smaller share of the profits as they're bringing their all important idea to the table.

I think I'm going to try this stunt with every service I consume. "Yes, you see, you give me a haircut for free and then we split any resultant profits. 70-30, because the haircut was my idea".

Re: This is why (college) old media is failing

#55

Post by QNguyen »

sobriquet wrote: post #53
adelevie wrote: post #2

If the post confuses you, I'll try and clear a few things up. This paper is still giving stipends to editors and senior reporters. They can't take even a small cut in their stipends to provide a modest stipend for someone whose skills are exceedingly more marketable than the ability to write in AP-style.

At the Daily Bruin all interns were unpaid. Typically after 6-12 months of part-time work (in any editorial department) there was opportunity to move up to senior staff positions and earn a stipend. That staff would put in 40-80 weeks on top of a course load, earning $2-3 per hour. I think it's very fair to bring on an unpaid dev intern and then let them work towards the stipend just like editorial positions. I would…

I'm at UCLA now, and over the last few weeks I've seen front page classifieds for DB hiring front end and backend devs. They're definitely paid hourly (I think I saw 14/hour, but I may be wrong)

Re: This is why (college) old media is failing

#56

Post by afterburner »

adelevie wrote: post #8
morisy wrote: post #6

This ad is frighteningly similar to the ones out there in the real world at all but the most progressive papers, only difference is they pay a little bit better.

The problem is that tech people can go anywhere with their skills. They're not limited to journalism. This means that newsrooms should make it a priority to at least be somewhat competitive when it comes to hiring technical talent.

Exactly. For the aspiring journalists, working at the college paper is a sweet way to get an edge in the journalism world, something very few other jobs at that level can provide. For the web developer, this is merely one of thousands of opportunities, and holds no special lure for being the school paper. Clearly, the journalists/editors here are looking at it from their limited point of view. Given that, the tone of the ad is somewhat disrespectful ("you have to know everything, but we'll pay you nothing")

Re: This is why (college) old media is failing

#57

Post by afterburner »

imack wrote: post #38
ZachPruckowski wrote: post #23

I don't see how this is different from the real world. I see lots of ads for "Unpaid Internships" that want extensive knowledge of the field and expect you to already have the skills and experience the internship is supposed to teach you.

My other favorite is looking for a technical person for whom they will "split the profits". Your local CraigsList "computer gigs" section will be filled with these. My favorite recent: "We are a couple of mompreneurs who are launching a business geared to moms. We are looking for someone, preferably a mom so you will already have knowledge of the target market, to help us with website design, online promotion etc. et…

Maybe web developers can sell themselves as "Marketing specialists". There seems to be a higher expectation of good pay with that among the non-tech savvy...

Re: This is why (college) old media is failing

#58

Post by stjarnljuset »

QNguyen wrote: post #55
sobriquet wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the Daily Bruin all interns were unpaid. Typically after 6-12 months of part-time work (in any editorial department) there was opportunity to move up to senior staff positions and earn a stipend. That staff would put in 40-80 weeks on top of a course load, earning $2-3 per hour. I think it's very fair to bring on an unpaid dev intern and then let them work towards the stipend just like editorial positions. I would…

I'm at UCLA now, and over the last few weeks I've seen front page classifieds for DB hiring front end and backend devs. They're definitely paid hourly (I think I saw 14/hour, but I may be wrong)

Ha, I actually went out to grab a paper because I recalled seeing this too. Those ads were for Student Media which I guess Daily Bruin is a part of. It advertised "pay competitive with any on campus."

As for other other jobs on campus, I saw that the Volunteer Center was hiring "Wordpress programmers" for $19/hr a couple months ago.

Re: This is why (college) old media is failing

#59

Post by QNguyen »

stjarnljuset wrote: post #58
QNguyen wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm at UCLA now, and over the last few weeks I've seen front page classifieds for DB hiring front end and backend devs. They're definitely paid hourly (I think I saw 14/hour, but I may be wrong)

Ha, I actually went out to grab a paper because I recalled seeing this too. Those ads were for Student Media which I guess Daily Bruin is a part of. It advertised "pay competitive with any on campus." As for other other jobs on campus, I saw that the Volunteer Center was hiring "Wordpress programmers" for $19/hr a couple months ago.

Now I wish I had paid more attention in PIC 40A this quarter... By the way, UCLA HNers need to do a meet up

Re: This is why (college) old media is failing

#60

Post by andylei »

adelevie wrote: post #2

If the post confuses you, I'll try and clear a few things up. This paper is still giving stipends to editors and senior reporters. They can't take even a small cut in their stipends to provide a modest stipend for someone whose skills are exceedingly more marketable than the ability to write in AP-style.

College newspapers don't have much money these days. Print advertising is drying up and monetizing web content is not working well. At my college newspaper, we don't pay anybody, editors included, (although we do have financial aid), yet we have a dedicated web staff.

The newspaper isn't really different from any other club. It's a lot of work, but you don't join a club to get paid, you join to meet people, work on interesting problems, and learn about something different.

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