This afternoon [Sept. 15] I met a young man, maybe in his mid-20s, who said he wants to be a writer. He said he was thinking of breaking into the profession by signing up with an organization called Textbroker. I looked it up. Its starting rate is 1.1 cents a word. That’s $11 for 1,000 words. You could make more money in less time plucking feathers from chicken carcasses.
I tell you this, Sunnies, to wash away any thought you might have that journalism will reliably provide you with a comfortable standard of living.
It might. You might be really good or really lucky or both. But journalism isn’t the profession it was when I graduated from Cornell in 1979. Back then, even small cities such as Danbury, Conn., and Pittsfield, Mass., had well-staffed newsrooms with frequent job openings. I know because I visited them looking for work in the winter of my senior year.
The first job I landed after college was with the Waterbury (Conn.) Republican and American. The morning and afternoon papers were unionized and I got a livable paycheck right from the start, enough to quickly pay off the loan on my used AMC Hornet. The next year I was hired by The Associated Press, also a union shop. I spent nine years there, in Albany, Rochester and New York City. After that I spent nearly 32 years at BusinessWeek and its successor, Bloomberg Businessweek. Bloomberg flew me to Davos three years in a row, business class. In 2021 I was hired by the Opinion section of The New York Times to write a newsletter on economics and business. That job, which paid very nicely, ended earlier this year. Now I’m freelancing for various publications, working on a book, and occasionally writing on Substack. (Please sign up for my newsletter. It’s free.)
I attribute my longevity in journalism in small part to skill and hard work and in large part to having gotten started in the right place at the right time. I hate to break it to you, but here today is neither the right place nor the right time.
So my advice to you is … write your hearts out! Write because you love everything about journalism. The smell of the glue pots. The red of the grease pencils. The chug-chug-chug of the teletype machines. (I’m dating myself.)
Write because you can’t get enough of breaking news or interviewing hockey players or whatever niche you occupy. I fondly remember walking home from 109 East State Street to the Prospect of Whitby co-op at around 1 in the morning, night after night, cooling off in the dark and buzzing with excitement over the issue we had just put together.
I exaggerated a bit when I compared journalists to feather pluckers. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median annual pay of “news analysts, reporters and journalists” last year was $60,280, which was a bit less than that of transportation security scanners but right in line with the pay of law clerks, explosives workers, hearing aid specialists, watch and clock repairers, fire alarm installers, and commercial divers. And clergy, who also perceive themselves as answering a higher calling.
Sorry for harping on money. The truth is, the black hole of 1.1 cents a word that’s tugging pay downward won’t matter to most of you because most of you have no intention of making a living as journalists. Wherever your careers take you, you will remember The Sun like a first love, as warm as the sun above.
Some of you, though, do have your heart set on journalism as a profession despite everything I’ve said. I doff my hat to you. What the heck: Give it that old college try. If it works out, great. If not, you can always get a job down at the poultry plant.
Peter Coy '79
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