(08-08-2019, 03:28 AM)727Sky Wrote: Quote:...Why haven't we heard any of this from the networks, or read it in the "great" national newspapers?
Think about how you would go about keeping this type of information out of the headlines, it's quite an
undertaking for the average person. I understand that this might seem obvious, but if an 'outsider' looks
pragmatically at the situation, one may conclude that it involved a guarantee of some-sort from the major
mediums not to publish such negative news.
It's easy to assume that all Journalists have the same ideals and bank on the notion that they'll ignore
information that reflects badly on those tenets, but are all Editors and Reporters really like that in the
large media corporations?
On the money-side -or what many of us would assume the reason why Journalists do what they do, the
idea that 'pay-offs' or a decent salary would be the assurance that a type of perception for chosen political
groups was maintained, doesn't seem to align well.
I took these figures from '
Monster.com' who used the U.S. Bureau of Labour Statistics and Pay-Scale's
information for the top ten jobs in Journalism. As you'll see in the job description, massaging information
for debatable reasons is always at the forefront.
Content marketer
What you’d do: A journalism career will undoubtedly centre around writing, and all industries need strong
writers in many mediums. Content marketers create videos, articles, and images within an editorial calendar
to create brand awareness, upsell products, participate in conversations about subjects related to the brand,
and create a sense of community between customers and the brand.
Additionally, content marketers target emails, content, social media posts, and other creative forms of
communication to different points in a customer’s experience.
What you’d make: $46,718 per year.
Copywriter
What you’d do: Whenever you see an advertisement, a copywriter developed the message being delivered.
If you're naturally persuasive, super-creative, and can cram a lot of convincing information into a few words,
this job should grab your attention.
What you’d make: $49,664 per year.
Corporate communications specialist
What you’d do: Major corporations need to relay company-specific information to their many employees, as well
as the press. This includes everything from benefits information to internal news stories to details of upcoming
events. A corporate communications specialist is in charge of creating and distributing all this news, and often
maintaining a company intranet.
What you’d make: $59,300 per year.
Editor
What you’d do: A traditional but ever-changing journalism career choice, editors oversee every step of the publishing
process, working with writers to plan and edit content for publication. Editors work at magazines, newspapers, online
media outlets—basically anywhere there’s a story, there’s an editor.
What you’d make: $57,210 per year
Grant writer
What you’d do: Grant writers use their persuasive talents to demonstrate the importance of a nonprofit organization's
causes through written proposals to win the money necessary to promote them.
What you’d make: $45,788 per year.
Public relations specialist
What you’d do: Public relations specialists create and maintain a favorable public image for the organizations they
represent and put together media releases to help shape public perception and increase brand awareness.
Your journalism background makes you an excellent candidate for a public relations role, as they regularly interact with
journalists to effectively communicate their organizations' messages.
What you’d make: $59,300 per year.
Reporter
What you’d do: Reporters inform the public about news and events, spending much of their time in the field, conducting
interviews and investigating stories. They work on tight deadlines in a fast-paced environment, striving to be the first to
publish the story.
What you’d make: $40,910 per year.
Social media specialist
What you’d do: Tweet, share, like, post, etc. A social media specialist works for a brand or organization and communicates
with the public through social media platforms to build a favorable reputation. They also review data and analytics to see
how they can improve their company’s social shareability.
What you’d make: $42,097 per year.
Sports information director
What you’d do: If you're a sports junkie, how about getting paid to oversee a college athletics program's ongoing
communications needs? As a sports information director, you'll help local, regional, and national sports journalists
get the stories they need from your school's coaches and athletes.
You'll also coordinate media coverage for various athletic events.
What you’d make: $36,212 per year.
Technical writer
What you’d do: Any time instructions must be written, particularly for a technical product or service, these writers go to work.
Technical writers prepare instruction manuals and how-to guides to explain how a product or service works.
What you’d make: $70,930 per year.
As you see, a Technical Writer earns more than Editor...! and I can appreciate the responsibility when giving instructions for
systems where a mistake can lead to costly negligence claims. But overall, the salaries aren't that considerable considering
the average household income in the United States is $59,039.
So what makes these Journalists write what they do...? If one takes into consideration that all information must be accurate,
surely neutral news would be commonplace and today's 'Orange Man Bad' syndrome would just be a juvenile internet meme?
The
salaries of television pundits are far-different and far-larger, yet the people who supposedly gather the data for them to
spout never complain... why is that? Could it be that the information they churn out on those wide-screens is enough of a
payment due to ideals of 'those who serve'?!
........................................
When I first joined a newspaper company, it was to clean toilets and rid the building of daily rubbish. These functions
were performed in the early hours and later, I would assist others in the general maintenance of an active company.
The tasks were heavily labour-defined and after a couple of weeks, a compositor asked me an odd question.
( This is in the days of lead-print and a compositor was a person who arranges type for printing or 'keys' into one of
those ancient clunky ink-covered composing machines!).
Anyway, this guy approached me and commented that when he first saw me working, he wondered if I was mentally
-impaired! I asked him why he would assume such a thing and he replied that the tasks I was performing surely couldn't
be very rewarding.
It was 1983 and the UK was still in a recession, work was scarce -especially in the region I live and it was only due to my
father working on the company's printing presses, that I'd been lucky to acquire the position.
I had no qualifications due to having to leave school early through some personal poor decision-making involving an
undeveloped concept of the law combined with a building known as a prison!
After assuring the guy that I wasn't retarded or suffering with a feeble mind, I told him it was ironic that considering he was
part of a communication industry that purveyed accurate information to the public, it was worrying that he hadn't read the
articles in the newspapers he was involved creating.
He nodded and walked away.
A few years later, I was busy carrying large boxes with 'Macintosh' emblazoned on theie sides into the building, when a
trade-union representative for the chap who'd earlier inquired about my phrenic-proficiency, barred my way and stongly
advised that I put the computer box down.
Looking puzzled, he remarked that the machine inside would put him and his colleagues out of work and that I was
contributing to the demise of his employment. I agreed and added that it was not my position to make judgement-calls
on what was right for his skilled labour, I could only steer my own ship an strive to feed my family.
After a few personal insults, I continued to carry the box to an office and repeat the task of emptying the truck of another
forty-or-so other computers. Since nobody in the company knew how to wire-up the devices to the mains, my fellow labourer
and I also set the computers up and took away the unwanted debris.
A month later, a vacancy appeared for a Graphic Artist and having an artistic-bent, I applied. Once more, the computers
were the main focus on how the job would operate, however training would be made available.
Being interviewed by the Editor, he informed me that the job wasn't like cleaning toilets or humping boxes around, it would
take me into the environs of the Journalists, who he inferred were some-sort of 'special people'.
I suppose sitting there in a brown overall and smelling of bleach, the well-spoken Editor believed that my assumed social
-conduct wouldn't dovetail well with the men and women of the circles of prose and belletristic commentary.
After the sixth begrudged interview, the same Editor told me I wasn't the right material for the job and at least, I believe
he was being honest.
The world turns.
Sitting there, hiding the remains of a child that had wandered onto the railway track and took a hit, I wondered about the
Photographer that was standing behind me. With a muttered 'thanks', he then left to tell the Journalist upstairs that the
image he had captured would be appropriate for the morning newspaper that was five minutes away from its deadline.
It was his judgement that had validity and not mine, even though the telephone was right next to me.
(I was a Broadsheet and gore on the front-page is a no-no.)
I was sat at a desk, no overalls and no need to worry about replacing mop-heads or whether you'd find another dead rat in the
ladies toilet before the day-shift started. No, I was now the lonely midnight rider of the machines that I'd carried in years ago.
I worked in an office and hopefully, not subject to the rules I'd learned during the country's economic collapse and Thatcher's
take-down of the trade unions.
The articles I read in the one-horse-town newspaper seemed far from the truth and with the managed-optics, presented a
different dialectic that I overheard the boozy bon-ton Journalists occasionally giggle about. And I said nothing.
But in my defence, I guess the kool-aid can be drank for the reason of a pay-packet and one's virtues stifled in its tang.
'Adjusted' scanned-in suicide notes, altered images of politicians and other odious requests to send a particular message
via the newspaper were worked on and if I had any inner-fight, it was negated due to the simple basis of working-class
fear and shame of an earlier mindset from the recession days.
But for those younger than me, the concern of not having a job was not something they seemed to have misgivings about.
The company had gone through some tough times and many on the outside saw the newspaper industry as a dinosaur that
should just find a dark cave somewhere and quietly calcify.
The renowned Journalists had left for the cities where gentrified-decorum and money still walked hand-in-hand.
Agreed pay-rises were ignored and the trade-unions -once a Thanos in the media industry, had been deliberately infiltrated
by those whom the companies perceived as weak and feared for their jobs. I now noticed that the younger Journalists saw
their roles in a different light from the 'beau monde' that I'd occasionally ran into when they were relieving themselves and
I was replacing a toilet roll.
Gone -had the tweed jackets and the four-hour lunch breaks, no more did a late-night Editor smooze with his scribes further
along the bar from those who didn't own a handkerchief... no, these new people seemed like idealists.
The behavior of these millennial Journalists is similar to their typewriter-forebearers, but at least the older generation of
scriveners didn't hide their disdain for the unwashed who bought their product.
That Class-War will never go away.
And hence the salaries numbers above. The days of earning a living to feed one's family have gone and the quarrels to
enhance that income have also been vanquished. The weak did inherit the Earth, it was just they'd stopped employing
human spell-checkers
The parvenu that parade their self-analgesic fiction today, see monetary gain secondary to the false Eloi-ethics they
surreptitiously cast out on the television and through the internet. The newspapers gasp with outrageous drama like a
dying carp in the hands of a grinning angler and thank heavens we -here on Rogue Nation, are aware of the bait all
too well.
As Congresswoman Ilhan Omar tweeted: “It’s all about the Benjamins baby", but earning it through conscientious work
seems to be as outdated as the guy asking me if I was retarded.
