what does a newspaper journalist get paid

cm1179

cm1179

cm1179

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i've got celebrity big brother on in the background (i know) and one of the house mates writes for the daily mail.

julian clarey has a problem with her because of this and commented ''apparently they get paid £2 a word, nice work if you can get it''

£2 a word? wow. is this a fair reflection.
 
There is a never-ending stream of dreamers who want to be journalists. So they don't get paid much whether they write for a rag or a rag with a mainstream reputation (i.e. Guardian).

No self respecting person takes their 'news' from these controlled gutter rags anyway.
 
Trainees at the paper I worked at got circa 16-18k. Average journo on a national probably makes 30-40k, on a regional 25-30.

Editors on nationals are on 6 figures.
 
Robbie G said:
What does an engineer get paid?
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cm1179 said:
£2 a word? wow. is this a fair reflection.
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How many words do you suppose are in an average article? If you're writing one column and it's got a maximum of around 500 words then you could be making up to around £52k per year if that's a reasonable estimate of price per word but I don't know if that is a common model except perhaps for freelancers.

Based on what Youstolemyname has said that would have been more than an average journalists salary and I'd suspect that those who are contracted to the paper will normally just get paid a salary rather than doing it on a piecemeal basis.

Robbie G said:
Or maybe I mean those guys at CERN or NASA.
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Probably not enough, to misappropriate Evan Esar's quote "America believes in education: the average professor earns more money in a year than a professional athlete earns in a whole week.".
 
Few people enter journalism for the money. The starting salary for a trainee reporter is around £15,000, but on a local/regional paper may be as low as £12,000, according to the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) . You can expect rises of £1,500 - £3,000 as you progress through training.
The average salary for all journalists is £24,500, but there is wide variation between regional and national newspapers. Salaries for journalists with between one to four years' experience are £14,900 to £24,350. For those with five to nine years' experience it is £21,700 to £35,000. With over ten years' experience you can expect a salary starting at £22,000 to £39,000.
Salaries for senior editors on regional daily newspapers are often negotiable and range from £50,000 to £85,000. On national newspapers, salaries can be even higher. Share options and bonuses, reflecting the paper's performance, may bolster salaries.


From prospects.ac.uk
 
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