The end of September brought two startling revelations that hefty salaries still exist in journalism despite the industry’s steep financial decline. CJR’s Michael Massing pointed out that Katie Couric’s $15 million CBS News salary “is more than the entire annual budgets of NPR’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered combined.” As shocking as that information was, however, exorbitant compensation is something of a broadcast news tradition.
More interesting, perhaps, was the scoop by Newsosaur Alan Mutter that Paul Steiger, the editor in chief of the non-profit news startup Pro Publica, earned a $570,00 salary in 2008. Mutter compared that situation to the Chi-Town Daily News, a startup that folded in September after it failed to raise $300,000 needed to meet its annual budget.
“This disparity dramatically illustrates the difference between the resources available to an earnest but under-funded grassroots news start-up and a non-profit journalism project that has entered the ranks of the major-league philanthropic organizations,” Mutter wrote.
Adding Steiger, a former managing editor at The Wall Street Journal (where he earned more than twice as much), to Pro Publica’s masthead surely provided the start-up some much-needed star power. On the other hand, half his salary would still leave him well off by industry standards, and free up enough money to hire half a dozen reporters. So this raises the question: Can very large news salaries be justified in the current business climate? And does it make a difference whether the outlet is a non-profit startup, a for-profit newspaper, or a television news network?
This is a major concern. Note that the Propublica tax form show expenses in 2008 at $6.1 million, and Steiger's salary at $570,000. That means he alone collected almost 10 percent of the expenses of the organization. That's just bizarre.
The managing editor, according to the tax form, is Stephen Engelberg, who received compensation of $451,000. (Apparently $150,000 was for relocating, but it is still compensation.)
If the organization did not claim to be working "in the public interest" none of this would be a problem.
Celebrity journalists OR editors like this are not the way to move forward for this industry. There are plenty of those already. What journalism needs are people who practice their craft for wages they live on.
This Propublica model seems to encourage the opposite.
#1 Posted by Guest, CJR on Wed 7 Oct 2009 at 12:30 AM
The marketplace determines value. I'd just like to see more transparency, since economic status/class tends to influence coverage. Mark Pinsky
#2 Posted by Mark Pinsky, CJR on Wed 7 Oct 2009 at 04:48 PM
It is a major concern. I am astounded that a one-day-a-week anchor at NPR's Weekend All Things Considered earns $300,000-plus for sharing his not-inconsiderable outlook on life. The NPR payroll is full of journalists (who seem to have plenty of time to work on books on the side) making $150k plus.
I love NPR and have been sending it money since 1980. No more. I cannot afford to have quality journalists and programs laid off and cancelled, like NPR did earlier this year, when stars earn salaries like that.
This model, adopted from Wall Street, may have made sense in commercial broadcasting -- in the 1980s. Not longer. I want to know how an organization that is subsidized in the public interest (in the form of free, preferred FM frequencies at no cost, CPB grants, tax-exempt status, etc.) can justify such exorbitant spending.
It saddens me that the "no nothings" who have always hated NPR in particular, and journalism in general, can take comfort from criticism like mine. But dammit, salaries in the 300,000 range at public organizations that are laying people off is not acceptable.
#3 Posted by John McNary, CJR on Thu 8 Oct 2009 at 12:45 PM
The idea that the market determines the value of highly paid executives is already viewed with skepticism even at for-profit companies. For non-profits like NPR or Pro Publica, excessive salaries deserve scrutiny.
The issue is that we already have the major networks creating celebrity journalists with massive, rock-star salaries.
#4 Posted by Guest, CJR on Thu 8 Oct 2009 at 03:15 PM