Another issue I haven’t discussed much are the woeful pay scales prevalent in journalism. Entry-level reporters can expect, on average, about $26,000 to $27,000. I just heard from a former student who became a very good reporter. But now he has an infant daughter and he’s getting married. He left journalism to do communication work in an HR department in a large corporation.

We’ve seen corporations in so many different fields lay off or buy out workers with high legacy costs. That’s happened in journalism as well — even though the pay scales have been much lower than what the auto industry has paid union workers for years.

It’s difficult to imagine the survival of high-quality journalism when salary structures don’t allow young people to enter the field and make an decent living for them and and their families.

But much of what’s noted may be colored as S&R reportage is – by the inclinations of bloggers. That’s not a bad thing, (I don’t believe “objecive journalism” has ever existed), but it creates barriers for readers who think of one blog as progressive, one as conservative – and so if the prog blog does a better job reporting on an issue than a con servo blog does, many readers who’d benefit from better coverage might never know – because of their own innate prejudices.

And we get social/civic/cultural conversations like some I have with righty friends – all they know is what Fox News tells them they know and they think all I know is what NYT or WaPo tells me. That diminshes the great conversation about America – and so diminishes us all.

I remember your great post from some months back on starting local on-line newspapers.

http://www.scholarsandrogues.com/2007/06/04/journalists-cover-my-town-ill-pay-you-191-a-year/

This is a model we could use right now. Let’s try to think about ways we could help it get traction….

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When a newspaper dies, “a voice is stilled.” That was the headline in the Cincinnati Post Dec. 30, the day before the newspaper’s presses were silenced. Corporate owner E.W. Scripps closed the Post. But should this be RIP, Cincy Post — or good …