Tim Lawson wrote:
I am absolutely not excusing the salary for this job, but I'd like to present a reality check from my past and probably some TCEs' present:
At my first copy-editing job, in 2002-03, at a daily newspaper with a 40,000 circulation, I was paid $10 an hour. This came after a lengthy job search. Best I could do.
What do you expect from a paper that was still pasting up in 2003? Having a single previous (higher paying) job changed the scale by 25 percent. The best thing I ever did was leave that paper -- the pay was hardly the only issue.
There's a difference between rural (vis-a-vis NoVa) Virginia and elsewhere in that a $400 apartment was easy to come by. Yes, I'd sniff at less than $35K now, but then, it worked fine, and there may be places where $25K works for a first job. BFE, Wyo., may be just such a place.