Fuse News: The Worst Job in America — Because It Doesn’t Pay

By Debra Cash.

Your average newspaper reporter — his pay isn’t so super.

It’s official. The 2013 jobs report of an organization called CareerCast rates “newspaper reporter” as the worst job in America.

Now, it’s hard to take this completely seriously when ununionized coal miners continue to suffocate in underinspected mines and fishermen—who are reputed to love their jobs—die at a rate of 121.2 deaths per 100,000 workers. Enlisted military personnel are ranked #3, but they at least know they’re likely to get shot at in the course of their government employment. Oil rig workers did make it onto the CareerCast 2012 worst jobs roll call at #5, which must be validating to the guys who died when the Deepwater Horizon exploded.

CareerCast is a job listings aggregator and classified ad site owned by Adicio. You have to wonder if there’s an agenda here, given that Adicio also positions itself as “a comprehensive, trusted provider of reliable, best-in-class online classifieds ad [software] for newspapers large and small, and is uniquely positioned to drive revenues straight to your bottom line.”

Don’t get me started on the bottom line for newspaper revenues. The median salary of a full-time newspaper reporter this year was $36,000. Freelance writing pays less than it did 30 years ago if and when it pays at all.

So maybe newspaper reporting is not the worst job in America. Maybe it just doesn’t pay.

c 2013 Debra Cash

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1 Comment

  1. Ian Thal on April 23, 2013 at 7:03 pm

    Ironically, my writing for the Arts Fuse led to a full time job as a newspaper reporter. While it doesn’t pay a lot– I certainly get a lot of job satisfaction of a job well done at the end of the day.

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