Herald freelance deal isn’t great – but it could be a lot worse

There ‘s been another stushie kicked off with The Herald revealing the new pay rates for shifters and casuals. AllMediaScotland has the details here.

Now the rates and offers aren’t great, but let’s take a reality check here and consider some of the offers that have come from media companies, it’s not horrifically bad, particularly if you are young and starting out or have a decent redundancy payment already in your back pocket.

£115 a day. If you can get five shifts a week is £575. Assume a working year of 46 weeks takes you to £26,450. Now that’s before tax and so on, but it’s still a wage. It’s pathetic when you consider that in 1985 the Daily Mirror in London was starting reporters on £25,000, but for a lot of people outwith the media it’s still a decent wage.

And while some may point to the average salary in Scotland being around £28,000 (yes, I’m aware of the irony of using that link), that’s a distorted figure and the median is a more realistic  number (that figure is slightly older). Here’s a Hudson report from 2008 about sector salaries in Scotland as well.

This could have been a lot worse. In the US many companies already tag payments to the popularity of a story online and it’s only a matter of time before circulation/online hits are tied into payments here. I was half-expecting the Herald announcements to have something along those lines.

If people don’t like it, they have one simple option – don’t do it. But here’s the problem, you won’t get all freelancers agreeing. Someone will always undercut the rest to get that shift or to get that payment. But it will take drastic action to get their lot improved.

People will lose out on some cash but the other loser here is The Herald. I know of two regular freelancers who are just going to go in, do a shift (still working hard) and then when they have a decent tale punt it to one of the Sunday papers like The Mail on Sunday or News of the World as they still pay well for a story – well, better than the others.

The underlying issue here isn’t actually that of what the Herald titles are paying, it’s one simple fact: freelance journalists for years have allowed themselves to be systematically and consistently lowly paid. Now, for the reporting shifter who goes in and does nothing but rewrite copy, £115 isn’t  a bad way to spend a day, but for the shifter who actually brings in the scoops or the sub who makes dull copy sparkle, it’s a bit on the low side – especially when you consider that a lot of the work bringing those scoops in is done outwith the shift. You can see why casuals wont offer their best stuff to The Herald in those circumstances.

Let’s do a quick unofficial comparison: There are very few PR professionals, including reporters turned PRs, who would do you a full shift (let’s call it eight hours of work) for that £115. A PR pro hiring themselves out at that daily rate is either new to the game, offering a massive discount for some reason or just plain duff.

So what can be done to make the lot better? In all honesty, I don’t know. If you’re a sharp and keen individual, no doubt you’ll go and speak to an editor and say ‘I brought you in this, this and this and that was all followed up by the competition’ then ways will be found for you to get more cash – or for you to go to the aforementioned competition.

On the issue of copyright, yeah, it’s a poor show that journalists dont automatically keep copyright, but let’s be honest – they never have in the past anyway, so something is better than nothing – and that’s a fight that shouldn’t stop (but again, journalists have let it slide in the past, like the wages issue). Also, and let’s be blunt, how many of the stories are actually worth syndicating? Not everyone’s Hugh Boag, Michael Tierney, Susan Swarbrick or Andy Denholm.

AMS is now reporting a suggestion put forward by the NUJ which seems completely fair in terms of how to improve the contract but, as I say, the issues raised by this are historical and, if there’s to be solutions, the industry has to look beyond one little fight to address the underlying issue.

Ultimately though, this is all about market forces – something I believe The Guardian’s Charles Arthur mentioned a while back – if there are too many people (or products) in a market then prices will be low as labour is cheap. If someone has a USP or top skills (for example, bringing in tons of scoops) they should do better. If they don’t they may have to take

But here’s another thing that some people may not have considered – or want to consider: how much Scottish print news is generated by Scottish press and how much is generated by staff in England or elsewhere? Would Spaniards accept newspapers written mostly in France, would the French accept newspapers written mostly in Italy? No, they wouldn’t.

The Herald pay rate isn’t great, but it could be a damn site worse.

It’s also an issue that makes people question why they are in journalism. If you came into it to meet famous people then you might still be doing OK. If, like the best, you came in to make a difference, to help people, to expose wrongdoing, then you might be doing OK – but that’s a job that takes long hours

Ultimately each person has to ask what made them come into journalism and if it still gives them that reward. Very few I know came into it for the money, but the question is this: do you let others take advantage of you because of that?

And until the issue is resolved, the ultimate loser is the public.