Saving journalism through $400K salaries?
As the clarion call for non-profit journalism sounds a little farther and wider every month, we’re all beginning to learn more about how this all may work. A fascinating interview in PaidContent.org with two key players from the new Bay Area News Project start-up includes a not-so-comfortable admission that the new CEO of BANP — who comes from the influential management consultancy McKinsey & Co. — is being offered a $400,000 salary (!) — this for running a non-profit news enterprise closely affiliated with University of California at Berkeley School of Journalism?
Does something feel amiss here? Given the painful, widespread lay-offs in the news industry (not to mention the pain educators are facing in the University of California system), the ironies seem inescapable.
I''m an Assistant Professor of English at East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania, where I teach online journalism and electronic creative writing classes.
