*Wendi C. Thomas
Economic justice is central to everything the “MLK50: Justice Through Journalism” does, not just the content we produce, but the way we care for and compensate workers.
In our view, this is what echoes Dr. Martin Luther King: a nation where all residents – especially workers – have enough resources to thrive, and where public and private policy support its success.
We focus on people who work for a living, especially those trapped in systems that create and maintain poverty. And that includes people who work for the MLK50.
How do newsrooms retain talented journalists from bending under the weight of debt of student loans and whipped by soaring housing costs? Particularly those who are black or indigenous, college graduates with no inherited wealth?
It’s an issue I’ve struggled with in the weeks since the reporter from the MLK50, Carrington J. Tatum, resigned. Read Tatum’s play here.
Carrington joined the team in October 2020, just months after leaving Texas State University with a journalism degree and student loan debt that now hovers around $90,000. In less than 2 years, he has accumulated a award-winning workincluding dozens of stories about the controversial proposal Byhalia Pipeline.
With a roommate it was working, but when the roommate left and the renter raised the rent from $300 to $1,700, the math didn’t work anymore. His best option, he decided, was to return to Texas and live with his mother, where he wouldn’t have to pay to live.
All of this was happening while I was stuck in Italy after catching covid at an international journalism conference. The stress left me unable to concentrate on the simplest of tasks, and the detention center staff protected me from what could happen.
But when I got home, the decision had already been made.
Not all problems can be solved with money, but this problem could have been.
My not being aware until it was too late was a reflection of my shortcomings. I scream all the time about my commitment to economic justice in all things, including compensation. I knew student loans are a thorn in the side of many students and I knew rents were going up, but I didn’t know about a colleague’s career paths.
I feel like I failed Carrington, even though he assured me I didn’t. He said these issues are bigger than our writing and correcting them shouldn’t be a cross to bear.
Maybe, but if the solutions don’t start with newsrooms like ours, where would they start?
My salary surveys from other local newsrooms and news outlets of similar size indicate that the MLK50 pays more than average in a city where, historically, the cost of living has been low.
This was Carrington’s 1st full-time job, and his total income was just under $50,000 when he resigned (which he shared in this piece). This is above the average household income in the city of US$ 41,900but below the Memphis metro area median household income of US$ 53,900.
Between March 2020 – the start of the pandemic – and May, Memphis area rents increased by nearly 30%. This is the 10th fastest-growing rental among the nation’s largest metropolitan areas, according to data collected by Apartment List.
I’ve heard of much larger rent increases than that; It’s not unheard of for a 1 bedroom apartment to go for $1,600. Add in student loans, car loans, inflation, scary gas prices, and for many, including Carrington, it becomes unsustainable.
before launching the MLK50, I sought advice from Russ Wigginton, then vice president of Rhodes College, and now president of the National Museum of Civil Rights. Your wise advice: “You have a Cadillac dream, so don’t budget for a Ford Pinto”.
I thought I had a Cadillac budget — this year, it’s just over $1 million. But we don’t have a budget that accounts for and corrects the economic disparities that capitalism creates and maintains.
My 1st impractical and unlikely idea: winning the lottery to pay off workers’ student loans. But the lottery itself “attacks the poor”like Vox explained.
In the end, I’m left with questions, which, as a journalist, isn’t the worst place to be.
How do you repair the damage done to some workers? How to do this without alienating other employees who have benefited from a much stronger financial foundation? Would candidates who would be bothered by our attempts at fairness be a good fit?
Is our compensation structure fundamentally unfair because we pay primarily for experience and skills, without regard to need?
What would a salary structure that centralizes reparations look like? How would we sell this to funders? To donors?
If we decided to make need/debt/lack of generational wealth a factor in compensation, at what stage in the hiring process would we ask about a job candidate’s finances? Is it appropriate to do this? And how would we ensure that this information doesn’t affect hiring decisions, while also factoring the additional expense into our budget?
What other worker economic/financial challenges are we ignoring?
We are calculating an increase in our mileage reimbursement rate to account for $5 per gallon gas prices. We’re talking to other newsrooms and trying to figure out what we can do now, what we want to be able to do soon, and how to get from here to there. If you have ideas, let me know.
In the meantime, when the Powerball gets really big, I’ll buy a ticket or two. Wish me luck.
*Wendi C. Thomas is the founding editor of “MLK50: Justice Through Journalism”a Memphis-based nonprofit newsroom focused on the intersection of poverty, power, and politics.
Text translated by Anna Júlia Lopes. Read the original at English.
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