Understaffing, poor pay undermining student journalism
It’s been almost a year since the Concordia student publication The Link published what would be their final editorial of the academic year. In the March 2023 piece , it revealed that it could not publish the remaining issues of the year as half the masthead had quit. The reason given was “understaffing, high job expectations, and minimal compensation.”
Although The Link may be one of the few student publications to bring these internal issues to the public eye, they are certainly not limited to one publication. Through this editorial, The Link added its voice to a growing conversation about burnout and unhealthy working conditions in student journalism on North American campuses. Previous pieces from The Daily Pennsylvanian (University of Pennsylvania), The Daily Gamecock (University of South Carolina), and The Eyeopener (Toronto Metropolitan University) have all expressed similar frustrations.
Queen’s’Journal editor-in-chief Cassidy McMackon has first-hand experience with this throughout her many years working at the publication. She told J-Source that during her undergraduate program, she was working about 25 hours a week for a retail job and about 30 hours a week for the Journal, despite only scheduled to work 15.
“(This) was fine and I loved it,” she recalled, saying that many of her colleagues were in the same boat. “But it definitely made for quite a lot of stress and I definitely had to plan quite a lot in advance to make sure that I was able to get everything that I needed to get done.”
McMackon was working in retail while an editor at a student publication because until she became editor-in-chief, she wasn’t being paid for her work at the journal. Although compensation varies across student publications, many positions are either unpaid or underpaid. While some publications pay staff an hourly wage, many compensate editors with modest stipends or honorariums that don’t reflect the labour that goes into producing these publications. In a response to The Link’s editorial, the Queen’sJournal argued that “depending on unpaid students to sustain organizations crucial to university life, like campus newspapers, isn’t sustainable.”
Student journalists Nawa Tahir and Teryn Midzain, from the University of Toronto’s The Varsity and the University of the Fraser Valley’s The Cascade, respectively, reported similar difficulties to McMackon in balancing work, school and journalism. Midzain takes a reduced course load to be able to do his job as The Cascade’s sports editor on top of another full-time job.
On the other hand, Tahir said that, as an international student, she had to be studying full-time, which limited her ability to reduce her academic workload.
“In The Cascade, we have a kind of dark humor joke of ‘oh, just your first burnout?’” Midzain joked. “It’s kind of a rite of passage to go through one … but it’s tough because there’s no real clearcut way to handle the burnout.”
It’s especially difficult working at a smaller university without a journalism program. The Cascade has high turnover each semester and finding contributors is a challenge. Midzain says this makes it hard to ensure that the paper is running consistently. At UFV, there are also few opportunities for student journalists to get training, as well as a lack of support from students and faculty compared with what Midzain has seen at other universities where the student publications are more established or integrated into degree programs.
Students in journalism degree programs also face their own set of challenges. Leslie Sinclair spent a year working with TMU’s student publication The Review of Journalism as part of her master’s degree. She had previously been able to balance her degree with her job at a law firm, but said that “once this production started, any vacation days I took from my job were just swallowed up with work on the magazine.”
Who gets to participate in student journalism?
Student journalism has trained many talented journalists, and is an effective and often fun way to get experience in the field. However, as demonstrated by The Link and its counterparts, being involved with a student publication requires significant unpaid or underpaid labour, which creates the perfect conditions for burnout. While these conditions make it hard for student journalists to do their jobs well, they also may prevent some from even joining in the first place.
For Jeevan Sangha, a freelance writer recently graduated from the University of British Columbia, one of her biggest regrets is not spending more time writing for her campus publication, The Ubyssey.
“What I’ve learned about journalism now is that just knowing people goes a really long way,” she said. “I think that having those networks earlier on might have provided more opportunities for me.”
At the time, she felt discouraged from reporting for The Ubyssey mainly because it was unpaid and would be a significant time commitment to take on as a full-time commuter student.
“I might have to stay an extra few hours on campus, which means I go home later, which means less time on homework … It just felt so stressful,” she explained. “I ended up opting for other student jobs on campus, because they were compensated, even if they were a little bit out of my field.”
When Tahir was The Varsity’s managing editor and chair of the paper’s Equity Board, she noticed many people facing similar barriers to Sangha. After sending out a survey to Varsity contributors, she received a lot of responses from people who wanted to get more involved but preferred to spend their time on other pursuits where they would get paid.
McMackon agreed that “the lack of compensation for a lot of positions that we have is definitely a barrier that I’ve seen in our hiring period.” In one instance, she recalled that a very promising candidate had to turn down a job at the Journal because he wasn’t able to work 15 hours a week unpaid.
“I think it’s definitely a barrier in terms of having that time to give to a place where obviously you spend so much energy (and) so much time and making these papers every week and then you get paid almost nothing for it,” said Tahir.
Towards a more sustainable student journalism
One clear solution to tackle burnout and make writing for student publications more accessible would be to offer more money. If staff and contributors for student newspapers were paid rates that reflect the work they put in, they might not need to work an additional job in order to cover their expenses.
In the summer after publishing the editorial, The Link went through some major reforms, most notably launching a pilot program increasing the honoraria for editors and creating a fund to pay contributors for their work. However, the funding to pay staff needs to come from somewhere. Like many campus publications, The Link is funded by student fees, and any increase in these fees must be voted on by the majority of the student body. Until they can obtain a fee increase, The Link will have “no long-term sustainable alternative to pay our workers fairly.”
Sinclair suggests that when student journalism is part of an academic curriculum, schools should fund students undertaking these experiences. She argues that universities need to recognize that there are many different types of students, many of whom may not have the financial privilege to work the extra hours required to participate in student journalism while they forgo pay for other jobs.
“If you want to have a breadth of voices in journalism, you have to think hard about this unpaid labour that you’re asking students to do,” said Sinclair. “If people are so burnt out from working this way, by the time they graduate, how can they still be excited to work in journalism?”
Another strategy to mitigate the effects of burnout could be to ensure that student journalists have access to mental health support. In 2019, the University of Southern California’s paper The Daily Trojan went as far as hiring a wellness and outreach director to support staff experiencing burnout. Although McMackon said she has to take on a lot of responsibility as editor-in-chief to ensure that her staff are both doing their job and maintaining their wellbeing, she recognizes that Queen’s students are lucky to have access to many external resources.
Finally, Tahir suggests more collaboration between student journalists and those further along in their career to help newer journalists break into the industry. While programs like Shared Bylines and the CAJ Mentorship program are a step in the right direction, she hopes to see more of this type of mentorship organized by publications rather than individual journalists donating their spare time. She also would like to see larger news outlets work with student journalists to cover stories happening on their campuses.
Midzain expressed similar desires, particularly hoping for alumni or journalists with more experience to organize training workshops to help The Cascade’s staff to develop their skills.
An important campus institution
The benefits of student journalism make it all the more necessary to discuss the structural issues present in many student publications, as well as how these problems may prevent some people from being able to participate and reap the benefits in the first place. Student journalism provides an opportunity for students to develop essential journalism skills in a hands-on environment, which prepares them for a career in the field. Student publications also often allow writers more freedom in what they cover, allowing them to focus on stories that are meaningful for them.
While it may be hard work, many student journalists stick with it because they are truly passionate about the work they do and the role they play on their campuses. Tahir, now a breaking news reporter at the Toronto Star, said that the work she did at The Varsity, especially investigations into sexual misconduct at her university, is some of the most meaningful work of her career so far.
“I think if you do it right, you can really let people’s creativity soar,” said Midzain, who had never considered becoming a journalist before writing for The Cascade. Tahir similarly recalled entering university with no idea of what she wanted to do until she started working for The Varsity.
“Student journalism is something I’m incredibly passionate about, and I just really want to see it grow and not diminish,” said Midzain. “I think every major institution should be keeping their campus journalism alive and support them in every way.”
Emma is a freelance journalist and coordinating news editor at the McGill Daily for 2023-2024. She is currently pursuing a Geography degree and writes about labour, social justice, and higher education.
