I got my start in radio. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
My first full-time job paid $700 a month – after inflation today, probably more like $1,400. Which would <\/em>translate to $8 an hour in 2021 dollars<\/em>, except that in small-market radio back then, “full time” meant 48 hours a week. You had to pick up a weekend shift – meaning that in today’s dollars, I was making $6.75 an hour, for running the music playlist, reporting a bit of news, doing some baseball play-by-play, and being on the air from 8-noon and 3-6PM weekdays, plus the eight hour weekend shift. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I did it because, at the time, that’s how one got into the business. Before one could apply for the job making $20K (in 1985 dollars), which could lead you to the job in Minneapolis making $30-35, which could lead you to Chicago and $50-60 – maybe even that major-market morning guy or program director job that would get you into six figures. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Most of us, myself included, never got that far, of course. Oh, I made it to the big markets – in my case, KSTP in the ’80s, where I think my best year was $12K (1987 dollars) plus a whooooole lot of freelance voice work and news reporting. It actually went downhill from there; when I left radio in ’93, I’d been making $7 an hour and 20-25 hours a week at WDGY, as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity gutted the market for 20-something guys doing afternoon talk shows. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I moved on to other dreams. <\/p>\n\n\n\n One of which has never been to be the Political Class’s middle and senior management. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Which is <\/em>the dream for an awful lot of people who go into political staff work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Starting with a four-year degree in Political Science, they move on to internships, and then to entry-level staff jobs – with legislators, congresspeople, executive branch departments – that, like a lot of entry level white collar jobs with immense supplies of applicants and few positions (even in government), which (even in government) limits the wages. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Oh, yeah – these “kids” who are plugging away for peanuts are all betting on the long term – a senior staffer, a civil service management gig with the six figure salary and the government pension, a consultant job making the serious money, or like AOC an elected office with the boundless wealth that brings (for Democrats) – the big payoff for those who have the talent, the marketing acumen and the persistence to get there. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But even given all that? There’s no field so with so much upside that someone can’t wrench some victimology out of it:<\/p>\n\n\n\n