Have you taken the #ukjournopay study yet?

Image by Nils Geylen via Flickr





The topic of pay is a thorny one in any profession, and in journalism it can also be somewhat disparate. 

The wages I've pulled for getting my face in other people's and asking them annoying questions has zoomed around the scale during the course of my career, without any real across-the-industry structure seeming to apply. 

For instance, when I moved from a weekly to a daily I was given a hefty pay rise - thanks, Gloucester Citizen (Northcliffe). There was another decent jump in my salary when I left the Southern Daily Echo (Newsquest) as assistant news editor for a deputy news editor's role at The News, Portsmouth (Johnson Press) several years ago. And there was a pay cut when I went from news editor of The South Wales Argus (Newsquest) to news editor of the Liverpool Echo (Trinity Mirror) several years later. 

Nowadays, between the pressures of the industry and the economy, I guess it's hard to know what scales apply where - which is why it was a surprise to learn that an editor for one Johnson Press title was earning £25,000 a year - £1,000 a year more than his assistant editors. Full story is here. 

So the #ukjournopay survey launched today by Francois Nel should make fascinating reading. Francois is always several thoughts ahead of the rest of us, and I'm looking forward to seeing what he discovers as a result of this study. 

You can take his survey here.