Broadcast Sweatshops

As broadcast news attempts to reinvent itself with “produce once, run everywhere” utilizing the same or smaller staffs, it suddenly dawned on me that some of creature comforts that once graced our crazy business have fallen by the wayside: edit cubicles that once turned into edit rooms have returned to being cubicles; hourly-paid staff jobs have become flat rate daily-hire freelancers and dinner reimbursements for non-union workers have all but disappeared.

Young people entering the business today are working in a sweatshop, it’s just that sewing machines have been replaced with computers. There is nothing wrong with expecting someone to produce content for all the news platforms, there is only something wrong asking them to do it for 60 hours a week without throwing in a free dinner here or there.