In the New Yorker...

[Front-Ranger]

I was paying $4 a month a year ago but I noticed my subscription going up, until it was $22 a month! I went to the online subscription management area and tried to unsubscribe. They asked why and I said I couldn't afford $22/month. This was in a chat box. They asked me if I'd continue at $4/month and I said sure. Hope it works for you too!

[serious crayons]

By "staff," do you mean people like the fact-checkers (assuming they still have them) and Gottlieb, and so forth, as opposed to the writers?

No, I meant writers, too -- people who get a regular paycheck and a w2, as opposed to freelancers (who get a 1099 instead of a w2, FWIW). So you know in the little bios on the page after the ToC, some say so-and-so is a staff writer, or has been a staff writer since 2008 or whatever, and then others just identify the person as a playwright or novelist or name their most recent book and so on. In my most recent edition I count six of each. Or should I say six of one and half a dozen of the other. 

You can bet TNY has fact checkers, as many magazines do but perhaps fewer now than in the past. Newspapers, to my knowledge, have never had fact checkers. They have editors and copy editors, which are different. Editors change stories in ways they think will make them read better. They also ostensibly look for unanswered questions or other areas where the stories could use more information, or cut parts they think are unnecessary or will keep them from fitting a particular spot on the page. And to some extent, they do fact checking. But copy editors do more granular fact checking -- they'll make sure names, addresses and things like that are correct and, in digital copy, check links to make sure they go to where they're supposed to. They kind of share headline writing. Reporters suggest headlines but someone else makes the call.

[serious crayons]

Do tell!  Or did I miss it?

I was paying $4 a month a year ago but I noticed my subscription going up, until it was $22 a month! I went to the online subscription management area and tried to unsubscribe. They asked why and I said I couldn't afford $22/month. This was in a chat box. They asked me if I'd continue at $4/month and I said sure. Hope it works for you too!

After Lee mentioned this, I called their subscription department. At first they offered something that was cheaper than what I was paying but not as cheap. I said, "My friend said she's only paying $1 a week." So then they offered that. Apparently the higher rate was for "all access," meaning recipes, games, etc., that I could easily live without, so I took the $1 deal. But lately I've noticed ads saying "all access" is now only 25 cents more, or $1.25/wk. That's for six months, after which I'm sure the price will shoot up again.

nytimes.com/subscription/all-access?

[Jeff Wrangler]

No, I meant writers, too -- people who get a regular paycheck and a w2, as opposed to freelancers (who get a 1099 instead of a w2, FWIW). So you know in the little bios on the page after the ToC, some say so-and-so is a staff writer, or has been a staff writer since 2008 or whatever, and then others just identify the person as a playwright or novelist or name their most recent book and so on. In my most recent edition I count six of each. Or should I say six of one and half a dozen of the other. 

Maybe TNY has its own idiosyncratic definition of staff writer. In the little bio section I've seen Jill Lepore identified as a staff writer--I know I saw it because it so surprised me, because of what I would understand a staff writer to be. I would think of a staff writer as a person who gets a regular paycheck and a w2--like a newspaper reporter, maybe--but Jill Lepore holds an endowed chair at Harvard. Yet she's considered a staff writer.

You can bet TNY has fact checkers, as many magazines do but perhaps fewer now than in the past. Newspapers, to my knowledge, have never had fact checkers. They have editors and copy editors, which are different. Editors change stories in ways they think will make them read better. They also ostensibly look for unanswered questions or other areas where the stories could use more information, or cut parts they think are unnecessary or will keep them from fitting a particular spot on the page. And to some extent, they do fact checking. But copy editors do more granular fact checking -- they'll make sure names, addresses and things like that are correct and, in digital copy, check links to make sure they go to where they're supposed to. They kind of share headline writing. Reporters suggest headlines but someone else makes the call.

I've been an editor and a copy editor in old-fashioned print media.

[Front-Ranger]

I just noticed something on the back cover of the Feb. 27th issue. Apparently you can watch five of the Oscar shorts at newyorker.com/video! I've seen "Night Ride" which is nominated for Best Live Action Short Film. It's very good and humorous too. I'm not familiar with The New Yorker Studios but want to learn more!

[serious crayons]

Maybe TNY has its own idiosyncratic definition of staff writer. In the little bio section I've seen Jill Lepore identified as a staff writer--I know I saw it because it so surprised me, because of what I would understand a staff writer to be. I would think of a staff writer as a person who gets a regular paycheck and a w2--like a newspaper reporter, maybe--but Jill Lepore holds an endowed chair at Harvard. Yet she's considered a staff writer.

I think she does both. Same as Nicholas Lemann, who TNY says has been a staff writer since 1999 and became dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University in 2003 (thanks, Wikipedia!). Louis Menand has been a staff writer since 2001 and is also an English professor at Harvard. Atul Gawande was a staff writer until 2021 while also being a surgeon. Meanwhile, those people did all kinds of additional things, including writing bestselling books. Obviously they either have superpowers or they really made the most of their summers off!

There must be some kind of a paycheck/w2 situation for staffers or why would TNY distinguish between them, sometimes within the same person? For example, TNY calls Menand a contributor since 1991 and a staff writer since 2001.

If you google their pay, it gets complicated. Salaries.com says salaries range from $1 million to $1.3 million. Perhaps they accidentally added an extra digit. Meanwhile, Glassdoor, potentially somewhat more reliable because it's based on employee reporting, shows a range of salaries for various positions and says a journalist/reporter makes $91,000. That seems pretty low considering the job. Other staff salaries are definitely not enough to live comfortably in NYC; a fact checker, for instance, makes $63,000 according to Glassdoor. Maybe they work remotely from Wyoming or sumpn'. All the Glassdoor listings are based on one person's reporting their own salary, though.

I also happened across this NYT article about a union battle at TNY. Apparently, the magazine's "stars" did not join the union. As a union member and supporter, I'm not sure I want to read it. http://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/13/business/media/new-yorker-union.html

I've been an editor and a copy editor in old-fashioned print media.

Oh really, where?

[Jeff Wrangler]

I think she does both.

I'm sure she does, but I question if she's running back and forth between Cambridge and NYC on a regular basis. I wonder if she even has a desk in TNY office. This is kind of what I mean when I say perhaps TNY has its own definition of what a staff writer is. Conventionally, I would think of a staff writer as somebody who goes into an office every day and perhaps gets assigned stories rather than write about things that interest them--and I presume Jill Lepore et al. aren't getting assigned stories to write--though, of course, they may be.

Obviously they either have superpowers or they really made the most of their summers off!

No doubt they also have graduate student TAs. 

Oh really, where?

You want me to go back to high school and college, where I edited the paper?  Checking references Being one half of a staff of two for the Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania's magazine (copy editor, editor--and also producer of most of the content). Copy editing most of my colleagues' work for the eight years I wrote a history for a living. In my current job I'm categorized as a proofreader, but the work still involves fact checking and conventional stuff like fixing grammar and punctuation because the editors have too much to do with technical/tech stuff and managing committees of question writers and teaching new writers how to write questions to pay attention to their serial commas and so forth.

Then there's the two summers I spent back in ancient times as a general assignment reporter for my home town morning newspaper, where I had to deal with copy editors and the editor--not to mention snooty reporters who thought they were above the kind of stories I wrote. One assignment was to cover a suburban high school graduation--and you were expected to get every student's name in the article, and it had to be correct. One of the reporters made some sort of smart remark about how of little importance those stories were. I kind of snapped at her that if it was her kid graduating, it would be important to her. She had no comeback to that.

[serious crayons]

I'm sure she does, but I question if she's running back and forth between Cambridge and NYC on a regular basis. I wonder if she even has a desk in TNY office. This is kind of what I mean when I say perhaps TNY has its own definition of what a staff writer is. Conventionally, I would think of a staff writer as somebody who goes into an office every day and perhaps gets assigned stories rather than write about things that interest them--and I presume Jill Lepore et al. aren't getting assigned stories to write--though, of course, they may be.

Right. I don't picture Lepore, Lemann and Menand being required to show up 8 hours a day M-F, or anything like that. They might even be part-time staffers. Or, as you suggest, "staff writer" may be somewhat of a meaningless title granted to skilled writers who contribute to the TNY a lot. Whether there's a w2 involved, no way of knowing.

You want me to go back to high school and college, where I edited the paper?  Checking references Being one half of a staff of two for the Genealogical Society of Pennsylvania's magazine (copy editor, editor--and also producer of most of the content). Copy editing most of my colleagues' work for the eight years I wrote a history for a living. In my current job I'm categorized as a proofreader, but the work still involves fact checking and conventional stuff like fixing grammar and punctuation because the editors have too much to do with technical/tech stuff and managing committees of question writers and teaching new writers how to write questions to pay attention to their serial commas and so forth.

Then there's the two summers I spent back in ancient times as a general assignment reporter for my home town morning newspaper, where I had to deal with copy editors and the editor--not to mention snooty reporters who thought they were above the kind of stories I wrote. One assignment was to cover a suburban high school graduation--and you were expected to get every student's name in the article, and it had to be correct. One of the reporters made some sort of smart remark about how of little importance those stories were. I kind of snapped at her that if it was her kid graduating, it would be important to her. She had no comeback to that.

Nice career! I'm impressed that a city big enough to have a daily paper and suburbs would also list the grads' names in the suburbs.

[Jeff Wrangler]

Nice career! I'm impressed that a city big enough to have a daily paper and suburbs would also list the grads' names in the suburbs.

"Suburbs" may be relative.    Lancaster, Pennsylvania, is what I would call a small city, but back in the day it had three broadsheet newspapers, a daily morning, a daily evening, and a Sunday. The two dailies were not morning and evening editions of the same paper. They were two separate papers with two separate staffs, though they used the same newsroom. One family published all three papers. (They also owned a local radio station and the local TV station.) The morning paper was Democrat, the evening paper Republican; I think the Sunday paper was non-partisan. I don't remember what the staffing was for the Sunday paper, but it was independent of the dailies; my high-school journalism teacher, the man who taught me to write, was a sports writer for the Sunday News.

It's been years now that the dailies have been collapsed into one paper that in terms of size is much smaller than the old papers. They print op-eds that are both liberal and conservative. (When I would go to visit my dad, I would be surprised at the number of anti-Trump letters to the editor.) They do have a presence online, but I've never checked it out. Maybe I should one of these days. The Sunday paper is still pretty big.

And the "paper" is printed on some pretty crappy paper, not the good newsprint like in the old days.

[Front-Ranger]

....Whether there's a w2 involved, no way of knowing.

Probably a 1099 form instead.