Media/Journalism Cringe Megathread - Hot off the Presses

Bacle

When the effort is no longer profitable...
Founder
You can find a job easily.
One just has to be willing to work to get higher pay
Yes, 'a job'.

Not a job that pays a living wage, not a job with benefits that actually make it worth staying at long term, not a job that lets you have a meaningful life outside that job, and not a job with pay commiserate with the demands of said job.
My experience in the job market is that jobs that want you to penny-pinch for a few years before you get to the good-paid position intend to fire you once you actually get there and hire another sucker to penny-pinch for a few years.
Also this.
 

Bigking321

Well-known member
Up until they boosted unemployment benefits because covid the economy and job market were doing amazing.

I wonder if there's a connection.

Where I'm at we have a ton of people on unemployment that are perfectly willing to stay there until the benefits run out.

This reminds me of the great recession when they extended unemployment benefits to last nearly two years. Everybody was hiring but no one wanted a job when they could get decent checks from the government.
 

Morphic Tide

Well-known member
If people cannot find jobs worth taking compared to what they get on unemployment, they aren't going to re-enter the workforce with any gusto.
The vastly more reasonable solution to this is cutting unemployment, as there's been plenty of time for the businesses to sweeten the deal. If they're still not offering better than unemployment, it's extremely likely they can't.

Concerns about the deficit are something of a farce and red herring, because the Fed Reserve will always be able to print more money and fiddle with interest rates if inflation gets too bad.
If the inflation rate "gets too bad", that's an agonizing years-long recovery that obliterated the savings of most of the country, not something the Fed can fart out with the money-printer and loan terms. Being as how it was fucking caused by those exact things, and must be solved by the opposite; I.E. reducing the money supply. What is the framework for the US government to reduce the supply of US dollars?

You can find a job easily.
One just has to be willing to work to get higher pay
Not true, the job market doesn't actually have a ready supply of jobs all that much better than what people were already working remotely available with existing credentials. It isn't simply "work harder", a lot of them practically mandate connections and those that don't will BTFO you if you don't meet what is very nearly a catch 22 of often rather expensive qualifications.

If those jobs exist? They're already taken. Simple as that. They aren't in sufficient supply for the COVID-subsidy-induced unemployment surge, because that surge is overwhelmingly predicated on getting more or only marginally less in unemployment than from working.

Many businesses just don't have the on-hand cash to pay people more, even if they're extremely excellent workers, and it'd take years of raises to see it in many positions rather than something that exists on the job offer.

Somewhat.
Depends on if you want to pennypinch for a few years or not
See, this is the big lie of "Just Work Harder": It actually doesn't work without planning things out for literal years and hunting for very specific jobs where working harder actually results in raises. It isn't just doing a good job, it's looking for a job that doing good pays. Lot of people have enough problems finding a job that'll take them in the first place.

My brother went through something like 300 applications in two months, multiple applications every day until he actually got hired, and ended up taken on by a temp agency, not employed by a workplace. He has in fact gotten his shit together well, and is closing in on the down payment for a house at under 30 with jobs consisting almost solely of high-turnover low-skill manufacturing.

He's spectacularly unusual. He does not use credit cards. He has a wife he lives with who has her own job, and they actually handle bills together instead of treating one paycheck as disposable income. The worst expense in his hobbies is Magic: the Gathering, and to my understanding he sticks to trading and packs rather than buying singles. He's been living in a run-down trailer the last five years, to my recollection, and very specifically could not have done it alone.

It's not just "pennypinching". It's specifically going out of your way to deliberately live a shit life for years so you can have your feet under you without debt and a well-paying job, and even then it will often be requiring two separate full-time paychecks to get started. People are not going to routinely actively make their life worse for potential future payoff on a large scale, people do not natively plan things out like that.

This is not some small adjustment. This is not some straightforward best-practice. People are not taught goddamn any of this shit, and pulling it off alone is very nearly completely impossible without careful planning for years before you even look at getting a job to get good credentials right when you enter, or sacrificing everything on the alter of "Working Hard" by holding down two full-time jobs and ignoring non-vital expenses to get the requisite savings for credential-hunting. Because the jobs that pay well up front require quite considerable credentials, and are in extremely limited supply.

It isn't enough to pennypinch for a few years, you have to specifically have a career in mind and an entry strategy, and be extremely thorough in planning that out, and even then it's liable to end up unsuccessful because someone else who didn't work quite as hard to meet the minimum standards had connections, or you end up making a mistake, or the job market gets bricked at a critical moment, or sudden medical issues happen, or any number of other things buggering such long-term behaviors.
 

Zachowon

The Army Life for me! The POG life for me!
Founder
The vastly more reasonable solution to this is cutting unemployment, as there's been plenty of time for the businesses to sweeten the deal. If they're still not offering better than unemployment, it's extremely likely they can't.


If the inflation rate "gets too bad", that's an agonizing years-long recovery that obliterated the savings of most of the country, not something the Fed can fart out with the money-printer and loan terms. Being as how it was fucking caused by those exact things, and must be solved by the opposite; I.E. reducing the money supply. What is the framework for the US government to reduce the supply of US dollars?


Not true, the job market doesn't actually have a ready supply of jobs all that much better than what people were already working remotely available with existing credentials. It isn't simply "work harder", a lot of them practically mandate connections and those that don't will BTFO you if you don't meet what is very nearly a catch 22 of often rather expensive qualifications.

If those jobs exist? They're already taken. Simple as that. They aren't in sufficient supply for the COVID-subsidy-induced unemployment surge, because that surge is overwhelmingly predicated on getting more or only marginally less in unemployment than from working.

Many businesses just don't have the on-hand cash to pay people more, even if they're extremely excellent workers, and it'd take years of raises to see it in many positions rather than something that exists on the job offer.


See, this is the big lie of "Just Work Harder": It actually doesn't work without planning things out for literal years and hunting for very specific jobs where working harder actually results in raises. It isn't just doing a good job, it's looking for a job that doing good pays. Lot of people have enough problems finding a job that'll take them in the first place.

My brother went through something like 300 applications in two months, multiple applications every day until he actually got hired, and ended up taken on by a temp agency, not employed by a workplace. He has in fact gotten his shit together well, and is closing in on the down payment for a house at under 30 with jobs consisting almost solely of high-turnover low-skill manufacturing.

He's spectacularly unusual. He does not use credit cards. He has a wife he lives with who has her own job, and they actually handle bills together instead of treating one paycheck as disposable income. The worst expense in his hobbies is Magic: the Gathering, and to my understanding he sticks to trading and packs rather than buying singles. He's been living in a run-down trailer the last five years, to my recollection, and very specifically could not have done it alone.

It's not just "pennypinching". It's specifically going out of your way to deliberately live a shit life for years so you can have your feet under you without debt and a well-paying job, and even then it will often be requiring two separate full-time paychecks to get started. People are not going to routinely actively make their life worse for potential future payoff on a large scale, people do not natively plan things out like that.

This is not some small adjustment. This is not some straightforward best-practice. People are not taught goddamn any of this shit, and pulling it off alone is very nearly completely impossible without careful planning for years before you even look at getting a job to get good credentials right when you enter, or sacrificing everything on the alter of "Working Hard" by holding down two full-time jobs and ignoring non-vital expenses to get the requisite savings for credential-hunting. Because the jobs that pay well up front require quite considerable credentials, and are in extremely limited supply.

It isn't enough to pennypinch for a few years, you have to specifically have a career in mind and an entry strategy, and be extremely thorough in planning that out, and even then it's liable to end up unsuccessful because someone else who didn't work quite as hard to meet the minimum standards had connections, or you end up making a mistake, or the job market gets bricked at a critical moment, or sudden medical issues happen, or any number of other things buggering such long-term behaviors.
As someone who worked 5 jobs all within 2 and a half years before joining the Army, it depends in where you are looking as well, and where you are trying to work.

I worked a temp and seasonal before I got my first full job. Which was Walmart. Got paid pretty well, more then livable if one either gets roommates or finds someplace cheap (where I was, I was living with my mom for instance) or living with family as I just showed. I then worked there for 7 months, doing great and working my ass off to give them all I can and actually had people wanting me to apply for higher jobs.

By that point I left to join a sheriff's office, where I eventually got fired.

After that moved in with a friend in TN, and worked my ass off at staples making the lowest I have ever made. At 9.75 an hour, making 200 a week and getting an apartment and splitting it with a friend.

I guess I got lucky, but a good job is one that wants to keep you and have you grow so you can make more people behave like you do.
 

Terthna

Professional Lurker
As someone who worked 5 jobs all within 2 and a half years before joining the Army, it depends in where you are looking as well, and where you are trying to work.

I worked a temp and seasonal before I got my first full job. Which was Walmart. Got paid pretty well, more then livable if one either gets roommates or finds someplace cheap (where I was, I was living with my mom for instance) or living with family as I just showed. I then worked there for 7 months, doing great and working my ass off to give them all I can and actually had people wanting me to apply for higher jobs.

By that point I left to join a sheriff's office, where I eventually got fired.

After that moved in with a friend in TN, and worked my ass off at staples making the lowest I have ever made. At 9.75 an hour, making 200 a week and getting an apartment and splitting it with a friend.

I guess I got lucky, but a good job is one that wants to keep you and have you grow so you can make more people behave like you do.
Meanwhile I tried for almost a year to find any jobs whatsoever in my area, and I couldn't even find an opening cleaning out toilets at a fast food joint. Mind you, this was a long time ago (a few years before the 2008 recession), but it was the main reason I tried to get a degree; because there was literally no entry-level work to be found.
 

Captain X

Well-known member
Osaul
You can find a job easily.
One just has to be willing to work to get higher pay
I would honestly say it's kind of a mixture of both. For a very long time, wages have been stagnate, and businesses have really not been all that willing to pay higher wages even when profits are up - instead executives and owners increase their own wages accordingly. While I see this as immoral, I'm also not a commie who's going to suggest that we forcefully redistribute wealth or cap how much they can earn or anything like that. Instead, I'd suggest a combination of guilting them, and perhaps some kind of a carrot and stick approach that will encourage them to raise wages on their own, as well as to improve working conditions for those who work for them. Amazon is an especially egregious example, and frankly I think it's a blindspot in the "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps" conservative mentality, because a lot of companies are actually pretty horrible to work for, and they don't even offer much in terms of wages or benefits to make up for it some. This is something that really needs to be addressed, which would also have the benefit of taking some of the talking points from the unions and communists away from them, provided that businesses can be talked into knocking this shit off and doing some work culture changes on their own. You also have this other side to it where unemployment is paying artificially higher prices because the Fed is just printing money to make the payout much higher than the individual states could ever provide (and which are more reflective of local wages anyway), as well as extending it far longer than it was ever intended to last, so even if you own a company, if you are too small, it might just be impossible for you to compete against this.
 

Captain X

Well-known member
Osaul
As someone who worked 5 jobs all within 2 and a half years before joining the Army, it depends in where you are looking as well, and where you are trying to work.

I worked a temp and seasonal before I got my first full job. Which was Walmart. Got paid pretty well, more then livable if one either gets roommates or finds someplace cheap (where I was, I was living with my mom for instance) or living with family as I just showed. I then worked there for 7 months, doing great and working my ass off to give them all I can and actually had people wanting me to apply for higher jobs.

By that point I left to join a sheriff's office, where I eventually got fired.

After that moved in with a friend in TN, and worked my ass off at staples making the lowest I have ever made. At 9.75 an hour, making 200 a week and getting an apartment and splitting it with a friend.

I guess I got lucky, but a good job is one that wants to keep you and have you grow so you can make more people behave like you do.
Dude, I have both a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in mechanical engineering, and it has meant fuck-all for actaully landing me a job in engineering. Most of them cite a lack of experience, but keep in mind that I've only ever bothered applying for listings that say they are entry level, so the 2+ years I have as a GRA/lab assistant should theoretically give me a leg-up among recent graduates, yet I have consistently been passed over. I'm honestly wondering if I'm being age-discriminated against at this point. Hell, recently I put in for an engineering tech position and basically got told I was not qualified for the position when in fact I should be overqualified for it. Let that sink in. So the only jobs I seem to be able to get are ones that you only need a high school diploma for (and honestly wouldn't actually need a high school education to do) and just involve a lot of physical work. That was fine while I was still in good health, but now I'm running into problems, like having arthritis in my shoulders now, so I'm not even going to be able to do these kinds of jobs for much longer.
 

Zachowon

The Army Life for me! The POG life for me!
Founder
Meanwhile I tried for almost a year to find any jobs whatsoever in my area, and I couldn't even find an opening cleaning out toilets at a fast food joint. Mind you, this was a long time ago (a few years before the 2008 recession), but it was the main reason I tried to get a degree; because there was literally no entry-level work to be found.
And now it seems to be the opposite
 

Vaermina

Well-known member
Dude, I have both a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in mechanical engineering, and it has meant fuck-all for actaully landing me a job in engineering. Most of them cite a lack of experience, but keep in mind that I've only ever bothered applying for listings that say they are entry level, so the 2+ years I have as a GRA/lab assistant should theoretically give me a leg-up among recent graduates, yet I have consistently been passed over. I'm honestly wondering if I'm being age-discriminated against at this point. Hell, recently I put in for an engineering tech position and basically got told I was not qualified for the position when in fact I should be overqualified for it. Let that sink in. So the only jobs I seem to be able to get are ones that you only need a high school diploma for (and honestly wouldn't actually need a high school education to do) and just involve a lot of physical work. That was fine while I was still in good health, but now I'm running into problems, like having arthritis in my shoulders now, so I'm not even going to be able to do these kinds of jobs for much longer.
Collage degree's have been devalued to the point of near meaninglessness...

Hence buisnesses considering "Entry Level" to be people with 10+ years of work experience in any given field. Who they can then pay next to nothing because it's just "Entry Level".
 

nemo1986

Well-known member
Dude, I have both a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in mechanical engineering, and it has meant fuck-all for actaully landing me a job in engineering. Most of them cite a lack of experience, but keep in mind that I've only ever bothered applying for listings that say they are entry level, so the 2+ years I have as a GRA/lab assistant should theoretically give me a leg-up among recent graduates, yet I have consistently been passed over. I'm honestly wondering if I'm being age-discriminated against at this point. Hell, recently I put in for an engineering tech position and basically got told I was not qualified for the position when in fact I should be overqualified for it. Let that sink in. So the only jobs I seem to be able to get are ones that you only need a high school diploma for (and honestly wouldn't actually need a high school education to do) and just involve a lot of physical work. That was fine while I was still in good health, but now I'm running into problems, like having arthritis in my shoulders now, so I'm not even going to be able to do these kinds of jobs for much longer.
I have a friend who has a similar issue. Has a BS in Mechanical Engineering and is working on his Masters but spent the last three years looking for a job. He JUST got hired at a firm over at RI so he is ecstatic. Me? Graduated in '09 as the Great Recession really kicked off and spent two years job hunting until I got a job as a GIS Tech. Is it what I studied? No, but it was a paycheck with good benefits and was made lead a few years ago which let me get enough cash to buy a house.
Collage degree's have been devalued to the point of near meaninglessness...

Hence buisnesses considering "Entry Level" to be people with 10+ years of work experience in any given field. Who they can then pay next to nothing because it's just "Entry Level".
College degrees are just over glorified high school degrees now and the later is due to A) HR having no clue what the jobs are about so go with a boiler plate job posting or B) managers don't want to pay people what they are worth and try to get them cheap or just don't want to train them because they have no budget for it or don't want to spend it on people who may bounce after a few years.
 

bintananth

behind a desk
Wouldn't be anything to do with them setting off a fuckton of fireworks would it? I know my neighborhood was blowing up last night.
The clouds of burnt gunpowder in my neighbourhood were thicker than what you'd see at a Civil War reenactment. I'm glad that the Fire Department only had to be called once.

July 4th is "let's go nuts with explosives day" in the US.
 
When you can't stay in your lane:



Yeah, that's why Biden is doing so well with swing voters in places like New Hampshire- HEY, Wait a minute!



Hey Alex, every considered that your definition of "halfway honest" comes from the same people whose lies about lockdowns, the virus, and vaccines you've covered?


Got an addenda to this, one of Berenson’s tweets yesterday got hit with the “misleading” tag. Looks like his request for forgiveness from liberal-dom by indulging in the two minutes hate has been met with a resounding “Nope”:

 

Husky_Khan

The Dog Whistler... I mean Whisperer.
Founder
Sotnik
More ESPN news. A few days ago veteran ESPN correspondent Rachel Nichols got into hot water for making these comments in her hotel room on a phone call while a video camera was still rolling and uploading the video to the ESPN servers.

“I wish Maria Taylor all the success in the world — she covers football, she covers basketball. If you need to give her more things to do because you are feeling pressure about your crappy longtime record on diversity — which, by the way, I know personally from the female side of it — like, go for it. Just find it somewhere else. You are not going to find it from me or taking my thing away. I just want them to go somewhere else — it’s in my contract, by the way; this job is in my contract in writing."

Maria Taylor is a Black sports journalist who also works for ESPN who only had two weeks left on her contract after declining a $5 million dollar contract from ESPN last year. Maria Taylor reportedly wanted "Stephen A. Smith" money in the field of $8 million a year. However as of late ESPN has been asking for pay cuts for much of its talents and its reported now that Maria Taylor was only being offered around half of what she was offered and turned down last year for a contract extension. T

Many ESPN employees as well as the standard social media outrage mob and various Black trades groups like the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) have demanded apologies and explanations from Rachel Nichols all the way up to the ESPN and Disney CEO's.

Coincidentally the video of Rachel Nichols was found by a Black ESPN producer named Kayla Johnson who sent the video to Maria Taylor. Also coincidentally this video was soon leaked after months of simply being a known video in the possession of ESPN. In another complete coincidence, Maria Taylor has been on a social media offensive, being a champion for the rights of Women and people of color while her contract with ESPN is about to expire...


According to Outkick when asked about the potential of a lawsuit from Rachel Nichols on this matter:

Outkick said:
Nichols would have a good case, I believe, against ESPN. That case could be both rooted in tort and contract law. Let’s start with the contract law claim. Nichols said her contract gives her the right to host the halftime show of the NBA Finals. If that’s true, then ESPN breached her contract when they gave Maria Taylor the hosting duties and removed Nichols. Now I haven’t read Nichols’s contract, but this is based on her own comments. If she’s right about that, she could sue for a contractual breach and be entitled to substantial damages.

Nichols could also sue ESPN based on the tape being recorded and later released. That’s a bit complicated because her own failure to turn off the camera left it on, allowing the taping to occur, but it’s reasonable to believe that an employee, especially one quarantined in a hotel room, would believe she had a reasonable expectation of privacy to engage in private phone calls without being overheard and certainly without being recorded. There could even be a criminal angle at play here,+ depending on the law regarding taping of private phone calls in both Florida and Connecticut. (The Nichols call took place in Florida and was recorded, presumably, in Connecticut where ESPN is based.)

Nichols has spent her entire career covering the NBA. Now, potentially, she may be unable to do that job in the years ahead because of this call leak. If that’s true, then Nichols may have substantial damages as a result of this recording being made of her private conversation. (There are also a ton of details we still don’t know. How long, for instance, was the camera recording her calls? Depending on the length of the recording, why didn’t someone at ESPN call and notify her of this issue?)

I would bet ESPN will end up paying Nichols millions and millions of dollars, either via a contract extension that’s far in excess of what her value might be on the open market or as a settlement that effectively sidelines her as an ESPN employee but lets her walk away with a golden parachute.

I’m not sure she’ll actually file a lawsuit, but the mere threat that she might file that lawsuit, I’d think, would have ESPN rushing to settle this case for a ton of money.

The most astounding part of this story to me, honestly, is that ESPN executives were never able to squash this dispute. They had a full year to mediate this issue. And it sounds like they just hoped it was going to vanish. That’s a massive failure of management.

And the other story here, which few seem willing to discuss, is how Maria Taylor leaked this all in an effort to get more money. I mean, it’s just so transparent what’s going on here. Taylor leaked this story to pressure ESPN executives into paying her way more money than she’d otherwise make. And the New York Times wrote this story painting Taylor as the huge victim here without acknowledging that they were effectively being used as a negotiating tool.

 

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