Newstradamus

Dario Castillejos

I've long believed that we are in the middle of a decades-long reconfiguration of how journalism is practiced, and how people make money at it.

Take a look at some other businesses, like the film industry. It used to be highly vertically integrated, with studios owning the whole process — actors, screenwriters, directors, production, marketing and distribution. Now pretty much everything is contracted out on a project-by-project basis. That's why we're paying $10 for movie tickets soon — everybody offers their skills on the open market, and the best at what they do get top dollar.

Or professional sports — once the players won the right to claim free agency, the best of them before long became multi-millionaires, and even the journeyman pros did a lot better than before.

As technology has pushed change at all levels of journalism, it seemed that this sort of caste model could be possible. Early signs came years ago, in television news, when handsome or beautiful talking heads started drawing down huge salaries based on their Nielsen numbers.

Then, in print journalism, Bob Woodward parleyed his "All the President's Men" fame into a career as both a newspaperman and a millionaire author of investigative books. Bob Barlett and Jim Steele, former investigative reporters with the Philadelphia Inquirer, leveraged a couple of Pulitzers into fat contracts — first with Time Inc. and now Vanity Fair — and seven books.

More recently, just in time for the presidential campaign, Washington Post writers John Harris and Jim VandeHei jumped ship and created Politico, which disseminates its political journalism via TV, the Web, newspapers and radio.

The latest evidence of this trend, in a New York Times story, shows the latest hot commodities are top sportswriters. The story notes that ESPN and Yahoo Sports "are on a furious hiring binge, offering reporters and columnists more than they ever imagined they could make in journalism."

How much? At ESPN, $150,000 to $350,000 a year for several writers, the story says, and far more for a select handful.

Some magazines like Sports Illustrated, have tried to keep up, but newspapers don't have a chance — they don't make that kind of profit. One of those who has profited is the SF Chronicle's Mark Fainaru-Wada, one of the duo who uncovered key info in the steroid scandal. He's how with ESPN, and says it's amazing considering what's happening elsewhere in the business: "We just went through a 25% newsroom cut at the Chronicle,"

The assistant ME for sports at the Washington Post is quoted as saying, "We're used to being a destination, not a stepping stone." That may be changing — starting with an elite few in hot-commodity beats like sports and politics.