‘Love and passion can’t help you live’: Reach journalists set to join picket lines

theguardian.com:

When hundreds of staff at the Mirror, Express and dozens of local newspapers join picket lines on Wednesday, they will be taking part in the largest strike to hit the UK newspaper industry in decades. Having spent recent months reporting on how the cost of living crisis is affecting their readers, many journalists at the media company Reach say they are struggling to meet their own bills – and management is refusing to listen.

One regional reporter described how three years of university, training and unpaid placements had secured them a job at a Reach outlet on £18,000 a year. Having only recently joined the media industry, they are already overwhelmed by the financial instability.

“I’m thinking of leaving soon,” they said. “I love my job – but this year will underline how love and passion can’t help you live.”

Other reporters describe having weekend jobs in coffee shops to supplement their journalism salaries, only to calculate that they earn more per hour from making coffees than they do from their full-time day job writing news stories.

Formerly known as Trinity Mirror, in recent years Reach has become the home to dozens of titles, including the Express and Star. It also has a sprawling local news business, combining a handful of traditional newspaper brands – such as the Manchester Evening News and Liverpool Echo – with dozens of web-first operations under the “Live” branding.

Of the two dozen Reach journalists who have spoken to the Guardian in recent days, none said they had gone into the media to get rich, and there was a widespread acceptance that working as a journalist is now a comparatively low-paid job. Yet staff say Reach’s management have pushed them to strike action by offering only a 3% pay rise – while the