What does a sports agate clerk make?
I just checked out what has been bringing people to the blog lately, and I find that a recent arrival was looking up the starting salary for a sports agate clerk.
Well, let me start by saying that being a sports agate clerk doesn’t pay all that well in terms of money, but it’s a really fun job.
What I got, ten years ago, was $7.50 an hour plus benefits. But those benefits were really good – health insurance, a bit of life insurance, and once I’d been on the job for a year, a 401(k) retirement account in which, for every dollar I put in, the employer put in an extra half-dollar. That’s an instant 50% return on investment, not shabby. And the investment company holding the 401(k) was one of the best, and I had a choice of about a dozen investment funds, all of which were very good.
Of course, at $7.50 an hour, after the insurance and retirement-fund contributions were taken out, the take-home pay was pretty skimpy. But the immediate boost to my bank balance was not the main reason I kept the job.
Working on the sports desk of a newspaper is just plain a whole lot of fun. At the newspaper I worked for, the sports desk was known as the “toy department,” for good reason. Sports is mostly about fun and games. The people I worked with were all, to some extent, children having fun. Jokes and laughter were a constant part of the daily routine. And even when the action got the most hectic (for example, when the school year was drawing to a close, and multiple high-school sports were in state tournaments, so box scores were coming in at an avalanche pace), everybody kept up a sense of humor. We were all working together, and that feeling of teamwork just can’t be duplicated in an ordinary office environment.
Yes, there were some lows. I remember the time a promising young athlete died in a freak pole-vaulting accident, and one of our reporters had to call the kid’s grieving family to get information to put into the article. That was a heart-wrenching day. But we leaned on each other, and we got through it.
So, if you want to be a sports agate clerk, I can highly recommend the job, in particular if you’re a young adult just starting out and you don’t need a whole lot of money. Take the job, enjoy the company of your coworkers, and just plain have fun.
Well, let me start by saying that being a sports agate clerk doesn’t pay all that well in terms of money, but it’s a really fun job.
What I got, ten years ago, was $7.50 an hour plus benefits. But those benefits were really good – health insurance, a bit of life insurance, and once I’d been on the job for a year, a 401(k) retirement account in which, for every dollar I put in, the employer put in an extra half-dollar. That’s an instant 50% return on investment, not shabby. And the investment company holding the 401(k) was one of the best, and I had a choice of about a dozen investment funds, all of which were very good.
Of course, at $7.50 an hour, after the insurance and retirement-fund contributions were taken out, the take-home pay was pretty skimpy. But the immediate boost to my bank balance was not the main reason I kept the job.
Working on the sports desk of a newspaper is just plain a whole lot of fun. At the newspaper I worked for, the sports desk was known as the “toy department,” for good reason. Sports is mostly about fun and games. The people I worked with were all, to some extent, children having fun. Jokes and laughter were a constant part of the daily routine. And even when the action got the most hectic (for example, when the school year was drawing to a close, and multiple high-school sports were in state tournaments, so box scores were coming in at an avalanche pace), everybody kept up a sense of humor. We were all working together, and that feeling of teamwork just can’t be duplicated in an ordinary office environment.
Yes, there were some lows. I remember the time a promising young athlete died in a freak pole-vaulting accident, and one of our reporters had to call the kid’s grieving family to get information to put into the article. That was a heart-wrenching day. But we leaned on each other, and we got through it.
So, if you want to be a sports agate clerk, I can highly recommend the job, in particular if you’re a young adult just starting out and you don’t need a whole lot of money. Take the job, enjoy the company of your coworkers, and just plain have fun.
posted by Carol Anne | 3:12 AM
1 Comments:
$7.50 an hour? You were rich! When I started as a sports agate clerk at the defunct Gwinnett Daily News in Lawrenceville, Ga., I was making $5.50 an hour. But talk about a fun start to what has become a now 20-year career as a sports journalist! I remember those long nights well.
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