Old writer, young writer; rich writer, poor writer
Michael writes on the Ragan Communications website about the age disparity between twenty-something political speechwriters and graybeard corporate communications types like me.
Michael and I spoke last week about my experience of the age range in corporate America exec comms departments. He quotes me in the article. One misquote - “I’ve been a corporate communicator for 25, 30 years”. This is simply not the case. I’ve been in the computer business for 25 years. But my early career was spent in technical jobs (database administration and systems engineering). I moved into product training 15 years ago and speechwriting came out of that, but only in the last eight years.
The salary gap seems way overstated. Political speeechwriters might well only get paid $40-50K. But claiming that “A speechwriter for the CEO of even a medium Fortune 500 company might make $250,000″ seems way high. Try changing the leading 2 to a 1 and the number makes more sense. At least in my experience. But wait! Maybe I’ve just been grossly underpaid all these years…
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Thanks for the clarification Ian. Sorry about the error.
By Michael Sebastian on 07.29.08 1:45 pm
The age “disparity” shouldn’t be a surprise. Of course, 20-something year old speechwriters are better suited for all nighters, crazy travel schedules, etc. The corporate side, at senior level, has always been more comfortable with older, seasoned speechwriters…Not sure what this writer meant about “sneaking into” a speechwriting job (makes it sound like you snuck in through a back at Sun) Most speechwriters come up through communications but they can come out of many other fields too (in my experience). More importantly, I want to know where the $250k corp.speechwriting jobs are..Am I missing something?
By mark ivey on 08.12.08 1:30 pm
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