The 25 percent conundrum - disparities in the salaries of editors - Editorial

Folio: The Magazine for Magazine Management, March 1, 1994

Even as the salaries of the editorial elite spiral into six figures, there remains a strange disparity.

If, as an editor, your compensation package were worth $225,000 a year, you would be pretty happy, right? Certainly you'd be making more than many of your peers. The average salary for top editors in last year's FOLIO: Editorial Salary Survey (August 1, 1993, page 41) was $66,444.

But suppose someone else, doing a comparable job at the same company, had a $400,000 package. You'd ask why.

At least I hope you would.

When Keith J. Kelly wrote recently in FOLIO:'s "First Day" about that real-fife example I describe above, it made me think of the refrain of the plaintiff attorney in Philadelphia. When wending his way through the seemingly inexplicable realities of prejudice, he would begin his questioning: "Okay, explain this to me like I'm a six-year-old."

Okay, then, explain this to me: There are two magazines, owned by the same private investment group, conducting searches for top editors at the same time. One magazine, a monthly, has a nationwide circulation of 1.8 million and is under assault by several aggressive competitors. PIB estimates its 1993 ad revenues were $40 million. It has an editorial staff of about 40 people and needs a skilled leader who can bring it a vision with which to enter the 21st century.

The other magazine is a regional weekly with a circulation of about 440,000. Although it has seen ad pages fall, in 1993 it brought in about $43 million in ad revenues and is virtually unchallenged editorially. Still, its formula and format could use some freshening up. It also has an editorial staff of 40.

So, which editor got what? You guessed it: The editor of the bigger magazine got the $225,000 package. Why? I'm sure executives and compensation experts could rationalize it a hundred ways, but I believe it comes down to this: The former job was a "woman's job" and the latter was a "man's job."

Half of you probably just stopped reading. That's how angry raising this topic makes some people. But it makes me angry, too. So for the half of you who are still with me, hear me out.

Year after year after year, our salary surveys show about a 25 percent difference between the salaries of top male and top female editors: that is, men make 25 percent more. The disparity holds even for the most senior, experienced editors--so it's not like the gap closes when you reach the upper echelons. Why is there a gap at all? That's a surprisingly difficult question to answer. Even economists who specialize in analyzing salary data can't agree on how it happens. But I do know this: If we continue to rationalize inequitable hiring practices to ourselves, to stifle discussion of the problem, to ridicule those who raise the issue and to generally pretend we're too sophisticated and enlightened to engage in that kind of discrimination (banish even the term!), then the unfair, illegal practice will go on and on and on. At budget time this year, when you sit down with a printout of your department's salaries, look at how they break out. Ask yourself, is there a pattern that follows the lines of gender? Then do what you can to rectify it.

Let me leave you with another real-life example. Who's the hottest editor in America? Tina Brown. Is Tina Brown the highest paid? I hope so. But I wonder--even given S.I. Newhouse's legendary generosity with his top editors. Keith, who's a regular bloodhound on the salary front, recently wrote in "First Day" of a new editor at a men's magazine whose multi-year package is rumored to be $600,000 annually.

Ladies, the bar has been raised.