Journalists lost jobs in droves over the last two years as the recession battered ad revenues and readers switched to mostly free online publications but that hasn’t prevented some publications from paying top dollar for talent.

From The Wrap

With all the million-dollar salaries being thrown around journalism circles these days, you’d hardly know we were in the depths of a media downturn.

While much of the journalism profession is idled, redundant, bought-out and collecting unemployment, a slim layer is suddenly pocketing supersalaries as the media landscape remakes itself around rags — and riches.

To name a few:

• On Monday, OK! magazine announced the hiring of Richard Spencer, who abruptly left his job as editor of In Touch in January — after a reported “monumental blow-up” over a demand to up his $750,000-a-year salary. (Read: Spencer-for-hire didn’t come cheap.)

• Ron Fournier left the Associated Press’ Washington bureau in June to take the reins as editor-in-chief at the National Journal Group at a salary that is said to be close to $1 million a year. (When I asked Fournier recently if that figure was accurate, he laughed. “If that really is my salary, I’m going to have to speak to David Bradley about [getting paid].”)

• In May, Janice Min — who walked away from Us Weekly when Jann Wenner refused to renew her $2 million-a-year deal (“I was making more money sometimes in one paycheck than he would make the whole year,” she wrote in a New York Post op-ed earlier this year) — was lured out of early retirement by e5 Global Media’s co-owner Jimmy Finkelstein to take the reins at the Hollywood Reporter. Beckman has been doubling editorial salaries all over Hollywood, and no one thinks Min came for less than $1 million.

• In July, it was reported Finkelstein offered Richard Johnson a cool million — double his current salary — to leave the New York Post and move to L.A., but the Post told him to sit down, shut up and read his contract.

•In August, Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek’s international editor, jumped to rival Time in a deal thought to be close to seven figures. (Zakaria was on the shortlist of candidates to replace Jon Meacham as Newsweek’s editor-in-chief.)

For the publishers this jockeying for so called star talent and luring them with fat paychecks presents a conundrum as many of them are cutting jobs at the same time.

There was a time that luring top writers led to increased readership and revenue but reader loyalty is a thing of the past.  Readers just want their news fast and free and for the most part don’t care where they get it from as long as it is convenient.

Just because publishers are paying high salaries to top talent is no guarantee of success.  Many sports teams learned this lesson long ago and maybe this time it’s the media’s turn.

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