Are Journalism Conferences Too Expensive?

As someone who’s tried to set up a startup company for the last year or so, I know a bit about conferences. Heck, in the first six months of this year alone I went to about 30 of them. Some were alright, some less interesting and the rest mostly just fairly average all round. It was your usual mixed bag of stuff to be honest.

But regardless of the event quality, one thing always stayed the same throughout. Namely, the price.

What do I mean by this?

Well look at it this way. Out of all the events I went to, the most expensive one was maybe £15 for a ticket. So regardless of how much of the event I found interesting, it was all cheap enough it didn’t matter either way. Who cares if I spent a tenner on something that turns out to be a bit naff? I was only going to spend that on a soft drink or a snack anyway.

And then I looked at journalism conferences.

Oh boy were they different. Seriously, it’s like the people who came up with these things had no idea how much a journalist earned in a year.

Because dear god, the prices are absolutely ridiculous in this field. For example, I recently got a message from a journalism job board offering ‘a day of training’ as an event. What do you think the price was for a ticket?

£10?

£50?

Maybe a hundred or so?

Nope. £180 minimum, going up to £323+ if you want the more advanced version.

And it don’t get much better elsewhere. Other conferences I’ve seen range from £80 to £500 based on the event, with one even going as high as £999 or even £1200 for a ticket!

It makes you wonder who’s supposed to be paying for this. It’s certainly not the journalists, who would be losing quite a massive chunk of their salary based on the averages wages I’ve seen mentioned online. But it also seems like it wouldn’t be very affordable for a lot of media outlets either.

I mean okay, the Guardian or the New York Times or whoever else could easily pay their staff to attend. They’ve certainly got the capital to send reporters to these luxury events if they feel like sending them.

But the smaller outlets barely squeak by as it is. If you were working for one of those and asked your editor to send you to a £1200 conference, the reaction would probably be something akin to this:

it’s just that far out of the norm for a small publication, and ridiculous in comparison to your average journalist’s salary.

What’s more, it makes you wonder quite why journalism conferences are so expensive all things considered. I mean, think about it. A good developer at a Silicon Valley tech company can make a few hundred grand a year, yet comparatively speaking their events are pretty cheap. They’re generally not paying $3000+ for tickets.

So why is the profession that’s having trouble keeping the lights on and seeing job losses everywhere filled with events that pay far more than most people can afford to waste?

It just seems ridiculous, and perhaps a good contributor to why wealthy people are so over-represented in the media. Because (like with so many other aspects of this field), they’re the only ones who can easily afford to go to all these things.

Let’s hope things change in the future, shall we?