The White House Correspondents Association has given its executive director a raise amid complaints that Julia Whiston is already paid too much, and that the group should instead focus on handing out scholarships to young reporters.
Carol Lee, the Association president who is also a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, confirmed to the Washington Examiner media desk Friday that Whiston was given a raise. Lee didn’t say how much Whiston now makes, but said her raise was an increase of $0.38 an hour.
That’s about $760 per year, and according to the group’s last tax return in 2013, Whiston made $133,150 annually.
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“Yes, [the Association] board voted to give Julie Whiston a cost-of-living increase in her hourly rate,” Lee said. “Her compensation varies year to year based on our workload.”
While it’s not a huge raise, some Washington-based reporters have complained publicly and privately about Whiston’s compensation, saying that it is outsized for her role. The Association was criticized in a documentary released this year for, in large part, compensating Whiston with a big salary while giving out a fraction of that money in scholarships.
In 2013, for example, the Association gave out $86,000 in awards to reporters during its annual dinner, and paid Whiston about 50 percent more in salary.
According to the minutes from an Association members meeting on Sep. 21, the scholarship fund is down to $20,716 “because all of the WHCA scholarships from last year have been paid out.” The minutes also say that the Association’s governing board has “made upward adjustments” to Whiston’s annual compensation “in accordance with recent history and scale.”
It’s unclear exactly what all of Whiston’s workload entails, but a Politico mini-profile on her in 2010 suggests she’s the primary coordinator of the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner, which is attended by journalists, celebrities and White House officials, including the president.
