Yeah I highly doubt that your yearly pay is $52k. That is a minimum, as it says, and this is probably a minimum that covers a bare-bones level of teaching and service responsibilities - like covering autopsies a couple of weeks a year and surgicals one week every two months. Many academic physicians are primarily researchers, but will be paid by the institution for doing a certain level of service work. So, if you have outside funding for research, obviously this is not part of the $52k. And if you increase your service work, probably more than $52k. And bear in mind that academic positions often have great benefits (lots of travel, health care, meals, etc) that are in addition to salary.
That being said, starting academic positions do not pay very well, and I don't think this is limited to pathology. Generally you start as a "clinical assistant professor" or "Clinical associate" or something like that (I'm not quite familiar with the complete hierarchy of titles). Increased seniority leads to higher titles and higher salaries. Starting academic pathologists don't often make a ton more than $90k per year, exclusive of benefits. Quite a few have outside funding, as I said. There are also bonuses.
Most positions in any kind of job will have salaries listed that don't really represent the full story.
