When it
comes to pay, “journalism and mass communication employers
today are investing no more – and no less –
in their new employees in terms of salary than has been
the case in recent history,” the researchers say.
“The
median salary of $26,000 earned by journalism and mass communication
graduates in 2002 does not compare favorably to salaries
earned by other liberal arts graduates.” For instance,
those oft-maligned English majors averaged $30,157. History
grads averaged $32,108 and criminal justice majors $29,324.
The best
money was among those who went to work for newsletters or
trade publications: a median of $28,655. Daily papers paid
a median $25,000 and weeklies $22,000, the same as television.
The survey also covered advertising, public relations, magazines,
cable TV and Web-based operations.
But this
is not a harangue against low pay. It’s been tough
economically, and in a business fighting the trend toward
commodity status, none of this should be surprising. However,
consider one other finding, and there is reason for concern:
More than three in 10 graduates (31.6 percent) said they
regretted their career choice and wished they had selected
another major.
In short,
at a time when journalism is struggling with accelerating
declines in readership and viewership among young people,
when some news executives are saying we need more 20-year-old
reporters and 30-year-old editors, we are in danger of eating
our young.
Word gets
around, and it doesn’t take long for the “best
and the brightest” – those young people we say
we need to meet the challenges of the 21st century –
to figure out the opportunities are better elsewhere. At
the University of South Carolina, we’ve been lucky.
Most of those coming out of our senior semester newsrooms
and who want to work in journalism have found jobs. But
a significant number now reach their senior year having
decided journalism, especially daily news work, holds few
opportunities or excitement from long hours and low pay.
And here’s
another statistic, this one from the National Association
for Female Executives and reported in December by Reuters:
Print journalism is among the worst when it comes to the
salary gap between men and women. While women TV news directors
make $4,000 less than their male counterparts, the gap jumps
to $9,000 between male and female print journalists. Look
around any college classroom; you’ll find that’s
not likely to be a winning strategy for attracting people
into the business.
Among
all the numbers is some good news, however. The Georgia
researchers found that more than two-thirds of those with
bachelor’s degrees in journalism and mass communication
said they were proud to be working for their employer. Almost
60 percent said the work they were doing was meaningful.
So the
challenge this year is to build on that. Maybe you can’t
put more money in the paycheck, but can you do something
to help make the work more meaningful or to simply say thanks?
Maybe an occasional newsroom or departmental lunch, or maybe
a little recognition for the best headline of the month,
or the story that brought the most reader response? Perhaps
it’s a good time to ask your staff what kind of training
they’d most like and then work with a nearby university
to bring it to them (with Web-based education, the cost
can be less expensive, and it can be reusable).
The second
challenge is to start managing your supply line –
the young journalists you’ll need in five or 10 years
for your operation to flourish. Do you work with your local
high school newspapers? This is where your prospective journalists
will get their first impressions; they need to know that
journalism is a fun, but exacting business and hard work.
Too many still look at the business because “I like
to write” or “I’m good with people.”
They need to know there’s much more to it so that
they don’t become disillusioned later.
If there’s
a college journalism program in your area, see if there’s
a way to get involved there, too. Certainly, try to speak
to classes whenever possible and give them the “real
world” perspective. But one of the best things you
also can do is help schools find funding for research and
teaching specifically for journalism. The times have changed
on campus, and those departments that can attract the dollars
are the ones that survive. Unlike the sciences, there aren’t
a lot of federal grants for journalism, and so the industry
is going to have to decide if it wants these programs to
survive and flourish.
Of course,
you could always hire English majors – but they’ll
want more money.
