By KATHERINE FERNANDES
Since the decline of newspapers, less people watching TV and the rapid growth of digital media, journalism salaries have been falling. Today, new graduate journalists are notorious for low salaries.
If you really want to be a journalist, you must be passionate about the career and must be willing to start from scratch with “not the best expected salary.”
Federal data show that news reporters are falling further behind workers in other occupations. The mean annual salary for reporters in the U.S is below the national average for all jobs.
As it turns out, a decade ago journalist earned more money than they do now. Reporters, on average, earn $2,080 less than the national average.
Certainly, journalism is a field where the competition is immense. The competition is increasing now even more because positions in this field are less. We probably have heard about the economic issues hitting the news business nowadays. Many newspapers with financial trouble have been forced to stop hiring new journalists and even lay off journalists that already have a job in the newspaper.
Not to mention, beginning broadcast journalists earn almost the same money as a beginning reporter in a newspaper. Although the competition for jobs in broadcasting is high, if you become an important anchor in a big media market, you’re going to have a high salary.
There are undoubtedly other careers such as medicine, business, architecture and law that pay much higher than journalism. However, journalism is a wonderful profession where you are always learning new things, meeting new people, traveling, exploring new things and doing interesting things. Despite the old journalism jobs being destroyed and many people fighting for these job positions, journalism is a great career to pursue when you really love what you do.
Yes, there are scarce career opportunities in this job field, yet if you want to be in journalism, you have to be willing to work harder and harder to be better than the other journalists fighting for the job you want.