US Journalism Job Growth Sputtering, Feds Say

According to the latest statistics from the Labor Department, demand for journalists in the US is set to grow only five percent between now and 2014. Forbes reports...

"Another endangered species: journalists. Despite the proliferation of media outlets, newspapers, where the bulk of U.S. reporters work, will cut costs and jobs as the Internet replaces print. While current events will always need to be covered (we hope), the number of reporting positions is expected to grow by just 5 percent in the coming decade, the Labor Department says. Most jobs will be in small (read: low-paying) markets."

Meanwhile, demand for PR specialists is expected to climb 18-26% during the same period. So what are all those bodies going to be doing exactly? I don't believe that the industry is progressing fast enough when it comes to embracing the digital age so there feels like there is some big disconnect here. (via)

Comments

[Shawn Smith]

Journalists, especially online producers, need to embrace marketing strategies to promote the content their producing. All the multimedia and content work producers do won't matter if people can't find it. Thanks for the find!

[Phil Wolff]

PR people will step in to report, become the media, produce content as it becomes impossible to get an alpha blogger's or mainstream journalist's time (fewer journos, more in longtail and microlocal niches), as news releases become ignored by real media (vs. google adword honeypots).

alpha PR people will have their own followings, covering their own beats, most of them no longer bloggin about PR but covering topics for which they have insight or passion. (can't think of any current examples, though... ;-)

[Joel Libava]

Hi Steve,There are a lot of grea journalists out there, and they are being affected by the changes taking place...There is a rather heated discussion going on at a Cleveland Blog {brewedfreshdaily.com}related to this topic.A blogger that was hired by our newspaper {one paper town}was dismissed for political reasons. He was a political blogger. Another one just resigned. Then they scrapped the program. Problem:The old-school, high paid execs still don't get it.User generated content is starting to win over the masses, because the masses ARE the users!Joel LibavaThe Franchise King Blog

[teno]

I don't know really, but personally i think http://fivq.com/ is good place for job seekers.