Econintersect: The Indiana University School of Journalism has conducted surveys of the profession approximately every ten years since 1971. The directors of the latest study, Professor Lars Wilmat and Professor Emeritus David Weaver, released the final report 01 May 2014: “The American Journalist in the Digital Age”. The results of this survey show that a profession which was evolving slowly at the end of the twentieth century has been dramatically changed in the twenty-first. At the core of the changes, the most important factor has been the rapidly emerging ubiquity of the internet.
Here is a summary of key points provided in a news release by Indiana University:
- Most see journalism going in “wrong direction.” Six in 10 journalists (59.7 percent) say that journalism in the United States is going in the wrong direction.
- Newsrooms are shrinking. Six in 10 journalists (62.6 percent) say their workforces have shrunk during the past year, while only about a quarter (24.2 percent) said their staff numbers remained the same, and even fewer reported some growth (13.2 percent).
- Journalists are getting older. The median age of full-time U.S. journalists increased by six years to 47 from 2002. This trend applies to journalists at daily and weekly newspapers, radio and television stations, newsmagazines, wire services and online news sites.
- More women in journalism. The number of women in journalism increased by 4.5 percent. However, women still represent only slightly more than one-third of all full-time journalists working for the U.S. news media, as has been true since the early 1980s. This trend persists despite the fact that more women than ever are graduating from journalism schools.
- Slightly fewer minority journalists. The number of minority journalists working for the U.S. news media has decreased slightly from 9.5 percent in 2002 to 8.5 percent in 2013. This means that the total percentage of minority journalists remains well below the overall percentage of minorities in the U.S. population (36.6 percent in 2012).
- Journalists are more likely to have at least a bachelor’s degree. About 92 percent of all full-time U.S. journalists have at least a bachelor’s degree, but slightly fewer proportionately are journalism majors (37.4 percent).
- Gender pay gap persists. Median income has climbed to about $50,000 in 2012, up 12.9 percent since 2002. This increase was less than half of the combined inflation rate of 29.5 percent during this decade (2001-12). Women’s salaries still trail those of men overall, but not among journalists with less than five years’ experience.
- More journalists say they are independents. In 2013, about half of all journalists (50.2 percent) said they were political independents, up about 18 percentage points from 2002. The number of those who identified with the Democratic Party dropped nearly 8 percentage points to 28.1 percent, while the number of journalists closer to the Republican Party decreased from 18 percent to 7.1 percent.
- Job satisfaction drops further. Job satisfaction dropped from 33.3 percent of journalists who said they were “very satisfied” with their job in 2002, to 23.3 percent who said so in 2013. This trend continues the decline in job satisfaction that was observed between 1971 and 1992 but was interrupted with a positive bounce in 2002.
- Perceived job autonomy also drops. The survey findings since 1982 document a continuing erosion of perceived professional autonomy in the nation’s newsrooms. While a majority (60 percent) of journalists said they had “almost complete freedom” in selecting their stories in 1971 and 1982, only a third (33.6 percent) said so in 2013.
- Government “watchdog” role increases. When asked to identify priorities for news media, three-quarters (78.2 percent) of journalists said investigating government claims is “extremely important.” That percentage is up significantly from 2002 and exceeds the high water mark of 76 percent in the early 1970s.
- More journalists value “analyzing complex problems.” A clear majority of journalists (68.8 percent) also said that “analyzing complex problems” in society is extremely important. That percentage is up 18 points from 2002 and — similar to the “government watchdog” role — exceeds the high water mark of 61 percent observed in the early 1970s.
- But getting out information quickly drops. In 2002, 58.9 percent of U.S. journalists said it was extremely important “to get out information to the public quickly.” A decade later, only 46.5 percent thought this role to be extremely important, possibly because of the competition of online news that started in the 1990s.
- Reaching a mass audience continues to decline. In the era of specialized niche media, declining numbers of U.S. journalists said that concentrating on news that is of interest to “the widest possible audience” is extremely important. While 39 percent of journalists considered that role extremely important in 1971, this percentage dropped to 12.1 percent in 2013, the lowest ever.
- Less support for controversial reporting techniques. The percentage of U.S. journalists endorsing the occasional use of “confidential business or government documents without authorization,” dropped significantly from 77.8 percent in 2002 to 57.7 percent in 2013. Similarly, the percentage of those who justify the occasional use of “personal documents without permission” decreased from 41 percent in 2002 to 24.9 percent in 2013. Support for the occasional “badgering or harassing of unwilling informants” also fell from 52 percent to 37.7 percent during the same time period.
- Social media changes news gathering. About 40 percent of U.S. journalists said social media is very important to their work. One-third (34.6 percent) of U.S. journalists spent 30 to 60 minutes every day on social networking sites. The findings also indicate that more than half (53.8 percent) of all U.S. journalists regularly use microblogs such as Twitter for gathering information and reporting their stories.
- Social media used to stay informed and monitor competition. The most common uses of social media among U.S. journalists are to check for breaking news (78.5 percent) and to see what other news organizations are doing (73.1 percent). Social media also is regularly used to identify story ideas (59.8 percent), to interact with audiences (59.7 percent), to find additional information about a topic (56.2 percent) and to find news sources (54.1 percent). Social media is least often used for verifying information (24.7 percent), meeting new people in the field (21.9 percent) or interviewing news sources (20 percent).
- Perceived impact of social media. A clear majority (80.3 percent) of U.S. journalists agreed that social media helps promote them and their work, and more than two-thirds (69.2 percent) said they are more engaged with their audiences. However, slightly less than half (48.9 percent) agreed that social media allows them to communicate better with relevant people, and only 29.7 percent said these media enhance their professional credibility. Few journalists said that social media improves productivity (25 percent), and fewer still said that it decreased their workload (6.3 percent).
Click on the cover page below to read the complete report (27 pages, pdf):
Sources:
- IU survey: U.S. journalists say they are less satisfied and have less autonomy (Press release, IU Bloomington Newsroom, 01 May 2014)
- The American Journalist in the Digital Age Key Findings (Lars Wilmat and David Weaver, Indiana University School of Journalism)
