Emerging Occupation News, June 24, 2013

Journalism is simultaneously a declining and emerging field. The mainstream print and broadcast media continues to shrink. Newspaper employment, for example, is down about 5% over the past year.

Paradoxically, however, the number of employed journalists is rising. Over the past year, the number of “news analysts, reporters, and correspondets” is up 23%, according to analysis by South Mountain Economics. The number of help-wanted ads for news analysts, reporters, and correspondents is up 15% over the past year.*

But these are not traditional journalism jobs. Roughly half the want-ads for news analysts, reporters and correspondents contain the words ‘digital’, ‘internet’, ‘online’, or ‘mobile’. Roughly a quarter of the want-ads include the phrase ‘social media.’ These jobs require a different set of  skills than traditional journalism positions.

*Calculations of employment are based on the Current Population survey; the 12 months ending May 2013 vs the 12 months ending APril 2012. The want-ad data is based on The Conference Board HWOL database; the last 90 days of ads.