Journalism Salary Report: Freelance Business Journalists Make $54,091 A Year

How much are business journalists making in this troubled economy? That’s the question the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism set out to answer during its phone survey of 773 randomly selected business journalists. What they found was that most business journalists make less than they did in the previous years’ study by Society of Business Editors and Writers. In 2009-2001, the median of the 394 journalists surveyed was $60,000-$70,000 per year. This year the median income for U.S. business journalists was $56,220 in 2010-2011.

Here is the breakdown of incomes by business journalists across media.

The research also found this breakdown for median salaries by place of employment in 2010-11:

• Print: $50,100
• Freelancing: $54,091
• Broadcast: $55,588
• Online: $57,308
• Wire services: $78,438.

For editors and supervisors overall, the median was $57,308, and for reporters, it was $55,714.

In addition, they found that only 14 percent of those business journalists and content writers surveyed in July mentioned that their newsroom was actively seeking and hiring full-time journalists. As for cutbacks, “one in five said their newsroom had shrunk in the past six months.”

Read the whole article and view the rest of the study’s results here.

Research on Business Journalists’ Salaries and Newsroom Hiring

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