TLDR: Newspapers are dying but other formats are rising – so I would argue there are still job opportunities for tenacious journalists and wordsmiths.
It might seem odd that in this era of rising illiteracy and the AI-accelerated collapse of writing skills, thousands of people still aspire to be journalists. Nearly 1,400 colleges and universities in the U.S. offer some type of journalism degree, and in 2023, 10,073 journalism degrees were awarded across the country – the vast majority of them (8,590) bachelor’s degrees, and most of the rest (933) master’s degrees.
I don’t have more recent figures, and it’s possible that the AI-pocalypse has dented those numbers since 2023. The total number of journalism degrees awarded in 2023 was already about 6% less than the previous year. In any case, it’s safe to say that thousands of people still hope to make a living as journalists, whether the archetype they strive to emulate is more Woodward and Bernstein, Hunter S. Thompson, or Meryl Streep’s character in The Devil Wears Prada.
But what’s the point? Isn’t the whole industry dead or dying? Who actually reads the news anymore? Are you going to shell out $37,760 a year – the median out-of-state private tuition for a journalism degree – to prepare for a job that’s going to be wiped out by chatbots and short-form videos before you even graduate, if it hasn’t been already?
The outlook seems grim. Just 15% of journalism majors become editors or news analysts, reporters, or correspondents early in their careers, according to a survey by Georgetown University. Recent years have seen a continuing flurry of news and media layoffs. The number of newspaper reporters is plunging.
“We are no doubt in an industry which is facing some serious declines. It doesn’t look like it did 30 years ago. The pipelines for students going into the industry, working their way up from local to national and having a reasonably established career from there, are gone.” –Charles Seife, Director of the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University, in an NPR interview
And yet, despite all this sobering news, there are as many journalists as ever. How is that possible?
According to an analysis by the Washington Post published last year, there are about as many reporters and editors working in the U.S. as there were three decades ago. We need to unpack this.
Data from the U.S. census and the American Community Survey indicates that journalism jobs have remained flat in absolute terms even as the U.S. gained a large number of jobs and people overall – so, relative to other occupations, journalism is declining.
In fact, newspapers lost 77% of their jobs over the 20 years through 2024, the biggest drop of any of the 532 industries monitored by the Bureau of Labor Statistics! (On the opposite end of the spectrum was nail salons, which saw 441% job growth.)
While newspapers hemorrhaged jobs, however, other types of publishers gained jobs. Reporters gained the most jobs in the categories of online publishing, independent journalism, newswires, and nonprofits. In fact, the number of reporters working at nonprofits doubled in the past two decades, with nearly 1 in 10 reporters working at nonprofit orgs such as public broadcasters and public-interest investigative newsrooms.
The reality is that a large percentage, perhaps the majority, of “reporting” jobs are now located at companies and organizations that most people wouldn’t associate with news reporting. As the Post summarizes:
Consider David “Spork Pollster” Montgomery, YouGov data journalist and a veteran of several daily papers. Or the reporters at Redfin, a national brokerage that releases endless analyses of real estate data. Or, like, half the folks we’ve cited at the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan “fact tank” that churns out data analyses. Or the communications teams who write up research at hundreds of universities, engaged in the same weekly grind we are, only with a focus on research from one specific institution and fewer dumb jokes.
This is the new reality of journalism and writing. This is where most of the viable opportunities will be in the future. If you want stable work as a writer or journalist, you’re probably going to find it at a non-media company, a university, a nonprofit, or something along those lines, rather than a traditional media outlet.
Another field to look at is PR. Although it’s not for everyone, there is considerable overlap between the work of a PR agent and that of a journalist. PR agents need to pitch stories to journalists, so they need to understand what makes a good story and how to tell it persuasively. They also need to acquaint themselves with the editorial agenda of a particular outlet, journalist or blogger so their pitches are well-targeted. Often, PR people will ghostwrite “content” on behalf of clients which then gets pitched to the media. There are other dimensions to PR, such as account management, but thinking like a journalist and creating high-quality written content will likely be a significant part of your job if you work in PR.
It’s worth noting that PR flaks outnumber reporters nearly 2 to 1 – and outnumber newspaper reporters specifically 7 to 1 (lol).
I’ll close with an informative comment by David Ryfe, Director of the School of Journalism and Media at The University of Texas at Austin, quoted by NPR:
You know, I don’t think it’s a secret among journalism school administrators, that most of our students come to us without the ambition to work in a mainstream newsroom. … We have a 95-96% placement rate at UT six months after graduation. I’ve collected the numbers for our recent graduates for the last two cycles, and about 30-35% get jobs in recognizably journalistic roles, another 30-35% get jobs in communication-related roles that are not necessarily journalism. And then the rest get jobs in non-communication roles.