The ABC is reporting on a leaked “issues paper” from the University of Queensland (UQ) and that UQ apparently plan to merge most of their Communications offerings. Part of this process is allegedly dropping the journalism course (although the leaked document states the contrary: they have no intention to drop the BJournalism degree).
“Issue paper” author and UQ Dean, Prof Tim Dunne, has definitely isolated some issues that are worth engaging with:
Demand for journalism is declining globally as employment opportunities diminish in the era of digital and social media. In recent years, there has been widespread job loss in the journalism profession in Australia. The Australian Government Job Outlook suggests that job openings for journalists and writers will be below average over the next five years, with an overall decline in the number of positions. At the same time, there is increased visibility (on-line, through social media etc) and new kinds of employment opportunities are emerging, including areas such as data analytics.
I am not sure how Journalism is taught at UQ but I find it very hard to believe that students are not equipped to take on the challenge of new “on-line” platforms in addition to traditional media forms.
Prof Dunne presents a bleak picture for journalism, but it is not entirely correct. What is the current state of the news-based media industry, formally known as ‘journalism’? Absolute numbers are very hard to discern, but trends are relatively straightforward:
The ABS Employment in Culture, 2006 – 2011 captures some trends over the five years 2006 to 2011.
[table caption=”Table 1: Employment in Journalism” width=”500″ colwidth=”20|100|50″ colalign=”left|left|center|left|right”]
Role,2006,2011
Newspaper or Periodical Editor, 4844, 5059
Print Journalist, 6306, 5510
Radio Journalist, 671, 603
Television Journalist, 1059, 1123
Journalists and Other Writers (nec), 1279, 1705
Journalists and Other Writers (nfd), 1414, 2125
Totals, 15573, 16125
[/table]
Much has been made over recent high profile lay-offs at Fairfax and News Corp, as if they are the only places that hire journalists. For example, the current #fairgofairfax social media campaign to generate support for Fairfax employees has a high degree of visibility on Twitter. Indeed, the number of print journalists declined by 800 in the five years 2006 to 2011, but as a field the numbers went up. I shall return to this below.
When we turn to the Australian Government Job Outlook data it is clear that this increase in the number of journalism jobs is not surprising.
[table caption=”Table 2: Journalists and Other Writers (Job Growth)” width=”500″ colwidth=”20|100|50″ colalign=”left|left|center|left|right”]
Time Period, Occupation (per cent growth), All Occupations (per cent growth)
5 Year Growth, 37.8, 7.8
2 Year Growth, 28.7, 1.9
[/table]
It seems that the Prof Dunne pays particular heed to this page of the Australian Government Job Outlook data regarding prospects:
Over the five years to November 2017, the number of job openings for Journalists and Other Writers is expected to be below average (between 5,001 and 10,000).Job openings can arise from employment growth and people leaving the occupation.
Employment for Journalists and Other Writers to November 2017 is expected to decline.
Employment in this large occupation (29,800 in November 2012) rose very strongly in the past five years and rose strongly in the long-term (ten years).
Journalists and Other Writers have an average proportion of full-time jobs (75.3 per cent). For Journalists and Other Writers working full-time, average weekly hours are 41.6 (compared to 41.3 for all occupations) and earnings are above average – in the eighth decile. Unemployment for Journalists and Other Writers is average.
So after witnessing jobs growth four to five times the average for the past five years or so, and 10 times the average over last two years, there will ‘only’ be between 5000 to 10000 new positions available.
The broader journalism industry seems like it is in a pretty good state of affairs, which contradicts popularist conservative narratives about an oversupply of journalism graduates. Two years ago The Australian newspaper attacked Journalism Schools and attempted to open up another front of the Culture Wars (or return to old ground after the earlier ‘Media Wars‘). They suggested that Australian journalism schools produce too many graduates, when it is apparent that universities were actually servicing demand. The Australian newspaper does not represent journalism in Australia; in fact, it is a tiny vocal minority.
The bottom line is that there has been an explosive growth over the last decade in journalism and other jobs relating to the news-based media industry. The biggest growth measured in the Employment in Culture statistics for Journalism is in the ‘Not Elsewhere Classified’ category of just under 500 new positions; occupations include blogger, critic, editorial assistant and essayist. The key point is that this growth is not in the legacy media industries areas where journalists have traditionally worked. Most people who work in the media industry know this to be intuitively correct. More media content (writing, filming, recording, producing, etc.) is created and distributed now than at any other point in history.
The real question that Prof Dunne asks, and which is implied by his remarks about the rise of new employment areas, what combination of skills and competences shall serve our graduates in an era that produces more media content than ever before in human history? Or as he states: “What is likely is that there will continue to be a need for strong and vibrant courses in journalism that are practice-based”.
He gestures towards data analytics as an example. Many research projects show how newsrooms have learned to appreciate analytics information about their websites, and increasingly about individual users (in the era of paywalls and required logins). Students report that they feel empowered after the workshop where I give them as editors the task of setting up a ‘dashboard’ in Google Analytics so as to create reports for their team of student journalists. They can see how older forms of journalistic ‘gut feeling’ map onto new analytics information.
Another example is regarding the delegation of editorial responsibilities to more junior staff. Reading into the Employment in Culture figures there has been an increase in the number of editors from 2006 to 2011. Occupations in this role include features editor, news editor, pictures editor, subeditor, and (importantly) website/blog editor. One way to interpret this shift, which is congruent with other observations, is that there has been a ‘flattening out’ of the journalism industry with less medium-specific silos and more network-based cross-platform media enterprises. We train graduates to be prepared to take on some of the responsibilities that used to belong to senior journalists as editors but are now graduate level positions.
Based on proposed five tier funding arrangements there will be a refocus on design and audio-visual studies as the core units of journalism and communication studies. Part of this is because of the very strange separation of Audio and Visual Studies from the other discipline areas in the 1007 Field of Education code so it is in the funding tier that receives greater federal government funding.
Great piece, Glen. Thanks. The employment data is really interesting.