Abstract
Journalism has long been seen as a ‘young person’s occupation’. While the average age of journalists has increased from 35 to 39 in past 20 years, this article investigates what developments are covered, or covered up, by this average. The Worlds of Journalism Study data permit us to compare journalistic workforce ages with that of the general workforce, we juxtapose labour force median ages with journalists’ median ages in 60 countries. On realizing that age alone does not present experience, we also include years of professional experience as indicator for journalistic workforce profiling, and also analyse the journalistic and general workforce in age segments in 14 countries to arrive at a more detailed picture of age distribution. Our findings reaffirm that journalism is still an occupation for the young, and underscore the fact that in many countries journalists do not stay in the job for long. This leads us to contend that journalism lives with large numbers of young and relatively inexperienced workers, making it an easier transition into the digital age when journalism similarly is created from many diverse sources and with workers with varying levels of experience.
Introduction
Journalism is seen in a state of flux, especially in North America and Europe (Carlson and Lewis, 2015; Deuze and Witschge, 2017). In past decades in Western literature, newsrooms were portrayed as steady centres where news and information were generated and distributed, staffed by journalists and editors whose years of knowledge and experience contributed to the quality of their product (Nikunen, 2014; Reinardy, 2016). While this was true for parts of the world, in particular those that shaped the image of journalism, it was not true globally. Studying the journalistic workforce makes apparent the high degree of staff fluctuation journalism globally functions with. The large data set gathered by the Worlds of Journalism Study (WJS) project permits us to see more clearly the age structure of the journalistic workforce, and their professional experience, consisting of the years worked as a journalist or in editorial roles. This allows us to realize that journalistic expertise is often held in only a few hands.
David H. Weaver (1998), in the first global comparative study of journalists, found that ‘journalism is a young person’s occupation’ (p. 456). His survey put the average age of journalists at 35 years. Roughly twenty years later, Weaver and Willnat’s (2012) follow-up study saw the average age of journalists rise to 39 years (p. 531), as did the WJS (2017) project. 1 While this is an important increase, we wondered, in light of other WJS data available to us such as median years of professional experience in 60 countries, what is masked by this average?
In many countries, journalism was perceived as a lifelong calling, supporting notions of journalistic professional identity (Nikunen, 2014: 871). In an Australian study, which looked at journalists’ lives after they had lost their jobs, ‘more than half of the participants had more than 25 years experience at the time of their redundancies’ (Sherwood and O’Donnell, 2016: 7). But empirically it was acknowledged that a minority spent decades of their working life in journalism (Weaver, 1998; Weaver and Willnat, 2012). Concerns were raised, as Yehiel Limor (2017) did with respect to Israeli journalists, ‘How can we teach journalists to remain loyal to their profession?’ (p. 149) This question in itself indicates that staying in the profession is not a given, and on all accounts, the task of remaining in the job has become a lot harder in the past decade. The transition from print to digital in news delivery has seen thousands of journalists retrenched in western countries, such as the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia (Nel, 2010; O’Donnell et al., 2016; Reinardy, 2016).
All the same, the WJS data confirm that the fact of up to two decades spent in journalism still holds for a number of nations. On the other hand, many more countries have a young cohort of journalists who barely stay in the job for a decade. This phenomenon needs to be interrogated in order to recognize journalism’s age dynamics and journalism’s functioning with a largely young and itinerant workforce. It is a situation that is important to appreciate at a time when digital disruption is reshaping journalistic work, and concerns have been voiced over the loss of expertise in journalism.
Age and years of professional experience, two rarely addressed factors
Of the global studies on journalists that have been conducted so far, David H. Weaver’s (1998) Global Journalist, and Weaver and Willnat’s (2012) The Global Journalist in the 21st Century, have collected data on age. Weaver’s (1998) book reported on the average age in only 12 countries, yet these findings provide an important basis. The result of an average of 35 years prompted Weaver (1998) to conclude In most places, journalists are younger on average (35 years old) than is the workforce in general. In Chapter 3, Chan, Lee, and Lee argue that in Hong Kong many young people become journalists to earn some experience before deserting for more lucrative and stable jobs in other fields, especially public relations. This seems to be a fairly common pattern around the world. (p. 459)
Weaver’s sober and insightful last sentence found little traction at a time when journalism appeared as an attractive work prospect to many, and journalism schools proliferated around the globe (Berger and Foote, 2017).
The increase in the educational level of journalists shows up in the figures obtained by Weaver and Willnat (2012), for The Global Journalist in the 21st Century when an average of 82 per cent of journalists held a college degree (p. 531), compared to 62.7 per cent in the earlier study (Weaver, 1998: 457–458). Also the appeal of the job seemed to have increased, raising the average age of journalists to 39.2 years (Weaver and Willnat, 2012: 531). All the same, Weaver and Willnat reiterated Weaver’s earlier dictum that ‘journalism tends to be a young person’s occupation, with most journalists between 25 and 45 years old’ (p. 530). The WJS (2017) data, based on 67 countries, puts the average age of journalists around the globe at 39.1 years and a median of 37 years.
Despite these consistent findings of journalism being a young person’s occupation, few authors have addressed the fact that journalists do not stay in the profession for long. While the labour market has undoubtedly a great influence on the age structure of the journalistic workforce (Sherwood and O’Donnell, 2016; Weaver et al., 2007), this should not be seen as the only factor. Several nations or regions have over decades had young cohorts of journalists, such as Singapore or the Special Administrative Region of Hong Kong. In Hong Kong, journalism scholars have consistently commented on this fact mentioning that many journalists ‘leave the profession only after a few years’ (Chan et al., 1996, 2012; Tsui and Lee, 2012: 374).
Young cohorts can be found on all continents. Not unexpectedly, this is the case in Africa, given that continent’s low labour force median ages. But also, several eastern European nations show low median and average ages, as do a number of Latin American and Southeast Asian countries. Largely, this has been seen as due to economic factors such as low pay, which undoubtedly plays an important role. Chile is one such country with a young cohort, and where research into journalism students delineates some of the reasons for a lack of commitment to journalism (Mellado and Scherman, 2017). In their article, Mellado and Scherman point to empirical evidence that journalism students do not necessarily want to work in journalism. While almost three-quarters of first year students want to work in the media, ‘this figure is reduced to 50% by the fifth year’ (Mellado and Scherman, 2017: 2145). Many, in particular female students, see their future in public relations, corporate communications and related areas. Oller Alonso and colleagues obtained similar results in their analysis of professional expectations of students in Cuba, Ecuador and Venezuela. The researchers found that although ‘most students in these three countries first job preference in journalism (62.7%), it is followed by public relations or advertising (20.9%), especially among female students, who have a higher inclination towards that area’ (Oller Alonso et al., 2017: 255).
In mass communication programmes in the United States, public relations and advertising courses take up an increasingly larger share than journalism courses (Becker et al., 2014; Weaver et al., 2007). Other surveys, such as the three-country study done by Nygren and Stigbrand (2014), also find that many students are uncertain if they want to become journalists. Similarly, in a longitudinal study of Norwegian journalism students, Hovden and Ottosen (2016) found that students view their course choice ‘merely a first area of study in a longer career – which may or may not involve a job in journalism’ (p. 62). Given this ambivalence towards a career in journalism, whether born out of uncertain employment prospects, or out of vacillation about which work is seen as most appealing, or out of the generic nature of journalism skills, it should not surprise that in many countries work in journalism amounts to but one stage in a career.
Methodology
To test this phenomenon of journalism being largely an occupation for the young, we decided to compare the journalistic workforce data, as available in the WJS project, with the general workforce data as provided by the International Labour Organization (2017).
RQ1. How does the median age range of the journalistic workforce compare to that of the general workforce?
This will give us an overall picture as to the difference of general workforce versus journalistic workforce. However, we contend that a juxtaposition of the median ages may only hold selective clues about the journalistic workforce because this comparison is strongly dependent on the age profile of a country’s population. We therefore chose to include the number of years spent in journalism. We will use the WJS country-based data set to ask our second research question:
RQ2. How does the comparison of journalistic and general workforce relate years of professional experience?
We anticipate that the resulting table will reveal that an age comparison alone does not provide a complete picture of the journalistic work cohort. In fact, we expect the data on years of professional experience will give us a more accurate picture of the journalistic workforce.
To study the age distribution in journalism in greater detail, we will select 14 countries, for which we break the journalistic workforce data and the general workforce data into age segments to illustrate the differences in the age profiles. These countries were selected to represent all regions of the globe, and to provide a spread of instances where professional experience is long and the journalistic age is much higher than the workforce age (United States), where journalistic age is marginally higher than the workforce age (Germany, Israel, South Africa), where the median ages are on par (Finland), where it is marginally lower (Italy, Bulgaria), where it is lower (Australia, Tanzania) and where it is considerably lower than the workforce age (Singapore, Chile, Russia, Hong Kong). We chose to place the countries in order of the median years spent working as a journalist as we expect this arrangement to reflect the increasing percentage of young journalists. The distribution of journalistic ages will be further underscored by a comparison with the ages of the general workforce.
RQ3. How does the detailed age-range data of the journalistic workforce compare to that of the general workforce in 14 countries?
For our detailed analysis, we have chosen the age ranges of up to 24, 25–34, 35–44, 45–54, 55–64, and 65 + . This adheres to the practice most nations’ statistics bureaux publish their data. Only in two cases did we encounter a different approach, in which we then matched our WJS data to that country’s data. The WJS data were collected in the years 2013–2016. We therefore chose, whenever possible, general workforce data from the years 2014 or 2015 as point of comparison.
We have to keep in mind that the WJS project focuses on professional journalists, that is on those who earn at least 50 per cent of their income from paid labour for news media and are involved in producing and editing journalistic content as well as in editorial supervision and coordination. The study includes journalists working in print, television, radio, online media and news agencies. In concentrating on professional journalists, the WJS data, on the whole, is newsroom centric, and permits us to refer to the age composition and experience in newsrooms.
Findings
A comparison between the labour force median ages and the journalists’ median ages, shows that out of 60 countries, in 12 countries the journalists’ ages are higher, and in nine countries within a percentage point of the general workforce, whereas in 39 countries the journalists’ ages are lower. While this is an indication that journalists, on the whole, are younger than the general working population, it also demonstrates that in almost all the African countries in the WJS survey – Sudan, Malawi, Botswana and Ethiopia – have a close match between the labour force and the journalists’ median ages. These countries have a young population, and the convergence of general labour force and journalists’ ages pinpoints the fact that this comparison based purely on median ages is strongly influenced by the population age profile of a country.
We decided therefore to introduce years of professional experience as indicator, which would show for how long journalists and editors have been in the job. Assuming years of professional experience as the more reliable indicator, the 60 countries, which reported this value, are arranged in descending order of length of experience.
In using years of professional experience, we arrive at a grouping of countries that is, on the whole, not unexpected. However, it does not translate into a similar match regarding the difference between the median of labour force and journalists’ ages, as the first column of Table 1 shows. While in any country with less than 10 years of professional experience, the median of journalists’ age is lower, it is only marginally so in countries with young populations, such as Ethiopia, Botswana and Malawi.
Comparison of the median ages of the general workforce, the median age of the journalistic workforce and the median years of professional experience.
Sources: Median age of general workforce: International Labour Organization.
Median age of journalistic workforce and median, mean and SD of years of professional experience: WJS data.
Among the countries with the most years of professional experience, we can observe a clustering of North American and European countries. This cluster indicates a strong correlation between journalists’ remaining in the job and the maturity of a country’s media sector. In this respect, a link to Hallin and Mancini’s (2004) finding that the early development of a mass circulation press creates ‘one of the most obvious differences’ (p. 22) can be observed here. We notice that despite major media transformations in the late 20th and early 21st century, these determinants are still evident in the working profile of journalists. It should be also noted that nations, which had a strong colonial influence in their media developments and are democracies, such as the Commonwealth countries of Canada, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa, or the Philippines, also tend to have a more committed workforce.
On the other hand, we observe different effects of incisive political events, such as the end of communism and the breaking up of the Soviet Union or Yugoslavia. These events appear not to have had much disruptive impact on the journalistic workforce in neither Croatia nor Serbia, nor on the Baltic states of Latvia and Estonia, yet they have been unsettling for the workforce in countries such as Romania, Moldova, the Kosovo and Russia itself. Russia, however, sits very much in a grouping of BRICS states, all of which have median years of professional experience between 8 and 10 years. Southeast Asian and African countries have young journalistic cohorts, which do not stay in the job for long.
To investigate these phenomena further, we have selected 14 countries from all continents to break down their workforce data into 10-year age segments to see the flow of workers more clearly. They range from countries where age and years of work experience are highest (United States) to where the median ages of journalists and that of the general working population are on par (Finland) to countries where they are markedly lower than the general workforce age. A cluster of these is in Southeast Asia (Singapore, Thailand) and Hong Kong. We have chosen several countries from one region to get a more detailed breakdown of age profiles to establish whether there is a discernable pattern in one region, or whether different circumstances are hidden under similar median ages and years of experience. Also, we have chosen to compare Bulgaria and Russia, both of which have an equally high percentage of female journalists – 64.6 per cent – yet have very different age profiles. Although this is an article about age, and not gender, we also break down the journalistic age data into female and male participation, and do the same for the general workforce data wherever possible. The 14 selected countries are arranged in order of the countries’ median years of journalistic professional experience.
What is common to the United States and the five European countries placed first in Table 2 is that journalists take up their jobs later or considerably later than the general workforce. This is entirely in keeping with the finding that more than 80 per cent of journalists hold a degree, and therefore commence work after the completion of their universities studies. These countries also share in the fact that the journalistic workforce is comparatively evenly distributed between the ages of 25–54.
Comparison of journalistic workforce data with general workforce data in 14 countries.
M YPE: median years of professional experience.
Sources for ages of journalists: WJS data. Details of sample sizes can be found in the individual country reports on the Worlds of Journalism Study website.
Sources for general workforce: United States Department of Labour (2016), Statistisches Bundesamt (Germany) (2017), Republic of Bulgaria National Statistical Institute (2016), Statistics Finland (2015), I. Stat (Italy) (2016), Central Bureau of Statistics (Israel) (2015), Australian Bureau of Statistics (2017), Statistics South Africa (2016), Russian Federation Federal State Statistics Service (2016), Ministry of Manpower (Singapore) (2016). Tanzania National Bureau of Statistics (2017), Instituto Nacional de Estadisticas Chile (2017), National Statistical Office (Thailand) (2017), Hong Kong Annual Digest of Statistics (2016).
The figures for the United States corroborate the finding in Table 1 that the United States has one of the highest standard deviations (SDs) with regard to years of professional experience, meaning that there is a considerable spread of ages. As the country data show, twice more women than men work in the 25–34 age range, but only a little more than a third of female compared to male journalists are still in the job beyond the age of 55, whereas the numbers are even in the general workforce. This phenomenon of female participation dropping significantly after the age of 54, often even at 44, is not confined to the United States, but the United States are one of the countries where this is pronounced. In Germany, like in the United States, twice as many women than men join the journalistic workforce after the age of 25. This degree of disparity is only replicated in Australia and Singapore, where female participation, however, falls more sharply than in Germany or the United States.
In Italy, we can see the beginning of a development that becomes more and more distinct throughout this table. Unlike in the general working population, a high number of journalists can be found in the 25–34 age group, with female participation particularly prominent in this age bracket.
Israel is another country where journalistic and general workforce is fairly evenly matched, except that journalists start work later. In Israel, the trend continues with over 30 per cent of journalists in the 25–34 age group. In terms of general workforce, Australia has a similar profile to Israel, but not in terms of the age distribution of journalists. The university system in Australia permits students to have completed their studies by the age of 22, which explains the higher percentage in the up to 24 years category. However, in Australia, which has gender parity, a remarkable 45.5 per cent of female journalists are to be found in the 25–34 age group. This figure halves and halves again in each subsequent age group, pointing to a difficult working environment for female journalists (North, 2012). Australia is not the only nation affected by this kind of attrition of journalists, except that in the other countries both genders are affected.
With descending median age and median years of professional experience, the age group of 25–34 consistently represents at least a third of journalists. In South Africa, it is 38.2 per cent, again driven by a female participation of 40.5 per cent. However, in South Africa, which has over 60 per cent women journalists, female journalists outnumber male journalists also in the age groups 35–54.
Russia and Bulgaria have among the highest female participation rate in the WJS data with 64.6 per cent. But whereas Bulgaria has a median of years of professional experience of 18 years, Russia’s is 8 years. This, however, has to be put into perspective by a mean of 11.4 years of professional experience (Table 1). Whereas during Soviet times ‘journalism was a mostly masculine profession’ it is now a ‘predominantly female environment’, with job satisfaction low due to pressures coming from the state, press owners and businesses (Lukina and Vartanova, 2017: 158–159). This dissatisfaction may explain the drop of 20 percentage points in the 35 to 44 age group and another 10 per cent in the 45–54 age group. Less than half of Russian journalists reported being involved in editorial activities (Anikina et al., 2017), whereas 75 per cent of Bulgarian journalists were involved in editorial coordination (Slavtecheva-Petkova, 2017). Noticeably in Russia, two-thirds of journalists are under the age of 35, whereas only about one-third of the general working population is.
All subsequent countries have at least over half of their journalists in the under 35 age group, and considerably more journalists in the younger age groups than the general working population. In Singapore, over 50 per cent of journalists are in the 25–34 age group; in fact, 63.3 per cent of female journalists are in this age bracket. The picture then steadies to 16 and 12 per cent in the subsequent age groups. This suggests that those journalists, who commit to their career, will stay for the remainder of their working life and oversee a cohort of young journalists, who have a high turnover. The percentage of those who remain in the job tallies with the percentage of those stating that they take part in editorial decisions (Duffy and Kim, 2016). This spread of ages is also evidenced in the mean of 11.4 years of professional experience (Table 1). A similar picture presents in Thailand, where almost 50 per cent of journalists are under the age of 35 and which, together with Hong Kong and Ethiopia, has the lowest median years of professional experience (Table 1). The subsequent age groups steady 2 to suggest that in Thailand, too, a small group of senior journalists supervises a large group of young, frequently changing reporters. This situation has existed over many years, where journalism is seen by young people as an opportunity to broaden experience before going on to further study (Heuvel and Dennis, 1993; McCargo, 2000).
In Hong Kong, three-quarters of journalists are under the age of 35, again a situation that has existed for several decades (Chan et al., 1996, 2012; Josephi, 2000). Hong Kong’s media is characterized by intense competition, especially among the Chinese papers, which have been pinpointed as the outlets where many of the young journalists work for a short time (Tsui and Lee, 2012). In this sample, no other country has such a high percentage of journalists under 25. Almost half the male journalists fall into this age bracket. In fact, 87.1 per cent of male journalists are no longer in journalism by the age of 35. Hong Kong has almost gender parity, and it is noticeable that, while there are similar numbers of male and female journalists in the 25 to 34 age group, women stay longer in journalism, and in larger numbers than men.
Tanzania’s age profile is in many, but not all, ways like that of other African nations. For all African nations in the WJS (2017) survey, the median age is 30.5 years, and the median years of professional experience is 5.8 years. Tanzania’s mean age of 27.6 is close to this median age, but with a 45.2 per cent female workforce, Tanzania is closer to gender parity than most other African nations, other than South Africa. The age distribution of Tanzania’s journalistic workforce could be interpreted as a media still in the process of establishing itself. With only about 5 per cent of journalists over the age of 35, also those in the higher ranks are young, and are mostly women. However, like in the Southeast Asian countries, the lure of other jobs is strong, such as the thriving non-governmental organisation (NGO) sector’s demand for communication officers (Mfumbusa, 2010), or the flourishing public relations industry offering attractive job prospects (Kivikuru, 2016).
A similar picture is showing in Chile, which has one of the youngest cohorts of the Latin American countries in the WJS project (Table 1). The average age of Chilean journalists has continually decreased since the 1960s, and one factor is the low average income (Mellado, 2012). However, its mean age of 33 indicates the presence of older journalists. As in Tanzania, and worldwide, journalism in Chile has to compete with other communication and public relations jobs, which are seen as more attractive or more secure (Mellado and Scherman, 2017). A comparison with the general workforce highlights the fact that few journalists – male or female – stay beyond the age of 44.
Conclusion
The data presented here give a clear affirmative answer to the question whether journalism is still a young person’s occupation. Not only does the juxtaposition of the median ages of the general and journalistic workforce data highlight this outcome, but also the detailed comparison of journalistic and general workforce data in select countries. In WJS’s (2017) data on age, 31 out of 67 countries have a median age of 35 or lower. Although the overall median age has risen in the past 20 years to 39 years (Weaver and Willnat, 2012; WJS, 2017), which is most likely driven by the lack of growth in the North American and European markets (Weaver et al., 2007), journalists are younger than the workforce in general. Deducing from the detailed country comparisons, this is caused in those countries that have young cohorts by the influx of female journalists particularly in the age group of 25–34. Their participation then drops, sometimes sharply, in the following age groups.
The most accepted reason for these brief stays is the one already mentioned by Weaver (1998) 20 years earlier, in that they are deserting journalism for ‘more lucrative and stable jobs in other fields’ (p. 459). Berger and Foote (2017) comment that ‘in many developing countries, university educated graduates are able to command higher salaries in communication work outside of news organizations’ (p. 254).
Another factor, which would need to be tested more fully, is a correlation between the perceived degree of autonomy and the desire to continue in the job. As the juxtaposition of Russia and Bulgaria has shown, Bulgarian journalists feel a much greater ownership over their work than their Russian counterparts. Yet, this may also be partly due to Bulgarian journalists bringing more experience to their jobs.
As the individual country comparisons are showing, no two countries are the same, even when similarities can be observed. Yet, the list of years of professional experience matches remarkably the clustering of countries previously selected by scholars, be it Europe and North America (Hallin and Mancini, 2004), or the BRICS states (Nordenstreng and Thussu, 2015).
Two further conclusions can be drawn from the data. One is that, for many, journalism is but one step in a longer career. The second is that these figures prove that in many countries, fluidity is a characteristic of journalism. Deuze and Witschge (2017), in theorizing the transformation of journalism, describe how much of the post-industrial newswork is ‘contingent, freelance, and temporary, people constantly move in and out of such environments, continuously reconstituting the production process’ (p. 9). A high turnover of staff can similarly represent such movement, modifying the organizational approach to newswork. As the data on the journalistic workforce shows, many newsrooms have to function with a small number of experienced staff and a large number of young and frequently changing reporters. This is hardly different from digital newswork where media editors, content managers or nodes take on the coordination. For example, Andy Carvin, when reporting the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings in 2011 for American National Public Radio, did not visit these countries but acted as a node in drawing together messages received on Twitter, and played a crucial role in assessing, selecting and editing the Twitter feeds (Hermida et al., 2014).
As the data on journalistic age and experience shows, journalism, in its workforce, functions with a high degree of change. Concerns regarding the volatility currently experienced in journalism should be allayed by the fact that coping with fluidity and flexibility is the hallmark of journalism.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank Kim Williams and Christine Tennent at the University of Sydney; Zvi Reich and the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics; and Sergio Splendore and Kari Karppinen for their help with finding general workforce statistics. The authors acknowledge the following scholars for the WJS project data: Tim Vos (United States); Thomas Hanitzsch, Nina Steidl and Corinna Lauerer (Germany); Vera Slavtcheva-Petkova (Bulgaria); Laura Ahva, Jari Väliverronen and Reeta Pöyhtäri (Finland); Sergio Splendore (Italy); Zvi Reich (Israel); Folker Hanusch (Australia); Arnold de Beer and Herman Wasserman (South Africa); Maria Anikina (Russia); Andrew Duffy (Singapore); Yusuf Kalyango (Tanzania); Claudia Mellado and Salomé Sola (Chile); Yubol Benjarongkij and Smith Boonchutima (Thailand); and Francis Lee (Hong Kong).
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.