BLS Profile the Author of This Report

BLS Profile

The author of this report has been asked to write a brief essay about a career chosen from the journalism field. The questions that will be answered include why the career interests the author of this report, what training the job requires, what skills are necessary to do the job, what benefits exist within the career, what drawbacks exist within the career, where will a person have to live to have such a job, what kind of dangers (if any) exist for the job, what kind of salary exists for the career and what the job outlook is for the career. While the industry is starting to taper off, opportunities exist for people with the right talent and motivation, and perhaps looks.

Questions Answered

The career position selected for this report was selected because it is the most visible and preeminent position within the journalism field. It is often on television, can often be in the field, can lead to an anchor position and there is a definitive path by which people can follow. The drawbacks that exist, and those will be described more in depth in a second, is that the field is shrinking and this is especially true in the newspaper field. The median pay for reports in 2012 was about $37,090 per year. This comes out to about $17.83 an hour. The entry-level education required for the job is a bachelor's degree, presumably in journalism. There is no work experience needed in a related occupation, although it surely could not hurt in some instances. Similarly, there is no on-the-job training necessary. The total number of jobs in the United States as of 2012 was 57,600. The job outlook is pretty dim as it is seen as dimming over the next ten years starting in 2012. Indeed, from 2012 to 2022, the jobs market is seen as dropping about thirteen percent. In other words, there will probably be a drop of about 7200 over the next five to ten years, relative to the current year of 2015 (BLS, 2015).

The term reporter is ostensibly included with correspondents and broadcast news analysts. The three types of people in this collective inform the public about news and events happening internationally, nationally or even locally. Since this could include hostage situations, weather events and so forth, there is a modest amount of danger that can occur. In terms of how to become a reporter, employers apparently prefer workers that have a bachelor's degree in journalism or communications along with an internship or work experience from a radio station, television station or a newspaper (BLS, 2015).

Employment of reporters, correspondents and broadcast news analysts, as mentioned above, is expected to decline more than a tenth from 2012 to 2022. Not noted above is that this is because of declining advertising revenue in radio, newspapers, television and so forth. This negative impacts newsroom budgets of all types and this leads to lesser pay and/or hiring of news people in general. News people will generally have to be willing to move where the jobs are if they want to truly climb the corporate ladder. Also, there are some cities that are much more "target-rich" when it comes to journalism jobs. Cities like this would include New York City, San Francisco and Los Angeles, just to name a few. Generally, larger cities such as metros and larger towns will have the larger news stations. For example, the epicenters in Florida in terms of news stations would be Orlando, Tallahassee, Tampa and Miami (BLS, 2015).

General duties of news reporters would include the following:

Research topics and/or stories that an editor or news director that they work for has assigned to them (BLS, 2015).

Interview people who have all of the information, analysis or opinions that are relevant to an article or story (BLS, 2015).