Majority of biz journalists received raise in past year, again

For the second year in a row, a majority of business journalists in the United States received a pay raise in the past year, according to an informal study of more than 200 business reporters and editors conducted in the last month by Talking Biz News and the Society of American Business Editors and Writers.

Of those who received raises, three-fourths said the increased pay occurred at their current job.

While 67.5 percent of respondents received a raise, about one-third of respondents reported their salary remained unchanged in the past year.

The survey discovered that the median survey of business journalists was between $80,000 to $85,000. This is more than last year’s survey results, which found the median salary to be $70,000 to $75,000. Previous salary surveys conducted by the Society of American Business Editors and Writers found, which all reported the median salary range of business journalists to be $65,000 to $70,000.

“This is great news for business journalism and for business journalists,” said Chris Roush, the Walter E. Hussman Distinguished Professor in Business Journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill, who oversaw the survey. “It means that their work is valued and respected.

Two-fifths of those who received a raise said that their increase was less than $5,000, whereas one in nine said that their salary had increased between $5,000 and $10,000. Seven percent said their salary rose by more than $15,000.

The pay raises occurred for various reasons. Seventy-six percent of respondents said their raise came from their current employer. Some business journalists said they received their raise as a result of a promotion or a small cost-of-living adjustment.

The respondents work in all types of business journalism, but the majority of participants said they had jobs with either a daily newspaper or website.

Forty-nine percent of the respondents said they work in business journalism jobs located in the Northeast, and the median salary for business journalists in that region was between $100,000 and $110,000. The survey found the 16 percent of respondents who work in the Midwest reported a median salary of between $75,000 and $80,000, or just lower than the national median.

The median salary for business reporters— which counted for 61 percent of all respondents—also varied across the country. In the Pacific region, they received a salary between $70,000 and $75,000, while in the South the median salary for a business reporter was $55,000 to $60,000. In the Southwest, the median salary for reporters was between $60,000 and $65,000.

Business news editors make a median salary between $100,000 and $110,000, according the survey results, while website editors involved in business journalism reported a median salary of more than $120,000. Editor in chiefs of print publications who responded to the survey make a median salary of more than $120,000.

Business journalists were asked to respond to a confidential, online survey that asked for their job title, their compensation, the type of media outlet where they worked, their geographic region and length of time in their current job and in business journalism, and their change in compensation during the past 12 months.

Journalists were not asked for their specific place of employment but were required to provide their name to verify that they were a business reporter. Those names were kept confidential.