Where the jobs are for graduates in journalism

"The new journalism specialties". The graphic shows that 56% of the Spanish journalists surveyed work in media that have community managers, and 30% employ data and traffic analysts. Click to enlarge the graphic.

Where will the jobs be for graduates in journalism and communication? The results of a survey of journalists in Spain give some indication. The urgent demand is for people with digital media skills, but more on that in a minute.

The Press Association of Madrid's (abbreviated to APM in Spanish) 2017 survey was sent to 13,500 professionals, and the overall response rate was a respectable 13%. A little more than a third were working in journalism while another third were working in other professions or were retired or semi-retired. The remaining 30 percent were working in communications, mainly advertising and public relations. (News articles about the survey are here, here, and here in Spanish.

Disconnect in training

The survey results show that the respondents to the survey are not the ones who are filling the new digital media jobs in their newsrooms. For example, 56% of the respondents said their publications had digital community managers--the people responsible for interacting with users in social networks and other channels--while only 13% of the respondents said they were working in those jobs.

Opportunities abound in business journalism

"Business journalism is a wonderful career".

Versión en español.

MEXICO CITY -- Francisco Vidal Bonifaz has worked as a business journalist in Mexico for three decades, and he sees lots of possibilities for growth in this niche.

There are not many journalists with training in this field, either in Mexico or other countries. And there are few media that are focused on the economy, finance, and business.

Vidal Bonifaz believes that there is room for new business media on the web, especially at two ends of the spectrum: in breaking news that covers the ups and downs of markets, and in longer pieces that explain the significance of these movements. "There is a story behind every number," he likes to say.

If he were creating a new digital publication, "I would eliminate all the stuff in the middle. No stories of 300 words. I would focus on the two extremes," he told me in an interview in Mexico City.

Internet media are creating jobs, just not fast enough

I found this data from Advertising Age fascinating: Internet media are now the second-largest employer in the media industry, trailing only newspapers. The represent 18 percent of the media industry jobs, according to the graphic that accompanies the article.

While newspapers are shedding 1,400 jobs a month, internet media are creating 400 jobs, according to Ad Age. Digital media now employ more than broadcast TV.

Sounds like a compelling argument for more focus in journalism schools on training students in multimedia journalism.

Related:

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More paywalls won't save journalists' jobs

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You don't need all the skills to get started

Leading digital journalist sees room for small media