Editorial Jobs Suffer 6.4% Drop From 2011: ASNE
There were 2,600 less full-time professional editorial jobs at newspapers in 2012, a 6.4% drop from 2011, according to The American Society of News Editors’ latest annual newsroom census figures.
Pew Research has more: “That leaves the industry at 38,000 full-time professional editorial employees and is the first time that figure has been below 40,000 since the census began in 1978. The losses are also more than twice the level estimated in March by Rick Edmonds, coauthor of the chapter on newspapers in the Pew Research Center’s State of the News Media report.”
But the news might not be as bad as it sounds as the role of editor is changing and newspapers were left to decide for themselves who to count. It was up to newspapers with regional editing centers, where copy gets edited, to decide whether or not to include these editors in the numbers.
Also, USA Today, The Los Angeles Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Arizona Republic, The Miami Herald, and The Times-Picayune were among publications not to respond. The research included responses from 978 of the 1,382 daily newspapers in the U.S.
