Starting salaries for 2007 journalism grads

Some salary data from the most recent UGA Annual Survey of Journalism and Mass Communication. This is starting salaries for people who graduated in 2007 with a bachelor's degree in journalism or mass communications. Overall, the average was the same as last year: $30,000.


Text breakdown and comparison with previous year

All fields: $30,000, same as for 2006 grads
Daily papers: $28,000, up nearly $1,000 from 2006
Weekly papers: $26,900
Radio: $25,000, down $2,000 from 2006
TV: $29,300, down $440 from 2006
Cable: $30,500
Advertising: $32,000, up $2,000 from 2006
PR: $32,000, up $2,000 from 2006
Consumer magazines: $32,000
Specialized info publishers: $32,000
Web: $37,400

Journalism dollars flow at TCU, ACU and more

No sooner do we leap over the equinoctial solar perpendicularity, it seems, but the cash to journalism programs starts falling like leaves:

The TCU Daily Skiff reported Friday that a $5.6 million renovation will add a television studio and converged newsroom to the TCU Schieffer School.

Also on Friday, Abilene Christian University dedicated its new converged-media newsroom:

On the newly renovated second and third floors of the Don H. Morris Center, the $1.1 million project offers common spaces and floor plans designed to encourage collaboration among students and faculty as well as a space for the department's first advertising and public relations agency.

Dr. Cheryl Bacon, chair of the school's department of journalism and mass communication, said it used to be enough for students to enter the job market with a good education and clips, an impressive portfolio or a great audition tape to display practical, real-world experience.

But "for students to get jobs today, it's not enough for them to have only one skill set," she said. "They have to be able to write, to shoot, to edit, to design. They have to do stories for print, for broadcast, for online."

While students may still specialize in one area of media, they will emerge competent in multiple platforms, she said.

Back in August, the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation announced $1.85 million in grants to journalism organizations, and last week Chicago's McCormick Foundation announced more than $4 million in journalism grants, including:

4. Investigative Reporters and Editors (Columbia, MO) $100,000
To assist in conducting customized workshops for ethnic
media reporters
5. Kansas University Endowment Association (Lawrence, KS) $50,000
To strengthen its Military and the Media Projects
6. Northwestern University (Evanston, IL) $1,355,000
For the Medill School of Journalism and its national
security training initiatives
7. The Trustees of Indiana University (Indianapolis, IN) $75,000
To launch a Nonprofit and Philanthropy Reporting Program
8. University of Colorado Foundation $110,000
To launch the Resolving Door community journalism project
9. University of Southern California (Los Angeles, CA) $120,000
For coverage on urban environmental justice
10. West Virginia University Foundation, Inc.(Morgantown, WV) $85,000
To launch a multimedia training program between journalism
schools and rural newspapers

North Texas j-department to become college

This North Texas Daily story (via Pegasus News) says UNT's journalism department will split off from Arts and Sciences to become its own college in 2009. Congratulations! Also interesting was this mention of grants (second excerpt):

... the conversation was "re-ignited" when NT President Gretchen Bataille took office in 2006 and brought with her a new administration.

... (In the past) Wells said the department has applied for grants and has been turned down because of its status.

"A couple times we applied for some pretty lucrative grants and we were turned down because we were a department and not a school," he said.

He said the journalism school's free-standing status would make it easier to get such grants but would also make competition for them more intense.

Can't afford to be an intern?

Romenesko posted this Mindy McAdams column (she teaches journalism at Univ. of Florida) about intern pay being so low that some can't afford to take the internships that are often required by both journalism advisors and journalism employers. This strike a chord with any of y'all?

Journalism groups get $1 million in grants

Last week, an Oklahoma foundation (the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation) announced $1 million in grants to journalism organizations. The amounts ranged from $7,500 to $200,000 and the purposes included seminars, research, colleges' outreach programs to high school students, creating a Web site and expanding an internship program. Read all about it here.

What price journalism education? Say, $360,000

Or at least that's the amount it took to endow a visiting professorship in journalism ethics at Arizona State – a rotating position in which a different working journalist comes to teach every spring semester. Sounds like a pretty cool plan, doesn't it? The grant came from the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation in Oklahoma City.

Some more price tags from recent months:

New media lab at University of Tennessee: $500,000. (Grant from Scripps)

Arizona State program to develop high school journalists: $510,000. (Grant from Stardust Foundation)

Endowment to create up to six $5,000 scholarships for students working on campus publications at University of Michigan: $600,000.

New school of journalism at Ole Miss: $5.3 million.

New Belo media center at UT: $15 million.

Syracuse University's new Newhouse School: $23 million.

New journalism institute at University of Missouri: $32 million.

Getting your journalism department back? Priceless.

Fundraising begins for Skip Leabo scholarship

Howdy folks: I wanted to make public the fact that FJSA is accepting donations for a Skip Leabo memorial scholarship; Kathleen McElroy graciously started the fund at the Fall Reception. E-mail me for donation details if you are interested or have questions; pass along the news to anyone you think might be interested; and please keep sending stories of Mr. Leabo and photos if you have them.

Along those lines, there are some more comments (in addition to those here) posted on the Batt's obituary for Mr. Leabo.