For those following the Blog Rally to help the Boston Globe and the life-threatening diseases plaguing the newspaper industry, try this with your morning coffee: Erica Smith, who does multimedia and print design for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, provides a public-service project on her own time/dime, Paper Cuts. She's tracking the dwindling numbers of newspaper employees through pink slips and buyouts. (Thanks, Erica.)
The running total for the first 99 days of 2009? 8091 or approximately 82 jobs per day. That would mean about 30,000 jobs by the end of the year, excluding jobs that dissolve after someone leaves but is not replaced.
Paper Cuts' total "does include all newspaper jobs, from editor to ad rep, reporter to marketing, copy editor to pressman, design to carrier, and anyone else who works for a newspaper."
OK, you say, what's the news here, Jessica? We all know that the newspapers could be spokespeople for some miraculous diet drug, would that newspapers were people and they wanted to shrink.
Here's the scoopy part: Journalism school applications are up! Significantly! According to Lauren Streib's Forbes article, Journalism Bust, J-School boom, "Columbia, Stanford and NYU applications increased 38%, 20% and 6%, respectively, from the previous year. Same thing at state schools. The University of Colorado (up 11%), University of North Carolina (up 14%) and University of Maryland (up 25%) all saw gains."
And, ready for this? "According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, by 2016 the number of positions for entry-level reporters and news anchors will increase 2%, while those for experienced writers and editors will grow 10%. Expect trade publications, freelance work and digital media to supply the bulk of the jobs."
