Low salaries and a high turnover rate is the norm in the media industry as far as journalists and the general public are concerned. Over the past three years the situation has simply worsened. According to a Hong Kong Journalists Association survey, there are still many senior journalists in the industry, but half of those interviewed said they would like or have tried to look for a new job.
Some 30 percent of interviewees said they would leave journalism within a year or two. This high potential for departure has alarmed the industry. Media managements will have to face up to succession challenges and to maintain professional standards as experience gives way to newcomers.
HKJA conducted the survey between February 24 to March 14, investigating the remuneration package of different kinds of journalists and their views about their future. Some 58 percent of the interviewees were degree holders, 16 percent were postgraduates and 15 percent were sub-degree holders. This shows the educational level of journalists is high. However, the male vs. female ratio of respondents was 51:47. This seems to contradict the general perception that women dominate the media industry.
High education level, low remuneration
The survey shows that most of the interviewees were journalists with two years or less experience. They made up 22 percent of the total. Those with experience of two to four years’ experience formed 38 percent. However, 29 percent of respondents have 10 to 20 years’ experience while nine percent have notched up 20 years or more. This suggests that journalists tend to stay if they can get through the early stages of the career even if the salary is not high.
Some 12 percent of respondents earn $10,000 or less a month. About 41 percent earned $15,000 or less while 61 percent take home $20,000 or less each month. The percentage of respondents earning less than $20,000 is the same as the percentage of respondents with experience of 10 years or less. A 10-year veteran journalist with $20,000 monthly salary can hardly go forward enthusiastically or aspire to greater heights in his career.
Of 398 respondents in our survey who identified themselves as reporters, about 30 percent had been working for two years or less, more than half have been working for four years or less. In terms of remuneration, the median is $12,000-$15,000, with 75 percent of respondents earning $20,000 or less. Only seven percent earned more than $30,000.
A difficult choice for most
In the circumstances, it is no wonder that most journalists find it difficult to decide whether to stay or quit the industry altogether. Some 43 percent of respondents say they “don’t know/never thought of it/hard to tell” when asked if they considered journalism a lifelong career. The number of respondents who answered ‘Yes’ and “No’ were almost similar: 28 percent and 26 percent respectively.
But while many said they had not made up their minds, action speaks louder than words. Some 31 percent admitted they had looked at job advertisements in search of another job outside journalism while 19 percent had actually applied for jobs in other fields. Only 47 percent said they did not look at or apply for jobs outside journalism. In fact, 31 percent actually said they would leave the industry within a year or two. The reason why respondents want to leave the industry is obvious: Low salary.
The number of team leaders and assignment editors in a newsroom is limited. It is impossible to accommodate all senior reporters. Hence more reporters are considering quitting. A total of 62 percent of reporters said they had looked at job advertisements in search of a job and applied for jobs in other industries during the last 12 months. The descending order of inclination to look for another job is team leaders, deputy or assignment editors (40%), editors (40%), photo-journalists (31%) and highest management (24%). The morale among better paid senior management is not exceptionally high. And they are not young: 24 percent said they were thinking of working in another industry.
It is surprising and worrying that 40 percent of the backbone of the media (team leaders, assignment editors and deputy assignment editors) are considering looking for work in totally unrelated fields. If they have no intention to stay, who will pass on the knowledge and expertise to new reporters? Can they be depended upon to carry out instructions?
This exodus from media most likely will happen after 12 months to four years
In fact, most people are thinking of leaving. This exodus of media practitioners most likely will happen after 12 months to four years. Among the various categories, 23-56 percent said they would quit at this period. The inclination to leave is stronger among reporters and editors. Over 50 percent said they would leave after 12 months to four years, much more than those who would quit after six years.
The low salaries have always been one of the main reasons for the high turnover rate in similar surveys in the past. But the ratio has now reached the highest in this survey. Every media management understands the situation. Some expect the aspirations of the journalist and the challenging nature of the job to compensate for the low salary. Others use their limited resources as the excuse not to increase wages. However, how such wishful thinking of management can be realized if staff enthusiasm is lost with the passage of time and the pressure of livelihood increases as the staff get older? How will the industry retain experienced journalists?
Highly educated, enthusiastic journalists give up opportunities for making a decent living in order to fulfil their dreams, while managements prefer to take on inexperienced workers at low salaries rather than keep experienced journalists. It looks like decline in the quality of news is inevitable.
The most practical way to keep skilled personnel, of course, is through pay rises and reasonable working hours, or even implementation of the five-day week. As a matter of fact, journalists can easily see that their colleagues have changed careers. HKJA contacted 33 former journalists who have successfully switch career paths since 2009. Among them 96% got salary increases, most getting $2,000 to $4,000 more each month. About 27% say they may return to journalism. For details see Annex 2.
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First the good news: most journalists in Hong Kong had a raise this year. But here comes the bad news: almost one third of them would leave the industry within two years.
The above two are the major findings in the survey conducted by Hong Kong Journalists’ Association in April 2008. Among the 376 participants, 52.6% had an increase of between 1% and 6%, compared with last year. About 22.6% received more than 6% pay hike, but 22.9% of participants did not receive any increase. Some even had salaries reduced by a slight 1.9%. Despite a general improvement in working condition, 32.2% of the participants indicated they would leave the industry within two years while 29.7% expected to change to other professions in 3 to 6 years.
The factors for leaving the industry are low wages (50.3%), high work pressure (31.6%), and negative impact on family life (30.7%).Comparing 5 years ago, the majority of journalists believed that the workload of frontline reporters and management had increased (85.1% and 83.1% respectively). But working conditions (i.e. salary, vacation, welfare etc) are thought to have worsened in the view of 34.2% while 32.3% thought there had been improvement. However, 33.5% thought there was not much difference.
Comparing 10 years ago, those with 10 years’ journalistic experience (33.8% of overall participant) indicated that the working conditions in general had become worse (73.0%). The primary causes were attributed to manpower shortage, with the less experienced reporters at lower salaries (76.1%), cost controls necessitating manpower reduction (68.1%) and loss of bargaining power on the part of journalists (60.9%). The journalists are concerned that working conditions may even fluctuate more causing standards to drop (59.2%), that journalists leave the industry more frequently (45.8%), and the professional standards drops (40.1%).
The results also showed that 41.4% of participants worked 10 hours every day while 31.1% worked for 11 hours or more. Of these participants 36.5% had a monthly income of $15,000 or below, 29.0% earned $15,001 to $25,000 while 34.4% earned more than $25,000. The median annual leave is 12 days. Hong Kong Journalists’ Association conducted the above survey in April, 2008. Among the 1,109 questionnaires being sent to reporters and editors of local news organizations, 376 surveys were completed with a response rate was 33.9%.
HKJA had concerns on the high ratio of reporters planning to leave the industry. In the coming year, we would organize more activities and seminar to address this issue. We also sent a letter to the editor of the local media outlets highlighting the industry-wide issue while urging them to take action to improve the working condition. We also welcome any suggestions that could improve the outlook of working journalists and raise our competitiveness of the local news industry.
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