Media Insider: Journalist Salaries, Newsroom Cuts, Online Inundation and More

Welcome to Media Insider, PR Newswire’s round up of journalism, blogging and freelancing stories from the week.

Photo by [BarZaN] Qtr, used under CC BY-ND 2.0

Medium’s Julia Haslanger recently reported that editors “make a bit more than reporters” in every category she researched. Positions included in the study were assigning editors, associate editors, deputy editors, senior editors, managing editors, and line editors, to name a few. Positions not included were social media and audience engagement editors, video and photo editors, design and graphics editors, copy editors, and database editors. More responses came from editors at small outlets. The median salary editors reported is $57,100.

The Times-Picayune, Heroic During Hurricane Katrina, Braces For More Cuts As 10th Anniversary Nears (Huffington Post)

This is the kind of story that makes your heart ache for a bunch of reasons. Hurricane Katrina presented an endless number of challenges in New Orleans, but for journalists, it had to be business as usual. The Times-Picayune staff overcame shortages of food, electricity and cell service to report the goings on there. And in June 2012, more than 200 people – nearly a third of the staff – were laid off and the print edition was reduced to three days a week. The “decline of the Times-Picayune is, in some ways, an illustration of a changing newspaper industry as a whole. But to simply peg it as part of a larger trend would be to understate just how devastating the downfall was felt in New Orleans, where the paper was published daily since 1837.”

Will The Washington Post’s New Talent Network Become the Uber of Freelancing? (The Freelancer, by Contently)

The Washington Post broke new ground in June with the launch of a new platform called the Talent Network, which aims to connect freelancers with “editors throughout the newspaper’s 600-person newsroom in Washington D.C.” Already, there’s been strong interest by writers looking to join the network. What’s worked particularly well is the targeting of freelancers who produce breaking news reports in places that need coverage where the Post doesn’t have an immediate presence.

Where Clicks Reign, Audience is King (The New York Times)

You’re likely familiar with the story about Cecil the lion. Apparently, the phrase “Cecil the lion” returns about 3.2 million Google News results. The New York Times reports that “more than 2,100 articles had been posted to Facebook by mid-August” and that according to Twitter, mentions of Cecil peaked at nearly 900 tweets a minute. “The effect, for online readers, was inundation. And it was far from the first time,” the Times reports.

Bloomberg to Lay Off About 100 Editorial Employees (New York Post)

Sources say Bloomberg is planning to “slim its ranks.” The New York Post recently reported the financial giant, which “employs about 2,400 journalists across the globe, is planning to lay off about 100 employees, or about 4.2 percent, in its editorial division as soon as Labor Day.” Many of the layoffs are expected to target politics and government reporters out of the New York and Washington, DC, bureaus, two sources told The Post.

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Christine Cube is an audience relations manager with PR Newswire and freelance writer. Follow @cpcube or check out her latest on Beyond Bylines on PR Newswire for Journalists.