Journalism & News

Finding out what's true and telling the public: reporting, editing, investigating, fact-checking, photographing, and forecasting the weather.

Top pay: highest pay, longest training

• Foreign Correspondent: Reports from other countries on wars, politics, and world events. Typical pay $115k.
• Executive Editor / Editor-in-Chief: Leads a newsroom or publication, deciding what stories get covered and setting standards. Typical pay $120k.

Mid pay: solid pay, degree or apprenticeship

• News Reporter: Digs up facts, interviews people, and writes or broadcasts news stories. Typical pay $60k.
• Investigative Journalist: Spends months uncovering hidden wrongdoing through documents, data, and sources. Typical pay $80k.
• News Anchor: Presents the news on TV, introducing stories, interviewing guests, and handling breaking news live. Typical pay $90k.
• TV News Producer: Builds each TV newscast: picks the stories, writes scripts, and times every segment to the second. Typical pay $60k.
• Assignment Editor: Runs the newsroom's 'assignment desk', listening to police scanners and sending crews to stories. Typical pay $55k.
• Data Journalist: Finds stories in data and builds interactive charts and maps for news sites. Typical pay $80k.
• Visual Investigations / OSINT Journalist: Uses satellite images, social media videos, and geolocation to verify what really happened. Typical pay $85k.
• Sports Reporter: Covers teams and athletes, writing game stories, features, and analysis. Typical pay $55k.
• Broadcast Meteorologist: Forecasts the weather and explains it on TV, especially during storms. Typical pay $75k.
• TV News Writer: Writes the short scripts that TV anchors read on air. Typical pay $55k.
• Audience Engagement Editor: Helps a newsroom's stories reach readers through search, social media, and newsletters. Typical pay $65k.
• News Graphics Reporter: Creates maps, charts, and interactive graphics that explain the news. Typical pay $78k.
• Opinion Columnist: Writes regular opinion pieces arguing a point of view on news and culture. Typical pay $75k.
• Magazine Editor: Plans magazine issues, assigns stories to writers, and edits them into shape. Typical pay $75k.
• News Researcher: Digs up public records, archives, and facts that reporters need for stories. Typical pay $65k.
• News Helicopter Pilot: Flies TV news helicopters over car chases, wildfires, and traffic, holding steady so a photographer can broadcast live, or doing both jobs at once. Typical pay $90k.
• Newsroom Standards Editor: Sets and enforces a news outlet's rules on accuracy, fairness, and corrections, and makes tough calls like using anonymous sources or graphic images. Typical pay $105k.

Starter: fastest way in

• Copy Editor: Fixes grammar, checks facts, writes headlines, and polishes stories before publication. Typical pay $52k.
• Fact-Checker: Verifies every claim, quote, and number in a story before it's published. Typical pay $52k.
• Photojournalist: Tells news stories through photographs: protests, sports, disasters, and daily life. Typical pay $48k.
• News Videographer: Shoots and edits video for TV news, often working alone as a 'multimedia journalist'. Typical pay $48k.
• Editorial Cartoonist: Draws cartoons that comment on politics and current events. Typical pay $45k.
• Independent Newsletter Journalist: Reports and writes a paid email newsletter directly for subscribers. Typical pay $40k.
• Obituary Writer: Writes life stories of people who have died, for newspapers and funeral homes. Typical pay $45k.
• News Stringer: Covers local events for newspapers and TV stations as a freelancer, paid per story or photo. Typical pay $25k.

Career Universe is an early version. Pay, training and AI-risk figures are estimates to start your own research, not verified facts. The research was written with AI research assistants, checked by validation scripts and spot-checked by hand. Check anything important with schools, employers and official sources. How the numbers work.