Journalists older, pay sluggish

The typical U.S. journalist is a 41-year-old while male with more than a decade of experience who works in a newsroom with about 50 colleagues and earns $44,000 a year.

If that seems like an unremarkable composite, that's because it represents a demographically stagnating media workplace that is aging noticeably and diversifying at a snail's pace. Those are the findings of the new edition of "The American Journalist," the major academic research study of the characteristics of American newsrooms, published every ten years since the 1970s.

"If you looked at another industry that hasn't grown much since the 1970s...you might find similar kinds of demographic patterns," says professor David Weaver, co-author of "The American Journalist in the 21st Century: U.S. News People at the Dawn of a New Millennium." At the spine of the newest edition of the book is a telephone survey of 1,149 journalists that probes questions Weaver and his co-authors have been following since 1971, 1982-83, 1992 and for the latest survey 2002.

Click on the headline to read more about the study.