Journalists’ wage structure in Spain during the crisis

Abstract

Media firms are bringing about policies to reduce staff costs as a way to confront the present economic crisis. This paper describes the Spanish Journalists´ wage structure during the crisis (2009) using data collected through a phone survey device in which a thousand Spanish journalists sample has been implemented.  Data are described in terms of occupational variables. The study is accompanied by a bivariate   analysis of the association existing between the wage level of the surveyed reporters and the variables mentioned above. The results show that the wage level of Spanish journalists depends on such variables as sex, age, professional experience, media genre, media size, geographic location of the media firms, professional rank, job contract-made and years working within the media. However, the wage-earning income is independent of their education level, their university degree in Media Studies or their further postgraduate research. The findings of our study maybe interesting to scholars and professional media organizations and will perhaps help to monitor the effects of media cost-cutting policies in the salaries of Spanish  journalists in the near future.