Journalism is being reshaped by platform use, changing payment habits, newsroom employment losses, artificial intelligence, and persistent risks to journalists. The statistics below cover audience behavior, trust, business models, jobs, pay, and safety, with measurement periods kept explicit.
Contents
- News consumption and platforms
- Trust, misinformation, and AI
- Paying for online news
- Newsroom employment and industry change
- Journalism pay and employment outlook
- Press freedom and journalist safety
News consumption and platforms
The Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2024 was based on a YouGov survey of more than 95,000 people in 47 countries. The countries represented about half of the world’s population. Its figures describe reported behavior in the global sample, rather than a census of every news user.
Video and platform distribution are central to the current news environment:
- 66% of the global sample accessed short news videos each week.
- 51% accessed longer news video formats each week.
- Online platforms accounted for 72% of news video consumption, compared with 22% on publisher websites.
- YouTube was used for news by 31% of the global sample each week.
- WhatsApp was used for news by 21% each week.
- TikTok was used for news by 13% each week.
- X, formerly Twitter, was used for news by 10% each week.
The same report found that only 22% of respondents across markets identified news websites or apps as their main source of online news. That share was down 10 percentage points from 2018. This places a measurable distance between the organizations that produce journalism and the platforms through which many people encounter it.
The figures also show why format matters. Short and long video are both widely used, while the 72% platform share indicates that discovery and distribution frequently happen outside a publisher’s own website. For publishers, audience reach therefore depends on a combination of reporting, video production, platform packaging, and the ability to convert attention into a durable relationship.
Trust, misinformation, and AI
The Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2024 found that 59% of respondents globally were concerned about what is real and fake online news. Concern varied substantially by country: it reached 81% in South Africa and 72% in the United States. These are survey measures of concern, not findings that classify individual news items as true or false.
Trust also differs across national media environments. The Reuters Institute’s 2024 country data reported the following overall trust measures and rankings:
| Country | Trust in news | Overall trust rank among 47 markets |
|---|---|---|
| United States | 32% | 35th |
| United Kingdom | 36% | 25th |
| Brazil | 43% | 15th |
In the United States, 62% trusted local television news and 61% trusted local newspapers. U.S. podcast reach was 44% in the last month. In the United Kingdom, 31% listened to a podcast in the last month. In Brazil, 33% shared news through social, messaging, or email channels. These country figures come from the Reuters Institute United States 2024, United Kingdom 2024, and Brazil 2024 reports.
The Reuters Institute AI and journalism 2024 research covered 28 markets and measured how much people had heard or read about artificial intelligence. A large or moderate amount was reported by 45%, a small amount by 40%, and nothing at all by 9%.
Acceptance depended on how much people had encountered AI information. Across all countries, 36% were comfortable with news made by humans with AI help, while 19% were comfortable with news made mostly by AI with human oversight. Among people who had heard or read more about AI, comfort with mostly AI-produced news was 26%; among those who had heard or read less, it was 13%. Comfort with news produced mostly by a human journalist with some AI help was 45% among the more-informed group and 30% among the less-informed group.
Together, these figures point to a distinction between using AI as an assistive tool and delegating most production to AI. Public comfort was higher for human-led production, especially among respondents who had encountered more information about the technology.
Paying for online news
The Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2024 found that 55% of non-subscribers said they would pay nothing for online news. Payment rates varied widely across the selected markets:
| Market | Share paying for online news |
|---|---|
| Norway | 40% |
| Sweden | 31% |
| United States | 22% |
| Australia | 21% |
| Germany | 13% |
| France | 11% |
| Japan | 9% |
| United Kingdom | 8% |
The country profiles add useful context. The United States had 331 million people and 90% internet penetration in the Reuters Institute United States 2024 profile. The United Kingdom had 68 million people and 95% internet penetration in the Reuters Institute United Kingdom 2024 profile. Brazil’s online-news payment share was 19% in the Reuters Institute Brazil 2024 profile, compared with 22% in the United States and 8% in the United Kingdom.
These figures should not be read as a single global price signal. They describe the share paying in particular markets, while the 55% non-subscriber result describes stated willingness among non-subscribers. Payment behavior is therefore shaped by local media systems, household markets, and the availability of subscription products.
Newsroom employment and industry change
Pew Research Center’s newsroom employment analysis measured the five news-producing industries over 2008–2020. Total U.S. newsroom employment was about 114,000 in 2008. Between 2008 and 2014, it fell to 90,000, a loss of about 24,000 jobs. Across the full 2008–2020 period, U.S. newsroom employment declined 26%.
The composition of newsroom work changed as well:
- Newspaper newsroom employment fell 57%, from roughly 71,000 jobs to about 31,000.
- Digital-native newsroom employment rose 144%, from 7,400 workers to about 18,000.
- Radio newsroom employment fell 26%, from about 4,600 workers to about 3,400.
- Newspaper employees represented 62% of newsroom jobs in 2008 and 36% in 2020.
- Television broadcasting employees increased from 25% of newsroom jobs in 2008 to 35% in 2020.
- Digital-native outlets increased from 6% of newsroom employees in 2008 to 21% in 2020.
The growth of digital-native employment did not offset the newspaper decline in the period measured. The figures instead describe a shift in where newsroom labor was located, alongside an overall contraction. Pew Research Center also reported that about 2,800 newspaper companies had received Paycheck Protection Program loans by August 2020.
More recent U.S. data in the Reuters Institute United States 2024 profile reported that the news industry shed nearly 2,700 jobs in 2023. That figure covers a later year and should be kept distinct from the 2008–2020 employment series.
Journalism pay and employment outlook
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a median annual wage of $60,280 for news analysts, reporters, and journalists in May 2024. The lowest 10% earned less than $34,590, while the highest 10% earned more than $162,430. These percentile figures show a wide distribution around the median; they do not describe the pay of every journalism role.
Median annual wages for journalists varied by industry in May 2024:
| Industry | Median annual wage |
|---|---|
| Media streaming distribution services, social networks, and other media networks and content providers | $77,460 |
| Television broadcasting stations | $65,670 |
| Radio broadcasting stations | $56,230 |
| Newspaper publishers | $46,640 |
The Bureau of Labor Statistics projected employment of news analysts, reporters, and journalists to decline 4% from 2024 to 2034. It projected about 4,100 openings per year on average over that period. The average projected growth rate for all occupations was 3%, compared with -4% for journalists. Annual openings can therefore coexist with a declining occupation when workers leave roles or move through the labor market.
Press freedom and journalist safety
The Reuters Institute country profiles included Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index results. In the United States, the 2024 profile reported a rank of 55 out of 180 and a score of 66.59. The United Kingdom ranked 23rd out of 180 with a score of 77.51. Brazil ranked 82nd with a score of 58.59. These are index results, not percentages of journalists.
UNESCO recorded at least 68 journalist and media worker killings in 2024. Of those, 42 occurred in countries in conflict, meaning more than 60% of the recorded killings took place in conflict countries. Eighteen conflict-zone killings occurred in Palestine, four in Ukraine, four in Colombia, three in Iraq, three in Lebanon, three in Myanmar, and three in Sudan. One each occurred in Syria, Chad, Somalia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
UNESCO’s World Trends 2021/2022 report recorded 455 journalists killed for their work or while on the job from 2016 through the end of 2021. Only 13% of journalist-killing cases recorded by UNESCO since 2006 had been judicially resolved. The two figures use different periods: the first covers the 2016–2021 series, while the second refers to cases recorded since 2006.
The safety burden is also visible in UNESCO and ICFJ survey results about women journalists. Among the women journalists surveyed, 73% had experienced online violence in the course of their work, 25% had received threats of physical violence, and 18% had been threatened with sexual violence. Twenty percent had been attacked offline in connection with online violence, 30% said they self-censored as a result of online abuse, and 26% reported mental-health impacts from online abuse.
These survey percentages describe the surveyed women journalists and should not be generalized automatically to every journalist or every country. They nevertheless quantify how digital abuse can extend into physical safety, editorial behavior, and mental health, adding a human-risk dimension to the economic and technological changes affecting journalism.