Journalist
Also known as: Reporter, News Writer
Research, investigate, and report on events and stories that inform and impact public knowledge.
Salary Range
The highest-paid specialization or seniority level for journalists.
About 1 in 1,000 reaches this level
About 47,100 news analysts, reporters, and journalists in the US (BLS Employment Projections, SOC 27-3023, 2025); network and cable anchors earning $2M+ number roughly 30-50 people — a more representative top-end than the $12M+ earned by the handful of highest-paid anchors.
Salary data based on 2025 BLS, Glassdoor, and industry reports. Actual compensation varies by location, experience, and employer.
How to Become One
This career typically requires a bachelor's degree. Here are the top colleges for it:
Cost to Qualify
Four years of tuition and required fees runs about $56K at a typical public college in our list (in-state) and about $288K at a typical private one. Both are pricier than the US national averages (about $48K public in-state, $180K private nonprofit, College Board 2025-26) because our 161-college dataset only includes nationally-ranked schools, not every US college. This excludes room and board, which we show separately on each college's page.
Sticker price, not what most people pay — scholarships, aid and in-state status all move it. Room and board is shown separately on each college's page.
AI Risk Assessment
Journalism is shrinking, and AI is now part of the reason. BLS projects news analyst, reporter and journalist jobs to fall 6% from 2025 to 2035, to about 44,300, with about 3,400 openings a year, mostly to replace people who leave. Press Gazette counted at least 3,434 journalism job cuts in the UK and US in 2025, after 3,875 in 2024 and about 6,000 in 2023. In 2026 it has logged cuts including The Washington Post (hundreds of staff, a third of the business), the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Associated Press. Some cuts now name AI directly: in August 2026 the broadcaster Scripps said it would cut 268 jobs, mainly at local TV stations, with its CEO saying the company is "leaning into AI, automation, technology and the centralisation of some roles."
AI reaches both the work and the business. On the work side, a 2025 Microsoft Research study measured how much of each job's tasks AI chatbots can help with, using 200,000 real conversations; news analysts, reporters and journalists came out 11th of 785 jobs. That covers much of what entry-level reporters do: transcribing, summarizing documents, and writing routine stories. On the business side, the Reuters Institute reported in January 2026 that Google search traffic to more than 2,500 news sites fell 33% worldwide and 38% in the US between November 2024 and November 2025, and news leaders expect search traffic to almost halve (down 43%) over the next three years.
This is close to a 5, and the case for 5 is strong: the career is contracting and AI can do much of the writing. We hold it at 4 because the main reasons BLS gives for the decline, falling advertising revenue and newsroom mergers, started long before AI, and the Reuters Institute says it is not yet clear how much of the traffic loss comes from Google's AI summaries. Reporting that needs a person on the ground, like building sources, going to places and holding powerful people to account, is still human work.
What would change this score. If more newsrooms follow Scripps in replacing reporters and anchors with AI-assisted production, or the yearly cut count rises again, it goes to 5. If the decline stays at the slow pace BLS projects, it stays at 4.
Sources
Ratings reflect a 10-year outlook based on 2025-2026 research, weighted toward entry-level impact. Individual outcomes will vary.
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