Journo Salary Sharer: How much do web producers make?
Behind the scenes, there’s a whole army of people in newsrooms working to get the news into the hands of readers. This is the first look at Journo Salary Sharer responses from people on the production side, starting with web production.
- Who’s included: Anyone who said they worked in “web/digital producing” or had “producer” in their job title. For those who said they worked in web producing but aren’t called “producer,” titles included things like “digital editor,” “interactive journalist,” “homepage assistant,” and “content coordinator.”
- Who’s not included: People who specified they were solely audio (radio/podcast), video or TV-type producers. (They will get their own posts.) However, I left in “interactive” and “multimedia” producers who said they worked in web production.
Who responded to the survey?
A total of 300 responses came from people in the roles I just listed above (from here on out, just calling them “web producers”).
A few demographic notes about who responded:
- Women outnumbered men, 3:2
- The youngest batch of salary respondents yet. More than 60% of responses came from those in their 20s. Less than 10% of responses came from people 40 or older.
- Half of responses came from high-cost-of-living cities. 30% came from medium-cost cities, and 20% from lower-cost areas.
- More responses came from large organizations than smaller ones:
Large: 44% | Medium: 32% | Small: 23%
And here’s your daily reminder that this isn’t a scientific study. It’s a self-reported, non-random survey, so while it’s interesting and hopefully useful, it’s not technically statistically representative of the industry. And there are fewer responses from producers than from reporters or editors, so once we drill down to some categories (like producers from small outlets), we can be talking about responses from just 50–75 people.
What’s the range of salaries for web producers who responded?
Just how skewed young were the responses?
You tell me: Is web production a young person’s job, or did we just happen to get an oddly young sample of people in web production to share their salaries?
How does web producer pay increase with experience?
Here’s where the majority (75%) of salaries fell for responses from people with each level of experience (note: only 30–45 responses in each category):
The median salary for web producers with 3 to 5 years of experience holds steady at $50K.
So you can compare, here’s it side-by-side with responses from reporters in their first five years:
How do salaries for web producers compare in places with different costs of living?
Echoing what we saw with reporters and editors, the range of salaries was higher and wider for people responding from high-cost-of-living cities than from lower-cost areas. But that could also be a product of having almost twice as many responses from high-cost-of-living areas like New York and D.C.
What about the size of the company?
Web producers at smaller and medium-size organizations (fewer than 100 editorial staff) had a median reported salary that was $10K lower than those at large news companies.
It’s interesting to note that 15 out of the 20 highest-salaried responses came from people who worked at large news organizations, often in roles like “VP of Digital,” “Senior Producer,” or “Digital News Editor.”
The level of experience of people who responded from large organizations was a bit higher (by one year) than those at medium or small outlets.
Unlike what we saw with editors, the size of the salary range only increases slightly at large organizations (from a $35K range to a $45K range).
Any other questions you still have about web producer salaries? Let me know. Holler at me on Twitter (@JuliaJRH) or email (Julia.Haslanger@journalism.cuny.edu).
Mark your calendar: I’m doing a Twitter chat with @AllDigitocracy about Journo Salary Sharer this Thursday at noon EST. Hashtag is #journosalary. If you want me to tweet at you when the chat is starting, let me know.
For more about the limitations of this survey data and my process in handling it, see my earlier post.
