Vol. 54, No. 3 Summer 2026
Thumbnail summaries of this issue’s major articles:
Young Biz Journalists Are Majority Female
The Reynolds Center for Business Journalism’s most recent survey, released in June 2026, shows a positive trend in the pace of hiring and attractive numbers on the compensation side, with a large cohort of women in the younger corps of business journalists.
The vast majority of survey respondents (69.4%) stated their current position was as a reporter, correspondent, or freelancer, with 26.8% of respondents stating they are in editorial or managerial positions. The remaining respondents reported holding other roles, such as researcher, producer, or academic fellow. The median salary for all respondents this year was $92,500, with editors, supervisors, and managers reporting a combined median salary of $109,375. Very few respondents (2.1%) reported a decrease in salary in the last year, with the overwhelming majority (68.9%) reporting a salary increase.
Natanson Excels with Columbia J-School Commencement Address
Hannah Natanson, a Washington Post reporter on whose behalf (and its own) the newspaper sued over a February 2026 dawn FBI raid on her home, should win a second Pulitzer for her May commencement speech to Columbia’s journalism graduates. As riveting as her reporting, her address was rich with career-building anecdotes and a call to action for her listeners. Natanson’s reporting on the Trump administration’s aggressive efforts to shrink the federal workforce, and its impact on federal employees, won her and the Post the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in May. https://www.cjr.org/opinion/hannah-natanson-advice-journalists-speech-columbia-journalism-school-class-2026.php
Pew-Knight Initiative’s Local News Analysis Marks Shifts, Adaptations
The landscape of local news in the United States has changed significantly in recent decades as Americans have been turning away from print and television and toward digital media. The Local News Factsheet examines Americans’ experiences and preferences when it comes to local news, from data starting in 2016. The fact sheet is part of the Pew-Knight Initiative, a research program funded jointly by The Pew Charitable Trusts and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. More U.S. adults still prefer television than any other pathway to local news, even though the share who express this preference has decreased from 41% in 2018 to 34% in 2025. Meanwhile, the share of U.S. adults who say they prefer social media sites and news websites or apps for local news has increased slightly since 2018. The Pew-Knight Initiative showed little difference between men’s and women’s preferences.
The New Bingo: Tracking Trump’s Insults of Women Journalists
U.S. President Donald Trump is a whirling dervish of comments on just about anything and everything, much of it sheer fantasy. His relationships with journalists covering him and his events are more than prickly; they are openly hostile. His animus is particularly intense when it comes to women in the press corps, behaving much like a teen boy who is either angry the girl doesn’t like him or that she’s too dumb to notice how cool he is. The rhetoric tends to match.
In response to the escalation of attacks in Trump’s second term, the International Women’s Media Foundation is launching On the Record: Documenting the Trump Administration’s Misogyny Toward Women Journalists, a new initiative documenting the president’s pattern of misogyny, holding his administration accountable for its treatment of women journalists, and galvanizing the journalism industry to push back against this rhetoric. https://www.iwmf.org/on-the-record/
Wedding Media Still Thrive With Focus on The ‘Non-Negotiable’ Life Milestone
When the internet began to blow up with rumors that Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce had booked Madison Square Garden for their July 4 wedding, setting off royal wedding excitement vibes that usually only the Brits get to enjoy close up, I decided to re-read the article about wedding media I wrote 19 years ago for Women’s eNews. https://womensenews.org/2007/07/bridal-media-send-i-do-message-overspending/
What might have changed since then?
Very little, it turns out. The glossy four-color, thick bridal magazines like Brides have declined in number; the survivors have mostly moved online with the same breathless prose they used for years. Thirty years ago, they were joined by The Knot, an all-in-one wedding planner and gift registry. The editorial offerings – wedding styling, venue and décor trends for receptions, dream wedding and honeymoon locations and peeks at celebrity weddings – remain the standards. Romance and romantic moments form the bedrock of the features. The desire for wedding-day perfection is intense and it starts earlier than ever.
Research in Depth: Reel Bodies– Misogynmorena and the Politics of Latina Representation in U.S. Film and TV by Mary C. Ortega
Research in Depth: Fashion Images as Tools for Critical Pedagogy — A Three-Stage Framework for Visual Literacy by Louisa Rogers
Plus Book Reviews and News Briefs!