EXPOSED
The modal worker here is a local or trade reporter whose day mixes original reporting with a large volume of commodity text: rewriting press releases, recapping earnings and game results, summarizing public meetings, aggregating wire copy, and writing SEO headlines — all of which generative models already do at publishable-enough quality for ad-supported outlets. What resists is the part that requires being in the room: cultivating sources who only talk to a person they trust, showing up at the courthouse or the fire, verifying a claim against a document nobody has posted, and personally owning a story that could get the outlet sued. There is no license protecting this work, and the economics of the industry are shrinking headcount independent of AI, which compounds the exposure.
This fall is concentrated in 2020 and has not recovered since.
Median pay $46,270 → $62,200 +7.5% in real terms
This line is counted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics — the one figure on this page that isn't a judgement of ours. Headcount moves on demand, offshoring, demographics and the business cycle, and automation is one term among several, often not the loudest.
So a falling line is not evidence that AI did it, and a rising one is not evidence that it won't. Both happen in this register: some occupations resist automation and shrink anyway, others are highly automatable and keep growing. The marked year is 2020.
BLS projection, 2024–2034
-3.9%
Percentage only. The projection counts a different population from the 39,250 above — it includes self-employed workers, which for this occupation is most of them, so the two headcounts are not comparable.
Exposed, and shrinking
Both signals point the same way: the tasks are largely automatable and the BLS projects -3.9% by 2034. This is the case where the score and the forecast agree, and it is the one worth taking seriously.
Different clocks. The score is what current AI could do to this work today. The projection is how many of these jobs will exist in 2034. Everything between the two — how fast employers actually adopt, whether demand grows in the meantime — is why they can point opposite ways without either being wrong.
~4,100 openings a year on average, including replacing people who leave.
AnchorCriticBloggerLeg ManReporterAnchormanColumnistArt CriticJournalistNewscasterBook CriticCommentatorFilm CriticFood CriticFood WriterNews AnchorNews WriterCub ReporterLaw ReporterMovie CriticMusic CriticNews AnalystPress WriterStaff Writer
Holding it up: judgment & accountability . Weakest point: liability shield .
Mixed — a routine tier and a judgment tier A 7 rather than a 12 reflects how much of the week is text-transformation the model already handles — turning a police blotter, an agenda packet, a quarterly filing or an AP feed into 400 publishable words — with only the doorknocking, the off-record coffee, and the FOIA-follow-up sitting above that line.
Some physical or field component An 8 covers the real but intermittent physical duty: standing at the school board meeting, driving to the flood, holding a recorder at a scrum, shooting your own phone video — none of it in the uncontrolled or hazardous conditions a war correspondent or storm-chaser faces, and much of the day still filed from a laptop.
No licence, no signature requirement A 1, not a 0, because journalism is deliberately unlicensed in the US — the First Amendment forecloses credentialing — so nothing but a press pass anyone can print stands between the job and a competitor, human or otherwise; defamation exposure lands on the publisher, not on you personally.
Meaningful discretion An 11 is right for calls like whether two sources are enough to publish, whether to name a juvenile, what to withhold in an active manhunt, and where the line sits between allegation and fact — genuine discretion, but exercised inside a style guide and cleared by an editor who takes the final publish decision.
The verdict above describes this occupation as a whole. Almost nobody does the typical version of a job — tick what's actually in your week and see how your own mix sits.
Your task mix speaks to task resistance (7/20 here) — how much of the day's work current AI already does. That is the dimension the boxes above are about.
It cannot move the other three. Liability shield (1/20) is whether the law requires a licensed human to sign. Trust premium (10/20) is whether buyers specifically pay for a person. Judgment and accountability (11/20) is whether the role exists to own consequential calls. Those are facts about the occupation's standing, not about which tasks are in your week — a paralegal who does only trial exhibits still holds no licence. Together they are 22 of this occupation's 37 points (59%).
Embodiment (8/20) is also a property of the work rather than the worker, but we don't tag individual tasks as physical or not, so the picker can't tell you anything about it. That's a limit of this tool, not a claim.
Did we get the list right? Tell us what's missing — the tasks are written from the outside, and you're reading this from the inside.
History Teachers, Postsecondary EXPOSED
The moves above are yours to make. This is the other half: what would have to change in the world for the occupation itself to score higher. None of it is in any one person's gift, but it is where the floor actually comes from. Scores here are not a one-way ratchet. Only two of the five dimensions — task resistance and embodiment — track what machines can do. The other three track law, what buyers will pay for, and who is answerable, and those move in both directions, often in response to the same pressure AI creates. If every lever below landed, this occupation would score around 52/100, still EXPOSED.
Commodity tier (press-release rewrites, earnings/game recaps, meeting summaries, SEO heds) fully absorbed by newsroom AI stacks, leaving surviving headcount concentrated on source-based original reporting and document verification — a genuine two-tier occupation where the residual job is the judgment tier. Watch AP/Gannett/Patch automation rollouts and whether remaining job postings specify 'investigative' or 'accountability' beats.
A named-human accountability requirement rather than a license: EU AI Act transparency obligations plus platform/defamation exposure pushing outlets to require a credentialed human byline who personally attests to verification before publication. Also watch insurers — media liability carriers (e.g. Axis, Chubb media E&O) adding policy conditions that AI-generated copy must be signed off by an identified editorial employee, and NYT v. OpenAI-style litigation making unattested synthetic copy uninsurable.
Provenance labeling becoming a purchasable signal: C2PA/Content Credentials adoption plus 'human-reported' disclosure norms (already in AP and Reuters standards, and in some Writers Guild/NewsGuild contract language) so subscribers and syndication buyers pay specifically for verified-human bylines. Watch whether Google/Apple News surfaces or licensing deals price human-reported content differently, and whether NewsGuild contracts win AI-disclosure and byline-consent clauses.
If courts continue to treat the named reporter/editor as the actual-malice locus, and if shield-law protections (federal PRESS Act as introduced) attach only to identifiable human journalists who can be subpoenaed and can refuse, the consequential call — publish or hold, name or protect a source — stays personally owned and cannot be delegated to a model.
The limit. Even with every lever, headcount economics dominate: the score describes per-role resistance, not the number of roles, and local ad-supported outlets are shedding jobs regardless. No licensure route exists for journalism in the US — First Amendment doctrine effectively forbids it — so liability_shield cannot reach the levels seen in law or medicine.
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 5,360 | $101,670 +63% |
| Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV | 2,390 | $101,020 +62% |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 1,690 | — |
| Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA | 1,090 | $85,040 +37% |
| San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | 1,050 | — |
| Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL | 840 | $65,610 +5% |
| Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN | 660 | $70,350 +13% |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 570 | $56,000 -10% |
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 5,360 | $101,670 +63% |
| Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV | 2,390 | $101,020 +62% |
| Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA | 1,090 | $85,040 +37% |
E.W. Scripps · POLITICO · ProPublica · McClatchy · The New York Times · Axios · Nine Entertainment · Seven West Media · Ars Technica · Associated Press · The New York Times Company · Reach plc
NW Labor Press reports that a newly ratified union contract covering five Northwest newspapers includes provisions limiting the use of AI in newsroom work.
Deadline reports E.W. Scripps' CEO told investors about major layoffs while promoting AI adoption in its local TV news operations.
Scripps cut jobs at a Texas television newsroom as the company shifts toward an AI-based production model, according to the San Antonio Express-News.
WNY Labor Today reports that news workers at Skagit in the Pacific Northwest went on strike seeking higher pay and contractual protections against AI use.
The NewsGuild-CWA reported that newsroom workers at Skagit-area publications went on strike with demands including pay increases and contractual protections against AI use.
The Guardian reported that Nine Entertainment will cut 30 jobs at The Age and Sydney Morning Herald, attributing the decision to AI-driven disruption.
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