The State of Ibero-American Journalism 

Periodistas Por El Mundo, a global network of information professionals, just released their annual report [in Spanish only] on the state of journalism in Ibero-America (a virtual region that essentially encompasses all Spanish-speaking Latin American countries plus Spain, Portugal, and Brazil). In the most probable case that you cannot read in Spanish, here are our main takeaways:

• Almost 4 of every 5 journalists in the region live either in Spain, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, or Mexico. This figure is quite revealing, despite the fact that both Brazil and Portugal have not been included comprehensively in the survey.
• 46% of those journalists are within the 18-30 years old range.
• 97% have at least a college degree.
• Only 5% of them earn more than USD $33,000 in annual salary; 44% earn only about USD $8,000 or even less. 
• 40% are formally employed by a news organization (with benefits), while 34% work as freelance.
• 24% work for newspapers or other print media, and 33% have gone completely digital (either working for online news outlets or as professional bloggers).
• On the state of journalism in their region: 37% say it is in good shape, while 62% of them are more pessimist, perceiving the whole environment as ‘bad’ or ‘very bad’.
• Journalists think that low salaries and an unstable job market are the main challenges that their profession faces nowadays. Press freedom ranks way below. 
• 78% of them deem social media as ‘important’ or ‘very important’ part of their jobs. 
• Five most used social networks: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Youtube, and Google+ (in that order). 
• Although 82% of the surveyed journalists believe that online media  will grow the most, 49% of them are afraid they will lose their current jobs sometime this year. Remember this?

Image: Partial screenshot of cited study, via Slideshare.