Clearly, we are in the middle of a public relations bull market. PR services are in great demand. And with this, the job market has become quite active.

My podcast, Talking Communications with Farrell Kramer, takes on this issue in Episode 12 -- The Job Market. Bill Heyman, President and CEO of Heyman Associates, is my guest and our discussion is focused on the strength of the PR job market and the broad trends that are driving it.

One fascinating point that comes up is this: While communications departments and agencies alike are generating a great deal of hiring activity, senior managers remain shy about making "out-of-the-box" hires. Bill talks about this in some detail and describes just why it is happening.

My July 21st post on one reporter's reasons for jumping from journalism to PR found salary to be a key concern.

Well, according to a salary survey cited in a new report in Editor & Publisher, this was no anomaly. Newspaper salaries are just plain out of line with the other opportunities available to college-educated individuals.

According to the report:

The 2006 Newspaper Industry Compensation Survey found that the average entry-level salary last year for the 521 dailies participating in the study is up 17.3% from 2001, but is still a humble $29,048, or 558.62 a week.

They'd be better off moving to the classified department, where the average salary for an inside sales rep last year was $36,077.

A letter posted on Jim Romenesko's fine media news blog explains why a newspaper reporter decided to jump from journalism to PR.

It's not pretty.

Over my 17 years in newspapers, I changed papers or chains four times and I'd say each move was due to the company making changes due to economics. My first paper folded. My second paper had a newsroom revolt after the third publisher in two years started demanding more unpaid hours from the staff. My third stop had a series of layoffs. In my fourth stop, I was laid off even though that same week I won a national award (a first for the paper).

The writer, Charles Bingham, goes on to describe his online search for a job within journalism:

The news for AOL hasn't been good for a while.  Recently, the AP reported -- I saw it on MSNBC's Web site -- that AOL is laying off 1,300 employees, about 7 percent of its workforce, and closing a call center. 

This comes as broadband Internet access has become so inexpensive -- cable, DSL, etc. -- that it makes little sense not to have it.

While AOL tried to spin this as customers getting more sophisticated with less need for phone support, it's hard not to believe that this has more to do with the impending death of dial-up.  This is important for communicators as it suggests more and more people will adopt broadband-driven media formats like podcasting -- both audio and video.

The decline of newspaper journalism is a well-known phenomenon and one we've addressed before on this blog.  It looks like we're moving quickly toward the end of the newspaper as an institution.  And this, in a way, is sad.

I came across some depressing statistics today in The Public Relations Strategist, a quarterly magazine put out by the Public Relations Society of America.  

It cited Editor & Publisher in saying that more than 2,000 journalism jobs were cut in 2005, including the following newspaper positions: