Professional development
If journalists work as freelancers or with fixed contracts in a media organisations they can take part in internal vocational training if the organisation is big enough to conduct a training unit. The public-service broadcasters ARD and ZDF jointly conduct the ARD/ZDF Medienakademie for their employees, which constantly offers new courses designed to meet the requirements of journalists in an ever-changing professional environment.
Official data from the work agency (Arbeitsagentur) assumes that there were over 96,000 journalists with fixed contracts in 2015. The professional organisation DJV, however, counts less than 50,000 journalists with stable working conditions, plus 26,000 freelancers and 3,000 trainees. Most journalists work for printed dailies, followed by employees in broadcasting and print magazine. In 2014 the work agency counted over 5,300 jobless journalists.