A couple of months ago I wrote a blog piece puncturing the myth of the shrinking EU press corps. Far from dwindling, I showed how the number of correspondents in Brussels has risen constantly over the last four decades – and continues to grow despite the crisis. According to the latest official figures, there were 1022 journalists accredited to the European Commission in September 2013. However, Lorenzo Consoli, the former president of the Foreign Press Association in Brussels, recently informed me this figure had jumped to 1095 by the end of 2013.
When I published my article, I promised a breakdown of the Brussels press corps – something not even the European Commission has done. So below you will find data on the gender, nationality and type of media journalists in Brussels work for. In addition, we show who are the big beasts in the Brussels media – ie, which media organisations employ more than a handful of reporters.