Medians give a better picture of what the average Joe or Jane on the faculty is being paid because medians are not skewed by a few high salaries the way means are. Never confuse total compensation with salary. Personally, I would be interested in knowing how your reporters got their numbers and what the correct numbers are, especially medians. Better yet would be a correction or a feature story about how salaries have lagged. A big news story is how places like UCLA increasingly lose faculty to industry and to private universities because our salaries are well under the market value of these people.
Academics love what they do.
The way society has exploited this fact to underpay faculty is a scandal. There are consequences for the quality of instruction and the creation of new knowledge. By 1982, the number had fallen to 21 percent. No, we don't need more doctorates, but it would be nice to allow some of the best and brightest to pursue knowledge without paying such a high price. Your article addressed an important topic in an interesting way.