Local ecosystem assessments are an essential tool for funders, civic leaders, and newsroom leaders to reveal who is informing communities, where gaps persist, and how resources can be deployed more strategically.
But many local funders and founders embarking on this work for the first time are often unsure exactly what it is, how it happens, and what the best practices are.
The Reynolds Journalism Institute (RJI) and the Local News Impact Consortium (LNIC) built “Commissioning a Local News Ecosystem Assessment: An Operational Toolkit” to answer those questions. Authored by independent local news strategist Ariel Zirulnick, the toolkit offers practical walkthroughs grounded in real-world experience, aiming to help community leaders commission credible news ecosystem research that can effectively guide investment in local news.
The report is designed to accompany work by the LNIC, which in the fall of 2025 published its first playbook for local news researchers: the Newsroom Census/Ecosystem Mapping Toolkit.
This new report takes ecosystem assessment commissioners through each decision they’ll have to make, from who gets to define the goals of the research to how to present the assessment findings to the community when it’s completed. In between it tackles everything from cost estimates to how many people you need to hear from in a community needs survey. It’s not a guide to research methods. It’s an operational playbook that fills in the steps no one ever writes down — drawn from real projects, real questions, and patterns seen across the field. (You can read more about how we learned what those steps are here.)
The toolkit walks users through the real decisions and steps these assessments require in order to align stakeholders, clarify goals, assess capacity and budget, understand research options and work productively with vendors.
- Introduction
- Step One: Organize Your Research Committee
- Step Two: Take Stock of Existing Data and Research
- Step Three: Define Goals, Scope, and Constraints
- Step Four: Issue a Request for Proposals (RFP)
- Step Five: Select a Research Vendor
- Step Six: Develop a Strong Statement of Work
- Step Seven: Assessing Your Community’s Information Needs
- Step Eight: Leveraging the Research
Taken as a whole or in part, the toolkit can be used as a shared resource for a committee, a reference guide for a project lead or a checkpoint before engaging with vendors. It includes details and resources to help users establish organizational readiness, assess internal capacity and budget, identify research priorities and define vendor selection criteria and timelines.
