A Collaborative and Open-source Approach to the Study of Journalism Employment

This report stems from discussions with scholars and practitioners who engaged with the Journalism Employment Working Group, affiliated with the Local News Impact Consortium (LNIC), an open-source initiative that unites researchers, journalists, and funders to rebuild sustainable, data-driven local news ecosystems.

About the Authors

Dr. Jennifer Henrichsen is an assistant professor at the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at Washington State University and the Research Director of the Washington News Ecosystem Project. She is Senior Personnel with the VICEROY Northwest Institute for Cybersecurity Education and Research, and an Affiliated Fellow at Yale Law School’s Information Society Project and the University of Pennsylvania’s Media, Inequality & Change Center. Dr. Henrichsen’s research examines how structural conditions and evolving forms of risk shape journalistic work and what those pressures mean for journalism and democratic life. She has produced more than 30 publications, including three books, 14 peer-reviewed journal articles, and reports including a study mapping the news ecosystem of Washington. She is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including the 2025 Andrew Carnegie Fellowship, the first in Washington State University history.

Sakshi Bhalla is a PhD candidate at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where she holds the Illinois Distinguished Fellowship, the most prestigious award for incoming graduate students. Sakshi’s research focuses on political information, its political economy, and spillovers onto political behavior in democratic contexts. She also examines the evolving relationship between media supply and user demand in high-choice environments, and how these interactions align (or fail to) with democratic informational needs. She holds two masters degrees, one in linguistics from Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi and one in statistics from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Louisa Lincoln is the Head of Impact and Engagement at the Public Media Bridge Fund, an initiative of Public Media Company. In 2025, she received her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication, where she studied funding models for journalism with a focus on nonprofit news, public media, and community journalism organizations. She previously was a Lipman Family Prize Fellow and a COMPASS Fellow at the American Journalism Project. Before graduate school, Dr. Lincoln worked in fundraising, marketing, and business development roles for nonprofit news and public media organizations including PRX, NPR, and Wisconsin Watch. In addition to her PhD, she holds an MA in communication from the University of Pennsylvania and a BS in journalism and political science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Dr. Benjamin Toff is an associate professor at the Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Director of the Minnesota Journalism Center, and in 2026 Visiting Principal Researcher at Pew Research Center. Dr. Toff’s research broadly focuses on the changing relationship between news outlets, the public, and how people navigate the political information environment. From 2020-2023, Dr. Toff was a Senior Research Fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford, where he led a multi-country project on trust in news. He is also co-author of the book Avoiding the News: Reluctant Audiences for Journalism (2023, Columbia University Press). In 2024 he co-founded and became research chair for the Local News Impact Consortium and published a report on Minnesota’s Local News Ecosystem. An award-winning scholar, Dr. Toff has received multiple awards and honors for his scholarship, including the Emerging Scholar Award from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, the International Journal of Press/Politics Hazel Gaudet-Erskine Best Book Award, and four best article awards from divisions of the International Communication Association. Before entering academia, Dr. Toff was a journalist for several years, including at The New York Times. Dr. Toff has a BA from Harvard University and a PhD in political science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Lisa Waananen Jones is associate professor of practice at the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at Washington State University, where she also leads the rural reporting project and professional training for the Murrow News Fellowship. Her journalism work focuses on data and visuals at the intersection of local and national news, and she was a key data contributor to The New York Times Covid-19 coverage, which was awarded the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. She has an MS degree from Columbia University’s School of Journalism and a BA from Washington State University.

LNIC Working Group

This report would not have been possible without the expertise of prominent scholars and practitioners in the journalism and policy realm who contributed in varying ways to the content of this report. 

• Matt Baker, Director of Research, Rebuild Local News
• Sakshi Bhalla, PhD Candidate, College of Media at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
• Anna Brugmann, Policy professional and journalism advocate
• Alex Curley, Founder and Executive Director of Semipublic
• Dr. Johanna Dunaway, Professor at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University and Research Director of the Institute for Democracy, Journalism and Citizenship, Syracuse University
• Dr. Jennifer Henrichsen, Assistant Professor at the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at Washington State University and Research Director of the Washington News Ecosystem Project
• Kang-Xing (KX) Jin, Board member of Civic News Company and advisory board for the Stanford Center for Digital Health.
• Dr. Regina Lawrence, Edwin L. Artzt Dean of the School of Journalism and Communication, University of Oregon
• Will Lennon, policy analyst, freelance investigative journalist, and author
• Dr. Louisa Lincoln, Head of Impact & Engagement at the Public Media Bridge Fund, an initiative of Public Media Company
• Dr. Paul Popiel, Assistant Professor at the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication, Washington State University
• Dr. Benjamin Toff, Associate Professor at the Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication and Director of the Minnesota Journalism Center, University of Minnesota