LNIC Research Reports // DRAFT

SCOPE IT: Understanding How to Measure
Journalism Employment

Dr. Jennifer R. Henrichsen, Sakshi Bhalla, Dr. Louisa Lincoln, Dr. Benjamin Toff, and Lisa Waananen Jones
August 2026 | Download Report (PDF)

Table of Contents

Introduction

About This Report

Conclusion

Bibliography

Appendix A: Sample Survey Questions

Appendix B: Table of Strengths/Weaknesses of Various Approaches

Appendix C: Responses by County to Washington State Staffing Survey

Download PDF
Appendix B

Table of Strengths/Weaknesses of Various Approaches


MethodStrengthsWeaknesses
Occupational and Labor Statistics
  • National scope
  • Consistency over time
  • Legitimacy for trend analysis
  • Occupational categories align poorly with newsroom roles
  • Weak geographic specificity
  • Limited ability to distinguish local vs. non-local work
  • Poor capture of part-time, freelance, intern, and volunteer labor
Surveys of Journalists or News Organizations
  • Ability to tailor definitions and adapt to local context
  • Capture part-time, freelance, intern, and volunteer labor
  • Provides “ground truth” to other measurement approaches
  • Low or uneven response rates
  • High labor costs
  • Sensitivity around budgets and staffing disclosure
  • Challenges with participation from newspaper chains
  • Difficult to update regularly
Desk Research and Manual Compilation
  • Highly accurate when carefully executed
  • Adaptable to local context
  • Useful where policy precision is required
  • Extremely labor-intensive; difficult to replicate
  • Highly dependent on researcher judgment
  • Hard to scale, sustain, or update
Commercial or Platform-Based Data
  • Publicly observable
  • Lower burden on newsrooms
  • Useful for comparative analyses
  • Incomplete datasets
  • Opaque filtering and classification
  • Instability over time
  • Uncertain alignment with “local” or newsroom-specific definitions
Content- and Byline-Based Approaches
  • Publicly observable
  • Lower burden on newsrooms
  • Useful for comparative analyses
  • Weak connection between output and labor inputs
  • Inability to capture precarity, workload, or unpaid labor
  • Difficult to discern geography
  • Not comparable across mediums (e.g. newspaper vs. broadcast)

Table of Contents

Introduction

About This Report

Conclusion

Bibliography

Appendix A: Sample Survey Questions

Appendix B: Table of Strengths/Weaknesses of Various Approaches

Appendix C: Responses by County to Washington State Staffing Survey

Download PDF
About this report

This report is a collaborative and open-source approach to the study of journalism employment. It 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. Learn more about the research team >

Want to join our team? Whether you’re a researcher, journalist, or funder, the LNIC invites you to join our mission to help ensure local communities have access to trustworthy news and information. Learn more about the LNIC >

Creative Commons License

The LNIC is an open-source initiative to rebuild sustainable, data-driven local news ecosystems. This license enables reusers of this report to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. If you remix, adapt, or build upon the material, you must license the modified material under identical terms. CC BY-NC-SA includes the following elements:

  • BY: Credit must be given to the creator.
  • NC: Only noncommercial uses of the work are permitted.
  • SA: Adaptations must be shared under the same terms.

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