LNIC Research Reports

SCOPE IT: Understanding How to Measure
Journalism Employment

Jennifer R. Henrichsen, Sakshi Bhalla, Louisa Lincoln, Benjamin Toff, and Lisa Waananen Jones
September 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
Step 3

Outline Your Geographic Scope

Once you have determined the purpose of your study and clarified your concepts, you must also clearly define your geographic scope. Are you measuring local journalism in a particular community, city, or county? Statewide? Regionally? Nationwide? Are you measuring local journalism by a Core Based Statistical Area (CBSA), which is  “an area that contains a central county that has a substantial urban population, along with any adjacent communities that have a high level of integration with the central county,”1 or are you measuring local journalism by a Designated Market Area (DMA)?

This should flow clearly from the purpose, audience, and debates you have already identified, but may nonetheless come with some nuance — namely, determining the unit of measurement for contextualizing local journalism employment (e.g., outlet-level, county-level, state-level). For example, even if you know that you are analyzing local journalism employment in a particular state, you must decide whether you will include a county-by-county breakdown of the statewide ecosystem. If so, this will impact your measurement tools and data analysis.

Calibrating these parameters at the outset is critical because it determines whether the data you are using can be credibly aggregated or disaggregated to provide a representative-enough view of the ecosystem you intend to study.

This decision involves significant methodological nuance, as information ecosystems rarely respect administrative boundaries. For example, a statewide analysis might mask local labor gaps or news deserts if the data is not broken down to the county or census-tract level. Conversely, a county-level focus may fail to account for regional newsrooms that provide “spillover” coverage across multiple jurisdictions. Calibrating these parameters at the outset is critical because it determines whether the data you are using can be credibly aggregated or disaggregated to provide a representative-enough view of the ecosystem you intend to study.

  1.  Congressional Research Service, Core Based Statistical Areas, July 3, 2024, https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/IF/PDF/IF12704/IF12704.1.pdf
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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
Send us your Feedback

The LNIC sees this journalism employment toolkit as a living document and, as such, the research team welcomes suggestions and additions to the toolkit. If you would like to share your suggestions with the research team, please contact the lead author at jennifer.henrichsen@wsu.edu.

 

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