LNIC Research Reports // DRAFT

SCOPE IT: 7 Steps Towards Understanding the Journalism Employment Landscape

Dr. Jennifer Henrichsen, Assistant Professor
Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at Washington State University
August 2026 | Download Report (PDF)

Table of Contents

SCOPE IT: 7 Steps Toward Understanding the Journalism Employment Landscape

Introduction

Conclusion

Acknowledgements

Bibliography

Appendix A: Sample Survey Questions

Appendix B: Table of Strengths/Weaknesses of Various Approaches

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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 — UPDATE THESE

INTRODUCTION

SCOPE IT: 7 Steps Toward Understanding the Journalism Employment Landscape

CONCLUSION & ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

REFERENCES

APPENDIX A: Sample Survey Questions

APPENDIX B: Table of Strengths/Weaknesses of Various Approaches

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