Who answered the survey
There were 627 people who completed more than 50% of the survey. Of those respondents, about 64% (403) currently worked in local journalism and 36% (224) had left local journalism. The survey was open to all people who had ever worked in local journalism, whether current or past, as well as people who attended an accredited journalism school.
This survey was open to people who worked in local journalism in any medium — print, broadcast (television or radio) and digital media. The most common medium for all respondents was newspapers, which made up about half of the responses (49%), followed by digital (27%), television (15%) and radio (10%).
The average respondent worked in local journalism for an average of 14 years and a median of 9 years. The minimum years worked was less than one and the maximum years working in local journalism was 58. Respondents’ average start year in local journalism was 2006, with the earliest being 1964 and the latest being 2023. While this survey was fielded in early 2024, one of the prewritten survey questions told respondents to answer 2023 if they currently work in local journalism, so we counted years in local journalism up to early 2023.
Respondents were also asked about the scope and size of their current or most recent local journalism outlet. The most common outlet scope was regional (35%), followed by state (29%), city (20%), and hyper-local (5%). We defined hyper-local outlets as outlets that focus on a specific community or neighborhood. About 17% of respondents worked at a very small outlet with less than 10 full-time employees, 35% worked at an outlet with 11-50 full-time employees, 33% worked at an outlet with 51-200 employees and 14% worked at an outlet with more than 200 full-time employees.
More than half of respondents (62%) identified as Women, Non-binary, Genderfluid, Transfeminine or Agender. About 38% of respondents identified as men. Due to the low sample sizes of gender minority respondents, such as those who identify as Non-Binary, Genderfluid, Agender, or Transfemine (3%), further analyses used a dichotomous measure to compare women and gender minority respondents to men.
The majority (78%) of our respondents were straight or heterosexual. Of all respondents, 9% were bisexual, 3% were gay, 3% were queer, 1% were lesbian, 1% were pansexual, and less than 1% were demisexual, aromantic, or asexual. Only 4% preferred not to indicate their sexual orientation. Due to the low sample size of sexual minority respondents, further analyses used a dichotomous measure to compare sexual minority respondents to straight/heterosexual respondents.
Similarly, the majority (81%) of respondents were white. This is the same as CISLM’s study of burnout in United States local newsrooms. Of respondents, 5% were Black, 4% were Asian, 3% were Biracial, less than 1% were Middle Eastern, American Indian or Alaska Native, or Multiracial. The remaining 2% marked their race as Other.
While it is difficult to measure the current demographics of local journalists since the News Leaders Association, which dissolved at the end of 2023, has not released data from its diversity survey since 2019, the lack of diversity among survey respondents is a limitation of this study.