Analysis of the state of the sector in 2022: This report draws on INN’s 2023 Index survey, which was conducted in January 2023, to summarize the state of diversity, equity and inclusion in the nonprofit news sector in calendar year 2022. A total of 348 INN members are included in the analysis, encompassing print, digital-only and broadcast outlets.2 With a 90% response rate, the survey data provide a representative picture of INN members’ personnel and their efforts to advance DEI. For ease of reference, this report treats these outlets as a rough approximation of “the sector.” However, we recognize that INN membership does not include all U.S. nonprofit news organizations. The findings should be interpreted with that caveat in mind, particularly with regard to public media outlets and print legacy outlets, which tend to be less well represented among INN members. Readers should also bear in mind that many news outlets led by and for people of color are for-profit organizations, falling outside the scope of INN’s membership. Findings we discuss in this report, particularly those focused on outlets that are led by and primarily serve people of color, should not be treated as representative of all U.S. news outlets led by and for communities of color.
For transparency purposes, INN has made the full survey instrument publicly available.3 We encourage interested readers to consult the survey instrument for details on full question wording. Survey response options have been abbreviated in this report’s charts and graphs for reasons of space.
Analysis of change over time: We were able to explore patterns of change over time on a limited basis. Specifically, we examine potential changes in the demographic composition of staff and leadership between calendar years 2020 and 2022.4 This comparison provides initial insights into whether diversity in nonprofit news organizations increased in the wake of the 2020 racial justice protests. The analysis focuses on the subset of news organizations for which we have comparable data from both survey years: a total of 196 organizations. Our ability to examine changes in diversity over a longer period of time was constrained by changes in question wording, responses rates and the composition of INN membership across different years of data.
Interview data: As a complement to the survey data, we conducted interviews with 16 INN members in June 2023. We focused on outlets led by and for people of color, outlets that reported an increase in diversity between 2020 and 2022, and outlets that reported taking on some of the more time-intensive DEI practices. We drew on insights from these interviews to help interpret and contextualize some of the patterns observed in the survey data.
Challenges: There are many methodological challenges inherent in measuring DEI in the nonprofit news sector, including the lack of comparable data to examine change over time and the difficulty of gathering accurate demographic information, particularly from news organizations that do not already track this. There’s also an evolving conversation with differing perspectives on what to ask, and how, in order to meaningfully capture DEI. We are grateful to the group of advisors who helped guide our efforts to address these challenges, while at the same time we recognize that the survey is neither perfect nor comprehensive. Lessons from the 2023 Index will help INN learn how to strengthen its future efforts to gather and share information about DEI in the sector.
We are grateful to the many people who contributed to this research. The report would not be possible without the participation of the 348 nonprofit news organizations who invested time and effort responding to INN’s 2023 Index survey. We also thank the sixteen outlets that served as interviewees, offering valuable insights and perspectives that deepened and refined our analysis:
Many thanks to the individuals who served as advisors and reviewers, including Steve Dubb, Sanjay Jolly, Gabe Schneider, Sara Shahriari, and Mc Nelly Torres. Their valuable feedback helped us develop our research questions, craft the survey instrument and refine the analysis and write-up of our findings. Thanks also to Emily Roseman, INN’s research director, who brings a deep commitment to inclusive and thoughtful research practices in her role guiding INN’s Index. We also gratefully recognize the many others in the journalism, nonprofit and philanthropic sectors whose writing, research and thought leadership have informed and inspired this research, including Carla Murphy’s Leavers Survey, Sisi Wei, Tracie M. Powell, Meredith D. Clark, the Building Movement Project’s Race to Lead survey and the Trans Journalist Association, among many others.
INN’s Index is shaped by the vision and leadership of Sue Cross, INN’s CEO and executive director, who launched the recurring Index survey in 2018 and inspired the idea for undertaking in-depth studies of DEI every three years as part of the Index’s contribution to knowledge about the sector.
INN’s 2023 DEI Index Report is sponsored by the Google News Initiative (GNI).
Index reports are also made possible thanks to INN donors, the Knight Foundation and INN’s general support funders, which include Arnold Ventures, Arthur Vining Davis Foundation, Battery Powered, Democracy Fund, GA News Lab, Hubbard Family Foundation, Inasmuch Foundation, Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, Nan H. Altmayer Charitable Trust, Present Progressive Fund, PCLB Foundation, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
2. INN’s Index reports typically omit public media outlets due to systematic differences in how these organizations report revenue and expenses. Public media account for 28 of the 348 outlets that completed the 2023 Index survey. For this reason, we excluded them from the part of our analysis focused on funding. However, they are included in our analysis of demographic composition and DEI practices. We note that some public media outlets (as well as a small set of other INN members that are not public media) reported demographics for their entire organization because they were unable to break out the data specifically for their news department.
3. The 2023 Index survey instrument can be accessed here. It encompasses questions about DEI as well as an array of other questions that INN asks each year for purposes of producing its reports on trends, opportunities and challenges in the sector more broadly.
4. For this analysis of change over time, we opted to use demographic data gathered in INN’s survey covering calendar year 2020, as opposed to using data gathered for its first in-depth study of DEI covering calendar year 2019. This is because the response rate was higher for calendar year 2020 than it was for 2019, allowing us to include a larger and more representative sample of INN members who completed the survey in both years.
More research from INN Index Snapshot Report 2023 Factsheet on Local News INN Case Studies Pods: Benchmarking Data for Members
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