Want to Survey Nonprofit News Outlets? Pay Us!
Several times a year, nonprofit news publishers like me get requests from academics and consultants bankrolled by any number of deep-pocketed players in the “journalism space” to take surveys. The appeals are generally urgent in tone and the timelines are typically short. “Don’t be left out,” we are told, “your opinion counts!”
Unfortunately, our opinions apparently don’t count enough to pay us for the time required to fill out multi-page forms—often an hour or more of staff time to double-check facts and figures and finalize responses.
Which is weird considering that many of the surveys are seeking to examine the always-difficult funding climate for the nonprofit news sector.
A subject that I’m not sure actually requires much more study. Especially when significant sums are lavished annually on academic researchers and consultants by the same major foundations, wealthy individuals, and social media corporations that nonprofit news outlets like mine are increasingly turning to for funding.
Making the product of the resulting research more of a self-fulfilling prophecy (we’re still broke) than information that is useful to nonprofit publishers—given that more of our news outlets would be in a better financial position year to year if the impressive sums that go to journalism research were given to us to produce journalism instead.
A typical survey question for nonprofit news outlets. Image: Jason Pramas.
Still, I understand that research studies on my sector are inevitable … and perhaps occasionally helpful to nonprofit news outlets on the ground.
As long as that’s the case, I think it’s best practice for researchers to always include a budget for paying nonprofit news outlets to answer their survey questions. Because publications in my sector are always short-staffed and overcommitted; thus, every hour of staff time counts.
Accordingly, if researchers want my nonprofit news colleagues and I to help out with their work going forward, they should really pay us to do so. Because we’re not here to help build academics’ careers—which, as a former journalism professor, I can assure readers is a primary purpose of far too much academic research. And we’re certainly not here to assist in further lining the pockets of almost uniformly useless consultants. We’re here to serve our communities of interest with journalism they increasingly can’t get anywhere else.
And frankly, we’ve got better things to do than provide free labor for the highly questionable intellectual return of “more data about our sector.”
The views expressed in this ANNOtator blog post are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of the leaders of the other member-outlets of the Alliance of Nonprofit News Outlets.
Jason Pramas is executive director of the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism, a founding member-outlet of the Alliance of Nonprofit News Outlets. Comments? Email him at jason@binjonline.org.