Executive summary

Since the first Changing Newsrooms report in 2020, this annual piece of research has aimed at exploring how news organisations around the world are adapting their working practices to external changes and internal dynamics, with a specific eye on their strategies towards attracting and nurturing talent, as well as cultivating a diverse, inclusive, and representative culture.

When looking at external forces, remote working was obviously the main focus of the report in 2020, when the global COVID-19 pandemic forced our social interactions to a halt and many news organisations moved their staff to work from home. The killing of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests brought attention to issues of racial injustice and social inequalities, sparking debates and conversations that reverberated through news organisations and led many of them to reconsider their own practices, both in terms of their internal representation, and in how they covered the news (Cherubini et al. 2020).

In the two following years, a mix of remote and in-office work made the ‘hybrid newsroom’ a widespread reality, but questions remained about how exactly to implement it and with what consequences on the social and collaborative working dynamics, as well as on staff’s feeling of belonging towards their organisations (Cherubini 2022). Hybrid working practices not only put a spotlight on real and perceived inequalities between people working in front of their bosses and those working away from them (also known as ‘proximity bias’), but likewise on the benefits that an increased flexibility could bring to creating a more diverse and distributed workforce as well. Yet, despite being the topic of several industry discussions, investing in talent and improving diversity remained fundamental, largely unmet, challenges (Cherubini et al. 2021).

Fast forward to 2023. While in May the World Health Organisation declared the Covid-19 pandemic over, other external challenges have come into play, namely an economic slowdown, increasing inflation, international wars and geopolitical disruption.

Three years after we started talking about remote and hybrid work, have working practices in news organisations around the world really changed compared to pre-pandemic? How did a higher degree of flexibility, enjoyed by many during the past years, get translated into new established processes and workflows? What impact will advances in generative AI have on roles and responsibilities in newsrooms? What progress has really been made on having truly diverse and inclusive organisations and working cultures? And lastly, how do we hire the talent we need and invest in existing talent to meet the challenges and opportunities of an ever-changing media landscape?

We’ll try to answer these questions in this year’s Changing Newsrooms report, which is based on a survey of 135 senior industry leaders from 40 countries and ten in-depth interviews.

Among other things, we find that:

• Two-thirds (65%) of newsroom leaders who took part in our survey said that their organisations have implemented flexible and hybrid working models with new rules in place for staff. Newsrooms have largely settled on embracing some degree of workplace flexibility: 30% of respondents said staff are required to be in the office some fixed days per week and their company is enforcing the rule to make sure it’s respected, while 22% said that, despite staff being required to be in the office some fixed days per week, no one is checking if this really happens.
• Some news leaders remain worried about a sense of disconnect within their workforce: 38% said that the shift to hybrid and flexible working has weakened staff’s sense of belonging to the organisation.
• Of our respondents, 74% think that generative AI will help newsrooms increase productivity and improve workflows, without changing the essence of journalism. Just 21% said that generative AI will transform workflows and processes, fundamentally changing every role in the newsroom.
• When it comes to guiding staff through opportunities and risks of AI, 29% of news leaders report that their organisations already have in place high-level principles to guide their AI plans, while 39% say they are working on them. Only 16% of respondents report having in place detailed guidelines on how to use generative AI in different circumstances and 35% say they are working on them. Only 9% of leaders report having training programmes for staff already in place.
• When it comes to diversity, 90% of our survey participants feel their organisations are doing a good job in gender diversity but numbers are considerably lower when it comes to doing a good job with political diversity (55%), supporting staff with disabilities (54%), or ethnic diversity (52%).
• According to our survey results, newsrooms lack a structured and clear plan for diversity. Of the survey participants, 43% said their organisation has a systematic and articulated strategy for diversifying talent acquisition, but in other areas systematic strategies were relatively rare. When looking at retaining talent, only 22% of news leaders said their organisations have a systematic and articulated strategy and 37% have such an approach to reflecting diversity in stories produced.
• When we asked news leaders who participated in the survey what challenges they thought their organisations were encountering when trying to improve diversity and representation, finding diverse talent was identified as the top challenge, mentioned by 57% of our respondents. In addition, 29% said retaining diverse talent was a problem, 20% said that improving diversity and representation is not considered an organisational priority, and 17% said there is a lack of understanding of the value/merit of it.

This report is based on a survey of a strategic sample of news industry leaders, completed between 6 September and 18 October 2023, and it is complemented by in-depth interviews with ten industry leaders. Respondents include editors-in-chief/executive editors, CEOs, and managing editors, as well as other senior positions in editorial, audience, talent development, and commercial. The sample includes individuals working in a wide range of different companies with a print, magazine, broadcast background, as well as digital-born news organisations and news agencies. While the survey was sent to news industry leaders in many different countries, the majority of the respondents are from the Global North, and most of them work in mid-size and large organisations.

Our results thus do not fully capture the often very different situation faced by small organisations and those operating in poor and/or authoritarian countries. It is not a representative sample and it is not a random sample. Therefore, it does not allow for generalisation to the industry at large. Because of the strategic sample we rely on, direct year-to-year comparisons of specific figures are not possible, although the data do help us identify overall patterns. More details of the methodology and make-up of the sample are provided in the section at the end of the report.

Listen to our podcast about the report

1. The impact of more flexible newsrooms on hiring, productivity, and diversity

1.1 From ‘remote’ and ‘hybrid’ to ‘flexible’ and ‘distributed’

‘It’s time to retire the phrase “hybrid work”’, declared Future Forum’s Brian Elliott in August 2023 in a piece for Charter, a digital publication that provides in-depth coverage of the modern workplace.¹ The terms ‘remote’ and ‘hybrid’ came to mean too many things, Elliott explained, pointing to a Future Forum research that showed that what employees are really asking for now is ‘the freedom to work where, and when, they’re at their best. They want a blend of regular time together with their team, and autonomy at the team level to figure out what’s right for them’. In one word: flexibility. Elliott goes on to articulate that many companies looked at simple solutions (‘three days a week in the office to be with your team’ for example) instead of structurally re-evaluating their working practices and embracing the potential of having a truly distributed workforce, which in turn requires new working protocols and leadership skills to thrive.

A few months earlier, Financial Times journalist and host of the ‘Working It’ podcast and newsletter Isabel Berwick was also wondering² whether we were ‘doing hybrid wrong’. Berwick highlighted a new study³ by the consultancy firm McKinsey that also found that few companies have taken full advantage of the possibilities offered by what it called ‘true hybrid’ work models. The study found that ‘for some, long-standing perceptions – including the notion that more days in the office is the measure of success – may stand in the way of meaningful change. For others, it may be that defaulting to old norms is easier than rethinking new ways of working.’

Indeed the culprit of failing hybrid working practices seems to be ‘poor execution’, according to a global pulse survey by business consultancy Gartner quoted here⁴.

More generally, not everyone was sold on the idea of hybrid working: across sectors, some companies⁵ opted for requiring their employees to go back to the office full time. These office mandates, however, haven’t proven very popular.⁶

Discontent with return-to-office policies was also found in media companies, becoming a contested topic in negotiations⁷ between management and newsroom unions at companies like Hearst and The New York Times.⁸

So, within this broader context of how hybrid work is seen across sectors, where does the news industry stand? Have news organisations around the world really changed the ways they organise where and when their staff work, as a result of the increased flexibility staff got used to during the pandemic? And if flexibility is what employees are asking for, what kind of flexibility would they like to have?

According to our survey, 65% of newsroom leaders said that their organisations have largely implemented flexible and hybrid working models with new rules in place for staff. Only 16% said that their organisations made some changes, but largely returned to a pre-pandemic model, with the majority of time spent in-person in the office.

Figure 1.

Organisations vary in terms of how they have actually implemented hybrid and flexible working. While 15% of our sample offer workers total flexibility in terms of when they work from home or come to the office, it is more common for employees to be offered a degree of flexibility (52%): 30% of newsroom leaders participating in our survey said staff are required to be in the office some fixed days per week and their company is enforcing the rule to make sure it’s respected, while 22% said that, despite staff being required to be in the office some fixed days per week, no one is checking if this really happens. For 16% staff are required to be in the office most of the time.

Figure 2.

Naturally, even within organisations, it’s not a one-size-fits-all strategy. Different teams have been following different approaches, with editorial and engineering for example adopting different in-office and remote work rules. Roles that require specific office equipment also enjoy more limited flexibility.

In the survey we asked what type of flexibility newsroom leaders felt their staff were asking for. According to the open-ended answers we received, flexibility about where to work seems to be most desirable. Beyond the home or office options, there were mentions of the city where the organisation is based vs. the countryside or a different location in the same country. Several participants also cited requests for greater flexibility during holiday time to allow employees to work from other countries or locations. Several newsroom leaders also cited requests for flexibility to accommodate caring responsibilities like childcare.

It’s not just about the place of work though. Some newsrooms allow a high degree of flexibility in relation to working hours: ‘We allow flexibility on [the] work schedule: staff members can plan breaks during their work day, for example, to exercise, run errands, attend family matters, or simply relax,’ said Maye Primera, Editorial Director of El Timpano, in California, US.

There are also generational differences in preferences for working practices. Although not always the case, early-career journalists sometimes see the office as an opportunity to establish relationships with more experienced colleagues and learn to navigate different work scenarios.⁹ On the other hand, they might have only experienced a high degree of flexibility in their work life and therefore expect that to be the norm. But, as a British editor noted, ‘it is hard to tell if this is a generational divide or a situation created by the new rules of work post-pandemic’.

1.2 The impact of flexible working on productivity and sense of belonging

Last year’s report highlighted a growing concern about a sense of disconnect between staff and their organisations (Cherubini 2022). The same feeling remains this year, with 38% of news leaders who participated in the survey saying that the shift to hybrid and flexible working has weakened staff’s sense of belonging to the organisation.¹⁰ In contrast, just 13% said that it had strengthened belonging, with 40% saying there had been no effect.

Figure 3.

Sense of cohesion and building of a shared culture came up a few times in comments as an ongoing challenge for aspects of hybrid and flexible working arrangements:  

In conversations around flexible and hybrid working, the issue of productivity often arises, together with the question of whether or not this working model enhances or hinders it.

Continuing the trend we saw in last year’s report, many of our survey respondents do not think it has had much of an effect: 48% say that productivity has neither increased nor decreased as a result of the shift to hybrid and flexible working, while a quarter (26%) think that it has increased. However, it is important to point out that a clear minority, just 19%, think that flexible and hybrid working has decreased productivity.

Figure 4.

The discourse around ‘productivity paranoia’ is not new. A Microsoft Work Trend Index Report in 2022¹¹ reported 85% of leaders surveyed as saying that the shift to hybrid work had made it challenging to have confidence that employees were being productive, while at the same time workers were reporting high levels of productivity. This disconnect fuels a ‘productivity theatre’,¹² where workers feel compelled to show they are working, in a largely performative way.¹³

A recent Slack State of Work in 2023 report¹⁴ found that most executives rely heavily on visibility and activity metrics as the main way to measure productivity, with 53% of desk workers saying they feel the pressure to respond to messages quickly, even if sent after working hours. Most individual contributors, on the other hand, would prefer to be measured on what they produce or achieve (with 27% indicating ‘achieving goals/KPIs’ as their top preferred measure).

Inspired by the conversations happening across industries, we wanted to see how newsroom leaders were thinking about productivity. In our survey we asked how much effort participants feel their organisations are putting into measuring productivity. (Please note that this is a report that focuses on the views of newsroom leaders so we don’t have data about how staff think about the issue.)

Only 13% of the leaders who participated in the survey said their companies put ‘a lot of effort’ into measuring productivity, while many more (39%) reported ‘some effort’. Perhaps most strikingly, nearly half (46%) said that their organisation makes either a small effort to measure productivity or no effort at all (16%).

Figure 5.

We also included an open-ended question in the survey asking leaders whether their organisation or their team had changed the way it measures productivity as a result of flexible working and if yes, how. The majority of those who answered reported no significant changes. We received a few examples of post-pandemic changes but they mainly involved non-editorial teams.

1.3 The impact of flexible working on talent

Last year’s report highlighted how hybrid and flexible working had a positive impact on hiring but made retention harder due to increased difficulties in establishing relationships with the new hires and developing a strong sense of belonging to the organisation. For this year’s survey we wanted to continue looking at what impact a more flexible way of working is having on the workforce, with a specific focus on recruitment and retention.

52% of newsroom leaders in the survey report that hybrid and flexible working has made recruitment much easier or somewhat easier, while 28% said that it hasn’t changed anything; 15% said that it has made recruitment harder.

Figure 6.

The advantages for recruitment appear in several of the comments we received. ‘Many applicants are looking for flexibility for commuting, child care and elder care. Knowing we are hybrid makes the company more attractive’, said a leader from a global organisation, headquartered in the US.

Another British editor echoed: ‘I was able to hire a top candidate who lives in Scotland, despite our office being in London. Without the flexible approach, we would have lost a really strong employee.’

Switching the focus to retaining talent, 43% of newsroom leaders in our survey said flexible and hybrid working has made retention much or somewhat easier, with 29% saying it hasn’t changed anything and 19% said it made it much or somewhat harder.

Figure 7.

Advantages and challenges can coexist, as exemplified by this comment from an Irish editor:

As we mentioned at the beginning of the chapter, strict ‘return to office’ policies risk having a negative impact on the workforce. ‘Our company has implemented a strict 5-day in-person work policy and that has had a negative effect of retention. We had a spate of resignations shortly after the announcement’, commented an editor from a publication based in South Africa.

The same challenge was echoed by a newsroom leader from a broadcaster in Germany:

My organisation has spiralled back into a mostly in-office policy, which has had a negative impact on retention. A lot of people have left seeking more flexible work arrangements. Our schedules at the news desk aren’t flexible at all time-wise, thus people seek out flexibility in terms of where to work, which we don’t offer.

One of the issues that often gets raised when talking about the challenges posed by hybrid and flexible working models is the effectiveness in training younger and less experienced staff (Cherubini et al. 2021). ‘For younger journalists, we have received some feedback that they feel they might receive more organic training in newsrooms where they can be physically beside more seasoned professionals and observe them at work.’, commented an Irish editor in this year’s survey.

However, a study by Charter and Qualtrics,¹⁵ based on a survey of 3,005 desk-based employees across industries, showed that where mentorship takes place is not a defining factor of success. Successful mentoring relationships, the study said, were similarly likely to occur if mentor and mentee met remotely, in person, or a mix of both.

1.4 The impact of flexible working on diversity, equity, and inclusion

Last year’s survey showed the promise of how increased geographical flexibility in relation to where to hire talent, for example, could have a positive impact on increasing organisations’ diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) levels, but we weren’t able to make any direct connection between the two aspects.

This year’s results show similar hopes from news leaders: 57% said they agree with the statement that ‘Hybrid and flexible working can increase our ability to hire diverse talent and have a positive impact on our diversity, equity, and inclusion strategies’, with just 16% disagreeing.

Figure 8.

‘Flexible work favours women, caregivers and parents, and people from low-socio economic backgrounds who may not be able to afford to commute in, or live in, major cities’, said a leader working in an audience role at a British organisation.

‘Most of our staff are women of colour, some of them working moms with small children and difficulties to find or afford childcare. Having flexible work hours has allowed them to balance their family and work life,’ agreed Maye Primera, Editorial Director at El Timpano, in California, United States.

Others noted that, even if a higher degree of flexibility can be beneficial to improving DEI, news organisations of course can’t rely solely on that if they want to meaningfully improve the diversity and inclusivity of their staff, as well as their organisational culture overall, and benefits of sharing a workspace remain:

The impact of hybrid and flexible working to leverage existing disparities is the focus of a report published in February 2023 by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The report looks at the gendered dimension of teleworking and its effect on gender disparities in labour market outcomes. Amongst other things, the study found that

For the news industry, similarly to last year, despite its potential and despite leaders being optimistic about the impact that flexible working can have on improving diversity in their organisations, we are still lacking a clear indication of this correlation.

2. The potential impact of AI on roles and workflows

Since the public release of ChatGPT¹⁶ in November 2022, the industry has been flooded with conversations about the impact that artificial intelligence, and more specifically generative AI, could have on the ways we produce and consume information.

There are several industry experts who have contributed their thinking to the issue, including people like David Caswell or projects like JournalismAI at LSE.¹⁷

In line with the general focus of the Changing Newsrooms report, we wanted to know what news leaders thought about the impact generative AI will have on roles and responsibilities in newsrooms.¹⁸

When we asked our survey respondents how they think generative AI and the automation of workflows will affect jobs in the newsroom over the next decade, 74% said that ‘generative AI will help us do some things more efficiently but the essence of what we do won’t change’, while 21% thought that ‘generative AI will transform workflows and processes, fundamentally changing every role in the newsroom’. Just 2% thought that generative AI will not change news work, reflecting the extent to which many newsroom leaders think AI will impact their industry.

Figure 9.

When we asked newsroom leaders how they see this potential impact playing out, the common sentiment across the 61 open comments we received was clear: at least for now, generative AI will help newsrooms increase productivity and improve workflows, freeing up time for journalists to do more actual journalism, but the essential, human-powered core of journalism won’t change.

Many stressed the efficiency gains when automating basic or routine tasks. In the words of this senior newsroom leader working for a global news organisation: ‘Some lower-level tasks will be done by AI but we still expect our staff to find, produce and edit stories by hand. AI cannot replace strong reporting.’

For some, the proliferation of AI-generated content could be an opportunity for news publishers to capitalise on their added value and potentially increase revenue:

This digital manager working in the revenue department in a Spanish news organisation agrees:

Caution remains in terms of publishing AI-generated content:

Some included in the comments some ethical considerations: ‘It is also necessary to relook into the question of to what extent we can accept AI-generated content to replace content created by reporters in the newsroom’, commented a senior editor from Singapore.

Other news leaders who contributed their comments anticipated more significant changes:

In the survey we also wanted to gauge the extent to which news publishers have started to introduce practical guidelines or training programmes to guide their staff through possibilities and risks posed by the implementation of AI.

We asked a further set of questions about implementation of various practices related to AI. When it comes to having high-level principles about how news organisations plan to use generative AI, just over one-third of respondents (39%) said their organisation is working on them, while 29% reports having some guidelines in place. One-fifth (21%) said they are considering them, but don’t have them yet.

Although many have worked or are working on high-level principles, only 16% say they have in place more detailed guidelines on how to use generative AI in different circumstances; 35% are currently working on developing these, and 30% are considering them.¹⁹

Having a formally designated person to lead all editorial aspects of generative AI is a reality for 16% of the survey respondents, but 29% said their organisations are not considering it.

Lastly, only 9% of survey participants said their organisation has a training programme to educate staff about opportunities and dangers of generative AI, while the majority (40%) is considering it and 29% is actively working on it.

It’s also useful to note that a few people have commented that these are still early days and the answers to the same questions we asked in the survey will likely look very different in six months’ time.

Figure 10.

• Cherubini, F., Newman, N., Nielsen, R. K. 2020. Changing Newsrooms 2020: Addressing Diversity and Nurturing Talent at a Time of Unprecedented Change. Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.
• Cherubini, F., Newman, N., Nielsen, R. K. 2021. Changing Newsrooms 2021: Hybrid Working and Improving Diversity Remain Twin Challenges for Publishers. Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.
• Cherubini, F. 2022, Changing Newsrooms 2022: Media Leaders Embrace Hybrid Work Despite Challenges. Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.
• Eddy, K., Ross Arguedas, A., Mukherjee, M., Nielsen, R. K. 2022a. Women and Leadership in the News Media 2023: Evidence from 12 Markets. Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.
• Eddy, K., Ross Arguedas, A., Mukherjee, M., Nielsen, R. K. 2022b. Race and Leadership in the News Media 2023: Evidence from Five Markets. Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.
• Kassova, L. 2022. From Outrage to Opportunity: How to Include the Missing Perspectives of Women of All Colors in News Leadership and Coverage
• Touzet, C., 2023. Teleworking through the Gender Looking Glass, Paris: OECD.