These assessments reveal who is informing communities, where gaps persist, and how resources can be deployed more strategically

As information landscapes fragment and local news grows more reliant on philanthropy, ecosystem assessments are becoming an essential tool for funders, civic leaders, and newsroom leaders. These assessments reveal who is informing communities, where gaps persist, and how resources can be deployed more strategically.

If you’re like many people embarking on this work for the first time, you know you need this research, but you’re unsure exactly what it is and how it happens. The big questions come first: How much will it cost? How long will it take? What should our assessment cover? And then a slew of smaller decisions follows: sampling frameworks, consent language, data storage protocols, translations, report length, format. These are the details that determine what your research actually enables when it’s done.

When anticipated, these questions and decisions can help you sharpen your goals. When they surface unexpectedly, they can derail timelines, expand scope, and add costs.

That’s why we’re launching a toolkit designed to help local funders and other ecosystem builders move through this process with more confidence and fewer surprises. It’s not a guide to research methods – there are great resources on that already, and we’ll share those. It’s an operational playbook that fills in the steps no one ever writes down – drawn from real projects, real questions, and patterns we’ve seen across the field.

I first entered this space as the project manager for the Press Forward South Florida ecosystem assessment, which brought me into conversation with the Local News Impact Consortium, ecosystem research vendors, Press Forward chapters, and others who had commissioned research like this. We swapped questions, progress updates, stumbling blocks, exciting insights, and lessons learned. 

As the same uncertainties and advice surfaced again and again, the Reynolds Journalism Institute and Local News Impact Consortium saw an opportunity: to document them and curate the resources that can help ecosystem builders answer them.

Think of this as the tactical guide you wish you’d had from day one — one that bridges the gap between understanding why you need an assessment and actually getting one done well.

What this resource is (and isn’t)

Let’s be clear, this isn’t meant to replace the array of resources already available on how to conduct various aspects of ecosystem assessments, nor is it a substitute for hiring an experienced vendor. Instead, it’s an operational bridge—a practical toolkit to move you from idea to execution with fewer unknowns and less guesswork.

This resource will include:

• Planning your research
  • Questions to ask yourself when setting your goals
  • An overview of different research methodologies and what types of insights each will yield

• Finding and managing vendors
  • A curated list of national ecosystem assessment vendors 
  • Advice on evaluating and working with local research vendors
  • Example RFPs you can adapt or borrow language from

• Budgeting + contracting
  • Price estimates for ecosystem research of various scale
  • A pressure-tested list of items to include in your contracts and agreements

It will be a vetted and thoroughly curated set of resources from across the field, organized in order of when you have to make each decision. This is perhaps the most important part of collecting all these resources in one place. I found out about a variety of great resources out there too late to incorporate them in my process. As a result, I made a lot of decisions the hard way – from scratch, through a lot of desk research and phone-a-friend moments. 

We’ll also be pressure-testing the toolkit with Press Forward Kansas City as they begin their assessment process, allowing us to refine the guidance in real time as they test it.

What to expect from this toolkit 

We’re developing these resources by talking directly with vendors, Press Forward chapters who’ve been through the process, and drawing on our own experiences supporting journalism innovation and local news infrastructure. 

The toolkit will be released in three parts, all accessible in one place:

• First installment This section will help with setting your research goals through hiring your vendor and developing a contract that covers all your bases.

• Second installment: A practical checklist for keeping your project on track once it’s underway, including common pitfalls to avoid and questions to ask at key milestones.

• Final installment: How to use your ecosystem assessment once it’s complete—because the research is only valuable if it informs action.

What type of research you need and which vendor is the best fit will vary, so we will be vendor-neutral and approach-flexible. But we are building this toolkit with two strong values about what an actionable information ecosystem assessment should include:

1. A catalog of information providers: A strong catalog isn’t just a spreadsheet — it’s a visibility and power map. Ideally, it’s public-facing, sortable, and includes information such as ownership structure, primary formats, and geographic or audience focus. It doesn’t have to be a huge undertaking. You can begin building one incrementally, even without a vendor, and we’ll share practical starting points and resources to make that possible.

2. A community information needs assessment: News that does not reflect community members’ greatest challenges is news that feels esoteric and irrelevant. Research-backed, representative insights into what community members need is one of the most valuable things you can offer the news and information providers in your remit. 

Why this toolkit is needed now 

Ecosystem assessments are genuinely valuable. They help you understand who’s producing news in your community, what gaps exist, where collaboration opportunities lie, and how to deploy resources strategically. When done well, they can kickstart transformative work.

Across conversations with dozens of chapters, we realized that the challenges weren’t about the research itself — they bubbled up in the decision making process when people lacked adequate context or expectations were mismatched.

Our goals are straightforward:

• Take some of the guesswork out of commissioning an assessment
• Help you navigate vendor selection and project management with confidence
• Eliminate unnecessary back-and-forth and mid-project adjustments that derail progress

The end state we’re aiming for? Research that happens on time, within your budget, and helps you identify and act on your community’s needs.

Stay tuned for the first installment at the end of January – and in the meantime, I am happy to discuss and share work-in-progress versions with chapters who need this information sooner than late January. You can reach me at ariel@arielzirulnick.com or book time during my office hours.

Why RJI and LNIC are supporting this effort 

The Reynolds Journalism Institute (RJI) at the Missouri School of Journalism empowers journalists with the knowledge, tools, and funding they need to strengthen the field through practical innovation. They are positioned at the intersection of research, training, and news innovation; uniquely suited to advance this work and help news organizations translate data and insight into tangible impact. 

RJI and the Missouri School of Journalism are also supporters of the Local News Impact Consortium, which is developing open-source research tools to help local chapters and newsroom founders conduct more effective, efficient, and actionable community research. Better research means better investment decisions, which means stronger local journalism for the communities that desperately need it.

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Cite this article

Zirulnick, Ariel  (2025, Dec. 12). A new resource for taking the guesswork out of ecosystem research. Reynolds Journalism Institute. Retrieved from: https://rjionline.org/news/a-new-resource-for-taking-the-guesswork-out-of-ecosystem-research/