Contact: Damon Kiesow, 573-882-5831, kiesowd@missouri.edu

The Reynolds Journalism Institute (RJI) and the Local News Impact Consortium (LNIC) have launched Commissioning a Local News Ecosystem Assessment: An Operational Toolkit, a resource to streamline research into the forces and players that shape local news.

Authored by independent local news strategist Ariel Zirulnick, the toolkit offers practical walkthroughs grounded in real-world experience, aiming to help community leaders commission credible news ecosystem research that can effectively guide investment in local news. 

“If you’ve been asked to come up with a report about your local news landscape that can translate broad goals like ‘understand our audience’ or ‘support local journalism’ into clear, scoped, and actionable research, this toolkit is for you,” said Randy Picht, executive director of RJI, which is based at the Missouri School of Journalism.

Understanding a local news ecosystem means untangling the complex network of newsrooms, institutions, platforms, and people that communities rely on for news, information and civic engagement. A quality assessment of such an ecosystem means doing more than mapping the players in that network; it means revealing gaps in coverage, uncovering patterns of collaboration, learning how people actually access and use news, and determining where investments can have the greatest impact.

The toolkit walks users through the real decisions and steps these assessments require in order to align stakeholders, clarify goals, assess capacity and budget, understand research options and work productively with vendors. 

Those decision points are about more than producing a shiny new report — they ensure that any findings can be reliably used to inform future programs, partnerships and grantmaking.

“We believe high-quality ecosystem assessments are critical infrastructure for a healthy community,” said Damon Kiesow, chair of the LNIC and a professor at the Missouri School of Journalism. “This guide significantly supports and enhances those efforts by simplifying the complex work of organizing and aligning on the needs of a local ecosystem research project.”

The toolkit will be released in two parts. Today, RJI is publishing Part One, which covers six steps:  

• Introduction
• Step One: Organize Your Research Committee
• Step Two: Take Stock of Existing Data and Research
• Step Three: Define Goals, Scope, and Constraints
• Step Four: Issue a Request for Proposals (RFP)
• Step Five: Select a Research Vendor
• Step Six: Develop a Strong Statement of Work

Taken as a whole or in part, the toolkit can be used as a shared resource for a committee, a reference guide for a project lead or a checkpoint before engaging with vendors. It includes details and resources to help users establish organizational readiness, assess internal capacity and budget, identify research priorities and define vendor selection criteria and timelines.

The second installment of the toolkit developed by RJI, which will launch in March, will focus on organizing work with a research vendor after they’ve been selected, the development of community surveys and the socialization of findings internally and externally within the community. This effort is designed to accompany work by the LNIC, which in the fall of 2025 published its first playbook for local news researchers: the Newsroom Census/Ecosystem Mapping Toolkit. The toolkit — including Part Two once it is published — can be found here.

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Cite this article

RJI Online (2026, Feb. 9). Launching today: How to commission an effective local news ecosystem assessment. Reynolds Journalism Institute. Retrieved from: https://rjionline.org/news/launching-today-how-to-commission-an-effective-local-news-ecosystem-assessment/