Methodology of the WJS

As an international comparative project, the Worlds of Journalism Study (WJS) sets clear guidelines and parameters of what to include, and exclude, from this academic endeavour. This allows for longitudinal and cross-country comparisons.

More specific detail on the overall methodological approach of the WJS, can be found HERE.

One of the key aspects of the methodological framework, is a clear definition of who is considered a journalist for the purpose of this study. A working paper on this definition can also be found on the WJS website.

Beyond the definition highligthed here, the requirements for a journalist to be part of the study, include that they must spend at least 50% of their time and/or derive at least 50% of their income from doing journalism.

A journalist is ...

"...someone who regularly seeks, describes, analyzes, interprets, contextualizes, edits, produces, presents or portrays intentionally accurate information about current affairs (news), in any text, sound and/or or visual form or medium, as part of a process of providing or interpreting this information to a more generalized group of people than those previously familiar with it, and without expectation of deriving personal benefit from the consequences of this information being made available. The journalist’s work may or may not specialize in any particular subject matter or “beat” (e.g. politics, culture, business, crime, sports, lifestyle). The journalist may be employed by one or more news outlets, and/or may be self-employed (“freelance”)."

Searching for the South African sample of the WJS

There is no central, comprehensive list of South African journalists, or even of media outlets in the country. This made establishing the population, and a representative sample, quite challenging – and somewhat problematic.

The 2018 edition of the Wits State of the Newsroom Report, one of the most authoritative reports on the state of South African journalism suggested (in 2018 already) that the “professional journalist workforce in South Africa has been slashed in half since a decade ago [2008], when it was estimated to be "around 10,000-strong”. This would mean that the author suggested in 2018 that there were an estimated number of 5000 professional journalists in the country – pre-Covid.

A chapter in the 2024 edition of the same report, repeats the number above, but also acknowledges the “tricky business” of counting jobs in journalism. According to the authors, Prof Glenda Daniels from the Wits Department of Media Studies and Alan Finlay from the Wits Centre for Journalism, “the instability of the data may not be just about the methods of collecting this data and the challenges encountered, it may be symptomatic of a media sector in dramatic flux, making any attempt to fix numbers in time easily undermined and fallible, even for editors.”

It is thus clear that some of the existing research and estimations on the number of journalists in the country vary quite widely.

Establishing the nature and size of the South African population for a project such as the Worlds of Journalism Study (with strict parameters) would therefore always be a challenge. Nevertheless, I am confident that the sample used for this study is the closest to a comprehensive and representative picture of newswork in South Africa as possible given the limitations discussed throughout.

While the study proposal was undergoing ethical review at Stellenbosch University, I started to reach out to a variety of media institutions to map the landscape of professional journalism in South Africa. Throughout the first few months of 2023, emails were sent to senior and/or key role-players in a broad range of media companies and outlets informing them about the study and asking them how big their staff complements are. Much of this initial contact was based on goodwill because I used to work as a professional journalist and still have contacts in the industry.

The initial information was used to create a broad overview of the professional journalistic landscape in the country. According to my informed estimation at the time there should have been around 1640 journalists working in South Africa at the time (who fit the WJS definition of a professional journalist). Based on feedback from newsrooms and further exploration, I later adapted this number to around 1440.

In the second wave of the WJS, the late Prof Arnold S. de Beer worked with a sample of 371 journalists from a estimated population of 2500 journalists across South Africa. The full country report from the second wave of the study can be found HERE.

Country_Report_South_Africa.pdf

The link to the South African online survey was sent out (via email) for the first time on Monday 21 August 2023.

Since the initial response rate was slow and not sufficient to reach the minimum sample for the WJS, I visited newsrooms to introduce them to the study and later randomly contacted specific journalists to reach the minimum acceptable sample. I would consider this sampling strategy as a combination of a census and saturation sampling.

The last response to the survey was recorded on 25 January 2024. This meant the survey was open for around 20 weeks (or 5 months). In the final instance, it reached around 1316 individual journalists (from a "living list" of journalists that was constantly updated to exclude journalists who have left the profession). Altogether 418 journalists opened and started to complete the survey. However, of these records only 305 were used for the final dataset given that the survey had to be completed to a certain point to be acceptable. Some records were also discarded as they were completed by people who did not spend 50% of their time or earn 50% of their income from journalism.

This meant that the final response rate was 23%. The sample also met the minimum criteria for the WJS with a 95% confidence level and a 5% margin of error.

I would reiterate my view that the findings of this report, while arguably not entirely representative of the South African media landscape, are comprehensive and detailed enough to provide a solid grounding for both industry and academic discussions.

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