The percentage results from all 40 survey questions

Excel spreadsheet file of raw survey data

SPSS spreadsheet file of raw survey data

Cory's story on unions

Cory's story on the survey results for  gender and race diversity 

Cory's story on survey results for quality, ownership, and news coverage issues.

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Midwest journalists respond to student's survey

Newspapers and newsrooms, like everything else in life, are in a constant state of change.

Students at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire developed and conducted a survey to gauge the extent of the changes in newspapers across the Upper Midwest by asking journalists of newspapers from Wisconsin as well as journalists from newspapers in Minneapolis, St. Paul and Duluth, Minn.

Survey questions addressed issues such as salary, racial and gender diversity in the newsroom, union influence, changing coverage and ownership changes, to name a few. 

The survey was based on readings done by students in "Leaving Readers Behind," a book edited by Gene Roberts investigating newspapers in the age of corporate takeovers.

"Leaving Readers Behind" focused primarily on the affect corporations, and the growing emphasis on profits, has on journalism and the quality of the newspaper.

The survey conducted by UW-EC students covers the industry more broadly than does "Leaving Readers Behind" in that it doesn't focus just on the corporate 
influence. The survey, however, is narrow in scope given that its results only reflect newspapers in Wisconsin and three in Minnesota.

The survey was a Web-based survey. Editors of every Wisconsin newspaper that had an e-mail address were e-mailed a letter explaining the survey. Editors were then asked to provide e-mail addresses for all staff or to forward the survey on to all staff. 

There were 585 journalists who responded to the survey. Survey responses were collected in a spreadsheet and distributed to the students to build a story idea off 
of. Responders varied from reporters to publishers and everything in between.