News organizations step up their support for caregivers

“News organizations — particularly the ones that have spent the past couple years reporting on caregivers hitting their breaking point — can no longer afford not to prioritize the needs of caregivers on their own staffs.”

The crises have been bountiful. A childcare crisis. An eldercare crisis. Long Covid as its own public-health crisis. And undergirding all of these is one more: the crisis of caregivers who are stressed out, burned out, running out of options, and dropping out of the workforce. News organizations — particularly the ones that have spent the past couple years reporting on caregivers hitting their breaking point — can no longer afford not to prioritize the needs of caregivers on their own staffs.

What do we mean by caregiving? Childcare is part of it, though only some of the need we see among news organization employees including ourselves. We like the more expansive definition of caregiving laid out in a 2019 report from Harvard Business School, which defined it as “the act of providing unpaid assistance and support to family members or others who have physical, psychological, or developmental need.” In the same report, around three quarters of employees said they had some sort of caregiving responsibility.

In 2023 we will see family-related labor including eldercare not just made more visible, but more substantively recognized. Looking at where and how work gets done today, we see recent precedent for the types of change we’ll see. In a global survey of newsroom leaders from Oxford’s Reuters Institute this past autumn, nearly two in three said their organizations had embraced some level of hybrid and flexible work. Given the unpredictable nature of often-news- and deadline-driven work, hybrid work flexibility is a powerful way to support caregivers’ schedules.

Employers across industries know that more workplace transformation is needed. More than 40% of business leaders our research team at Charter surveyed this autumn said that they’re currently focused on solving for employee mental wellbeing, hiring, and employee retention. One way to begin addressing all three is by providing substantive caregiving support, including through leave policies, flexible time off,  and backup care benefits.

This is an area where media organizations can lead. While our organizations rarely offer the highest salaries, we can differentiate ourselves to candidates with family-inclusive benefits and practices. The economic strains on the industry aren’t a reason not to support caregivers better. Even (especially!) amid demanding assignments and a tight labor market, we can demonstrate that we can offer workers adequate time to rest and recharge, not to mention care for others. When these approaches are in place, we will see more engaged employees who are less likely to burn out. Support for caregiving isn’t a nice-to-have: it is an imperative for investing in and retaining diverse talent in journalism.

Even startup newsrooms can meet these needs when they prioritize them. Nonprofit newsrooms like The Markup and The 19th similarly show how they value their talent through policies that are generous to employees with child and eldercare responsibilities. When I (Cari) first joined Charter, I was seven months pregnant, and the company was new enough that our founders created our parental-leave policy the same day I received my offer. I was lucky to start my life as a caregiver with an organization that was ready to support me through the transition and into this next phase. But luck shouldn’t have anything to do with it.

A truly inclusive newsroom cannot exist without an understanding of what their caregivers need in order to do their jobs well. And what do we need?

  • We need benefits that reflect the lived experiences of caregivers, such as childcare subsidies and mental health care — especially given the often unpredictable emotional and time constraints of newsroom work.
  • We need employee resource groups that allow caregivers to connect and advocate for the necessary workplace supports.
  • We need to feel empowered to be open about signing off to take a parent to the doctor or to make daycare pickup.
  • We need networking to be family friendly: to happen during working hours, to be less dependent on alcohol-centered events, and to be open to participants within their households.
  • We need organizations to designate backfills when staff are on extended leaves of absence, so that work doesn’t fall to already overburdened employees.
  • We  need more of what Katherine Goldstein, a reporter who leads the DoubleShift community, calls “sustainable solutions to personal problems.”

Employers will come to understand that these are just a starting point. The news organizations that we’ll see thrive in the future will be the ones that continually ask their employees how they can support them, in and outside the newsroom.

Cari Nazeer is the managing editor at Charter, a media and insights company that exists to transform every workplace. Emily Goligoski is the head of research at Charter.

The crises have been bountiful. A childcare crisis. An eldercare crisis. Long Covid as its own public-health crisis. And undergirding all of these is one more: the crisis of caregivers who are stressed out, burned out, running out of options, and dropping out of the workforce. News organizations — particularly the ones that have spent the past couple years reporting on caregivers hitting their breaking point — can no longer afford not to prioritize the needs of caregivers on their own staffs.

What do we mean by caregiving? Childcare is part of it, though only some of the need we see among news organization employees including ourselves. We like the more expansive definition of caregiving laid out in a 2019 report from Harvard Business School, which defined it as “the act of providing unpaid assistance and support to family members or others who have physical, psychological, or developmental need.” In the same report, around three quarters of employees said they had some sort of caregiving responsibility.

In 2023 we will see family-related labor including eldercare not just made more visible, but more substantively recognized. Looking at where and how work gets done today, we see recent precedent for the types of change we’ll see. In a global survey of newsroom leaders from Oxford’s Reuters Institute this past autumn, nearly two in three said their organizations had embraced some level of hybrid and flexible work. Given the unpredictable nature of often-news- and deadline-driven work, hybrid work flexibility is a powerful way to support caregivers’ schedules.

Employers across industries know that more workplace transformation is needed. More than 40% of business leaders our research team at Charter surveyed this autumn said that they’re currently focused on solving for employee mental wellbeing, hiring, and employee retention. One way to begin addressing all three is by providing substantive caregiving support, including through leave policies, flexible time off,  and backup care benefits.

This is an area where media organizations can lead. While our organizations rarely offer the highest salaries, we can differentiate ourselves to candidates with family-inclusive benefits and practices. The economic strains on the industry aren’t a reason not to support caregivers better. Even (especially!) amid demanding assignments and a tight labor market, we can demonstrate that we can offer workers adequate time to rest and recharge, not to mention care for others. When these approaches are in place, we will see more engaged employees who are less likely to burn out. Support for caregiving isn’t a nice-to-have: it is an imperative for investing in and retaining diverse talent in journalism.

Even startup newsrooms can meet these needs when they prioritize them. Nonprofit newsrooms like The Markup and The 19th similarly show how they value their talent through policies that are generous to employees with child and eldercare responsibilities. When I (Cari) first joined Charter, I was seven months pregnant, and the company was new enough that our founders created our parental-leave policy the same day I received my offer. I was lucky to start my life as a caregiver with an organization that was ready to support me through the transition and into this next phase. But luck shouldn’t have anything to do with it.

A truly inclusive newsroom cannot exist without an understanding of what their caregivers need in order to do their jobs well. And what do we need?

  • We need benefits that reflect the lived experiences of caregivers, such as childcare subsidies and mental health care — especially given the often unpredictable emotional and time constraints of newsroom work.
  • We need employee resource groups that allow caregivers to connect and advocate for the necessary workplace supports.
  • We need to feel empowered to be open about signing off to take a parent to the doctor or to make daycare pickup.
  • We need networking to be family friendly: to happen during working hours, to be less dependent on alcohol-centered events, and to be open to participants within their households.
  • We need organizations to designate backfills when staff are on extended leaves of absence, so that work doesn’t fall to already overburdened employees.
  • We  need more of what Katherine Goldstein, a reporter who leads the DoubleShift community, calls “sustainable solutions to personal problems.”

Employers will come to understand that these are just a starting point. The news organizations that we’ll see thrive in the future will be the ones that continually ask their employees how they can support them, in and outside the newsroom.

Cari Nazeer is the managing editor at Charter, a media and insights company that exists to transform every workplace. Emily Goligoski is the head of research at Charter.

Rodney Gibbs   Recalibrating how we work apart

Don Day   The news about the news is bad. I’m optimistic.

Jim Friedlich   Local journalism steps up to the challenge of civic coverage

Janelle Salanga   Journalists work from a place of harm reduction

Kathy Lu   We need emotionally agile newsroom leaders

Anika Anand   Independent news businesses lead the way on healthy work cultures

Karina Montoya   More reporters on the antitrust beat

Raney Aronson-Rath   Journalists will band together to fight intimidation

Wilson Liévano   Diaspora journalism takes the next step

Elite Truong   In platform collapse, an opportunity for community

Al Lucca   Digital news design gets interesting again

David Cohn   AI made this prediction

Joanne McNeil   Facebook and the media kiss and make up

Cari Nazeer and Emily Goligoski   News organizations step up their support for caregivers

Johannes Klingebiel   The innovation team, R.I.P.

Ståle Grut   Your newsroom experiences a Midjourney-gate, too

Moreno Cruz Osório   Brazilian journalism turns wounds into action

Jarrad Henderson   Video editing will help people understand the media they consume

Ayala Panievsky   It’s time for PR for journalism

Priyanjana Bengani   Partisan local news networks will collaborate

Peter Bale   Rising costs force more digital innovation

Basile Simon   Towards supporting criminal accountability

Valérie Bélair-Gagnon   Well-being will become a core tenet of journalism

Tim Carmody   Newsletter writers need a new ethics

Jesse Holcomb   Buffeted, whipped, bullied, pulled

Jacob L. Nelson   Despite it all, people will still want to be journalists

Parker Molloy   We’ll reach new heights of moral panic

Amethyst J. Davis   The slight of the great contraction

Kavya Sukumar   Belling the cat: The rise of independent fact-checking at scale

Martina Efeyini   Talk to Gen Z. They’re the experts of Gen Z.

Alex Perry   New paths to transparency without Twitter

Jody Brannon   We’ll embrace policy remedies

Nicholas Thompson   The year AI actually changes the media business

Laxmi Parthasarathy   Unlocking the silent demand for international journalism

Kirstin McCudden   We’ll codify protection of journalism and newsgathering

An Xiao Mina   Journalism in a time of permacrisis

Ryan Gantz   “I’m sorry, but I’m a large language model”

Bill Grueskin   Local news will come to rely on AI

Julia Beizer   News fatigue shows us a clear path forward

Laura E. Davis   The year we embrace the robots — and ourselves

Jenna Weiss-Berman   The economic downturn benefits the podcasting industry. (No, really!)

Masuma Ahuja   Journalism starts working for and with its communities

Taylor Lorenz   The “creator economy” will be astroturfed

Jonas Kaiser   Rejecting the “free speech” frame

Jennifer Choi and Jonathan Jackson   Funders finally bet on next-generation news entrepreneurs

Juleyka Lantigua   Newsrooms recognize women of color as the canaries in the coal mine

J. Siguru Wahutu   American journalism reckons with its colonialist tendencies

Susan Chira   Equipping local journalism

Anna Nirmala   News organizations get new structures

Peter Sterne   AI enters the newsroom

Sue Cross   Thinking and acting collectively to save the news

Mariana Moura Santos   A woman who speaks is a woman who changes the world

Zizi Papacharissi   Platforms are over

Danielle K. Brown and Kathleen Searles   DEI efforts must consider mental health and online abuse

Jim VandeHei   There is no “peak newsletter”

John Davidow   A year of intergenerational learning

Nicholas Jackson   There will be launches — and we’ll keep doing the work

Richard Tofel   The press might get better at vetting presidential candidates

Cindy Royal   Yes, journalists should learn to code, but…

Francesco Zaffarano   There is no end of “social media”

Jennifer Brandel   AI couldn’t care less. Journalists will care more. 

Christoph Mergerson   The rot at the core of the news business

Joe Amditis   AI throws a lifeline to local publishers

Sarah Marshall   A web channel strategy won’t be enough

Kaitlin C. Miller   Harassment in journalism won’t get better, but we’ll talk about it more openly

Josh Schwartz   The AI spammers are coming

Joni Deutsch   Podcast collaboration — not competition — breeds excellence

David Skok   Renewed interest in human-powered reporting

Kaitlyn Wells   We’ll prioritize media literacy for children

Victor Pickard   The year journalism and capitalism finally divorce

Sarah Alvarez   Dream bigger or lose out

Simon Galperin   Philanthropy stops investing in corporate media

Anita Varma   Journalism prioritizes the basic need for survival

Lisa Heyamoto   The independent news industry gets a roadmap to sustainability

Tre'vell Anderson   Continued culpability in anti-trans campaigns

Barbara Raab   More journalism funders will take more risks

Ryan Kellett   Airline-like loyalty programs try to tie down news readers

Larry Ryckman   We’ll work together with our competitors

Snigdha Sur   Newsrooms get nimble in a recession

S. Mitra Kalita   “Everything sucks. Good luck to you.”

Sue Schardt   Toward a new poetics of journalism

Amy Schmitz Weiss   Journalism education faces a crossroads

Cory Bergman   The AI content flood

Alexandra Svokos   Working harder to reach audiences where they are

Sue Robinson   Engagement journalism will have to confront a tougher reality

Ariel Zirulnick   Journalism doubles down on user needs

Alexandra Borchardt   The year of the climate journalism strategy

Pia Frey   Publishers start polling their users at scale

Andrew Losowsky   Journalism realizes the replacement for Twitter is not a new Twitter

Rachel Glickhouse   Humanizing newsrooms will be a badge of honor

Esther Kezia Thorpe   Subscription pressures force product innovation

Sumi Aggarwal   Smart newsrooms will prioritize board development

Tamar Charney   Flux is the new stability

Mary Walter-Brown and Tristan Loper   Mission-driven metrics become our North Star

Sarah Stonbely   Growth in public funding for news and information at the state and local levels

Megan Lucero and Shirish Kulkarni   The future of journalism is not you

Eric Holthaus   As social media fragments, marginalized voices gain more power

Julia Angwin   Democracies will get serious about saving journalism

Shanté Cosme   The answer to “quiet quitting” is radical empathy

Sam Gregory   Synthetic media forces us to understand how media gets made

Surya Mattu   Data journalists learn from photojournalists

Delano Massey   The industry shakes its imposter syndrome

Emily Nonko   Incarcerated reporters get more bylines

Alex Sujong Laughlin   Credit where it’s due

Mar Cabra   The inevitable mental health revolution

Burt Herman   The year AI truly arrives — and with it the reckoning

Mauricio Cabrera   It’s no longer about audiences, it’s about communities

Kerri Hoffman   Podcasting goes local

Mael Vallejo   More threats to press freedom across the Americas

Daniel Trielli   Trust in news will continue to fall. Just look at Brazil.

Brian Moritz   Rebuilding the news bundle

Dannagal G. Young   Stop rewarding elite performances of identity threat

Christina Shih   Shared values move from nice-to-haves to essentials

Eric Thurm   Journalists think of themselves as workers

Matt Rasnic   More newsroom workers turn to organized labor

Errin Haines   Journalists on the campaign trail mend trust with the public

Dominic-Madori Davis   Everyone finally realizes the need for diverse voices in tech reporting

A.J. Bauer   Covering the right wrong

Molly de Aguiar and Mandy Van Deven   Narrative change trend brings new money to journalism

Sarabeth Berman   Nonprofit local news shows that it can scale

Jaden Amos   TikTok personality journalists continue to rise

Felicitas Carrique and Becca Aaronson   News product goes from trend to standard

Nicholas Diakopoulos   Journalists productively harness generative AI tools

Khushbu Shah   Global reporting will suffer

Gabe Schneider   Well-funded journalism leaders stop making disparate pay

Michael Schudson   Journalism gets more and more difficult

Eric Nuzum   A focus on people instead of power

Leezel Tanglao   Community partnerships drive better reporting

Gordon Crovitz   The year advertisers stop funding misinformation

Ben Werdmuller   The internet is up for grabs again

Jakob Moll   Journalism startups will think beyond English

Brian Stelter   Finding new ways to reach news avoiders

Alan Henry   A reckoning with why trust in news is so low

Jessica Maddox   Journalists keep getting manipulated by internet culture

Dana Lacey   Tech will screw publishers over

Eric Ulken   Generative AI brings wrongness at scale

Upasna Gautam   Technology that performs at the speed of news

Doris Truong   Workers demand to be paid what the job is worth

Bill Adair   The year of the fact-check (no, really!)

Jessica Clark   Open discourse retrenches

Anthony Nadler   Confronting media gerrymandering

Mario García   More newsrooms go mobile-first

Sam Guzik   AI will start fact-checking. We may not like the results.

Emma Carew Grovum   The year to resist forgetting about diversity

Walter Frick   Journalists wake up to the power of prediction markets

Ryan Nave   Citizen journalism, but make it equitable

Janet Haven   ChatGPT and the future of trust 

Nikki Usher   This is the year of the RSS reader. (Really!)

Joshua P. Darr   Local to live, wire to wither

Elizabeth Bramson-Boudreau   More of the same

Michael W. Wagner   The backlash against pro-democracy reporting is coming

Hillary Frey   Death to the labor-intensive memo for prospective hires

Cassandra Etienne   Local news fellowships will help fight newsroom inequities

Stefanie Murray   The year U.S. media stops screwing around and becomes pro-democracy

Paul Cheung   More news organizations will realize they are in the business of impact, not eyeballs

Gina Chua   The traditional story structure gets deconstructed

Andrew Donohue   We’ll find out whether journalism can, indeed, save democracy