What Do Journalists Have in Common?
A Data Analysis of the American News Bubble
Two years ago, I wrote What Makes a Billionaire, breaking down the most common traits of American billionaires. Today, I’m going to do the same for American journalists. What attributes are shared by this semi-elite group of people?
To answer this question, I ranked the top 10,000 journalists on Twitter (article here) and did a data analysis on them. Here are the main things that top journalists have in common.
1) They Write for the New York Times
Of all the journalists I found on Twitter, most worked for the New York Times. The Times is not just the most prestigious news organization in America, it’s also the largest. It employs over 3000 reporters and publishes many more. Number 2 publisher the Guardian similarly posts articles from a wide variety of non-employee contributors. The 3rd and 4th spots go to Bloomberg and CNN which can use profits from related businesses (terminals and tv news) to hire many reporters. Finally, the wire services (Reuters, AP, AFP) also employ many journalists.
