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Data from a survey of 1,149 U.S. journalists suggest news workers' job satisfaction is associated with perceptions about employers' business and professional (journalistic) goals and priorities. Journalists tend to be less satisfied if they work for organizations that they perceive to be strongly profit-oriented and more satisfied with their jobs if they perceive that their employers value good journalism. These relationships, however, vary by job role. News supervisors and rank-and-file journalists not only have different perceptions of their organizations' goals and priorities, but those perceptions have somewhat different effects on job satisfaction in each group.

A content analysis of more than 13,000 items on the main display pages in twelve daily newspapers finds that publications with a strong market orientation publish fewer items about government and public affairs and more items about lifestyle and sports than newspapers with a weak market orientation. But it also finds that content for the public sphere continues to dominate the main display pages of both newspapers that embrace market-driven journalism and those that do not.

The use of readership research to shape editorial content is becoming increasingly common at U.S. daily newspapers. This practice reflects a "marketing concept" of journalism, which emphasizes tailoring a product to customers' wants and needs. Data from seventy-eight daily newspapers suggest that as uncertainty about the organization's environment increases—specifically, uncertainty about how to serve readers—an organization will strengthen its marketing orientation. The data also suggest that environmental uncertainty is generally not affected by structural characteristics of the community in which the newspaper publishes. That is, there is little evidence that changes in or characteristics of the newspaper's "real" environment strongly influence the degree of uncertainty that editors have about their newspaper's environment.

The impact of group ownership on U.S. newspapers has been the subject of controversy in American journalism. This study of professional practices at fifty-eight U.S. daily newspapers finds few differences between group-owned and independent newspapers. It does, however, find that the size of a newspaper group and number of papers in a group are associated with differences in some professional practices.

This study examined content at ten small daily newspapers at two points in time—before and after a woman replaced a man as managing editor. The results were then compared with content changes at ten "matched" papers at which a man was managing editor for both points in time. The mix of topics that the newspapers covered changed little across time for both groups of publications. But the types of articles changed for the papers at which women became managing editors. The emphasis on feature approaches to the news increased, and standard hard news declined.

A panel study of 400 U.S. journalists assessed changes in indicators of professionalism between 2002 and 2007, a period of significant economic and technological turmoil for news organizations. Findings show that professional organization membership declined among journalists, and staff cutbacks and higher workloads posed threats to the autonomy of some news workers. Beliefs about professional roles shifted slightly, with more emphasis on analyzing problems and being adversaries of public officials. Finally, journalists became more ethically cautious during the five-year span of the study, a period in which ethical lapses were disclosed by several high-profile news organizations.