Do you really know your reporters? Evaluation methods of editors-in-chief

This article explores how leading Israeli news organizations evaluate the performance of their reporters in an era when evaluations are becoming more intensive and challenging, addressing new measures, pressures, and narrower margins of error concerning editorial employment. Data are based on in-depth interviews with 13 current and former editors-in-chief – the ultimate decision-makers on these matters. Findings indicate that evaluation is mostly impressionistic, informal, and aversive toward the uses of quantitative indicators. These tendencies are anchored in a deep belief that evaluating reporters is an ‘art’ more than a ‘science’. Editors’ evaluations are prone to huge blind spots, ignoring most reporters, who neither excel nor fail on a daily basis, overlooking audiences’ input, and reveal lack of awareness of the need to use evaluations as a public signaling system of quality in journalism.