How to measure the productivity of journalists?

In fact, when I worked for a broadcasting company, I would wonder about what was the productivity of my colleagues and me. That is because most of broadcasting companies in South Korea seem to earn much more money compared to the time and efforts that journalists are putting. They tend to deem their productivity different properties from that of other industries and think that it is hard to measure their own productivity. The company for which I’d worked also tried to appraise the productivity of individual journalists, but stopped doing it.

It is evidently clear that the ability of personnel to carry out their tasks is a critical factor in the success of media companies as well. But how can we calculate the productivity of journalists - with how many hours they work?, how many stories they produce? or how many exclusive news they publish? What about a simple measurement; total operating revenue divided by full-time equivalent employees? In addition, what if the news is neither a good nor a service?

Picard (1998) looked at the disadvantages of using productivity measurements for individual journalists and newsroom performance appraisals and suggested the 'measuring journalistic quality through output production by journalists' along with seven categories of time use, saying “but it is possible to indirectly measure journalistic quality and productivity by thinking of them as the result of a variety of activities carried out by journalists.”

Picard: Measuring and interpreting productivity of journalists