🗞️In other news: How many of us are open to speaking with a journalist?

Jul 02, 2026

As a long-time journalist, I can confidently says that my best stories have come from conversations with regular folks who take great pride in being members of their communities. They wanted to share everyday relatable anecdotes that changed the trajectory of their own lives, or spurred them to take a risk to help address an unmet need of others.

Still, only about one-in-four Americans (23%) have ever spoken with, or have been interviewed by a journalist, according to a report from Pew Research Center. In other words, most Americans have never spoken with a journalist.

The report, based on a survey of more than 3,560 adult respondents, found that people who feel more attached to their community are likely more willing to talk to journalists, or that talking to journalists helps people feel more entrenched in their community.

At the same time, journalists often don’t randomly sample the population when they’re deciding who to speak with, meaning some groups may have more opportunities than others to interact with local media.

The groups of people more likely to have spoken with a local journalist, according to the report, include:

Adults with more formal education: Three-in-ten college graduates say they’ve spoken with a local journalist, compared with 17% of adults with a high school diploma or less.
People with higher family incomes: 31% of Americans with higher family incomes say they have spoken with a journalist, compared with 18% of those with lower incomes.
People who feel more attached to their local community: Among those who say they are very attached to their local community, 34% say they have interacted with a local journalist. Smaller shares of those who feel somewhat (23%), not very (20%) or not at all attached (13%) say they’ve interacted with journalists.