47% of Business Insider newsroom titles carry a rank word. Sveriges Radio: 1%

Key findings

1. 19,273 of the 127,602 editorial rows in our published base carry a rank word in the job title, 15.1%.
2. Business Insider tops the 194 outlets with 100 or more editorial rows: 135 of its 286 rows carry a rank word, 47.2%.
3. Sveriges Radio sits 190th of the 194 with 9 of its 764 rows, 1.2%, and BFMTV is last with 0 of its 107.
4. The word doing the work at Business Insider is "senior", on 90 of its 286 rows, against 17 rows with deputy, 14 with executive and 11 with chief.
5. At the Daily Mail it is deputy instead, on 33 of its 185 rows, against 27 with senior and 15 with chief.
6. 4,287 of the 4,663 titles at the twenty lowest outlets, 91.9%, contain the English word editor, reporter or journalist.
7. Two title strings, "Journalist" at 247 rows and "Reporter" at 241, cover 488 of Sveriges Radio's 764 rows; Business Insider's commonest title is "Senior Reporter" at 17 of its 286.
8. Editor rows carry a rank word far more often than reporter rows: 13,863 of 54,548 editors, 25.4%, against 2,703 of 46,013 reporters, 5.9%.
9. Of the 43 countries with 200 rows or more, the United Arab Emirates is highest at 126 of 503 rows, 25.0%, and Sweden lowest at 41 of 1,879, 2.2%.
10. By outlet type, magazines run at 1,052 of 4,222 rows, 24.9%, and broadcasters at 7,327 of 53,995, 13.6%.
11. The New York Times is at 511 of 2,168 rows, 23.6%, ranked 31st, and the BBC at 935 of 3,935, 23.8%, ranked 30th.
12. The four Nordic countries rank 39th (Finland, 4.4%), 41st (Norway, 2.7%), 42nd (Denmark, 2.4%) and 43rd (Sweden, 2.2%) of the 43.

47.2% of Business Insider's newsroom titles carry a rank word, against 1.2% at Sveriges Radio

We took ten words that put a journalist above a plain title (chief, executive, deputy, senior, head of, director, vp, vice president, principal, lead) and matched them over the job-title field of every row in our published base. 19,273 of the 127,602 editorial rows match, 15.1%.

Business Insider is the highest of the 194 outlets with 100 or more editorial rows, on 135 of its 286 rows, 47.2%. Sveriges Radio is 190th, on 9 of its 764 rows, 1.2%, and BFMTV is last at 0 of 107.

Source: JournalistLabs, September 2026.

Going in we assumed the top of the ranking would be magazines and the bottom wire agencies. The ranking splits by country and by broadcaster instead. Eight of the ten lowest outlets are European or Brazilian broadcasters, and the four Nordic countries take four of the last five places among the 43 countries with enough rows to print.

Rank words are matched over the job title only, never over the profile headline, which is user-written blurb text we do not publish. The lexicon ships as lexicon.txt in the dataset, and every count, share and ranking on this page is on those ten words.

Business Insider's 47.2% counts 135 of the 286 people we hold

We hold 286 Business Insider people and 764 Sveriges Radio people. Neither outlet publishes a headcount for its newsroom, so what fraction of either staff we hold is not known. The 47.2% counts 135 of the 286 Business Insider people on our rows, and how many people Business Insider employs is not known here.

Two of the 194 outlets do publish a number to compare against. The BBC page on Wikipedia says the corporation has over 5,500 journalists working across its output, against our 3,935 rows, 71.5% (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_News). The New York Times page cites deputy managing editor Sam Dolnick putting the newsroom at 1,700 journalists in March 2023, against our 2,168 rows, 127.5% (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_York_Times). The second figure is a 2023 count against a 2026 snapshot, and our rows include people the paper would not call journalists, which is how a coverage share goes over 100%.

For the other 190 outlets in the ranking there is no published headcount. Coverage is unknown and it differs by outlet, so a low share could be a newsroom with few ranks or a slice of that newsroom that happens to hold few.

Indeed puts 14% of US postings at senior level, against our 15.1%

The nearest published figure we could find is Indeed Hiring Lab's, 2026-07-23: "only about 14% of postings are for senior positions nationwide, while entry- and mid-level postings represent 46% and 40%, respectively", https://www.hiringlab.org/2026/07/23/the-labor-market-is-tilting-toward-seniority/. That is a share of US job postings under Indeed's own seniority classification, across the whole labour market, and it is not a title-word match. We print it as a check that our 15.1% is the right order of magnitude for a seniority share. We found no public source giving the share of job titles that contain a specific rank word, so the 15.1% has no outside number to sit beside.

91.9% of the 4,663 titles at the twenty lowest outlets carry an English job noun

The twenty lowest outlets are mostly Swedish, Danish, Norwegian and French broadcasters, so the first thing to check is whether we are simply failing to read their titles.

The twenty lowest outlets hold 4,663 editorial rows between them. 4,287 of those titles, 91.9%, carry the English word editor, reporter or journalist. Under a tighter rule, counting a title as untested when it carries no rank word from our ten and none of those three job nouns, 355 of the 4,663 rows qualify, 7.6%.

Source: JournalistLabs, September 2026.

So these journalists are writing their titles in English, and what they write is "Reporter" or "Journalist" with nothing in front of it.

The flagged share runs from 1.7% at Ekstra Bladet to 36.0% at Audacy. The three highest are American. All 81 flagged titles at Audacy are anchor and presenter strings, "News Anchor" 23 times, "Sports Anchor" 5 times, "Radio Presenter" 3 times. At the Daily Bruin, 31 of 105, and Yale Daily News, 25 of 108, they are student-paper strings: "Staff Writer", "Opinion Columnist", "Photojournalist". Those are English too, and they carry neither a rank word nor one of the three nouns. At the Nordic outlets the flagged share runs from 2% to 7%.

Sixteen of the twenty lowest outlets sit in countries whose newsrooms do not work in English. The other four are English-language newsrooms low on rank words: Audacy at 7 of 225 rows, Sun Media in Canada at 5 of 129, Yale Daily News at under 5 of 108 and the Daily Bruin at under 5 of 105.

The commonest exact titles say the same thing more plainly. At Sveriges Radio, 764 editorial rows: Journalist 247 (32.3%), Reporter 241 (31.5%), Broadcast Journalist 16 (2.1%), News Reporter 13 (1.7%), Reporter Programledare 12 (1.6%), and five more at 6 rows or fewer. Two words cover 488 of the 764 rows. At SVT, 486 rows: Reporter 182 (37.4%), Journalist 85 (17.5%), Editor 16 (3.3%), Reporter Redaktör 6 (1.2%), Broadcast Journalist 5 (1.0%), News Reporter 5 (1.0%), and four more under 5 rows. None of the twenty carries a rank word.

At Business Insider, 286 rows: Senior Reporter 17 (5.9%), Senior Correspondent 12 (4.2%), Editor 12 (4.2%), Reporter 10 (3.5%), Journalist 9 (3.1%), Video Editor 7 (2.4%), Correspondent 7 (2.4%), Senior Editor 6 (2.1%), and Executive Editor and Editor in Chief at fewer than 5 rows each. Five of the ten carry a rank, the commonest is one of them, and no single title covers 6% of the rows on file. At the Daily Mail, 185 rows: Editor 6 (3.2%), Night Editor 5 (2.7%), then eight titles at fewer than 5 rows each, Deputy Editor, Sports News Editor, Deputy Sports Editor and Commissioning Editor at 2.2% apiece, and Senior Reporter, Assistant Sports Editor, Executive Editor and Assistant News Editor at 1.6%.

Source: JournalistLabs, September 2026.

The 194 outlets run from 47.2% down to 0.0%

202 outlets clear the 100-row bar. Eight of them are parent-company domains rather than single newsrooms (Vox Media, Hearst Magazines, Pearson, Getty Images, Sky Italia, Paramount, Fox Television Stations and iHeartMedia), and we drop those here as the site's own outlet tables do, leaving 194 outlets holding 58,989 rows. Each outlet's own editorial rows are the denominator of its share. Rank is the order of the exact unrounded share, ties broken by editorial rows.

The top ten: Business Insider 135 of 286 rows (47.2%), the Daily Mail 86 of 185 (46.5%), the Columbia Daily Spectator 63 of 138 (45.7%), Moneycontrol 48 of 106 (45.3%), Press Trust of India 71 of 172 (41.3%), The Indian Express 184 of 446 (41.3%), People Inc. 71 of 183 (38.8%), Law360 93 of 245 (38.0%), CNN-News18 77 of 206 (37.4%) and Time 38 of 105 (36.2%).

Third place goes to a student paper. The Columbia Daily Spectator is Columbia University's newspaper, and 49 of its 138 rows carry "deputy" against 13 with senior. Law360, eighth, is a legal trade wire rather than a general newsroom, and 88 of its 245 rows carry "senior". Four of the top ten are Indian: Moneycontrol, Press Trust of India, The Indian Express and CNN-News18.

The bottom ten: TV 2 Danmark 6 of 265 rows (2.3%), SRF fewer than 5 of 136 (2.2%), DR 13 of 659 (2.0%), Ekstra Bladet fewer than 5 of 118 (1.7%), SVT 7 of 486 (1.4%), Sveriges Radio 9 of 764 (1.2%), Aftonbladet fewer than 5 of 176 (1.1%), SBT fewer than 5 of 232 (0.9%), TV 2 Norway 0 of 155 (0.0%) and BFMTV 0 of 107 (0.0%). Eight of the ten are broadcasters; Ekstra Bladet and Aftonbladet are newspapers. Cells of one to four rows print "<5" throughout.

Source: JournalistLabs, September 2026.

"Senior" carries 90 of Business Insider's 286 titles and "deputy" 33 of the Daily Mail's 185

A title carrying two of the ten words is counted once in the outlet's share and once in each word's column.

At Business Insider the word is "senior": 90 of its 286 editorial rows, 31.5%. Deputy follows on 17 rows, executive on 14 and chief on 11, with director and lead under 5 rows each, no head of, no vp and no principal. At the Daily Mail the order is different: deputy on 33 of its 185 rows, senior on 27, chief on 15 and executive on 10. The two outlets are 0.7 points apart on share and reach it through different words.

Source: JournalistLabs, September 2026.

Two Indian outlets use a word that is nearly absent elsewhere. "Principal" appears on 23 of The Indian Express's 446 rows and 7 of Press Trust of India's 172, against 107 rows in the whole 127,602-row base.

The bottom ten are thin enough to print in full. Sveriges Radio: senior on 6 of 764 rows, chief under 5, everything else zero. SVT: senior on 5 of 486, chief and lead under 5 each. DR: senior on 6 of 659, chief, director and executive under 5 each. TV 2 Danmark: senior, chief and director under 5 each in 265 rows. SRF has only senior, under 5 rows of it in 136. Ekstra Bladet has chief and director under 5 each in 118. Aftonbladet has senior and head of under 5 each in 176, SBT senior under 5 in 232. TV 2 Norway has no match in 155 rows and BFMTV none in 107.

25.4% of editor rows carry a rank word, against 5.9% of reporter rows

13,863 of the 54,548 editor rows carry a rank word, 25.4%, against 2,703 of the 46,013 reporter rows, 5.9%. That is 4.3 times the rate. Other editorial roles sit at 1,137 of 6,625, 17.2%, correspondents at 826 of 5,463, 15.1%, producers at 203 of 2,856, 7.1%, critics at 57 of 897, 6.4%, anchors and presenters at 400 of 8,678, 4.6%, and columnists at 84 of 2,522, 3.3%.

By outlet type, magazines lead on 1,052 of 4,222 rows, 24.9%, then online outlets on 3,687 of 18,648, 19.8%, wire agencies on 776 of 5,450, 14.2%, newspapers on 6,291 of 44,828, 14.0%, and broadcasters on 7,327 of 53,995, 13.6%. Those five buckets hold 127,143 rows. The remaining 459 rows sit at outlets with no type on their record and carry a rank word on 140 of them, 30.5%.

By the person's own country, over the 43 countries with 200 rows or more, the top five are the United Arab Emirates 126 of 503 (25.0%), Singapore 189 of 787 (24.0%), the United Kingdom 2,699 of 12,094 (22.3%), India 1,662 of 7,656 (21.7%) and Hong Kong 132 of 644 (20.5%), with the United States 13th on 10,418 of 69,377 (15.0%). At the bottom sit Sweden 41 of 1,879 (2.2%), Denmark 27 of 1,125 (2.4%), Norway 15 of 550 (2.7%), Brazil 42 of 1,024 (4.1%) and Finland 18 of 408 (4.4%). Finland ranks 39th, Norway 41st, Denmark 42nd and Sweden 43rd, with Brazil 40th between them.

Source: JournalistLabs, September 2026.

The New York Times is at 23.6% and the BBC at 23.8%

We published a report on 15 September 2026 on editors per reporter, where the NYT and the BBC came out eight places from the top and eight from the bottom of 40. On rank words they land on top of each other. The New York Times carries a rank word on 511 of its 2,168 editorial rows, 23.6%, ranked 31st of the 194, and the BBC on 935 of its 3,935, 23.8%, ranked 30th.

Source: JournalistLabs, September 2026.

The per-word counts are a different shape at each. At the NYT, senior appears on 310 rows, deputy on 98, chief on 59, director on 35, executive on 9, lead on 9 and head of on under 5, with no vp and no principal. At the BBC, senior appears on 707 rows, executive on 72, director on 64, lead on 39, deputy on 38, chief on 30, head of on 13 and principal on under 5, with no vp.

Adding bare "head" and "managing" to the ten words takes the base to 22,456 of 127,602 rows, 17.6%, and Business Insider to 143 of its 286, 50.0%; those counts are the wide_ columns in every CSV and nothing else on this page uses them.

The funnel: 173,133 rows in, 127,602 published, 58,989 in the ranking

The run starts at 173,133 classified editorial rows and two drops cut it. 12,540 rows go because the company website on the profile is a link-in-bio, social or marketplace host rather than a newsroom, and 32,991 go because the outlet is not media-typed, which is where universities, academic publishers and government agencies employing journalists leave the count. 127,602 rows remain, none with a blank job title, across 8,800 outlets. 202 outlets hold 100 or more editorial rows, 62,302 between them, 48.8% of the base. Dropping the eight parent-company domains leaves the 194 outlets ranked above, holding 58,989 rows, 46.2%. Marie Claire, 33rd, carries country IT on its record and no outlet type, so it prints Italy and "n/a". The full method is at https://journalistlabs.com/method/.

Every one of the 127,602 titles is a claim on a self-written profile

A rank word in a title is what a journalist typed about themselves. We did not check a single one against a masthead, an org chart or an outlet's own staff page, and we asked no outlet to confirm its counts. Somebody who writes "Senior Reporter" may hold the grade, or may have held it at a previous employer.

The rows were not pulled on one date. The profiles behind the base carry fetch stamps between 2026-07-22 and 2026-09-15, median 2026-08-05, so a promotion inside that window can appear under either title, and no outlet site was crawled for this report.

The language check tells us the titles at the bottom twenty are written in English. It does not tell us whether Swedish, Danish and Norwegian journalists hold fewer ranked jobs than American ones or write the same jobs down without the rank. We cannot separate those two here.

Cells of one to four rows print "<5". We publish no person-level rows and no page per journalist. The CSVs go down to the outlet, the country, the outlet type and the role, and title_frequency.csv lists every job-title string occurring 5 or more times with a flag for whether it matched, so a reader can test the ten words against real titles without the person-level base. It holds 1,450 strings covering 90,062 of the 127,602 rows, 70.6%; the base holds 34,161 distinct title strings in all.

Cite this

JournalistLabs, "47% of Business Insider newsroom titles carry a rank word. Sveriges Radio: 1%", September 2026, https://journalistlabs.com/research/business-insider-47-percent-of-newsroom-titles-carry-a-rank-word/.

Dataset

Every number on this page is in /static/data/business-insider-47-percent-of-newsroom-titles-carry-a-rank-word/. outlets_ranked_194.csv is the table above, and outlets_100plus_rank_share.csv is the same table with the eight parent-company domains kept and flagged, 202 rows. Both carry outlet_domain on every row. rank_word_breakdown_top_bottom.csv holds one column per word for the top and bottom ten, rank_share_by_country.csv the 43 countries, rank_share_by_type_and_role.csv the type and role cuts, common_titles_four_outlets.csv the ten commonest exact titles at the four outlets named above, bottom20_language_check.csv the language test, and title_frequency.csv every title string of 5 or more occurrences with its match flags. lexicon.txt holds the word sets as regular expressions, report_rank_words.py is the script that produced every file here, and facts_console.txt, sanity_console.txt and coverage_console.txt hold its output, the sanity checks and the two newsroom-size fetches. A README.md lists the columns and denominators and a METHOD.md covers the base, the lexicon and the language rules. We do not publish the person-level base. Data: CC BY 4.0, JournalistLabs, September 2026.