@Puzzlez - don't mention it. I just hoped to answer OP's question regarding why their metric score didn't go any higher, and since I'd gone through at least half the game files trying to find where LE's resources were at, I happened to have it handy. I don't think I ever saw the min-max settings anywhere online either, but I didn't look too hard myself.

As for the stuck metric, I never tried it, but I think mine at least will lower as normal as time goes by without me getting any reports done after coming back from travel. In summation, I have no clue what's going on, but hey, you found a way to use it in your favour, so it's not like it's an issue, right? xD
[sorry to double-post, kinda, but the page refreshed and added more replies]

I don't know if it helps but I have a sim in the law enforcement career at the moment and one of the options when he's at work is "work on paperwork" or something similar to that. Using that work tone helps with the reports metric and his daily performance still goes up. He also questions a few sims and writes reports manually outside of work and that has (so far) been enough to keep his reports metric maxed most of the time. I assume it's a work tone that the careers mod or one of it's modules has added.

Wow, looks like I found a question that actually intrigued some people LOL! Thank you everyone. This was a helpful and enjoyable read.
Igazor, as you can probably tell by the lengthy posts I often write, I love to write so of course my sims reflect this. I do like to sit my sims down at and have them write, but I prefer the books a bit more since they actually make them money. But like StarkofGenius and puzzelzaddict pointed out it is a lot of working for sims to do this endlessly to keep the metric in the good, especially when writing books on top of the reports and reviews! I will attempt to just keep the metric in mid-range. They do, after all, have to spend time with their family and friends on occasion.
I don't usually like to use the mood cheat, but sometimes you just have to bump it up or never get anything done! I know EA pretends to say that bookworms and the like are supposed to enjoy writing, but no matter what combo I use in traits it seems writing sends every sims mood down, which is stupid since it's my Zen thing as I'm sure it can be for many actually successful writers. Another oversight in EA's programming.
kimlupai - you know I rarely do have them work on reports while at work, I don't think you have that option once you get higher up though. I honestly can't remember now. sigh...morning brain. I wonder if the practice writing option works in the journalism career as well to keep that metric up? I usually have my sims who are going to be writers at a high skill level in writing by the time they get a job so I never really used that.
StarkofGenius, thank you very much for that research! I didn't expect all that but it's appreciated. I do love to understand the why and how of game mechanics.

OMG I will be so happy once we get to the new site and can actually edit our posts! Geez the typos above are cringe! LMAO I'm still drinking my morning coffee so...you know...excuses!

@JohnL83 - don't mention it. I'm pretty much the same way, preferring to understand how or why something works over just knowing it does.
If you ever need the values for Journalism they're not that hard to find in the game files, and I don't mind looking it up or telling you where to find them yourself. As I said, I had all that info ready from when I looked into LE to write up my custom career, so it really wasn't a hassle!
EA's just asking for too many of them mathematically speaking, if you consider someone who doesn't use mods and can't follow Igazor's suggestion, or make the day longer with Relativity, or what kimlupai pointed out about that tone that does come from NRaas Tones module and is present for both LE and Journalism, letting them write reports/stories while at work. That one's actually handy and if I'd known of it while writing my own career, I would've borrowed it! So thanks to @kimlupai because I got to learn some new things myself.

You're very welcome StarkofGenius and thank you for confirming that the tone does come from the mod. I'm afraid I've had the NRaas mods installed for so long that I no longer remember what is added by the mods and what is in the vanilla game.

JohnL83 if it helps, my sim has just got promoted to Special Agent (Level 8 I believe) and he still had the tone available.