Over the past decades, journalism schools and journalism training programmes have been trying to keep up with the constant technological and societal developments. Numerous studies have been done about what knowledge and skills should be taught and several on how they should be taught, to be more adaptive to this changing environment and media landscape. Meanwhile, also media companies are increasingly becoming educators, with their own learning academies to make journalists become lifelong learners. In this study, which was conducted in the Netherlands, we take a holistic approach to understanding the uncertain future journalism education is currently dealing with. We use the method of scenario planning to systematically analyse the current debate on journalism education. By collecting opinions and views of fifty different experts from the broad field of journalism and (journalism) education, we deducted certain and uncertain trends that led to two axes, answering the following questions: What type of journalism do we educate for and Who is in charge of the learning process? Crossing these axes, four scenarios for the future of journalism education appear. With this study, we intend to facilitate the debate on the future of journalism education.
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Although basic features of journalism have remained the same over the last decades, the tasks journalists perform, the skills they need and the position they have within news organizations have changed dramatically. Usually the focus in the discourse on changes in journalism is on skills, especially on technical multi-media skills or research skills. In this paper we focus on changes in professional roles of journalists, arguing that these roles have changed fundamentally, leading to a new generation of journalists. We distinguish between different trends in journalism. Journalism has become more technical, ranging from editing video to programming. At the same time, many journalists are now more ‘harvesters’ and ‘managers’ of information and news instead of producers of news. Thirdly, journalists are expected to gather information from citizens and social media, and edit and moderate user-contributions as well. Lastly, many journalists are no longer employed by media but work as freelancers or independent entrepreneurs. We track these trends and provide a detailed description of developments with examples from job descriptions in the Netherlands.
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In this article, the main question is whether and, if so, to what extent online journalism raises new moral issues and, if any, what kind of answers are preferable. Or do questions merely appear new, since they are really old ones in an electronic wrapping, old wine in new bottles? And how does journalism deal with the moral aspects of online journalism? The phenomenon of the Internet emerged in our society a few years ago. Since then, a large number of Dutch people have gone online, and the World Wide Web is now an integral part of our range of means of communication. Dutch journalism is online too, although certainly not in the lead. More and more journalists use the Internet as a source, especially for background information. Newspapers have their web sites, where the online version of the printed paper can be read. And that is it for the time being. There are no more far-reaching developments at present, certainly not on a large scale. Real online journalism is rather scarce in the Netherlands. The debate concerning the moral aspects of online journalism is mainly being conducted in the United States. First of all, by way of introduction, I will present an outline of online journalism. The first instance is the online version of the newspaper. Here, only to a certain degree new issues come up for discussion, since the reputation of reliability and accuracy of the papers, in spite of all criticism, also applies to their online versions. Besides, especially in the United States and increasingly in European countries as well, there is the so-called dotcom journalism, the e-zines, the online news sites without any relationship with printed newspapers. This may be the reason why these sites do not have a strong commitment to moral standards, at least as they have developed in the journalistic culture of the newspapers. After having outlined the moral issues arising in online journalism, the question will be addressed whether and, if so, to what extent it is meaningful and desirable to develop instruments of self-regulation for this new phenomenon of journalism.
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Aanleiding Nieuwsuitgeverijen bevinden zich in zwaar weer. Economische malaise en toegenomen concurrentie in het pluriforme medialandschap dwingen uitgeverijen om enerzijds kosten te besparen en tegelijkertijd te investeren in innovatie. De verdere automatisering van de nieuwsredactie vormt hierbij een uitdaging. Buiten de branche ontstaan technieken die uitgeverijen hierbij zouden kunnen gebruiken. Deze zijn nog niet 'vertaald' naar gebruiksvriendelijke systemen voor redactieprocessen. De deelnemers aan het project formuleren voor dit braakliggend terrein een praktijkgericht onderzoek. Doelstelling Dit onderzoek wil antwoord geven op de vraag: Hoe kunnen bewezen en nieuw te ontwikkelen technieken uit het domein van 'natural language processing' een bijdrage leveren aan de automatisering van een nieuwsredactie en het journalistieke product? 'Natural language processing' - het automatisch genereren van taal - is het onderwerp van het onderzoek. In het werkveld staat deze ontwikkeling bekend als 'automated journalism' of 'robotjournalistiek'. Het onderzoek richt zich enerzijds op ontwikkeling van algoritmes ('robots') en anderzijds op de impact van deze technologische ontwikkelingen op het nieuwsveld. De impact wordt onderzocht uit zowel het perspectief van de journalist als de nieuwsconsument. De projectdeelnemers ontwikkelen binnen dit onderzoek twee prototypes die samen het automated-journalismsysteem vormen. Dit systeem gaat tijdens en na het project gebruikt worden door onderzoekers, journalisten, docenten en studenten. Beoogde resultaten Het concrete resultaat van het project is een prototype van een geautomatiseerd redactiesysteem. Verder levert het project inzicht op in de verankering van dit soort systemen binnen een nieuwsredactie. Het onderzoek biedt een nieuw perspectief op de manier waarop de nieuwsconsument de ontwikkeling van 'automated journalism' in Nederland waardeert. Het projectteam deelt de onderzoekresultaten door middel van presentaties voor de uitgeverijbranche, presentaties op wetenschappelijke conferenties, publicaties in (vak)tijdschriften, reflectiebijeenkomsten met collega-opleidingen en een samenvattende white paper.
Being objective as a journalist indicates a distance to your sources and maintaining the role of a neutral bystander. This principle echoes in journalism education; generally speaking, to call something objective is a compliment and to say something is subjective is a warning. This journalistic role perception faces criticism since the late twentieth century. There’s extensive scholarly research looking to bridge the gap between objectivism and subjectivism, but journalistic education still widely prioritizes a binary perception of these principles, putting a strong emphasis on objective reporting. This PD aims to integrate artistic practices into journalism education that advocate a more balanced approach of the assumed objective-subjective dichotomy. One such approach is live journalism, where the artistic method extends to productional outcome, usually in the form of a journalistic narrative brought before a live audience. Research shows that, whereas visitors still think such productions should be fact-based, the fact that journalists had (made) a personal connection to their subject was seen as essential to the credibility of their work. This presupposes that journalism in this context is not merely a profession, but rather a person carrying out a profession. This PD intends to not only accept a certain subjectivity, but to explore its potential in journalism education. It plays with the concept not as being or becoming personally opinionated as a journalist, but as subjecting the self as a reporter. Research shows that for journalists, such an active connection to a target audience and an attitude to want to hear more than an answer to a question leads to a more representative understanding of the position and predicaments of a social group. In this light, the objective and subjective do not present themselves as a T-junction where the journalist chooses either one or the other; they appear in mutuality.
