Journal of Applied Journalism & Media Studies - Volume 2, Issue 2, 2013

This article proposes a dialogical teaching paradigm based on Paulo Freire’s conception of critical pedagogy. It argues that Web 2.0 technologies are uniquely suitable for such an approach. It moves from theory to prescription. It begins with a survey of the current media landscape and state of journalism. In the light of these, it makes a case for an approach to journalism education in which civic function is complemented by technical proficiency. Based on extant scholarship and the author’s experience as a new media practitioner and educator, the article notes the distinctive features of Web 2.0 technologies that make it particularly amenable to such an approach. It focuses on two specific ones – blogs and wikis – to suggest ways in which the learning experience can be enhanced. But it emphasizes that absent the awareness of journalism’s civic function, technical skills may enhance employability, but they won’t bring professional respect. To compete in a saturated field, journalists will have to show both technical facility and civic responsibility.

The content of most journalism courses at journalism schools has been affected by the fast digital and interactive developments in the field. The changing digital organization of information and sources necessitates constant changes in news-gathering and research techniques and affects education in research skills. How can educators cope with the new demands concerning information gathering and selecting? Journalism students need to know how to use the newest research tools, how to find quick and reliable information and data on the Internet and how to best utilize social media for their journalistic research. Which research skills need to be taught to journalism students in this digital age? This article attempts to map the salient issues concerning changes in the syllabi of research skills courses by analysing scholarly literature, blogs and books by professional journalists and experiences at the – author’s – School of Journalism in Utrecht (the Netherlands) with the implementation of newly designed research courses. It is argued that digital developments have caused a shift from the information-gathering stage to the selecting stage of the research process in journalism. This implies more emphasis on evaluating and selecting skills in journalism education. New digital tools also require different research skills such as more language skills for more efficient search strategies. New digital sources, such as open data and the public on social media, call for more analytical skills and specific social skills to be added to the customary research skills.

Major changes in the workplace associated with the widespread use of online journalism, the consequences of news gathering in a digital environment and the ability to produce content for multimedia platforms are setting new goals in journalism education. One of the defining features of journalism university education is the requirement that students demonstrate their understanding of core skills by producing professional work. The identification of competencies constitutes one of the key dimensions in current Journalism education. This article examines the Online Journalism courses at the Miguel Hernández University (Spain), in order to analyse the competences acquired by the students. The methodology includes a multi-layered approach: on the one hand, we conducted interviews with over twenty media professionals who currently work in Spanish online media, to identify the skills that are most demanded. Their answers provided a working framework during the design and implementation of our research. We also carried out a survey with 250 students in their final years of the Grade in Journalism at the UMH, with the aim of exploring their adaptation to five specific courses: news writing, media production, online news design, digital communication and database management.

This article examines the issue of journalism education on Information Communication Technologies (ICTs). More precisely it investigates the issue of teaching ICTs and in particular of updating and extending existing knowledge and skills. The study proposes the adoption of experiential learning for achieving such an educational goal and describes in detail the journalist’s work process. It also discusses the necessary ICT skills that a journalist must process and presents data from surveys conducted among journalism students and professional journalists in Greece. The article purposes the use of Virtual Learning Environments and Learning Portfolios in order to support journalists’ training on ICTs. Finally it offers recommendations for the deployment of an educational programme that will succeed the described goals.

Researching what Silvio Waisbord (2013) calls the ambiguities of the profession of journalism requires confronting changes and challenges to journalism, addressing the self-proclaimed assertions of those who see themselves as journalists, and doing so with an eye to changing landscapes. To understand journalism’s professional identity in a digital era requires an equally agile approach, one that assesses professional adherence and identifies ways these aspects of identity translate and transpire in traditional understandings and forms, and how they relate to digitally native forms of mediated communication. Steeped in reflexive approaches born out of critical enquiry, this article advocates textual analysis and a discourse analysis methodology for analysing this identity, and posits that evaluating discourses of professional identity in texts serves as a gauge of journalism’s ‘threat perception’ towards new entities in the digital era. Pairing this approach with an engaged discussion of concepts of journalism allows for a broader understanding of how journalism’s professional identity is performed. First, this method better utilizes the way identity serves as a point around which tenets of ‘being’ journalism can be explored and, second, it engenders a more nuanced understanding of perceived threats to journalism’s primacy in the digital era. For educators, exploring how ‘different answers to journalistic problems are emerging in the online environment’ (Singer 2005: 180), reflexive analysis assuages disputes over journalism’s ambiguous professionalism, and moves towards a view of digital possibilities that discounts threats, and advances understandings towards a more reflexive space that better addresses the nexus between traditional concepts of journalism and new media opportunities.

It was once thought a multimedia journalist or MMJ was fantasy, as seen in the television series Max Headroom. The hero of the show was a journalist who videotaped his own stories, reported live from anywhere but was also seen as a stalwart of the fourth estate, a ‘hero’ of society. Today, it is possible for a journalist to technologically assert themselves as a Max Headroom reporter, yet what are missing from the fictional television series are the economical and social considerations put in place to make such a character viable. This article critically reviews the significance of the MMJ.

This essay argues, provocatively perhaps, that journalism history should be at the core of journalism education in the digital age. In so doing, it proposes a fundamental role for historical awareness in the formative process of journalists and other media professionals that undertake this field of study. In this way, one of the key objectives of a discrete journalism degree can be to ensure a rational and critical knowledge of the present, as well as the assessment and understanding of its basic professional boundaries (political, social, economic and cultural) and how they have been shaped historically. The main purpose of this historical emphasis is to ensure that the next generations of journalists might be able to understand today’s society and make it comprehensible to others. Through this project, it is argued here that students in particular and the academy in general can become aware of the significant synthesis of accumulated knowledge that journalism represents as an organic and quasi-coherent social phenomena.

Developments in journalism and in education pose multiple challenges for journalism educators at a time of great change in both sectors. They face changing demands and expectations from a range of stakeholders, including students, practitioners and employers. The challenges result partly from new forms of journalism practice – such as the use of social media – and partly from changes in education, such as a recognition of the value of social constructivist approaches, including peer and informal learning. This article suggests that one way forward is to take advantage of the dual dimension of social media – as both a vocationally important part of the curriculum and as a medium with recognized educational potential. Drawing on a study of the use of one key social media platform (Twitter) by postgraduate journalism students, it highlights the scope for such an approach.

The controversy surrounding the integrity of Paul Hansen’s award winning World Press Photo of the Year 2013 has moved the debate on ethics and digital images into a new and highly sophisticated technical level. There seems to be no consensus among forensic analyst experts on the question of knowing whether the photograph submitted to 2013 competition is composite or not. In this article, we contend that should ethical principles be preserved from drifting into a set of virtually unlimited technical specifications, the framework for designing and thinking ethical guidelines ruling the use of news images should abandon old conventions and find a new ground where to legitimate photojournalism’s social function.

This article looks at how students and teachers at four schools of journalism from Grenoble and Marseille (France), Bucharest (Romania) and Geneva (Switzerland), represent and make use of amateur online publishing practices. It analyses the current conflict between the values associated with Web 2.0 and the normative model underpinning journalism, which is historically rooted in opposing the figure of the amateur. Combined research methods were used in the study, such as a questionnaire carried out on a group of 85 first-year master’s students in journalism, semi-structured interviews with second-year students and teachers, and focus groups conducted among volunteer students. The survey’s results highlight the role played by training establishments in legitimizing and internalizing the standards of journalistic professionalism.