Australian Journalism Review - Volume 45, Issue 1, 2023

Defining who is a journalist is now fraught with difficulty and may well be impossible. The digital revolution has made it possible for anyone with a smart phone to create journalism-like content without necessarily adhering to any of the accepted formal conventions of journalism. Any legal definition that uses that approach is fraught with difficulty, and risks including people who should probably not be covered by the law, or ruling out those who should. This article proposes a novel approach, by considering journalism as a formalized process for gathering, organizing and presenting information according to recognized standards and ethics. Such an approach could form the centrepiece of a Media Freedom Act, and give the industry incentive to respond with a system of voluntary certification that could identify those people who understand and apply those standards and ethics, and whose work would thus deserve the protection of the law.

Many people would say that journalism is in crisis. In Australia, we regularly see front pages in our newspapers that show scant regard for the facts and are clearly partisan. Two former prime ministers have called for a Royal Commission into the media. Incursions on media freedom are frequent, and Australia has dropped down the scale on measures of media freedom. Meanwhile, repeated attempts to improve self-regulation have created only cynicism. Meanwhile lawyers, doctors and even builders have professional associations in which industry practice and ethics can be discussed. No such body exists for journalists. Social media contains plenty of criticism of journalism, but most are poorly informed and the profession reacts defensively. In this article, I will argue that some of the ideas about journalism that we teach, and measure the profession against, are not as historically well based as we like to think. Journalism has been many things since the profession was created, not all of them good. Now, though, there is the potential for a conversation with the public about what we want journalism to be. What role might universities play in advancing such a conversation? And what outcomes should we seek?

This research project deployed one-on-one, semi-structured interviews with news editors in Perth, Western Australia, to evaluate journalism courses and student employability across the five Perth-based universities that teach journalism (Edith Cowan, Murdoch, Curtin, University of Western Australia [UWA] and Notre Dame universities). The 2022 interviews were undertaken with a view to compare and contrast the results to similar interviews published in 2014. The findings indicate that industry practitioners still think universities are typically the best place to teach journalism, and that students are highly competent in digital technologies. However, there is concern about the current state of graduate general and civil knowledge. Other trends include a growing sense that journalism students should be given training in public relations foundations and, additionally, that most editors would like to be involved with university curriculums. A major difference was an awareness during interviews in 2022 that tertiary staff cuts and financial pressures complicate the maintenance of high standards.

Review of: The Journalism Manifesto, Barbie Zelizer, Pablo J. Boczkowski and Christopher W. Anderson (2022)

Cambridge: Polity Press, 122 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-50954-263-5, h/bk, AUD 72.95

ISBN 978-1-50954-264-2, p/bk, AUD 20.95

ISBN 978-1-50954-265-9, e-book, AUD 16.99

Review of: News Values from an Audience Perspective, Martina Temmerman and Jelle Mast (eds) (2021)

Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 190 pp.,

ISBN 978-3-03045-045-8, h/bk, EUR 99.99

ISBN 978-3-03045-048-9, p/bk, EUR 69.99

ISBN 978-3-03045-046-5, e-book, EUR 58.54

Review of: Reporting on Sexual Violence in the #MeToo Era, Andrea Baker and Usha Manchanda Rodrigues (eds) (2022)

London: Taylor & Francis Group, 224 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-03211-552-8, h/bk, USD 252

ISBN 978-1-00322-041-1, p/bk, USD 73.99

ISBN 978-1-00077-104-6, e-book, USD 60.29

Review of: Digital Journalism in China, Shixin Ivy Zhang (ed.) (2022)

London: Routledge, 134 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-03216-215-7, h/bk, USD 103.00

ISBN 978-1-00324-757-9, e-book, USD 32.39

Review of: Borderland: Decolonizing the Words of War, Chrisanthi Giotis (2022)

New York: Oxford University Press, 296 pp.,

ISBN 978-0-19756-579-7, h/bk, GBP 64.00

ISBN 978-0-19756-580-3, p/bk, GBP 19.99

ISBN 978-0-19756-582-7, e-book, AUD 31.75

Review of: Newsroom–Classroom Hybrids at Universities: Student Labor and the Journalism Crisis, Gunhild Ring Olsen (2022)

New York: Routledge, 197 pp.,

ISBN 978-0-36736-316-1, h/bk, AUD 218.40

ISBN 978-0-36751-756-4, p/bk, AUD 65.59

ISBN 978-0-42934-526-5, e-book, AUD 59.19