Journalists’ multiskilling in the digital age

JOURNALISTS’ MULTISKILLING IN THE DIGITAL AGE
Maurice Vergeer
Radboud University Nijmegen
the Netherlands
Alexander Pleijter
University of Groningen
the Netherlands
Liesbeth Hermans
Radboud University Nijmegen
the Netherlands

Changes in the field
Drastic changes in media industries
increased media output
Digitization
the Internet
Mergers
Factors important for media industry changes:
technological innovations
economic pressures
Professionalization
Striving for increased quality

From convergence to multi-skilling
Single mode news organizations transformed to multi-media organizations
Converged news organizations affects journalism practice (Avilés & Carvajal, 2008)
Different and more skills
Production for several platforms simultaneously
Production speed increases

Economicnecessity
Decliningnumber of newspapersubscriptions
“News is for free”

Consequences for journalists’ daily activities
More production
With less journalists
At a much quicker rate
Journalist transform from a specialist to generalist

Still…
Empirical evidence is lacking
Little research on multi-skilling
Hardly any longitudinal research

Research Questions
What type of activities do journalists carry out?
To what degree have these activities increased or decreased over time, in general and specifically for different media types?

Data and measurements

Data
Drawn from the membership database of the Dutch Journalism Association (NVJ).
2006 (N=643) and 2010 (N=1016)
identical measurement instruments in both years

Measurements
activities and media platforms,
a matrix with one dimension all types of media platforms listed and the other dimension the media activities listed.

Media platforms
Broadcasting
Public service broadcasting
Commercial broadcasting
Regional public service broadcasting
Local broadcasting

Media platforms
Newspaper
National newspapers
Free dailies
Regional newspapers
Nondaily newspapers
Free door-to-door newspapers

Media platforms
Magazines
News magazines
Special interest magazines
Professional magazines
Corporate magazines
Magazines for associations
The Web
Journalism websites and weblogs (unrelated to media that are traditionally offline)

Activities
writing
editing
reporting
coordinate
photo´s/video
presenting
maintain website

Findings

Most performed activities

Number of activities performed

What activities have in- or decreased by media type

Conclusion
Journalists perform multiple activities.
About three to four activities
Writing, editing and reporting
In four years time there is been little change overall
But,
Considerable changes within different media types
Multi-skilling is mostly performed on the web, but less in other media
And even slightly decreasing for traditional media

Editing, presenting and reporting has decreased across media types
Writing and recording videos and photographing has increased for selected media
Maintaining a website has increased across all media

Future research
What specific combinations of activities do journalists perform?
To what extent is this related to personal and professional background (age, gender, professional education)?

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Journalists’ multiskilling in the digital age

by Maurice Vergeer on Sep 12, 2011

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Journalists’ multiskilling in the digital age — Presentation Transcript