ONLINE FEATURE JOURNALISM

Although online journalism is still dominated by breaking news coverage, new genres are emerging that differentiate it more and more from old media journalism. This article explores the emergence of feature journalism in online newspapers. Through comparative qualitative text analysis of feature journalism in the US online newspaper palmbeachpost.com and the Norwegian online newspaper dagbladet.no, two widely different approaches to the production of feature journalism on the Web are uncovered and a critical perspective on the remediation of journalistic genres in online newspapers is elaborated. The analysis shows that both these approaches display a clash between discourses of traditional feature journalism and discourses of online communication. It further reveals that genre development in online journalism is a complex process marked by contradictions and inconsistencies and that online newsrooms are struggling to find solutions on how to differentiate online journalism from old media journalism.     

THE LAST DAYS OF CIVIC JOURNALISM

Almost 15 years after it started, civic journalism is waning. Some say that its practices have been integrated into the routines of news making without the label attached. Others say that it is simply dying. This study seeks to define the legacy of civic journalism by investigating the news practices in Savannah Morning News, a newspaper in Georgia, USA. Ethnographic observation and interviews found that the ideas of civic journalism were instituted in the newspaper through its presentation and the routines of discovering community news. However, it was less obvious in the discovery and gathering of news about larger events and issues. The role of the news organization in convening the public for problem solving has continued, but the role of championing particular solutions was not observed.     

USING CITIZENS FOR COMMUNITY JOURNALISM

Hyperlocal journalism is thriving. This article describes the case of a Belgian regional newspaper experimenting with citizen journalism and user-generated content (UGC) for hyperlocal news coverage. For each municipality of the region, an online news page has been created where all citizen contributions are published side by side with professional stories on local community news and events. The fact that the UGC is not separated from the professional articles makes it an interesting case to examine commonalities and differences between both types of community reporting. The findings, based on a content analysis of 474 news items, suggest that the newspaper seems to use citizen volunteers primarily as a means to outsource the “soft”, “good” and “small” news coverage of local community life, while preserving the “hard” and “bad” news provision as the exclusive domain of professional journalists. Further, the study's findings support previous research indicating that (1) local community journalism is characterised by a mix of crime reporting and news coverage of fires and accidents, on the one hand, and positive human-interest stories about social club activities, cultural events, health and sports, and school life, on the other; and that (2) citizen journalists tend to rely heavily on first-hand witnessing and personal experience due to a general lack of access to official sources of information.     

THINKING ABOUT CITIZEN JOURNALISM

This study seeks to understand how community newspaper editors negotiate the professional complexities posed by citizen journalism—a phenomenon that, even in the abstract, would appear to undermine their gatekeeping control over content. Through interviews with 29 newspaper editors in Texas, we find that some editors either favor or disfavor the use of citizen journalism primarily on philosophical grounds, while others favor or disfavor its use mainly on practical grounds. This paper presents a mapping of these philosophical-versus-practical concerns as a model for visualizing the conflicting impulses at the heart of a larger professional debate over the place and purpose of user-generated content in the news production process. Moreover, these findings are viewed in light of gatekeeping, which, we argue, offers a welcome point of entry for the study of participatory media work as it evolves at news organizations large and small alike. In contributing to a growing body of literature on user-generated content in news contexts, this study points to the need for better understanding the causes and consequences of journalism's hyperlocal turn, as digitization enables newswork to serve increasingly niche geographic and virtual communities.     

JOURNALISM EDUCATION IN SLOVENIA

This article presents the findings of the first research into editors’ views of journalism education in Slovenia. The results of a mail survey and in-depth interviews reveal that although the vast majority of editors are not particularly familiar with the curriculum of current journalism studies, they identified a broad general knowledge and practical journalistic knowledge as the curriculum's advantages, with—inconsistently—the latter also being described as the curriculum's main deficiency, together with the lack of any knowledge of special fields such as law and economics. The editors’ negative attitudes to journalism education are grounded less in actual knowledge of what the Journalism Faculty offers its students than a priori convictions and stereotypes about journalism graduates being incompetent theorists. Factors in the media and in society that might be hindering journalists’ professionalism are overlooked, while the blame for editors’ negative experiences with journalism graduates is almost exclusively ascribed to the Faculty. Although the Slovenian university journalism curriculum has been reformed several times in the past few decades, the old image of the Faculty of Social Sciences as a remnant of the old communist political school is still firmly grounded in the mentality of Slovenians, yet rejected by the editors.     

PRACTICE REVIEW: JOURNALISM ETHICS AND CONFESSIONAL JOURNALISM

Confessional journalism has become a staple of contemporary journalism, either in the form of first-person real-life experiences (often ghosted by journalists) or regular columns by journalists detailing intimate details of their lives. The form is now recognised as a distinct genre but what has not received attention, except as an internal debate within journalism itself, are the consequences of this form of writing for journalism and journalists. There is mounting evidence that editors are exerting pressure towards this form of writing, favouring particular types of writers. This review investigates the compelling ethical implications for writers and their subjects within the genre and argues that these implications are producing distinctive journalistic responses and strategies.     

ENVISIONING JOURNALISM PRACTICE AS RESEARCH

As pressure grows on journalism academics to publish scholarly outputs and attract external research income, many express frustration over the uncertain status of journalism practice in relation to the requirement for making a contribution to knowledge (Harcup, 2011). Simultaneously, work in education theory has highlighted contextual shifts in arts and humanities education that signify a pressing need for journalism studies as well as other disciplines to define their position regarding practice within research. Recent reflections on practice and research within journalism education (Niblock, 2007) suggest the discipline is seeking forms of scholarship that cohere better with its industry-facing character. This paper seeks to originate both a methodological framework and an epistemological perspective that acknowledges practitioner perspectives as accumulated knowledge. Drawing on concepts of reflexivity and habitus, it will negotiate and evaluate a range of potential models of practice as research, and discuss their implications for furthering the profile of journalism scholarship.     

THE PROMISE OF COMPUTATIONAL JOURNALISM

Computational journalism involves the application of software and technologies to the activities of journalism, and it draws from the fields of computer science, the social sciences, and media and communications. New technologies may enhance the traditional aims of journalism, or may initiate greater interaction between journalists and information and communication technology (ICT) specialists. The enhanced use of computing in news production is related in particular to three factors: larger government datasets becoming more widely available; the increasingly sophisticated and ubiquitous nature of software; and the developing digital economy. Drawing upon international examples, this paper argues that computational journalism techniques may provide new foundations for original investigative journalism and increase the scope for new forms of interaction with readers. Computational journalism provides a major opportunity to enhance the production of original investigative journalism, and to attract and retain readers online.     

FOLLOWING THE ACTION

Live sports blogging is a relatively new form of journalism in wide and frequent use by media companies but has received little attention from the academy. This article outlines a study that explored the belief and value system behind live sports blogging to establish whether shifts were taking place within the professional ideology of sports journalism. In-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 10 live sports bloggers in the United Kingdom. The study found that live bloggers retained core journalistic values and beliefs of balancing objectivity and subjectivity, immediacy, providing a public service and editorial autonomy. However, live blogging's challenges of immediacy, interactivity and shifting consumption patterns have led to a reimagining of what these concepts mean and the skills and competences required. Live bloggers perceived their role as community builders and mediators of discussion as well as information providers, and this represents a new openness and inclusivity within the occupational base. Participants did not regard these changes to be a dumbing down of standards but rather a paradigm shift towards flattening hierarchies between journalist and audience. The findings suggest live bloggers have shown a greater willingness to adapt than previous research into the migration of sports journalists to digital platforms has found.     

JOURNALISM EMBRACING ADVERTISING AS TRADITIONAL JOURNALISM DISCOURSE BECOMES MARGINAL

The border between journalism and marketing communication is diminishing and media such as television and magazines are especially vulnerable to the colonisation of traditional journalistic genres by promotional information. From the point of view of audience perception, grouping certain media channels or discourses into “journalistic” and others into “promotional” or “mixed” would provide a certain level of predictability, as well as a basis for their judgement of information. However, we argue here that category confusion takes place even inside sub-sectors of niche magazines. The objective of this international comparative research is to analyse the editorial ideologies and discursive practices concerning the hybridisation of media discourse in one media sector: the Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Events (MICE) sub-sector of niche magazines. Can these magazines be identified as “journalistic”, “advert” or “mixed” oriented media? The empirical research is focused on the production process (the implementation of editorial principles) in key MICE magazines mainly in European countries.     

JOURNALISM EDUCATION IN BRITAIN

The number of undergraduate journalism students in Britain has risen fivefold since 1994/95 as journalism education undergoes the rapid expansion previously seen in other countries. This study analyses this expansion in Britain, demonstrating that it has led to a growing proportion of journalism graduates in newsrooms, despite residual, industry concern that journalism is not the best first degree subject for would-be journalists. The study examines findings from a survey of British journalism undergraduates concerning what motivated them to become journalists. Its first phase was conducted when, or soon after, 661 students arrived at 10 British universities. Students were also asked about ambitions regarding specialisms in journalism. A similar questionnaire was administered to a “completion” sample of 234 students shortly before these university programmes ended. This asked why some had by then rejected journalism as a career. Findings are contextualised with international studies of journalism students.     

INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM ON CAMPUS

Despite many obstacles, investigative journalism continues to flourish in Australia. A significant part of the explanation for this appears to lie with universities which have journalism programs. Investigative journalism has a strong presence in these programs across Australia, a presence which is increasingly being felt at postgraduate level. As a result, an increasing number of journalism graduates have the skills and understanding necessary to embark on serious investigative work, and several institutions have embarked on projects with innovative approaches to collaborative investigative work. However, the wider context in which Australia's tertiary institutions operate is far from benign, and journalism programs—and thus the teaching of investigative journalism—are subject to many pressures. The paper finds that, although university journalism programs are increasingly taking responsibility for educating their students about investigative journalism, thereby picking up a key responsibility which would once have been borne entirely by the industry, there are also forces at work which limit their capacity to do this.     

From “Selfies” to Breaking Tweets

The aim of this paper is to analyse the different ways in which journalists negotiate representations of their professional and personal identity on social media platforms. We argue that the differing representations of personal and professional identity on social media correspond to the professional, organisational and institutional tensions that have emerged in this new space. Using qualitative interviews with various journalists and editorial staff from Australian media organisations across television, radio, print and online publications, we indicate that journalists present their personal and professional identity on social media in three different ways. The first group create public, professional social media accounts, but also create secondary, private accounts that are only accessible to personal networks. The second group either choose, or are required by their media organisation, to only have a professional presence on social media; that is, they have public accounts that are only associated with their media organisation and display only their professional activities. The last group merge a professional and personal identity on their social media sites, showing aspects of their personal and their professional lives on publically available accounts.     

JOURNALISM CURIOSITY AND STORY-TELLING FRAME

This comparative study of journalism practices in Australia and Denmark explores the interplay between two concepts relevant for journalism's meaning-making activity: a curiosity seen as an action meant to close an information gap, and a story-telling frame seen as a form of structuring information which helps to define what is known of a topic. Using the newspaper coverage of events following the discovery of a “mysterious sickness” in the previous home of a group of Tasmanian devils sent to Copenhagen Zoo as a christening gift for the baby of the Danish royal, the article examines how the epistemological and organisational dimension of frames relates to the process of meaning making. We suggest refining the concept of frame in journalism studies by making a distinction between a frame (an epistemological category) and an angle (a textual organisation category). Our investigation shows that this distinction better serves the analysis and understanding of the mechanisms behind journalism in comparative contexts.     

SOURCE CREDIBILITY AND JOURNALISM

The extent to which information sources, that stand behind virtually all the news, are perceived by journalists as credible is a key determinant of the likelihood of their obtaining news access and public voice. The nature of source credibility judgment in journalism, however, is disputed between two major schools: while the “visceral” camp contends that it is highly subjective, intuitive and biased, the “discretional” camp perceives it as a far more reasonable and legitimate journalistic tool. The present study attempts to uncover evidence of both “visceral” and “discretional” judgment by studying the conceptual credibility (trustworthiness ratings) and practical credibility (practices indicating trust or skepticism, such as cross-checking and attribution) and the congruence between the two in a sample of 840 news items based on 1870 news sources. Findings were gleaned in face-to-face reconstruction interviews with reporters from nine leading Israeli news organizations, who reconstructed, source by source, the processes behind their items, shortly after their publication. Pro-discretional evidence shows that while journalists perceive their own experience as more credible than that of any other human agent, they do tend to stick with sources they perceive as more credible, the majority of which were relied on in the past, granting them more ready acceptance. Pro-visceral evidence, in turn, demonstrates that even the least credible sources receive substantial news space, some without any cross-checking. Furthermore, reporters ranked their sources' credibility even when they had no former record of trustworthiness. The paper suggests interpreting the composite of these findings as discretional logic with islands of visceral judgment.     

MAPPING EDUCATIONAL ROLE DIMENSIONS AMONG CHILEAN JOURNALISM AND MASS COMMUNICATION EDUCATORS

The challenges and uncertainties that journalism education has historically faced have led to reconsiderations of its approaches, definitions, and functions in society over time. Yet, little attention has been paid to assess how Journalism and Mass Communications (JMC) educators see their roles, as well as individual and contextual factors that influence their orientations. Based on a survey of educators and data collected from JMC schools in Chile, JMC educators' roles can be grouped into four distinctive categories: the scholarly-oriented, the didactic-oriented, the practice-oriented, and the journalistic-oriented roles. Overall, the orientation that received the greatest support was the practice-oriented, followed by the didactic and the scholarly-oriented. The findings also reveal that education level, job commitment, gender, current professional journalism experience, organization type, school accreditation and the existence of graduate programs are factors that best predict educators' orientations.     

STRUCTURAL CHANGE AND JOURNALISM PRACTICE

This paper examines structural changes to Chinese news organisations in the new millennium and their impact on journalism practice, with a particular focus on the Xinhua News Agency. The paper attempts to understand the complexity of these changes and their implications for journalism, media and communications studies.     

CHICANA/O STUDENT JOURNALISTS MAP OUT A CHICANA/O JOURNALISM PRACTICE

Research documenting the media under-representation of people of color indicates that unless journalists re-imagine the way they report on communities of color, those growing segments may be left without a stake in the “public imaginary.” In this paper, I suggest that journalism educators turn their attention to Chicano/a student journalists in order to begin the process of re-envisioning newsgathering and writing in ways that more accurately depict and inform Latino/a communities. Driven by a collaboration between myself and undergraduate student producers of Venceremos, a bilingual Chicano/a student publication at a western state university, this paper builds a case for why these student journalists are an important source of knowledge and inspiration for journalism educators concerned with improving mainstream coverage of diverse communities. The essay also summarizes my association with the Venceremos staff in order to model how journalism educators can team up with alternative student journalists and it demarcates traits that typify their evolving Chicano/a journalism practice.     

Sharing the Stage

Despite the proliferation of research on social media and journalism, only a few studies have analyzed how journalists in Latin America embrace the affordances of social platforms for journalism practice. Based on a survey of 877 Latin American reporters, this article examines the platforms journalists use and how they use them. The broad finding is that, despite the great popularity of Facebook in the region, Twitter is the most important platform for daily newsgathering and journalistic work. Journalists turn to Twitter to find sources and stories, showing an important openness to participatory journalism. Yet, they mistrust information provided from political sources. Our findings show that different regions in Latin America work with social media in different ways, and local journalistic cultures have an impact on these adoptions, especially in the case of Brazil. Further research and implications for the field are discussed.     

FLOURISHING BUT RESTRAINED

Research concerning user participation in online news has demonstrated that news websites offer a wide range of participatory features, but largely permit users only to comment on already-published material. This longitudinal analysis of Sweden's four major mainstream national news websites focuses on front-page news items to investigate to what extent user participation has increased over time and whether the participatory features present allow users to exert control over key journalistic processes. Its findings indicate that user participation has increased rapidly in regard to processes peripheral to news journalism, but also that users have to a minor extent begun over time to perform work previously reserved for professional journalists.