AMERICAN SPORTS WRITERS’ SOCIAL MEDIA USE AND ITS INFLUENCE ON PROFESSIONALISM

American sports writers' use of social media as a newsgathering tool has influenced journalism practice, further complicating the industry's abstract definition of “professionalism.” This study builds on a pilot study published in the fall 2011 issue of Journal of Sports Media, which assessed print sports journalists' use of social media. In the current study, a survey was administered to 77 full-time print sports journalists who cover professional sports. This paper seeks to extend the pilot study and previous professional research in two ways: firstly, to assess how this specific subgroup of sports writers use Facebook and Twitter to gather information; and secondly, to analyze how these sports writers define “professionalism” and what industry factors correlate with chosen definitions, such as newspaper circulation and work superiors' attitudes toward social media. Cross-tabulations and chi-square tests were used to test hypotheses. Cramer's V or Phi, depending upon the cross-tabulation, were used to measure relationship strength. Results suggest this subset of sports writers more often uses Twitter for newsgathering purposing than Facebook. There is also a strong relationship between the frequency of Twitter usage and the definition of professionalism chosen; circulation size and instances of directly quoting from athletes' social media accounts; and age and Twitter usage.     

体育新闻的发展对体育新闻专业人才业务素养的特殊要求

本文在讨论体育新闻发展现状与趋势的基础上,分析了当前我国体育新闻专业人才业务素养存在的不足,提出了体育新闻专业人才业务素养八个方面的要求。     

“I Did What I Do” Versus “I Cover Football”

As athletes added their voices to the fall 2014 protests against police violence, in-house reporters, that is, content producers paid to produce stories for team websites, were part of the press pack describing these actions. Despite working for teams, many view themselves as sports journalists, despite working for teams, view themselves as sports journalists. This collision of sports and politics posed a challenge to the professional identities they try to maintain. Using interview data and textual analysis, this case study examines the ways that in-house sportswriters understood and operationalized their professional identities at a moment when they came into potential conflict with their employment situations. Their answers reflect boundary work on the part of in-house media members, who stressed their independence and news judgment in explaining their choices around this story even if their actions diverged. The work raises questions for understanding how journalistic identity translates to new contexts such as brand publishing.     

What is Slow Journalism?

In an era of fast and instantaneous journalism and concerns about the deleterious effects of speed, it can be easy to lose sight of the other kinds of journalism being practiced, other temporalities for its production. There has been little scholarly work on slow journalism, so the first aim of this article is, if not to define, then at least to describe some key characteristics of what slow journalism might be. It will look at how the term has been used on blogs, websites, public forums, and in the minimal scholarly literature available. It will also explore some examples by producers who identify with the term to see what slow journalism looks like in practice. The proliferation of independent journalism using Slow as a way of thinking about production suggests that we are witnessing a new alternative emerging in the mediascape.     

“I LOVE TO PLAY THE BIMBO SOMETIMES WITH ATHLETES”

This article analyses the professional interactions between female journalists and their sources, key moments in the information production process, and explores, in the context of the Swiss daily press, one of the most masculine journalistic universes: sports journalism. It illustrates that because of the specific mode of recruitment into this journalistic speciality, women are confronted with various constraints—a lack of knowledge in the domain of sports, overwhelmingly male sources, and tensions linked to the fact that they are women—and with expectations from their chief editors that they will develop a “feminine” view of sports news. They are required to adapt and adjust to their role in a way that severely constrains their interactions with their male sources. Thus, controlling their appearance, language, and attitudes, these women make intentional use of certain stereotypes associated with femininity—“women as object of seduction” and “women as weak and inoffensive”—for professional goals, when the interaction warrants. They believe that those strategies allow them to have easier access to their sources and to create interactions encouraging the exchange of information that they judge to be sincere, authentic and more private, that would permit them to write deeper and more “human” articles.     

RESEARCH AND REFLECTION

Journalism education is increasingly located within universities where much of the teaching is carried out by journalists and former journalists known as “hackademics”. Yet only a minority of journalists-turned-journalism-educators are engaging in the scholarly research typically expected of academics. Should this grouping be expected to undertake academic research into journalism and, if so, how might they be supported in becoming scholars? Such issues will be explored in this study of journalists-turned-journalism-educators in the higher education sectors of the United Kingdom and Ireland. Their experiences of, and attitudes to, academic research into journalism will be reported and analysed alongside the perspectives of journal editors and in comparison with the experiences of academics in other disciplines. Within the context of a growing literature on journalism education, the concept of reflection-upon-practice will be discussed as one with resonance not only for the graduate journalists now being turned out by universities, but for journalism educators internationally.     

“MAYBE YOU NEED TO HAVE AN EARTHQUAKE”

This study explores whether the US media, particularly television, radio, and newspapers, met the expectations of international journalism educators concerning the coverage of world news. Four focus groups with 34 journalism educators from 29 countries were conducted in the United States. A critical discourse analysis shows that most journalism educators' expectations were not met because they found world news coverage to be deviant from the reality in their respective countries or regions. Discussion focuses on how the discourse could help us to understand how to coalesce international journalistic practices and information gathering in a new global hi-tech era, not only for the US media, but for other media systems around the world.     

FROM “KNOWING HOW” TO “BEING ABLE”

In attempt to define a methodology, journalism scholars use the term “reflective” as a way to distinguish their critical study of journalism from that of a non-practitioner. The phrase “reflective practice in journalism” is now also used widely in higher education course literature and increasingly it is emerging in discourses relating to journalism research. However, the use of the term “reflective” in both cases has not been anchored in meaning. This paper will propose a number of definitions, and will discuss a number of potential approaches that seek to move towards a synthesis of journalism practice and theory. It will start by outlining the current scholarly context for undertaking journalism research, focusing on the rise of “journalist-academics” and the desire for recognition of the value and status of practice within the academy. It will then examine a number of critical models which may shed helpful light on how journalism might be viewed as “research-in-practice”.     

网络信息传播中的把关缺位及对策——以“小月月”事件为例

无论是传统媒体还是网络媒体,编辑都是主要把关人。在"小月月"事件中,网络社区编辑、网络媒体和传统媒体编辑作为把关人出现明显缺位,致使"小月月"在网络和传统媒体中掀起轩然大波,最终在发帖人承认造假之后迅速落幕。网络时代编辑作为"把关人",要坚持传播真实,做到客观公正,避免"隐瞒性谎言",分清"知情权"和"知情欲望"的界限,尊重隐私。     

The Future of Journalism—Who to Believe?

This work collates the opinions of European professionals and internet users concerning the changing reality facing the world of journalism following the explosion of digital media. Our research shows the results of analytical surveys conducted between October 2013 and January 2014 among 54 professionals of renowned prestige, and 500 regular users of the digital media in the five most populated countries in the European Union: Germany, United Kingdom, France, Italy and Spain, all states affected to a greater or lesser extent by the crisis of the printed press. The surveys cover a wide range of topics, from the impact of social networks, the quality of the digital media, the willingness of citizens to pay for content and the degree of interactivity in the digital media for the future of journalism. Professionals and users agree that the news in 2020 will be better and more interactive than now. With regard to other matters, there is more disagreement. Professionals are much more critical than users when it comes to evaluating the quality of the news. The professionals’ survey was more qualitative, and, in their opinion, overcoming the crisis in the written press implies, among other measures, promoting analysis, prioritising quality over quantity and offering “niche” specialisation.     

新闻文化的数学观

新闻文化与数学文化具有一种天然的一致性。本文在数学思维的视野下,概要分析了新闻文化中的诸多数学观念,特别是从模型意义,审美结构与内容,尤其是简洁美、对称美、奇异美,以及求极值、重证明等方面,提出了一些值得新闻文化借鉴的重要内容和方法。     

COZY JOURNALISM

In recent years applications like CoveritLive have diffused with great speed throughout online newsrooms. Such technologies create an interface where audience participation and journalistic reporting potentially merge into a text-production system marked by a high degree of immediacy and interactivity. This paper investigates the consequences of such practices for the professional ideology of journalism. What norms and ideals do journalists who initiate and partake in such practices adhere to? To what degree does their practice conflict with traditional ideals of journalistic reporting? The paper analyses the “live” coverage of football matches in the two most popular Norwegian online newspapers, VG Nett and dagbladet.no. The findings suggest that the merger of audience participation and immediacy creates conflicts of ideals for the journalists involved, and that ideals of subjectivity and social cohesion are promoted by such practices of journalism.     

The Impact of the Digital Transformation on Sports Journalism Talk Online

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the impact of the digital transformation on broadcast practices from a producer/studio participant perspective with a focus on sports journalism online. More specifically, the study targets changes in sports talk and interaction as producers re-shape their communicative activities to fit audiences’ new contexts of reception. It discusses how these changes in practices relate to some of the fundamental assumptions in current broadcast talk theory. The textual studies are complemented by interviews with six prominent Swedish media industry representatives in order to shed light on their perceptions of the broadcast to online shift given their respective experiences. The results show how producers/participants adapt to a more casual and relaxed interactional style and tone online than in ordinary broadcasting. The studied sportscasts also largely abandon the traditional broadcast address, as expressed in direct discursive address and looks-to-camera, for an orientation to screen devices where social media active audiences are to be “found,” although still having a traditionally positioned audience to attend to. Although sociability is still the structural principle for producers’ interactional choices irrelevant of platform, the strategies of how to achieve it are changing due to the digital transformation.     

Journalists’ Use of Knowledge in an Online World

There has been little empirical study of the extent to which journalists are drawing on and applying academic research and systematic knowledge, or of their sourcing routines and habits in this regard. This paper examines data from an original online survey conducted in fall 2015 with working journalists (N?=?1,118). Over all, about half reported drawing on research studies frequently in their stories, and journalists expressed strong support for the idea that research can improve story quality. A multivariate analysis finds that knowledge usage is more likely to take place among journalists with some forms of academic and statistical training, with a national audience and with more coverage specialization in science-related topics. Political and television journalists are less likely to use expert knowledge.