Seeking the future journalist: Professional skills and roles in the new media ecosystem

Abstract

Journalism education has been the subject of debate and contention for more than 100 years. Drastic technological developments and the disruption of journalism’s traditional business model have inevitably sparked a new debate on the content and purpose of tertiary journalism education (Mensing, 2010; Jarvis, 2012). The most prevalent and persistent aspect of journalism education has been the theory-practice division, which basically reflects the opposing views between academia and the industry (Josephi, 2016). Employers and editors see university-based journalism programmes as theory-laden and out of touch with industry realities (Robinson, 2016), whilst academics insist on the study of journalism in terms of its role, history, law, ethics, standards, methods, and impact along with practice (Jarvis, 2012). Although the debate never really ended, since the early 2000s the idea of educating future journalists as ‘reflective practitioners’ seems to have taken hold (Josephi, 2016). This approach attempts to bridge the gap between academia and the industry (Gillmor, 2016, Gutsche Jr., 2019, Senat et al., 2019, Friesem, 2019, Tischauser & Benn, 2019, Terzis, 2008). Faced with serious challenges ranging from shrinking budgets, severe criticisms of outdated curricula and students skeptical whether the degree will land them a paying job (Robinson, 2016), journalism schools have opted to become more industry and technology-oriented. Thus far studies have offered mixed findings; the addition of technology courses and social media elective modules have been hasty with questionable results, whilst internships, although in some cases proved helpful for preparing young professionals for a career in journalism, in other cases brought up instances of labor exploitation and minimal professional benefits (Senat et al, 2019). Some argue that such moves simply reinforce the alignment of journalism education with an industry-conceived model of journalism (Mensing, 2010); a model which emphasizes the tenets of the ‘super journalist paradigm’ at the detriment of relevant, explanatory, well-sourced and well-verified journalism (Spyridou & Veglis, 2016). On the other hand, recent research points to the tenets of civic-oriented skills and pedagogical approach. Meier & Schützeneder (2019) argue that one of the core qualifications that future journalists should have is to communicate constructive solutions; their suggestion draws on the science-practice combination “to go beyond the current professional model” (evidence-based practice). The issues of media literacy and critical thinking are being raised by Friesem (2019) as important skills to help future journalists not only comprehend economics, ideology, and power relations but also as important means to deconstruct information disorder in the post-truth era. As if journalism’s education challenges were not enough, the recent pandemic has brought up several weakness and challenges for journalism. According to Possetti, Bell and Brown (2020) the coverage of Covid-19 has provoked a pandemic of disinformation, whilst journalists themselves are faced -among others, with adverse labor conditions, lack of training in remote reporting and publishing, and inadequacies regarding advanced methods of verification and fact checking as well as in covering science and medical/health matters. Such findings confirm a serious change reflected in Fowler-Watt et al’s (2020) argument that until now, journalists reported on crises. The Covid-19 pandemic placed journalists, like everyone else, in the crisis. The dimension of science journalism has been repeatedly invoked as an important add-on to university curricula (La et al., 2020; Bagdasarian et al., 2020). Once again, it is necessary to re-examine the “core journalistic competencies as a response” to the everchanging landscape (Guo & Volz, 2021, p. 93). Drawing on the notions of skills and professional roles, and taking into consideration the changing news landscape with an emphasis on declining journalistic authority (collapsing trust levels and attacks on facticity itself), this study aims to investigate how does the industry envision the future journalist; what type of skills do media organizations expect from future journalists. The study is based on twelve semi-structured interviews of senior editors working in the big media groups in Cyprus. The findings aim to contribute in the broader discussion of reforming journalism education in the post-covid era.