Development journalism out of date?

The mass media occupy a central position within the processes of social change in Africa. Since successful journalism education can be formative for the further development of the African communication sector, the authors investigate the borderland of theoretical systematisation and empirical research of journalism. This is carried out via the following steps: (1) Firstly, the theoretical and practical basis of the phenomenon of development journalism is exposed and it is referred to its connection to journalism education in Africa. (2) Through the evaluation of African journalism education on the basis of training locations and programmes, the authors are able to pursue the question, which position development journalism takes in current journalism education. (3) The preliminary results show an expansion and differentiation in journalism education in Africa. In principle, this is a positive process, which, however, does not take place to a high extent

Teaching and Professional Fellowship Report 2004/5 : An Investigation into the feasibility of developing a Virtual Newsroom - An e-learning tool for journalism

The aim of my fellowship was to put the idea of developing a Virtual Newsroom – an online means of teaching journalism -- to the test. I began work on this idea some six years ago after many years of using computers in the teaching of journalism. At that time, I developed, together with the IT Research and Development Unit (ITRDU), at the London Institute (now University of the Arts London), an e-learning prototype based on the ‘breaking story’ exercise – a fundamental exercise for journalism teaching. In tests on students the early prototype proved to be an effective method for learning journalism skills. The students found the prototype programme a worthwhile and stimulating experience. Teachers of journalism saw it as an innovative way of teaching journalism, but were hampered by the fact that there was no way, with the programme as then developed, they could get behind the scenes to change any of the content, or other elements of the exercise. It was essential then, that in any future development, the programme would have to have enough flexibility to enable journalism teaching staff to easily manipulate the content. It also became clear that, six years on, it was necessary to determine if any new developments in online learning for journalists had superseded my original idea

A sporting chance for women? Exploring gender imbalance on the sports desks of UK national newspapers

Sports journalism has traditionally been seen as a male domain, and a number of researchers suggest that this tradition has not changed (Strong, 2007) . Sports reporters in the United Kingdom remain predominantly male, and despite increasingly more women having entered sports journalism since the women’s movement of the 1970s, the number of women sports writers remains relatively low (Franks, 2013; Chambers et al, 2004). In recent years there has been some considerable progress regarding the visibility of women in broadcast sports journalism and in particular the London Olympics in 2012 was a watershed for UK broadcasting, but there are still very few women sports writers in the UK newspaper industry, and sports journalism remains a largely male-dominated area in countries all over the world. (Hardin & Shain, 2005

The case against the democratic influence of the internet on journalism

Book synopsis: Web Journalism: A New Form of Citizenship provides a much-needed analytical account of the implications of interactive participation in the construction of media content. Although web journalism is a fast-changing technology this book will have sustained appeal to an international readership by seeking to critically assess Internet news production. … With the rise of blogging and citizen journalism, it is a commonplace to observe that interactive participatory media are transforming the relationship between the traditional professional media and their audience. A current, popular, assumption is that the traditional flow of information from media to citizen is being reformed into a democratic dialogue between members of a community. The editors and contributors analyse and debate this assumption through international case studies that include the United Kingdom and United States. … While the text has been written and designed for undergraduate and postgraduate use, Web Journalism: A New Form of Citizenship? will be of use and of interest to all those engaged in the debate over Web reporting and citizen journalism

Philanthropic Foundations: Growing Funders of the News

Updates April 2008 discussions on the role of foundations in supporting journalism, including creating journalism units within NGOs, collaborations with for-profit news organizations, and investment in local news sites and news and information nonprofits

The New Journalism and the Struggle for Interpretation

Scholarship in literary journalism often focuses on matters of technique and style, and on the ethical challenges of immersion reporting. In some contexts, however, literary journalism may also take on a sense of moral purpose, as when reporters assert the importance of their interpretations, or readers attribute special meaning to a particular style of writing. The New Journalism of the 1960s and 1970s offers a revealing example of how magazine and book publishing markets and writer–editor relations inevitably shape journalists’ interpretations and lend them a sense of social significance. The New Journalism did not stand alone and apart from the larger profession, but took root within a network of writers, editors, and publishers, and grew out of a wider, ongoing debate over the nature of journalists’ interpretive responsibilities

Deer in the headlights: Towards an understanding of how journalism students engage with complex academic research methods modules

Journalism is at a crossroad. The rise of populist governments with accusations of fake news against what has always been considered to be Fourth Estate journalism means journalists face significant challenges to produce compelling, truthful, and accurate news at a time when reality is altered by those who do not agree with what journalists say. The current journalistic climate means journalists must move beyond the lexical meanings of what it means to be a journalist to a more critical one where they have to verify and analyse the news for the audience. One of the key ways in which journalists can respond to significant challenges to practice is by becoming more critically aware practitioners. A significant step in that direction occurs in journalism programmes at the university level where students are required to produce a critically researched dissertation as part of their conditions of earning a degree. However, with journalism being a traditionally vocational programme, challenges arise because students have difficulties drawing correlations between academic research and journalism practice. Our research aims to understand how students engage with academic research method modules. Based on our findings, we argue that students can use interactive learning methods and online resources to help engage with more complex and unfamiliar content

Oblique strategies for ambient journalism

Alfred Hermida recently posited ‘ambient journalism’ as a new framework for para- and professional journalists, who use social networks like Twitter for story sources, and as a news delivery platform. Beginning with this framework, this article explores the following questions: How does Hermida define ‘ambient journalism’ and what is its significance? Are there alternative definitions? What lessons do current platforms provide for the design of future, real-time platforms that ‘ambient journalists’ might use? What lessons does the work of Brian Eno provide–the musician and producer who coined the term ‘ambient music’ over three decades ago? My aim here is to formulate an alternative definition of ambient journalism that emphasises craft, skills acquisition, and the mental models of professional journalists, which are the foundations more generally for journalism practices. Rather than Hermida’s participatory media context I emphasise ‘institutional adaptiveness’: how journalists and newsrooms in media institutions rely on craft and skills, and how emerging platforms can augment these foundations, rather than replace them