PRESENTED BY:DEBORA HALPERN WENGER

UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPICO -AUTHORS: LYNN C. OWENS, DARREN

SANEFSKI , PAT THOMPSON

HELP WANTED: The evolution of journalism skills

required by top U.S. news companies

The Setting

Only medium seeing audience growth is digital – driven in large part by mobile and social media.

Nearly every journalist is to some extent an online journalist. Singer (2011) found that online journalism is something traditional print or broadcast journalists do on top of their daily activities.

Beam and Meeks (2011) reported that many reporters are now spending much of their time on “a series of tasks that didn’t exist in newsrooms until the Web became a common tool for distributing news.”

Research Questions

RQ1: What are the skills and attributes newspaper and broadcast news companies are seeking in new employees, as posted in their job listings? 

RQ2: What skills and attributes are required for specific job positions? 

RQ3: What are the most common Web/multimedia skills required across job categories?

RQ4: What skills and attributes are required for online-only jobs? 

RQ5: Comparing four years of data, which skills and attributes are gaining emphasis and which are appearing less often in job postings?

Method

Quantitative content analysis of job postings from 16 media companies: Gannett, Tribune, NYT, McClatchy, Advance, Hearst, MediaNews, Lee Enterprises, Belo, Disney, Sinclair, CBS, News Corp, Univision, Comcast/NBC and Berkshire Hathaway. Top U.S. newspaper and broadcast companies,

according to The State of the News Media 2012. Collected job postings from the companies’

websites for a three-month period: September 15 to December 15, 2012. Only postings for newsroom positions were analyzed.

Results

The study yielded 703 job postings, a 33% decrease from 2010.  63.8% (n=449) were broadcast jobs.26.3% (n=185) were newspaper jobs. 

9.8% (n= 69) were for online-only positions.

TV Top 5

1. Previous professional experience84.4%

2. Ability to work under pressure 56.8%

3. News judgment 55.9%

4. Strong writing 52.1%

5. Team player 50.3%

Newspaper Top 5

1. Strong writing 75.4%

2. Previous professional experience73.8%

3. Web/multimedia skills 67.8%

4. News judgment 60.7%

5. Working under pressure 57.4%

Online Top 5

1. Web/multimedia skills 91.5%

2. Previous professional experience74.6%

3. News judgment 70.4%

4. Working under pressure 66.2%

5. Knowledge of mobile 64.8%

Changes over time

Researchers Wenger and Owen first began analyzing job postings in 2008

A small group of skills has been steadily growing in importance since the project began No skills have dropped every year –

suggesting that journalists are consistently being asked to do more vs. working differently

Multimedia for All

Writing for the WebPosting to the WebProfessional use of social mediaVideo and photo skillsMobile skills?

Recommendation for further study

Recommendation

As journalism programs evolve their curricula, learning objectives and outcomes should recognize the need for these newer media skills and evaluation of these skills should be incorporated into assessment plans.

Thank you!

Deb Wenger@dhwengerdrwenger@olemiss.eduPPT and paper posted to ScribD