Traditional Skills, Duties Dominate Online Newsrooms

Ryan Thornburg, a UNC journalism professor and former editor at washingtonpost.com and usnews.com, just completed a survey of online journalists at newspapers in North Carolina, and finds that most are traditional in their values, skills, daily duties and self-perceptions. The findings seem to contradict the idea of an emerging class of young, technically facile “backpack journalists.” Instead, the future of journalism — at least at small and mid-sized papers — may be dominated by people who are essentially copy editors with fewer than 10 years of experience.

Ryan is blogging about the findings at www.futureofnews.net.

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