Traditional Skills, Duties Dominate Online Newsrooms

July 7, 2008 · · 3 Comments

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.

[You too can submit to Cyberjournalist.net, here: http://www.cyberjournalist.net/submit/]

This post was submitted by Ryan Thornburg.

Comments

3 Responses to “Traditional Skills, Duties Dominate Online Newsrooms”

  1. Electric Fishwrap » Blog Archive » Online journalism requires traditional skills on July 9th, 2008 8:20 am

    [...] Cyberjournalist pointed me to a study that University of North Carolina professor Ryan Thornburg completed about the values of online journalists. [...]

  2. The Future…. « UMassJournalismprofs Weblog on July 11th, 2008 1:29 pm

    [...] colleague at washingtonpost.com, who is now on the faculty at UNC, has an interesting take on the skillsets needed for today’s online [...]

  3. Patrick on July 12th, 2008 12:43 pm

    I think the methodology as well as analysis behind this survey is completely distorted.
    The “findings” probably just mirror Ryan’s preconceived notions.

    Sounds more like government propaganda than a legitimate study.

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