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.
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3 Responses to “Traditional Skills, Duties Dominate Online Newsrooms”
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[...] Cyberjournalist pointed me to a study that University of North Carolina professor Ryan Thornburg completed about the values of online journalists. [...]
[...] colleague at washingtonpost.com, who is now on the faculty at UNC, has an interesting take on the skillsets needed for today’s online [...]
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.