Online Journalists See Themselves in Traditional Fields; Could It Be the ‘Gannett Effect’?

In a survey of journalists who work online at newspapers in North Carolina, most described themselves as working in traditional fields of writing and editing rather than “new media” fields such as multimedia production.

The first thing I want to do today is to thank all of the respondents to my recent survey of people who work online at North Carolina newspapers. We had 70 people at 29 daily newspapers respond to the survey. This 64 percent response rate is very high, and I think the state’s journalists deserve credit. But I also need to give credit to Phil Meyer, who helped design the survey method and to Teresa Edwards in UNC’s Odum Institute for Research in Social Science. It also didn’t hurt that there is such widespread support in this state for the University of North Carolina and for the School of Journalism and Mass Communication. It’s been an honor to be affiliated with these institutions. And it’s an honor to have the chance to talk a little bit now about some of the hard working journalists in this state.

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Announcing: Online Newsroom Study

With the kind help of Phil Meyer, Ying Du and Sara Peach, I’ve just completed a survey of every person we could identify that works in online news production at newspapers in North Carolina. The results of the survey are in and I will be using this blog to share my notes and thoughts as I begin to cull through the numbers. I hope that by doing so, I’ll provoke some questions from you, dear reader, and some good ideas for further research.

The survey asked respondents specific questions about their own skills and duties of their daily work. It also asked them about their titles and the reporting structures of their organizations. I’ve been amazed at how little we really know — other than the hallway anecdotes at trade conferences — about how online newsrooms are organized. What, exactly, does a “producer” do? How do different skills and structures affect the product?

So, first, let me tell you a bit more about how we conducted the survey.

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THBT: Academy-Industry Partnerships

One of the reasons I decided to make the move from newsroom to classroom is because there’s a need for journalism schools to be a source of applied research and development of products and processes that can help journalism be more memorable, relevant and inclusive. Today on the Tar Heel Bus Tour I had a chance to see how some of those partnerships are constructed between UNC and private business in other fields, and to think about how they might work in journalism.

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Bloggers: The New Anchors

A colleague of mine at the UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Val Lauder, recently shared this article with the faculty e-mail list. The piece, written by Johnnie L. Roberts for Newsweek, wonders “Can News Anchors like Katie Couric Survive?”

I don’t know whether anchors like Katie Couric can survive, but there is one kind of news anchor that is thriving. They’re called bloggers.

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