Regional newspaper publishers are seeking digital skills - at last
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Version 0 of 1. What skills should a young journalist have nowadays in order to obtain a job on a newspaper? Year by year, since the dawn of the digital revolution, journalism educators have been creating new courses designed to teach their students how to use online tools in order to enhance job opportunities. For a good while, however, the people responsible for recruiting journalists, meaning editors, tended to ignore digital abilities in favour of traditional skills, as a 2011 review on behalf of the National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ) showed. But times appear to have changed according to the results of an enterprising research exercise by a former head of news at the Yorkshire Evening Post, Rebecca Whittington, Journalism skills – has the digital tipping point been reached? Her study of recruitment advertisements on the HoldTheFrontPage website over a three month period, from 1 November 2014 to 31 January 2015, suggested “a definite tip towards digital skills preference.” She analysed the language used in the adverts by noting keywords. The traditional set included terms such as print, contacts, exclusive, hard news and shorthand; the digital set used terms such as hits, UGC, platforms, multimedia and Facebook. Rebecca then noted how many times each of keywords were used and where in the text they first appeared. Overall she discovered that the there was a higher number of digital keywords in the ads (56%) over traditional (44%). She was also able to identify which publishing groups favoured digital skills. Trinity Mirror placed the greatest emphasis on digital language, with a 73% use of digital keywords. Newsquest registered 54% and Local World had 52%. (NB: The other large regional newspaper company, Johnston Press, did not place any adverts during the three-month period). Archant, which placed eight adverts, gave greater emphasis to traditional language, with 59% of its keyword use coming from the traditional set. Whittington conceded that her study amounted to being only “a snapshot rather than the big picture” but it does imply a growing preference for digital skills. She also voiced a note of caution: “the preference for digital over traditional could merely be indicating a desired state of a newsroom or company, rather than reality. “It could also indicate an urge to demonstrate the importance of newer digital skills in contrast to taken-for-granted traditional ones.” She cited research published earlier this year by Lily Canter of Sheffield Hallam university in which she interviewed editors across the media industry, broadcasting as well as newspapers. She found that digital skills were being recognised as being at least as equally important as traditional. But Whittington tells me, despite publishers’ increasing search for digital skills, certain specific requirements - knowledge of coding, for instance, or data mining - are not being sought in the adverts. So there is some way to go yet as the media landscape continues to change. Whittington’s research, which she will supplement with a longitudinal study, is part of a larger and more complex consideration of the impact of digital reporting tools on regional media that forms the basis of her ongoing Phd thesis. She is currently a teaching assistant at Leeds Trinity university. Prior to her work with the Yorkshire Evening Post and Yorkshire Post she edited two Johnston Press weekly titles in the Wakefield area. Source: Rebecca Whittington Hat tip: HoldTheFrontPage |