Online Journalism Blog

UPDATE (Aug 7 ‘08): The Annual Survey of Journalism & Mass Communication Graduates suggests employment opportunities and salaries are not affected.

J-schools are generally set up to prepare students for the mainstream news industry: print and broadcasting, with a growing focus on those industries’ online arms. There’s just one small problem. That industry isn’t exactly splashing out on job ads at the moment…

The LA Times is cutting 150 editorial jobs and reducing pages by 15%; The Atlanta Journal-Constitution cutting nearly 200 jobs; the Wall Street Journal cutting 50 jobs; Thomson Reuters axing 140 jobs; in the UK Newsquest is outsourcing prepress work to India, while also cutting jobs in York and Brighton; Reed Business Information, Trinity Mirror and IPC are all putting a freeze on recruitment, with Trinity Mirror also cancelling its graduate training scheme and cutting subbing jobs. In the past two months almost 4,000 jobs have vanished at US newspapers (Mark Potts has this breakdown of June’s 1000 US redundancies). In the past ten years the number of journalists in the US is said to have gone down by 25%.

Given these depressing stats I’ve been conducting a form of open ‘panel discussion’ format via Seesmic with a number of journalists and academics, asking whether journalism schools ought to revisit their assumptions about graduate destinations - and therefore what they teach. The main thread is below.

The responses are worth browsing through. Here’s my attempt at a digest: [Read more]

The following is a longer version of the article that appeared in Journalism.co.uk last week, with some extra tools and quotes.

It’s almost impossible to sum up Twitter in one line. To some, it is a way of delivering content to mobiles as headline text alerts. To others, it’s a social networking tool for getting contacts and leads. Some use it as a research tool for developing stories; and still others as a project management tool to gather a number of contributors together - for example, drivers posting updates on traffic.

In other words, it is what you make it and the only way to figure it out is to start using it. The following is a guide to getting started on Twitter as a journalist, and some of the things that can be done with it. [Read more]

I had an email recently from the Editor of NME.com, David Moynihan, about the News Diamond in practice. I thought it was worth reprinting in full:

“You describe much of what I do for a living: I am the Editor of NME.com and work in a buzzing cross-platform environment that mirrors your theories. Now that the dust is starting to settle a bit more in digital publishing, publishers are really taking notice of websites and web staff in ways that would have been unimaginable a few years ago. [Read more]

The Guardian is to recruit online video and audio staff, reports the paper:

“Guardian Unlimited, the title’s online operation, is looking to hire five staff for its internet video unit to work on footage of breaking news, as well as “developing mini documentaries and video elements within larger, cross media projects”.”As well as the five online video staff, GU is looking to recruit a head of audio and two audio producers as it expands its year-old podcast operation.”

And in the same edition, Emap is reported to be “ramping up its digital strategy by launching new media “incubator” projects for Motorcycle News, Today’s Golfer and Empire magazines and appointing three new digital directors”:

“Mr Mistry said he has interviewed nearly 50 digital media specialists, including people from search firms and entrepreneurs with up to 10 years’ experience in launching digital brands.”

But here’s a stat to bore your print journalism friends with:

“rock magazine Kerrang!, for example, now makes less than 25% of its revenue through the original print product. Kerrang! has music TV, digital radio, mobile and live event offerings.”