In a guest post Alexandra Stark, Swiss journalist and Head of Studies at MAZ – the Swiss School of Journalism, argues that it’s time for journalists to take action on business models for supporting journalism. Stark proposes a broadened set of skills and a new structure to enable greater involvement from journalists, while also fostering further teaching of such skills.

Ask a journalist if his or her job will remain important in the future: “Of course,” he or she will answer while privately thinking, “What a stupid question!” Try changing this stupid question just a bit, asking: “How will it be possible that you’ll still be able to do a good job in the future?” It’s likely you won’t receive an answer at all.

Most journalists have never really thought about it. And if they have, they’ll probably tell you it’s not their job – it’s the task of someone else: perhaps the media owners, readers, foundations or even the state.

For the most part, journalists don’t count “thinking about the future” among their responsibilities. Yet is it really wise to leave our future to others – many of whom have interests in different directions? Shall we leave it to the media executives who’ve promised shareholders a 20 percent return on investments? To the audiences, who’ve grown accustomed to receiving everything for free, or simply taking what is presented? Shall we leave it to foundations or the state, which may change positions or run out of funding?

No. If we journalists want to be able to do a good job in the future, we should stop reacting – adapting – to what happens and start taking action ourselves.

Let me make this clear: basic journalistic skills – for example research, selection and presentation – remain crucial. We’re still talking about journalism.

But as the world becomes more complex, it is no longer sufficient to simply know how to write nice articles or to use a video camera.

Our potential to do what is now considered a “good job” has dramatically decreased due to technological changes, reduced pay and transformations in user behaviour.

Journalists need to take responsibility

Until recently, most of us journalists didn’t especially care about these catalysts of change. Nor did our bosses, as a recent study* from the University of Applied Sciences of Winterthur shows. The study is based on the Tartu-Declaration, which lists 50 skills for journalists, accepted Europe-wide. When asked about the most important skills, 360 editors in chief from across Europe ranked the competencies as shown below:

Source: Koch, Carmen; Wyss, Vinzenz (2010)*

This ranking indicates that the skills editors in chief consider important are those closely related to the heart of journalistic work ­­­– the day-to-day-routine of creating content. The Tartu-Declaration does not mention many skills dealing with the aforementioned drivers of change, and the few which are not considered important by the editors in chief are as follows:

Source: Koch, Carmen; Wyss, Vinzenz (2010)*

It is of course understandable that the focus of editors in chief will be on day-to-day business. Many newsrooms were forced to reduce staff, leaving remaining journalists the task of filing more stories. Overall, the situation is growing increasingly difficult, and changing circumstances continue to restrict our possibility to produce good journalism.

Yet this is wrong: we should stop getting used to the pie shrinking. We need to help make the pie grow again.

This is – of course – much easier said than done. No one knows the “correct” way to go about it, and while a few have tried problem-solving, the majority simply scrutinize their efforts and indulge in schadenfreude when they fail.

Most initiatives are driven by the business-side, with journalists rarely taking action. Why is that so? Because we still think that it’s not our business. If we really want to do our job in the future, we journalists should not only provide content, but also be involved in securing the possibility to create good journalism.

In a world where it is not clear where we are going, we need completely new skills. We should know about and be interested in the drivers of change and how they’ll affect journalism, that is: how the economy evolves, how technology develops and how our users change their habits.

A new set of competencies is required

In my Master’s thesis (only in German, sorry!) I worked out additional sets of competencies, based on the Tartu-Declaration (left side of the graph). Along the three drivers of change I developed three groups of additional competencies (right side of the graph): technological, economic competencies and competencies related to audience (for a larger file please click the illustration).

Journalism Reloaded: Extended competencies for the future of journalism.

We journalists need much more than basic day-to-day-skills. We need to develop deeper competencies to help us to influence the future of journalism.

For example, with regard to technological competencies (for a detailed description as well as the detailed list of competencies related to the economy and audience please refer to my thesis) this means journalists:

• are interested in the technological evolution in the media sector and the opportunities this evolution poses (for production and usage of content)
• accept that both tasks and work-processes change because of technical development
• can help, and thus want to shape and develop change
• know that not everything that is technologically possible makes sense, and may even be ethically problematic
• can use research, communications and production tools (hard- as well as software) efficiently

How do journalists acquire these competencies?

Not so long ago there were still many voices saying, “You can’t learn to be a journalist. You either are one, or you’re not.” That has changed.

Most people today agree that training helps make better journalists. But the old voices were not all wrong, there is a part of being a journalist one can’t learn. For example everything to do with willingness. You might be surprised there are so many competencies related to willingness. But they are crucial – if journalists are unwilling, you won’t be able to make them change.

Despite the fact that they’ll tell you the opposite, journalists don’t really like to change – this I learned in several change-projects I was involved with. As a colleague once told me, “Journalists love it when worlds collide, because that’s action. But pull their table ten centimetres over and they’ll get really annoyed!”

Therefore, I propose structuring competencies the following way:

Where do journalists get these competencies?

Since willingness is about attitude and cannot be taught, competencies in this category must play a crucial role in the selection process (of editorial departments hiring staff as well as schools/universities recruiting students).

To be able is meant both on an intellectual level and on the level of skills. While skills can be taught, intellectual ability can only be trained (in schools as well as on the job) and therefore has to be an element in the selection process as well.

To know refers to professional knowledge as well as general education and expert knowledge. While professional knowledge can be taught, broad interest and expert knowledge has to be a precondition and therefore should also be part of the selection process:

Let’s go for it!

If we as journalists really want to be able to do what we do well – informing the audience, telling stories, uncovering scandals – we must become active and journalism schools must teach us how to do so.

Not so much for the newspapers of today, but certainly for the media we will be working for tomorrow.

Alexandra Stark (mail@alexandrastark.ch, Twitter: @alexandrastark) is Head of Studies at MAZ, the Swiss School of Journalism. She is a trained teacher and holds Masters degrees in International Relations (University St.Gallen) and New Media Journalism (University Leipzig). She was a freelance Moscow-correspondent, and continues to work as a freelancer specialising in economic coverage.

* no download available. Koch, Carmen; Wyss, Vinzenz (2010): The weighting of different journalistic competences: A survey with European editors in chief. Winterthur: Projektbericht

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There’s a wonderfully written post on Sean Blanda’s blog about fixing entrepreneurial journalism courses. Unusually, the post demonstrates a particularly acute understanding of the dynamics involved in teaching (Lesson One, based on my experience of teaching ‘strategic learners’, strikes me as a particularly effective tactic*, while Lesson Two addresses the most common problem in students’ ideas: vagueness, or ‘mass marketism’).

But it also reminded me of a conversation I had recently about journalism students’ reactions to being taught entrepreneurialism – and the one lesson that’s missing from Sean’s list.

It’s this lesson: “Why?”

Here’s the thing: journalism students – and I hope I’ll be forgiven for generalising horribly here – often have quite a conservative perspective of the profession. For example: despite print journalism bleeding jobs and online publishing being one of the biggest areas of growth, you wouldn’t know that by looking at the application numbers for the courses leading to each industry.

The majority of students still want to be print or broadcast journalists – even while most of them get all their news online and most people in the industry are having to adapt to multiplatform roles. And unfamiliar roles like community management take a great deal of explaination and justification.

Teaching entrepreneurial journalism, it seems, generates the same reaction. Many students struggle to connect with it on an emotional level, or, more often, worry about its impact on editorial independence.

So somewhere between lessons one and seven – probably quite early on – I’d add another: ‘Saying No‘

Saying No

This lesson would deal directly with negotiating the tension between short- and longer-term commercial demands; how to maintain good relationships while also maintaining a professional distance.

You’ll notice that I avoid using the terms ‘ethics’ or ‘editorial independence’ or other normative terms. Because, frankly, that language isn’t going to get you anywhere in an argument with an investor or publisher. And it will make that week’s class stick out as somehow ‘academic’ and unrelated to the core of entrepreneurship.

Ultimately, of course, it is about ethics and independence – but specifically why those ethics and that independence have evolved in traditional journalism, and how we have those arguments in the profession.

Ideally it would involve a case study or two of people who have found themselves in those positions of having to explain to an advertiser or client why we are not going to do what they want. I don’t think you’ll have to look far to find those. Every editor, publisher, and ad sales director deals with these every month.

Here are some starters: we say no to that advertiser because it will undermine our brand and reduce our audience, which the advertiser themselves does not want. We say no to that client’s demands because other clients will stop dealing with us if we don’t treat them all the same. We say no because we will end up in court (even if that’s not always true). We say no because our boss won’t agree to it (even if we don’t have to ask). We say no because the costs would outweigh the benefits.

What else should be in that lesson – and are there others?

*The idea of grading students *entirely* based on profits – or even revenue – is of course unworkable (universities could not accredit any course module based on this measurement), inappropriate (it’s not teaching the level of critical thought that a postgrad course should), and unrealistic within the timescale of study. Most new businesses don’t make money for their first couple of years, and under those criteria some of the biggest companies of the internet age would get an ‘F’ (and the biggest failures would get an ‘A’)But the principle of a small element based on this to get students’ minds focused and reward those who make a successful start, is a good one.

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From September I will be running an MA in Online Journalism at Birmingham City University. I hope it’s going to be different from any other journalism MA.

That’s because in putting it together I’ve had the luxury of a largely blank canvas, which means I’ve not had to work within the strictures and structures of linear production based courses.

The first words I put down on that blank piece of paper were: Enterprise; experimentation; community; creativity.

And then I fleshed it out:

In the Online Journalism MA’s first stage (Certificate) students will study Journalism Enterprise. This will look at business models for online journalism, from freemium to mobile, public funding to ad networks, alongside legal and ethical considerations. I’m thinking at the moment that each student will have to research a different area and present a business case for a startup.

They will also study Newsgathering, Production and Distribution. I’m not teaching them separately because, online, they are often one and the same thing. And as students should already have basic skills in these areas, I will be focusing on building and reinventing those as they run a live news website (I’ll also be involved in an MA in Social Media, so there should be some interesting overlap).

This is an explicit space for students to try new things, fail well, and learn what works. They will do this in partnership with a news organisation based on a problem they both identify (e.g. not making enough revenue; poor community; etc.) – I’ve already lined up partnerships with national and regional newspapers, broadcasters and startups in the UK and internationally: effectively the student acts as a consultant, with the class as a whole sharing knowledge and experience.

Alongside that they will continue to explore more newsgathering, production and distribution, exploring areas such as computer assisted reporting, user generated content, multimedia and interactivity. They may, for example, conduct an investigation that produces particularly deep, engaging and distributed content and conversation.

The final stage is MA by Project – either individually or as a group, students make a business case for a startup or offshoot, research it, build it, run it and bid for funding.

By the time they leave the course, graduates should not be going into the industry at entry level (after all, who is recruiting these days?), but at a more senior, strategic level – or, equally likely, to establish startups themselves. I’m hoping these are the people who are going to save journalism.

At the moment all these plans are in draft form. I am hoping this will be a course without walls, responding to ideas from industry and evolving as a result. Which is why I’m asking for your input now: what would you like to see included in an MA Online Journalism? The BJTC’s Steve Harris has mentioned voice training, media law and ethics. The BBC’s Peter Horrocks has suggested programming and design skills. You may agree or disagree.

Let’s get a conversation going.

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I’ve set up a Facebook group for journalism and news entrepreneurs – a place to network, share ideas and gather support. Join it if you think it’ll be useful.

PS: If you’ve not joined the Online Journalism Blog Facebook group, please do. It’s great.

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Another Twitter lead led me to this one:

“Going Solo is a chance to learn how to do things like set your rates, make yourself known, close deals, find clients or let them find you, explain what you do to the world, find a life-work balance, or deal with administrivia in the networked world we web people work in.

“Who’s involved? Until we get a proper ordered list, here is a bunch of names (organisers, advisors, helpers…): Stephanie Booth, Elisabeth Stoudmann, Charlene Knoetze, Stowe Boyd, Suw Charman, Imran Ali, Stephanie Troeth, Sibylle Stoeckli, Martin Roell, Carlos Pacilio, Anne Dominique Mayor, Chris Brogan, and others…”

More here, including an early bird discount if you book by the end of March.

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