HELP WANTED: The evolution of journalism skills required by top U.S.

news companies
PRESENTED BY: DEBORA HALPERN WENGER UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPI CO-AUTHORS: LYNN C. OWENS, DARREN SANEFSKI, PAT THOMPSON

The Setting
Only medium seeing audience growth is digital driven

in large part by mobile and social media. Nearly every journalist is to some extent an online journalist. Singer (2011) found that online journalism is something traditional print or broadcast journalists do on top of their daily activities. Beam and Meeks (2011) reported that many reporters are now spending much of their time on a series of tasks that didnt exist in newsrooms until the Web became a common tool for distributing news.

Research Questions
RQ1: What are the skills and attributes newspaper and

broadcast news companies are seeking in new employees, as posted in their job listings? RQ2: What skills and attributes are required for specific job positions? RQ3: What are the most common Web/multimedia skills required across job categories? RQ4: What skills and attributes are required for online-only jobs? RQ5: Comparing four years of data, which skills and attributes are gaining emphasis and which are appearing less often in job postings?

Method
Quantitative content analysis of job postings from 16

media companies: Gannett, Tribune, NYT, McClatchy, Advance, Hearst, MediaNews, Lee Enterprises, Belo, Disney, Sinclair, CBS, News Corp, Univision, Comcast/NBC and Berkshire Hathaway.

Top U.S. newspaper and broadcast companies, according to The State of the News Media 2012.

Collected job postings from the companies websites

for a three-month period: September 15 to December 15, 2012.

Only postings for newsroom positions were analyzed.

Results

The study yielded 703 job

postings, a 33% decrease from 2010.

63.8%

(n=449) were broadcast jobs. 26.3% (n=185) were newspaper jobs. 9.8% (n= 69) were for online-only positions.

TV Top 5
1. 1.

Previous professional experience Ability to work under pressure

84.4% 56.8%

1.
1. 1.

News judgment
Strong writing Team player

55.9%
52.1% 50.3%

Newspaper Top 5
1. 1.

Strong writing Previous professional experience

75.4% 73.8%

1. Web/multimedia skills
1. 1.

67.8%
60.7% 57.4%

News judgment Working under pressure

Online Top 5
1. 1.

Web/multimedia skills Previous professional experience

91.5% 74.6%

1.
1.

News judgment
Working under pressure

70.4%
66.2% 64.8%

1. Knowledge of mobile

Changes over time

Researchers Wenger and Owen first

began analyzing job postings in 2008 A small group of skills has been steadily growing in importance since the project began
No

skills have dropped every year suggesting that journalists are consistently being asked to do more vs. working differently

Multimedia for All

Writing for the Web

Posting to the Web

Professional use of social media

Video and photo skills

Mobile skills? Recommendation for further study

Recommendation
As journalism programs evolve their

curricula, learning objectives and outcomes should recognize the need for these newer media skills and evaluation of these skills should be incorporated into assessment plans.

Thank you!
Deb Wenger @dhwenger drwenger@olemiss.edu PPT and paper posted to ScribD