In our own image? The socialisation of journalism`s new recruits

This paper examines the role of a key group of primary refiners in the socialisation of new entrants to journalism: that is, the trainers, generally called cadet counsellors or editorial training managers. While the paper highlights the historical and structural tensions still current in the training of young journalists in Australia, it identifies the two main determining forces as technology and the increasingly virulent commercial imperative driving modern journalism. This paper also taps into continuing and current debates surrounding accreditation and professionalism. It confirms the fundamental identity crisis for trainers: should they confirm and consolidate current practice or be innovators and catalysts for change within the newsroom?

Who is the 'lovable larikan'? : an historical inquiry using biography and autobiography

Every profession has its myth that defines its self-identity and work culture. For nursing, it's Florence Nightingale; for theatre, Homer and Shakespeare; for medicine, Hippocrates. Australian journalism too, has its myth - that of the hard-working, hard-drinking, aggressive and defiant 'Lovable Larrikin'. But unlike other professions, Australian journalism's 'myth' cannot be pinned down to one historical figure. It is therefore difficult to investigate the 'real' story behind the myth. Using an open-coding analysis of biographical and autobiographical material, this paper aims to detect larrikin-like characteristics among early Australian journalists (Colonial era to, and including, the interwar period), to identify significant people and events that developed larrikinism as a specific Australian journalism identity.

Reporting in a multimedia world

The breathless pace of change in the news media renders many traditional "how to" journalism guides out of date. Here's an up-to-date essential starter kit for aspiring journalists. All the basics about the power of words and the potency of numbers. Useful tips about internet use, technology, video journalism and photography. The career path, a neglected topic, will be invaluable for those who want to know where and how to start. Reporting in a Multimedia World is highly recommended.Professor Judy McGregor, Head of Department of Communication and Journalism, Massey University, New Zealand.Every journalist must be able to conduct an interview and write snappy copy. But now journalists need broader skills as well. No matter what field they are working in many now need to be able to wield a digital recorder or take photographs, talk to camera convincingly, and create content for online delivery. Reporting in a Multimedia World offers a thorough overview of the core skills journalists need for the 21st century. The authors show how to generate story ideas, handle interviews, write for different audiences, and edit your own copy. They explain the basics of news photography and broadcast media, as well as the requirements of Internet journalism. They also look at professional issues and career strategies. Written in a lively style and with case studies and tips from experienced journalists Reporting in a Multimedia World is an ideal introduction to an exciting and demanding profession.

Conversations on convergence : insiders' views on news production in the twenty-first century

Convergence is a major topic of discussion at professional and academic journalism conferences and seminars around the world. This book presents the insights of major players and academics in the field of convergence. Here is your chance to read what the experts think about one of the most significant changes that journalism faces. It should be on the desk of all managers keen to know where the future will take us, and on the reading list of every student of journalism and media.

Online newsgathering : research and reporting for journalism

If you are a journalist of any kind, you now realize that you need to know how to find the information you need online. This book shows you how to find declassified governmental files and statistics of all kinds, outlines the use of simple and complex search engines for small and large data gathering, and provides directories of subject experts. This book is for the many journalists around the world who didn't attend a formal journalism school before going to work, those who were educated before online research became mainstream, and for any student studying journalism today. It will teach you how to use the Internet wisely, efficiently, and comprehensively so that you will always have your facts straight and fast.

Changing journalism for the likely present

Media convergence and newsroom integration have become industry buzzwords as the ideas spread through newsrooms around the world. In November 2007 Fairfax Media in Australia introduced the newsroom of the future model, as its flagship newspapers moved into a purpose-built newsroom in Sydney. News Ltd, the country’s next biggest media group, is also embracing multi-media forms of reporting. What are the implications of this development for journalism? This paper examines changes in the practice of journalism in Australia and around the world. It attempts to answer the question: How does the practice of journalism need to change to prepare not for the future, but for the likely present.

Early in November 2007 The Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian Financial Review and the Sun-Herald moved into a new building dubbed the ‘newsroom of the future’ at One Darling Island Road in Sydney’s Darling Harbour precinct. Phil McLean, at the time Fairfax Media’s group executive editor and the man in charge of the move, said three quarters of the entire process involved getting people to ‘think differently’ – that is, to modify their mindset so they could work with multi-media.

The new newsroom symbolised the culmination of a series of major changes at Fairfax. In August 2006 the traditional newspaper company, John Fairfax Ltd, changed its name to Fairfax Media to reflect its multi-platform future. In March 2007 Fairfax launched Australia’s first online-only daily publication in Queensland, brisbanetimes.com.au. In May 2007 Fairfax completed its merger with Rural Press to become the biggest media company in Australasia, with annual revenues of about $2.5 billion and market capitalisation of about $7 billion. Two months later Fairfax got even bigger when it acquired at least one radio station in all Australian capital cities plus television studios when it bought Southern Cross Broadcasting. Fairfax is expected to bid for one of the two digital television licences made available by the changes to media ownership laws promulgated in May 2007.

The aim in moving Fairfax from a print to a multi-platform company was to reach as large an audience as possible. ‘We have a total readership in print of over 4 million per day and online of over 5 million per month’, CEO David Kirk said at the time of the Rural Press merger. ‘Our brand of quality, independent, balanced journalism will serve and support more communities than ever’ (Kirk 2007). A few months earlier chairman Ron Walker had written in the company’s annual report: ‘Fairfax is evolving into a truly digital media company’ (2006: 2). Within five years Fairfax would be a significantly bigger Internet company that distributed its content ‘over more media’, Kirk wrote in the same report (2006: 5).

Kirk developed a three-pronged strategy. The first part of the strategy involved the need to ‘defend and grow our newspaper publishing businesses’ – that is, to consolidate and develop the existing newspapers, whose circulations were holding steady during the week and improving on Saturdays. The second part involved plans to ‘accelerate the revenue and earnings of our digital business’. The third part was ‘to build a digital media company for the twenty-first century’ (Fairfax annual report 2006: 3). In June 2007 Kirk appointed Tim Mannes project leader for the Fairfax Media-Rural Press integration. ‘The purpose of the integration work is to bring the two companies together and build what is truly Australasia’s leading media company’, Mannes wrote in a memo to all staff on 7 June 2007. ‘It’s vital throughout this process that we maintain continuity and momentum and protect the interests and needs of our customers’ (2007: 1).

The business model appears attractive. Kirk said Fairfax’s increased scale and diversity would mean it relied less on classified lineage advertising in major metropolitan newspapers, so it could ‘rapidly develop the best online response to changing media advertising patterns’. In the two years to 2006, online’s contribution to Fairfax’s profits had grown from 1 per cent to 14 per cent with ‘much more to come’. Online’s share of the national advertising pie had grown from 2 per cent in 2002 to 10 per cent in 2006 (Beverley 2007: 6) and had jumped to 14 per cent in 2007. Analysts said they were happy with Fairfax’s move ‘from a newspaper company to a media company’ and banks such as Credit Suisse upgraded their profits forecast (AFR 19 September 2007: 37).

Planning for the move to One Darling Island Road in Sydney’s Darling Harbour started early in 2006. Fairfax CEO David Kirk took personal responsibility. He and chairman Ron Walker visited integrated sites around the world, along with a group of editorial bosses. The favoured site was The Daily Telegraph in London, which embraced convergence from June 2006. CEO Murdoch McLennan hired a consultant from Ifra, Dr Dietmar Schantin, director of the Newsplex, to facilitate the move from mono-media to multi-media at The Telegraph. Schantin said change was less about new technologies and more about altering the established mindset. The focus must be on the audience: ‘The whole idea of audience orientation seems to be quite new for some newspapers. In the past it was more “we know what is good for our readers and so we distribute the content”.’ Newspapers were a service industry whose service was information and news, he said. Newspapers had to learn to ‘serve’ its audience with the things the audience wanted to know, on any appropriate platform. ‘We start from the audience. What they want is a very important point. That does not mean that a newspaper should just do what the audience wants. The newspaper [also] needs to stick
to its core values’ (Luft 2006, Coleman 2007: 5).

Tom Curley, CEO of the world’s biggest newsgathering organisation, Associated Press, gave an important speech to the annual Knight-Bagehot dinner in New York in November 2007. The news industry had come to a fork in the road and needed to take bold steps to secure the audiences and funding to support journalism’s essential role for both the economy and democracy, he said. Otherwise the media industry would find itself ‘on an ugly path to obscurity’. He similarly emphasised the need to serve the audience: ‘Our focus must be on becoming the very best at filling people’s 24-hour news needs. That’s a huge shift from the we-know-best, gatekeeper thinking. Sourcing, fact gathering, researching, storytelling, editing [and] packaging aren’t going away’
(Curley 2007).

Kirk appointed a ‘newsroom of the future’ committee from editorial (reporters and photographers), IT and HR. The committee initiated a study tour by editorial executives of leading integrated and converged newsrooms in the UK and the US in April 2007. This became known as the ‘Tier 1’ course and involved the editor and deputy editor of The Age, and the news editor of The Sydney Morning Herald. The Herald’s editor went to the annual conference of the World Association of Newspapers in Cape Town, South Africa in June 2007 because that event featured convergence as one of its main themes (PANPA Bulletin June 2007: 6). The committee designed a two-day awareness course for senior editorial managers, known as ‘Tier 2’, that was run in Sydney in July 2007. The ‘Tier 3’ program for all editorial staff started in August 2007 and this ‘multi-media awareness program’ continued until the end of the year. A ‘Tier 4’ course for about 10 per cent of editorial staff (about 40 journalists), where they learned a range of multi-media skills, was scheduled to start after the Beijing Olympics in 2008. The author facilitated most of the Tier 2 and 3 courses.

The Tier 3 and 4 courses have profound implications for journalism education in Australia because they represent the start of major changes to how journalists work in Australia. The process reflects evolution in newsroom practices around the world. In November 2006 Ifra, the international media research company, asked newspaper executives worldwide about their priorities for 2007. The survey attracted 240 responses from 43 countries and results appeared in January 2007. Integration, editorial convergence and cross-media strategies attracted the most attention. Four in five executives rated it one of their top priorities, and half made it their main priority in terms of allocating ‘significant’ funds (Ifra 2007: 34). Ifra repeated the survey in November 2007 and published the results in January 2008. Expanding web strategies was first on the list for 2008, just ahead of editorial convergence strategies, which topped the list in 2007. Improving video and audio content jumped 14 places, and mobile phone strategies leapt 9 places between 2007 and 2008 to be near the top of the list (Ifra 2008: 8).

Convergence's fundamental question

This paper asks the fundamental question of whether editorial managers and journalists are embracing convergence for business reasons or to do better journalism. Media organizations around the world are adopting various forms of convergence, and along the way embracing a range of business models. Several factors are influencing and driving the adoption of convergence—also known as multiple-platform publishing. Principal among them are the media's desire to reach as wide an audience as possible, consumers who want access to news in a variety of forms and times (news 24-7), and editorial managers' drive to cut costs. The availability of relatively cheap digital technology facilitates the convergence process. Many journalists believe that because that technology makes it relatively easy to convert and distribute any form of content into another, it is possible to produce new forms of storytelling and consequently do better journalism. This paper begins by defining convergence (as much as it is possible to do so) and describing the competing models. It then considers the environments that lead to easy introduction of convergence, followed by the factors that hinder it. Examples of converged media around the world are provided, and suggestions offered on how to introduce convergence. The paper concludes that successful convergence satisfies the twin aims of good journalism and good business practices.

Intersection of ideals : journalism, profits, technology and convergence

Journalism needs advertising and advertising needs journalism: advertising pays for good reporting just as good reporting attracts customers for advertising. Problems arise when the equation becomes unbalanced, such as during the recessions in the early part of the twenty-first century. This paper asks the key question of whether editorial managers and journalists are embracing convergence at this time for business reasons or to do better journalism. It begins from the perspective that media organisations around the world are adopting various forms of convergence, and along the way embracing a range of business models. Several factors are influencing and driving the adoption of convergence - also known as multiple-platform publishing. Principal among them are the media's desire to reach as wide an audience as possible, consumers who want access to news in a variety of forms and times (news 24/7), and editorial managers' drive to cut costs. The availability of relatively cheap digital technology facilitates the convergence process. Many journalists believe that because that technology makes it relatively easy to convert and distribute any form of content into another, it is possible to produce new forms of storytelling and consequently do better journalism. This paper begins by defining convergence (as much as it is possible to do so) and describing the key competing models. It then considers the environments that lead to easy introduction of convergence, followed by the factors that hinder it. Examples of converged media around the world are provided, and suggestions offered on how to introduce convergence. The paper concludes that successful convergence satisfies the twin aims of good journalism and good business practices.

Better journalism or better profits? A key convergence issue in an age of concentrated ownership

Convergence has become an accepted form of journalism at media organisations around the world. These organisations are adopting a range of business models to find ways to pay for these innovations. The main drivers behind this radical change in media production are consumers' changing media habits, cheaper digital technology, and the disruptive forces that these two drivers generate. Technology also makes possible new forms of storytelling, which potentially allows journalists the chance to do better journalism through convergence. This article focuses on the key issue of whether editorial managers and journalists are embracing convergence to save money, or to do better journalism. It begins by defining convergence (while accepting the wide variety of definitions) and describing two main models of implementation. It then considers the factors that lead to easy introduction of convergence followed by the factors that hinder its introduction. Examples are provided of converged media around the world. This article ends with a warning about the dangers for democracy of misapplied convergence in an era of increasing concentration of ownership.

The Australian class structure and Australian politics 1931 - 40

This paper presents the results of an analysis of the class structure of interwar Australia based largely on the 1933 Commonwealth census. It reviews previous analyses by academics but although contemporary journalists and political strategists. It develops an estimate of the class composition of the electorate as distinct from the general population and attempts to define the class position of voters outside of the paid workforce. It considers the question of to what extent Labor needed non-working-class votes to secure an electoral majority and how the differing social composition of the Australian states impacted on electoral outcomes and Labor strategies. It employs the method of bounds to develop some preliminary conclusions about the electoral behaviour of different social groups and concludes with some observations on the divided nature of the Australian working class and the competing strategies that parties developed in their search for an electoral majority.

The inadequacy of Western media theory in third world internal conflicts : the case of military censorship in Sri Lanka

The literature of communication and conflict is long and deep. However, it has focused primarily on cross-border conflict in the northern hemisphere. Not much academic research has been done on intra-state conflicts in general or on Asian conflicts in particular. This research on the Sri Lankan separatist conflict contributes towards filling this void.Newspaper reports in three languages on Operation Jayasikurui (1997) as well as on the capture of Elephant Pass (2000) were analyzed by trained coders with high reliability. In-depth interviews were conducted with Sri Lankan journalists and military personnel who participated in these incidents. Triangulation sources include Sri Lanka Army materials and the Sri Lanka Government Gazette.

Results clearly show that despite stringent governmental regulations, censorship had no effect on these Sri Lankan newspapers, which employed unique cultural techniques to circumvent these restrictions. Despite their apparent divergent ethnic backgrounds, all newspaper samples are consensual in their depiction of the conflict all the time while managing to set different agendas for their individual readerships. Media regulations could not impose censorship as proposed by Western theoretical constructs. Results show no correspondence between media samples and imposition of government or military policy. The press enjoyed freedom to convey war information to the public and exhibited a distinct streak of social responsibility in their watchdog instincts.Dominant Western propaganda models and theoretical perspectives do not apply to the Sri Lankan context. Understanding the cultural dimensions is essential before theorizing on media behaviour. No particular theoretical framework from the literature could be used to make inferences. One further interesting finding suggested from this research: Internal conflict within the Asian region may have its own unique theoretical perspective. The study concludes by proposing an alternative model.