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).

Perspectives on assessment practices in Australian journalism education

Claims from both educational and industry sides about what journalism students should be learning are not new, and not confined to Australia. European debates on the nexus between practical training and theoretical capacity extend to those by American journalism educators, who share concerns about how journalism schools can accommodate both theory and practice (Adam 2001; Bjork 1996; Bromley & Servaes 2006; Dickenson & Brandon 2000; O’Donnell 2001-02; Rosenbaum 2002; Ricketson 2005). These discussions merge coherently with initiatives undertaken by Australian universities to ensure graduates from any discipline are equipped with a set of measurable skills (or attributes)appropriate to the international context of higher education. The paper explores this tension through the lens of assessment in journalism education, and does so by drawing mostly upon education theory. It suggests some possible ways to cater for media industry pressure on universities to cut theory and concentrate on practice, while accounting for the educator’s responsibility to promote learning in line with graduate attributes such as the capacity to function as a global citizen, a capacity for critical evaluation, and a deep knowledge of the field of study.

Teaching narrative journalism and the APN Professional Development Program

This paper extends the familiar concept of ‘journalism-as-storytelling’ into a description of some of its practical applications in a university and industry partnership resulting in a commercial training arrangement in early 2007. It describes the APN/USQ Professional Development Program for newspaper employees (with no formal journalism qualification) and exemplifies how print journalism courses may be adapted to teach narrative writing techniques. It demonstrates how foundation skills in journalistic practice may be incorporated into an adapted teaching model, suggesting that “the basics” of narrative writing should not be thought of as discrete components of journalism education. This argument is further supported by the description of a robust pedagogical approach informed by Mezirows’ transformative learning theory for a cross-disciplinary knowledge base.

Diverse approaches : a study of Australian journalism educators' use of web-based curriculum modules for reporting cultural difference

The Reporting Diversity website provides four curriculum modules to assist journalism educators to teach students about the issues and practice of reporting on cultural difference. The researchers co-ordinated the second round of trials of these resources in 2009, which involved the participation of academics and students from five Australian universities. A further 30 academics were surveyed to gauge their level of awareness of the materials. This paper reports on the educators’ evaluation of the resources and reveals the innovative ways in which the modules are being used and adapted in different classroom settings. The researchers argue that sharing different teaching approaches to the materials through the Reporting Diversity website would assist other academics to adapt the resources for their own use.

Benchmarking journalism courses with a focus on graduate employability : case Studies from three Australian universities

Benchmarking is commonly perceived as a key part of quality assurance and enhancement, and universities have had limited success to date in benchmarking, nationally or internationally, in matters concerning teaching and learning. This is partly due to the paucity of comparable quantitative indicators. The challenges are even greater when benchmarking is at course (program) level. As part of an Australian Learning and Teaching Council fellowship (Benchmarking partnerships for graduate employability), a process was designed to enable course leaders to engage in collaborative and confidential benchmarking at course level, with a particular focus on graduate employability (or, more specifically, the assurance of graduate capability development and achievement). Among the 24 benchmarking partners were three course leaders in undergraduate journalism. This paper describes their collective experiences and some of the outcomes of the benchmarking exercise. It also highlights some of the challenges of benchmarking in a discipline where graduates may follow a range of career paths, and where technology means professional practice is evolving at a very rapid pace. Given these underpinning uncertainties, discussions around employability and appropriate graduate capabilities are best had face to face with adequate time for establishing common understandings. This has also been a focused way of building capacity and scholarly networking.

Journalism ethics : arguments and cases

Journalism Ethics : Arguments and Cases provides a framework for students of journalism and media studies to examine the role that ethical dilemmas play in determining editorial content. Ethical practice is discussed in relation to newsroom operations, the economics of the news industry, and society's expectations of the news media

Journalism ethics : arguments and cases

Situating modern ethical dilemmas in a social and historical context, this text encourages students to think critically about the theory and practice of journalism ethics. It has been fully updated in every chapter with new examples and cases taken from 'yesterday's headlines'.

Journalism education 'down under' : a tale of two paradigms

Journalism studies is currently undergoing one of the periodic renovations that is characteristic of an active and diverse community of scholars. This paper examines aspects of this renewal debate among journalism scholars by focusing on the situation in Australia and New Zealand. It argues that the debate ‘‘Down Under’’ mirrors global differences on the issues of ‘‘theory’’ and ‘‘practice’’ in journalism education and that an understanding of the key fault lines in this context can provide useful insights into the wider arguments. In Australia and New Zealand a key area of discussion is around attitudes towards the concept of professionalism in the practice, training and scholarship of journalism. These tensions are apparent in both the news media and in the academy. The contradictory positions of those who favour greater industry involvement in curriculum matters, including accreditation of courses, and those who are less sanguine about the normative influence of industry on critical scholarship are explored in relation to differing attitudes to professionalism and the political economy of news production. The paper concludes that rather than pegging the debate to an unstable definition of professionalism, journalism educators should instead focus more on journalism scholarship founded on a political economy approach.

Animal rights and media ethics in Australia: advocacy journalism?

This paper considers the role of animal rights-based Australian law in journalism studies and its connection to instruction of graduate students at a large university based in Victoria. Its case study examples illustrate and develop some of the discussions in journalism studies worldwide of the balance between ethical practice balanced against legal considerations, and whether advocacy and journalism can function together for the benefit of the public interest.

Geo-social journalism: reorienting the study of small commercial newspapers in a digital environment

This paper begins by problematizing the use of “community” to define and theorize small commercial media outlets that have geography as their primary characteristic—particularly hyper local and small traditional newspapers connected to larger media organizations in digital space. We then extend the concept of “geo-social news” to outline “geo-social journalism” as a specific form of news work currently grouped under the “community media” umbrella. Geo-social is a concept for exploring how small commercial newspapers change as media technologies evolve. It offers a framework for understanding how these news outlets and audiences connect via the notion of “sense of place”. It can also be used as a lens for theorizing their role in social flows and movements and as nodes in the global media network. The practice of “geo-social journalism”, meanwhile, has two dimensions. Firstly, journalists must engage with the land (environment/agriculture/industry), populations, histories and cultures of the places they report news. Secondly, it involves connections and understandings of the shifting constellations of global and national systems, issues and relationships of the digital era. Finally, this paper argues that by its very nature, “geo-social journalism” eschews theoretical universalizing and instead demands fine-grained analyses of the specific dynamic of each “geo-social” publication, its setting and the practices which shape it and it in turn shapes.

Tracks to advocacy: journalism studies, animal rights and Australian media law

This article considers the role of animal rights-based journalism and its connection to teaching media law and ethics to undergraduate students in an Australian university arts faculty. An anecdotal discussion of a reflective practice informing the teaching of an undergraduate course in a journalism major relates questions of ethics and law to broader considerations of the role of advocacy in and around journalism, and media practice. It is argued that animal rights-related stories have a role in training media professionals, and also in inspiring journalists to envision their own work as part of the democratic mechanisms of social and legal reform in Australia.

New Business Models And Editorial Exemption: A Study On Service Journalism Based On Ecommerce Operations

The paper presents and discusses business strategies based on the association from journalistic content to new commercial practices in digital media. We describe selected examples from Folha de S. Paulo and El País involving service guides, links and ecommerce advertisements. The employed method provides content analysis to illustrate how the search for new business models in journalism may conduct its commercial activities beyond the conventional sale of advertising and subscriptions, including a discussion on the challenges and implications of this practice. The hypothesis is demonstrated by describing operations for the sale of tickets, books, music, and films related to news features and service journalism contents. The text finally wonders and discusses how such commercial actions may affect editorial autonomy and publishing exemption.

Media, 'Madness' and Ethical Journalism

This article analyses the way newspapers and journalists sometimes fail to acknowledge and resolve some of the contentious ethical dilemmas associated with reporting news. Its focus is on not exploiting and vilifying the vulnerable, especially people with mental illness, through sensationalism and inaccurate and imprecise use of medical terminology such as "psycho ". "schizo" or "lunatic ". Because ethics is central to our understanding of professionalism, this article uses professions and professionalism as benchmarks aginst which to analyse and critique how journalists and newspapers define and report news.Sometimes journalists fail the test of good ethical practice in terms of negative. outdated and inaccurate expressions they use in the news stories they report. Likewise, regulators of news industry standards appear not to recognize and sanction such reporting. The apparent inability to resolve these ethical dilemmas creates a context conducive to tolerance for, not acceptance of. unethical news reporting.