Archive for the ‘journalism’ Category

Life After Print: Journalists Crawl to Digital

October 25th, 2009 by AV Flox in journalism

The Media Management Center recently released a study of journalists’ attitudes in regard to digital media.

The verdict? Journalists in a cross-section of 79 newsrooms across the nation feel the transition from print to digital is too slow. Many of the nearly 3,800 responders said the shift was taking too long, with only 20 percent longing for the good old days of print. The breakdown looks like this:

  1. 12 percent are “digitals”, meaning they spend most of their time online. They are the youngest group, with an average age of 38.
  2. 11 percent want a more major shift, and could help that shift happen in their newsrooms, but they feel pessimistic about staying in the business much longer. Most of those in this segment have been in the business for at least 15 years.
  3. 50 percent feel newspapers should increase their efforts toward digital media moderately. They want an equal split between online and print work.
  4. 14 percent think that the 30 percent of time they devote to digital media during the work day is sufficient and see no reason to go further.
  5. 6 percent actively wish digital media would go away.
  6. 5 percent are leaders who have been in the business more than 20 years and who want to shift to the web completely. They’re optimistic about the change and see their career options brightly.

A careful look at the study indicates that what sets apart journalists who want to become more engaged online is not youth as much as how much time they spend online outside of work and how much knowledge they have of their audience preferences:

Previous Readership Institute research has proven the importance of customer knowledge as a first step in building media use. Real customer focus also includes acting on the results and letting customer needs drive internal decision-making. This study offers a new reason why knowing the audience is important: it helps stimulate a desire to transition to online work.

The immediacy of feedback and climate of engagement enables a journalist to understand what’s a hit and what’s a miss in real time. This motivates their engagement, which leads to more engagement and growth. It’s a positive cycle when the newsroom equips its team with the right tools and guidelines for digital interaction.

Unfortunately for most newsrooms, few are doing so. The survey revealed that more than half of the journalists working primarily in print had had no training in the to equip them for a transition to digital media. One in four journalists reported having had no training at all. Incredible.

You can read the full report here.

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  • AV Flox writes about web culture; new media’s gradual overthrow of old media; trends in social media; and the complicated entanglements people get themselves into as we venture forth into this new world where, more and more, the analog is colliding with the digital.

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