Nontraditional Online News Media Seek Employees with Adaptive Expertise
Nontraditional online news sources are more likely to hire people with broad bodies of knowledge (“adaptive expertise”) while traditional news organizations more commonly seek out those with solid technical skills, according to a recent study published in Journalism & Mass Communication Educator.
Dr. Serena Carpenter, an assistant professor in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, examined over a six-month period 664 online media job postings on JournalismJobs.com to gauge whether online news media employers prefer employees with specific skill sets or with knowledge spanning several topics.
Traditional news media were still most interested in hiring new employees with “nontechnical routine expertise,” such as solid writing skills, working under deadline, editing, teamwork and communication skills, and Associated Press Style. About equally, however, they also were seeking employees with “technical routine expertise,” such as content posting and management, image editing, blogging, video editing, and social media knowledge.
Nontraditional online news media were as interested in nontechnical routine expertise as traditional news media, but less interested in routine technical expertise (perhaps because they assumed new employees already had such skills or that they could be easily taught). Instead, nontraditional online news media were significantly more interested in hiring employees with adaptive expertise, such as knowledge outside journalism/mass communication, creativity, independent and critical thinking, leadership, and problem-solving abilities.
Regardless of their preferences, the job postings for traditional and nontraditional online news sources expressed interest in employees with some expertise in both areas, suggesting that teaching specific and broad knowledge areas should each have a place in the journalism and mass communication curriculum.
The study appears in the Autumn 2009 issue of Journalism & Mass Communication Educator.
CONTACT: Serena Carpenter, Assistant Professor, Arizona State University, Serena.Carpenter [at] asu.edu.
- Download An Application of the Theory of Expertise: Teaching Broad and Skill Knowledge Areas to Prepare Journalists for Change, by Serena Carpenter, Arizona State University.
- More from Journalism and Mass Communication Educator
- More Research You Can Use
Research You Can Use is produced by a volunteer group of faculty and staff within the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC). The group selects new research from AEJMC refereed journals that may interest journalists. Journalists may use the releases for stories or for continuing education.
A PDF version of all participating articles are available for download. For a reprint, contact the person cited or Jennifer McGill, Executive Director, AEJMC, 234 Outlet Pointe Blvd., Ste. A, Columbia, SC 29210-5667, e-mail: AEJMCHQ@aol.com, telephone: (803) 798-0271. For more information about the Research You Can Use project, please contact Mich Sineath, e-mail: AEJMCpr@aol.com.
Online news is an inferior good among users, research shows
Rising income predicts a decline in online news use so well that it may exemplify what economists call ‘inferior goods,’ reports a study recently published in Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly.
Overall, the study suggests online news is perceived as ‘inferior goods’ because online news use decreases as income increases, explains Hsiang Iris Chyi, Assistant Professor, U. of Texas-Austin.
The study finds increased income predicts decreased online news use even after researchers control for: gender, age, educational levels, overall news interest, and use of newspapers, television news, and radio news. In other words, Chyi and Mengchieh Jacie Yang, U. of Texas-Austin, find higher income predicts decreased online news consumption regardless of otherwise relevant demographics and media habits.
In an interview, Chyi says the study also raises the question if consumers perceive other media, such as Internet video, MP3 players, and cameras on cell phones, as ‘inferior goods?’
In the article, Chyi and Yang explain the association between increased income and decreased on line news use fits a microeconomics theory known as ‘inferior goods.’
The authors explain consumers distinguish between perceived ‘normal’ and ‘inferior goods’ when they make routine purchasing decisions.
The authors add ‘normal goods’ are characterized by a positive relationship between higher income and increased demand. When income rises, however, the demand for ‘inferior goods’ is identified by a de facto decline in consumer demand.
The authors note the classification of ‘inferior goods’ is not necessarily linked to a product or service’s intrinsic quality. For example, Chyi and Yang explain consumers tend to buy more macaroni and cheese, Ramen noodles, potatoes, rice, and bus travel when income declines. However, these transform into ‘inferior goods’ because consumers buy less of each after incomes increase – even though the product is the same.
“Inferior goods can be useful, convenient, and profitable,’ Chyi says. Chyi adds it insightful to understand the term ‘inferior goods’ in terms of marketing decisions instead of quality. “Ramen noodles should not be marketed as steak,” Chyi says.
The authors note no previous study in mass communication or journalism has assessed the relationship between news consumption and income with the intent to distinguish between ‘normal’ and ‘inferior goods.’
The study’s findings are based on the 2004 biennial survey of media consumption by the Pew Research Center. The Pew national random sample surveyed about 3000 adults — of which about 24 percent had gone online to obtain news within the previous day. Among these persons, about half, or 616 respondents, reported the length of time they spent looking at online news the previous 24 hours (from less than five minutes to one hour or more).
So, online news use is a measure of actual news consumption.
The study provides additional information about what predicts online news use. For example, the study finds increased radio news use, news interest, and higher education levels predict increased online news consumption. Conversely, age, gender, newspaper use, television news use fail to predict online news consumption.
The authors note the findings have implications for online publishers who are considering whether to charge readers for services. The authors imply the findings suggest additional charges may not be well-received by consumers.
The authors conclude the findings additionally reveal the need to better understanding the value readers, listeners, and viewers derive from news as well as detail why some consumers perceive online news as ‘inferior goods.’ Chyi adds little is known about how young adults distinguish a high from a low quality online news provider as well as how persons under 30 make similar decisions about newspapers, magazines, radio and television news.
Chyi says the Media Economics Research Group at the U. of Texas-Austin plans future work in these areas.
CONTACT: Iris Chyi, Assistant Professor, School of Journalism, University of Texas at Austin, chyi@mail.utexas.edu, http://newmediaresearch.org; or Jacie Yang, Ph.D. Candidate, School of Journalism, University of Texas at Austin, jacieyang@gmail.com
- Download Is Online News an Inferior Good: Examining the Economic Nature of Online News among Users by Hsiang Iris Chyi and Mengchiegh Jacie Yang
- More from Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly
- More Research You Can Use
Research You Can Use is produced by a volunteer group of faculty and staff within the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC). The group selects new research from AEJMC refereed journals that may interest journalists. Journalists may use the releases for stories or for continuing education.
A PDF version of all participating articles are available for download. For a reprint, contact the person cited or Jennifer McGill, Executive Director, AEJMC, 234 Outlet Pointe Blvd., Ste. A, Columbia, SC 29210-5667, e-mail: AEJMCHQ@aol.com, telephone: (803) 798-0271. For more information about the Research You Can Use project, please contact Mich Sineath, e-mail: AEJMCpr@aol.com.
AEJMC Supports Net Neutrality
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 26, 2010
Contacts:
Carol Pardun, AEJMC President (803) 777-3244, pardunc@mailbox.sc.edu
Bill Herman, AEJMC Member and Media Law Scholar, (215) 715.3507 (mobile), billdherman@gmail.com
AEJMC Supports Net Neutrality
The Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) urges the Federal Communications Commission to adopt rules preserving open and nondiscriminatory access to the internet.
The debate about network neutrality is complex and contentious, but we wish to address a specific myth advanced by network neutrality opponents: that this regulation would stifle innovation and create disincentives for investment in next-generation broadband networks.
The AEJMC rejects this claim.
The most important internet innovations have not come from network providers, but from creative outsiders who built their inventions on top of a neutral network. Requiring network neutrality is vital to preserve competition and investment in internet content, services, and applications.
The FCC should codify the internet openness principles that already guide the agency, and Congress and the courts should support this move. The rules would protect both consumers and innovators of content, services, and applications from unfair discrimination by internet service providers. Perhaps most importantly, these rules would help preserve and develop the internet as a key tool for communication that serves our democracy.
This statement was issued by the President of AEJMC and through the President’s Advisory Council.
Related links
- Federal Communications Commission
- Network Neutrality (Wikipedia)
- “Net Neutrality” in the news (Google)
About AEJMC
The Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication is a nonprofit, educational association of journalism and mass communication educators, students and media professionals. The Association’s mission is to advance education, foster scholarly research, cultivate better professional practice and promote the free flow of communication.
# # #
Readers of black newspapers rely on these publications for health information
Readers of black newspapers depend on black newspapers for health and cancer information rather than mainstream media, according to a recent study published in Newspaper Research Journal.
The study found that those who were classified as “black media dependent” or those who ranked a black newspaper as their first or second choice of media typically distrust health information provided by mainstream media and tend to rely heavily on black newspapers for health and cancer information.
Maria E. Len-Rios, Elisia Cohen and Charlene Caburnay examined readers of black newspapers in 24 communities to determine black newspaper use and dependency, black self-identity and media use for health and cancer information.
Their research also revealed readers spend less absolute time reading black newspapers, but they proportionally read more issues of these newspapers. In addition, as a group, younger and less educated readers depend more on black newspapers.
Len-Rios is an assistant professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Missouri, and Cohen is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Kentucky. Caburnay is an assistant professor at the health communication research laboratory in the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis.
The study was published in the winter 2010 issue of Newspaper Research Journal.
Contacts: Sandra H. Utt e-mail: nrj@newspaperresearchjournal.org or Elinor Kelley Grusin e-mail: egrusin@memphis.edu.
- Download Readers Use Black Newspapers For Health/Cancer Information by Maria Len-Rios, Elisia Cohen and Charlene Caburnay
- About Newspaper Research Journal
- About Research You Can Use
Infographics alone do not lead to better understanding of environmental health risks
Newspaper infographics alone do not increase readers’ understanding of health issues, according to a recent study published in Newspaper Research Journal.
Barbara M. Miller and Brooke Barnett examined how readers respond to news stories about health risks, specifically ones that used infographics, such as maps and captions relating to the graphic. This study suggests the inclusion of the infographic did not lead to better understanding of the environmental health risk because readers who saw the map alone or with a caption were not more fearful or more uncertain than individuals who read just the text.
The researchers found readers shown just the textual explanation were the most likely to be concerned about the health risks presented in the study.
The authors conclude that the use of attractive graphics and text in partnership can be more useful than using either by itself.
Miller is an assistant professor and Barnett is an associate professor and director of the Elon Program for Documentary Production in the School of Communication at Elon University.
The study was published in the winter 2010 issue of Newspaper Research Journal.
Contacts: Sandra H. Utt e-mail: nrj@newspaperresearchjournal.org or Elinor Kelley Grusin e-mail: egrusin@memphis.edu.
- Download Understanding of Health Risks Aided by Graphics with Text by Barbara M. Miller and Brooke Barnett
- About Newspaper Research Journal
- About Research You Can Use
Newspapers offer more depth, insight than do major online sites
While newspapers and news Web sites cover generally the same topics, newspapers offer stories with more breadth and depth than their online counterparts, according to a study published recently in Newspaper Research Journal.
Examination of five major news Web sites and a broad cross-section of U.S. daily newspapers showed that, on average, stories published in newspapers were nearly twice as long as stories posted on the news Web sites, and newspapers published twice as many stories focusing on domestic issues such as business, the environment, health and immigration.
In addition to length and topic, researcher Scott Maier looked at story authorship, geographic focus and story placement. The study analyzed the major new Web sites Yahoo! News, MSNBC.com, CNN.com, Google News and AOL News, as well as 13 newspapers of varying circulation size and location.
While the study concludes that newspapers provide more depth and coverage, Maier concludes that the study also points out some of the strengths of online news sites, such as a strong focus on popular issues and a greater emphasis on analysis and opinion.
Maier is an associate professor in the School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Oregon.
The study was published in the winter 2010 issue of Newspaper Research Journal.
Contacts: Sandra H. Utt e-mail: nrj@newspaperresearchjournal.org or Elinor Kelley Grusin e-mail: egrusin@memphis.edu.
- Download Newspapers Offer More News Than Do Major Online Sites by Scott R. Maier
- About Newspaper Research Journal
- About Research You Can Use
On the Challenges of Small Newsrooms and Mobile Communication
by Doug Fisher, University of South Carolina
COMMUNITY JOURNALISM – Small, family-owned news organizations may have the best opportunity to take advantage of the digital pathway to reach their communities, but they also may be the most endangered by it and find it the most challenging.
I’ve come to that conclusion after working last summer in the newsroom of an 18,000-circulation community daily newspaper and after years of working with other editors and publishers at individual papers or small family-owned chains.
The health of these newsrooms is important to their communities. In many instances, as case studies at the Newspapers and Community-Building symposia have shown, they are among the few institutions willing and able to stand up to the power structure. Also, as has been widely noted, they generally are suffering less economically than their big-city counterpar ts.
Studies, some presented at Community Journalism Interest Group research sessions, have shown that a significant number have a limited or no online presence. Rather than scoff at that, we should consider that it also has allowed them to bypass many of the online mistakes made by their big-city brethren.
But there also is a stark reality: Those are not newspapers hanging from the belts and in the purses of their readers. They are cell phones that are rapidly turning into complete mobile communication platforms. And they promise to forever change the communication landscape, even in the smallest of communities.
This is a fertile area for research that we hope to see more of at COMJIG: How are mobile devices being used and are they changing communication patterns in small communities as much as they appear to be in larger ones? Read more
The Future of Communication: Theory and Methodology?
By Dietram A. Scheufele, UW-Madisonb
COMMUNICATION THEORY & METHODOLOGY – Communication as a discipline has come to a crossroads. The “mass” in mass communication has morphed into different publics that generate, exchange, and use content in ways that were unimaginable just a decade ago. And these changes in how content is produced and communicated are paralleled by much more far-reaching shifts in how some cohorts in society interpret traditional notions of privacy, objectivity, and source credibility. And so far, our discipline has not done a very good job at offering answers to what have become increasingly pressing questions in various societal debates. How do social media change how we interact with one another? How does information get disseminated in a fragmented multi-channel media environment? And what does the future of (mass) communication look like?
The tricky part, of course, is that many of the answers to these questions transcend the boundaries of our discipline. This is particularly challenging for a young field, such as communication, that continues to struggle with its identity and its desire to compete on an even playing field with much larger disciplines, such as psychology and political science. And if we are not careful, we may follow these disciplines down some dead ends. A good example is the debate surrounding Republican Senator Tom Coburn’s proposal in October 2009 to prohibit the National Science Foundation from “wasting any federal research funding on political science projects.” Coburn, of course, used the label “political science” but targeted social science much more broadly. And his comments rekindled an old debate among political scientists about incremental disciplinary research versus big questions. Cornell’s Peter Katzenstein summarized this intra-disciplinary dilemma best: “Graduate students discussing their field … often speak in terms of ‘an interesting puzzle,’ a small intellectual conundrum… that tests the ingenuity of the solver, rather than the large, sloppy and unmanageable problems that occur in real life.” Read more
LIVE Chat Replay: Women in the Newsroom
A summer 2009 Newspaper Research Journal study reported that 62% of women working in newspaper newsrooms have some intention of leaving journalism, citing exhaustion, cynicism and burnout. Scott Reinardy, University of Kansas, led a discussion about these results with women still working in journalism and some who have left.
Please feel free to continue the discussion in the comments section.
Foursquare, journalism, and a sense of place
I have a confession to make. I live a secret life. By day you know me as the mild-mannered professor of journalism, helping guide young ones in the formation of their journalistic skills. But I have an alter ego.
You see, I am the mayor of Coppee Hall.
For the uninitiated, I’m talking about Foursquare, a mobile Web application that uses location-based systems to let you “check in” where you are using an application on your iPhone or similar smartphone device. If I had to compare it to something you already might know and use, it’s similar to Twitter except that rather than tweeting about what’s in your mind or what you are doing, it’s simply a status message about where you are.
My goal for this post is to sketch out some ideas in hopes that you’ll add yours at the end of it. I’ve been fooling around with Foursquare the past couple weeks after Mashable recently noted it was the social media offering worth watching in 2010. After using it for a while, I am seeing some of the huge potential it offers both fans of social media and journalists. And I see a lot of potential for it in terms of journalism education, as it offers a new way to tell stories and add to the record.
In fact, the designers have made it such that your check-ins via the Foursquare app can be linked to other social media you already use, such as Facebook or Twitter. When you check in, the application generates a boilerplate status message that tells people where you’re at. On Facebook, it adds a little Google map so you can see the location visually.
Checking in is about as easy as could be. When I load the Foursquare app on my iPhone, the applications triangulates my approximate location via cell phone towers and then suggests places to check in that are nearby. When I got to work today, for example, it suggested the University, several buildings on campus, and a bunch of local businesses.
To check in, you simply select one of the locations, press a button, and it’s recorded. My check-ins can be seen by friends of mine I am linked to (when you sign up, it gives you the option of adding friends similar to Facebook by searching e-mail addresses, Twitter friends, or Facebook friends). If I link it to my other social media accounts, that check-in will be viewable there as well.
People ask me (OK, well, my wife asks me) why in the world a service like this would be useful. And on the surface it seems kind of silly. Nobody really cares where I am at the moment, and there doesn’t seem to be anything useful about this kind of thing to folks who cannot look beyond what they see in front of them (i.e. an “I’m at Coppee Hall” status message on Facebook).
Truthfully, the designers probably saw the same thing in terms of burnout potential, which is why they created badges. You earn these things by doing something, or sometimes a lot of something. The first badge you earn is for your first check-in. To date I’ve earned other badges for 10 check-ins at different venues, 30-check-in updates in a month, and one for being at a place three times in one week. You can earn a “Gym Rat” badge for going to work out a lot or other less charitably-named badges for going to your local watering hole a bit too often.
The badges aren’t worth anything per se, but they tap into that need to collect things that my generation tends to have, something my colleague Bob Britten explained so well on his blog. This is how my generation is wired to play games, so the badges have some type of intrinsic value. And they also are a type of status symbol; wouldn’t it feel good to be known via your badges as someone who works out a lot?
The mayorships are part of that as well. I wasn’t kidding when I said I was mayor of Coppee Hall, the building where I work. You earn this title by checking in at a location more times than anyone else in the past two months (provided you have a photo uploaded to your profile). Right now I’m mayor of three locations, including my local CVS pharmacy. Yup, I’m a big shot.
Being mayor is one of the more fun things about Foursquare, and people do guard the title with their life. My friend Jen who was a fellow grad student at MU got into an interesting conversation with a few of us on Facebook concerning Foursquare and said she is obsessive about her mayorships. Using the application’s “Shout” feature, she even sends out a blast to her constituents telling them hello every time she checks in to her favorite fiefdom (the local library), and that message gets posted on the venue page and via Twitter (if anyone’s listening).
A Foursquare check-in has about the same kind of value or power as an individual tweet, which is to say very little. As with most things that are forward-thinking about social media, the power is not in the individual message but the sum of messages in aggregate. So beyond being mayor and earning badges, what is Foursquare good for? There are two big things that stand out to me: business potential and journalism potential.
The business one, we’re starting to see that more. Businesses are seeing the value of being listed. Every time I check in at a venue I am in a sense advertising their existence to my social network; that’s credibility and advertising you can’t buy. So good businesses figure out ways to reward people by offering discounts for check-ins or free food for their mayor. There’s a good deal of logic here. More check-ins means more social advertising.
But the business end also has some cool other features. When I check in to some place, I can add a tip (pictured) about the location. At a restaurant, I added a tip about a particular dish I like. At work, I put on there to be ready to walk up hill, which Lehigh U folks obviously know but a visitor might not. It’s a really cool way to socially share local knowledge about a place, but all that knowledge is user-driven to the degree that people using Foursquare make use of it.
While you can see these tips on the venue’s page, you also can surf for local tips aggregated regardless of venue based on your current location. So when I load the app and my location gets triangulated, I can click on the tips menu at the bottom and it will aggregate tips for any place near me, regardless of location. It’s a really useful feature if I was, for example, in a random place and looking for a new place to eat that I hadn’t tried before.
I say it all the time, but one of the great things about media is serendipity, the process of coming across things you wouldn’t expect to find. Aggregated tips based on where we are is serendipity at work, allowing me to explore my neighborhood or current location in more interesting ways.
OK, so it’s good for business, and good for those of us who want to discover things in our city or neighborhood that we don’t know about. By itself, that is super useful because it acts as a type of location-based wiki where users add to the record about a place and help us define that space with a little more context. This is what I mean by Foursquare, like Twitter before it, being more than the sum of an individual check-in. Sure, nobody cares that I’m at CVS, but there is value in me adding tips that the lines seem especially long during certain times of the day.
That’s where the journalist’s role comes in. Foursquare is a platform full of journalistic potential because adding information to the record is what we do. Did a local business fail a health inspection recently? Right now we put that in the newspaper, which people are reading less, or on a Web site, where people don’t know how to find it among mountains of information. There is value in journalists adding news and verified information to the record (including links for more information) that would enhance a person’s knowledge and ability to experience (or avoid) a place.
So journalists can add tips, but they can also be part of projects mapping out the community in general. One of the nice things about Foursquare is that you can add venues if the one you’re at isn’t on the check-in screen. The app makes use of Google maps and you can type in what you’re searching for to get its suggestions, but sometimes you just have to enter the name and address of the business. This would be a wonderful role for the journalist, to help map out our communities and provide some of those tips and details along the way that help add to the narrative. Everything on Foursquare is, in the end, driven by its users.
At its best, news provides us with a sense of place about our surroundings by telling us things about the places we live that we might otherwise might not know about. For someone like me who is living in a new home and city, Foursquare has been an interesting way to explore my own neighborhood. When I am at home I can see all the businesses and places I didn’t know about because it doesn’t fall along my usual driving or walking patterns. When there is information that is value-added by professional journalists or citizen journalists, I get to know my community better.
I am working on ways to get something Foursquare-like into the classroom, maybe not this term but next fall. If we were to treat the app as a wiki platform, my simple idea would be to award points for value-added information. The goal would be to map different sections of our community over the semester, adding as much detail and information as possible.
There is value in this stuff. It might not win us a Pulitzer, but it would add to the larger community narrative and help us better understand our surroundings amidst a busy, busy world. In the end, that’s a big part of the job.
How do you see yourself using Foursquare in a journalistic fashion?
*This article first appeared on the author’s website at http://www.jlittau.net/, and was re-posted with the author’s permission.
Jeremy Littau has almost 10 years of experience in journalism after working at newspapers of different sizes, specializing in editing and writing both in print and online. He got his start at the Daily Democrat in Woodland, CA, and did the typical “move up the ladder” part of his career, landing at the Los Angeles Daily News in 2000. He spent four years at the Daily News before returning to school at Missouri. He earned his M.A. in journalism from Missouri in 2007 and his PhD in journalism from Missouri in 2009.
Jeremy has extensive experience researching new media trends in journalism and is the author of several publications on the subject, specializing in multiplatform storytelling that makes use of audience conversation in the news process. He is available for research and training seminars both within the academic environment as well as within newsrooms.
