Investment in video at newspapers not significant

There was a push for video in 2006, however that emphasis may be changing at U.S. newspapers.

Video is published only a few times a week at most U.S. newspapers, according to a recent survey published in the Newspaper Research Journal by John Russial.

The online staff is usually responsible for editing video. Online staff averaged 11 people at large-circulation sized , 5 at mid-sized, and 2 at small papers. However, it is photographers (75%) and reporters (45%) who are responsible for gathering video, and very few news leaders report using a team to produce video stories for the web, which may result in lesser quality work. Russial argues that this may mean that people with broad technical skills rather specific skills are valued at newspapers.

Publishing your journal articles online – your rights

To get one manuscript published in a top journal requires years of hard work. It involves gathering research, collecting and analyzing data and facing the peer-review process. It is a process that I appreciate to become a better researcher.

To further research, I would like to share my work beyond publication in a journal. A friend noticed that Neil Thurman published preprint versions of his work. In an email, he told me that most journals allow researchers to publish preprint versions of their articles. He said preprints are the version of the manuscript that was initially submitted to the journal without the amendments required by the peer review process.

Taylor and Francis, a publisher of many journals including Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, Communication Methods and Measures, and Mass Communication and Society, says that authors have the right to publish their preprint work on their home page or institutional Web site. Based on my reading of an author’s rights, it can also be published on another site if the information provided adjacent to the article links to the finished published journal article to the journal’s Web page.

Authors are also able to link to the finished journal article on their home page or institution’s Web page after an 18 month period following publication in Social Sciences & Humanities journals. However, the author must fully reference the publisher and link their article to the journal’s Web page. However, an individual must pay if they want access to the author’s article.

Training leaders to adapt with change

In the most recent issue of Electronic News, a journal dedicated to broadcast media research, University of Florida researcher Johanna Cleary surveyed television news directors and producers about the state of training in newsrooms in 2003 and 2004. Many news organizations rarely provide training to further their employee’s knowledge, however providing training may encourage organizational commitment and job satisfaction.

The results show that producers are unhappy with the amount and the content of training provided to them, however 62% of them said that the lack of professional training did not influence employee’s loyalty to the organization. On the other hand, the majority of news directors (69%) surveyed believed that it did influence their job satisfaction.

It should be noted that many new graduates professionally entering the field with online skills may desire additional training to keep up with the evolving field of online communication. A lack of guidance from leadership or from outside professionals may cause anxiety because of the current state of the business. Newsroom leaders and information organizations should consider reaching out to academia for guidance because many academics spend their careers monitoring changes occurring in the field of journalism.

Some newspaper bloggers don’t get blogging

Recent research conducted by Larry Daily, Lori Demo, and Mary Spillman in the Newspaper Research Journal shows that professional journalism newspaper political bloggers rarely post and do little to interact with their readers. The study showed that a quarter of bloggers did not post within the sampled week and the median number of posts were four for that time period.

The results also show that the political bloggers did little to engage their readers. The purpose of the comment is to build community, however 80% of the blog authors in the study did not post one comment, and the average number of comments received readers was one a day. In the blogging world, bloggers typically respond to their readers via comments or email.

The authors offered some advice on areas of reflection for newsrooms:

• Placing comments on a separate page increases page views, but hinders conversation
• Ask your blogger whether they are truly committed to increasing civic conversation
• Few comments means that the blogger may not understand the culture of blogosphere

The death of the business card

I was just at the National Communication Association convention this past weekend. A common occurrence that happens is that people often exchange business cards. However, I usually toss those cards in the trash when I get home because I have organizing issues.

The tossing of the cards does not mean that I do not value the connection, however I prefer to stay connected with you via Facebook, Wired Journalists, or LinkedIn. My social networking spaces act as an online rolodex. If I have a question, I will just send you an email. However, the business card seems to lose its life following the conference and I feel uncomfortable emailing you because you may not remember me because you will do as I do and toss the cards in the trash.

However, if I do feel the need to contact you following the conference. I will simply google you. It just makes my life easier. Perhaps that is just how geeks connect, and not the rest of the business world.

Dissecting and defining citizen journalist

Many people are debating the definition of a citizen journalist. I have conducted research on online citizen journalism, which you can read in a few upcoming research journal articles and a book due out later this year, Web journalism: A new form of citizenship?. My definition of an online citizen journalist is “an individual who intends to publish information meant to benefit a community.” This means citizen journalists and traditional journalists fall under the definition of a journalist. Not every person is a journalist, but any citizen can become one.

I will dissect my definition:

It is a First Amendment right to publish, and any infringement on that right goes against the ideals of the First Amendment. “Freedom to publish means freedom for all and not for some. Freedom to publish is guaranteed by the Constitution” (“Associated Press v. United States,” 1945, p.20).

Intent to publish is important because the rights of journalists must be protected as they gather information, not only after content has been published.

Information should be intended to benefit, rather than harm individuals or the public.

A community can refer to a geographic area or refer to a group of people with similar interests. The move online is proving that many people use more than geography to define themselves. The duty of the journalist is to serve people – that includes people who make up the masses and people who belong to smaller subgroups.

*Associated Press v. United States, 57 (Supreme Court of the United States 1945).

Writing a research paper

It is sometimes assumed that students and faculty know how to structure a research paper. Research papers for journals vary in length, but they usually run about 5,000 words or 28 pages in length. A paper is usually composed of six parts: Introduction, Literature Review, Method, Results, Discussion, and Conclusion. This Web page provides some nice advice addressing the purpose of each section. But it is important to understand that each section has a purpose.

Here are few tips. First, always state the purpose of your research and tell me what you are studying in the beginning, you are my guide. In the Literature Review section, focus on addressing literature related to your independent variable first and your dependent variable second. Another tip is to use the Discussion section to explain or speculate “the why” behind your results. This means you should cite research that contradicts or explains your findings, instead of just saying what you found in your results. The Conclusion section is meant for the bigger picture meaning behind your results, and if you don’t have a bigger picture, delete the Conclusion section.

A great handout on writing research papers can be found at Dr. Pamela Shoemaker’s Web site. When you get to the site, select “Typical Research Paper Organization.”

AEJMC policy on providing access to online studies

I wrote in a previous post that I was contacting organizations regarding their policy about providing access to journal articles for the public. Unless you pay, the public does not generally have access to recent journal articles for a one year period. This pay-to-read policy will also affect my ability to write about research found in a greater number of journals. AEJMC holds the copyright on Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, and Journalism Monographs. AEJMC’s Executive Director Jennifer McGill shared with me the reasons behind their policy:

“We do not allow online full-text of articles during the first year to protect our subscriptions, which cover the bulk of the cost of publishing the journals. Without that subscription income, we could not produce the journals. We do allow classroom use of any article — at no fee — to promote the use of the research. The journals (on a one-year delay) are online through commercial groups who do charge. So it would be hard to link to the articles on their sites.”

McGill says that AEJMC uses this approach to share research with professional journalists.

“For several years now, AEJMC has provided a “Research You Can Use“  section. This provides a press release and a copy of the full article for articles that the editor of the journal (Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly) believes would be useful to working journalists.”

However, the site only provides access to a PDF abstract and press release of the study. You have to contact the researcher to obtain a copy of the study. It would be more helpful for journalists and researchers if the organization posted copies of the articles on this page. The most recent set of abstracts are from Summer of 2007.

However, AEJMC has recently begun providing full access to recent Newspaper Research Journal articles, a division journal of AEJMC.

I think it would be beneficial if AEJMC leaders got together to discuss alternative/innovative ways of sharing research with professionals and non-journal reading academics in order to promote the informational value of journals beyond an audience of publishing academics.

Elite news may not be the answer

There is a debate in academia as to whether newspapers should continue to provide a diversity of content or whether they should focus their efforts on a few topic areas to survive. Democratic theory assumes that people should actively seek a diversity of information in order to make knowledgeable decisions governing their lives. The question is whether it is one publication’s role to meet those needs. And if one community publication does not exist for readers of all backgrounds, what will this mean? Entman and Herbst argue that democracy will negatively be affected if the press encourages citizens to be ignorant by tailoring information solely for the elite audiences.

However, others argue publications should cater to elites or experts because elites can gather, synthesize, and communicate information to citizens. Phil Meyer, Knight Chair in Journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, argues that newspapers should concentrate their efforts on creating quality content for well-educated audiences. He argues the quality of news has diminished because of the need to disseminate a diversity of information.

I think it is important to evaluate the potential consequences and consider the audience before making this sort of committment. A recent study published in Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly by Tewksbury, Hals, and Bibart provides some evidence to counter the argument against creating content for elite audiences. The study divides people into two categories: Selectors (people who use the internet to find information on one topic at a time) and Browsers (those who use information sites to monitor what’s happening in the world). The results show that the majority of newspaper and internet news readers sampled tend to be browsers. These type of readers prefer to scan the publication on a range of topics to be informed on current affairs, and browsers feel more politically and socially aware. Browsers may prefer to scan a publication out of habit because that is how newspapers were read in the past.

I will agree that citizens are not ideal creatures consuming all of the information presented to them, but it is in their nature to connect with other people. But what happens if a publication does not exist to unite people of varying levels of knowledge?

Entman, R.M. and S. Herbst (2001) ’Reframing Public Opinion as We Have Known It’, in W.L. Bennett and R.M. Entman (eds.) Mediated Politics. Communication in the Future of Democracy, pp. 203-25. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Tewksbury, D., M.L. Hals, and A. Bibart (2008) ‘The Efficacy of News Browsing: The Relationship of News Consumption Style to Social and Political Efficacy’, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 85(2): 257-272.

Consumption of public affairs online

People remember more public affairs and other types information from newspapers more than any other medium. However, research is unclear to what affect the presentation of information online will have on news users. The fear with the move online is that people will only read news that directly interests them, rather than news that affects the nation and the world. Cass Sunstein, University of Chicago law professor, has argued that the internet may be become an echo chamber because people will only seek information that aligns with their interests. In the past, newspapers provided cues as to what issues were considered important. In the online realm, there may be fewer cues because the vast amount of information available on a home page and because people arrive to the online publication by going through other routes than the home page such as search engines, RSS feeds, and blogs.

An interesting survey by De Waal and Shoenback in Mass Communication & Society found that online news readers were just as familiar with public affairs topics as newspaper readers. The authors suggest that people may run inadvertently accross a diversity of topics through other means such as news aggregators (e.g., Yahoo News, Google News). The authors also argue that print newspapers need to begin differianting their product from their online one, perhaps by focusing on indepth coverage of public affairs topics. Writing for two different publication types would be difficult for journalists to do the because of downsizing and lack of resources. The need to create efficient content is one reason behind the lack of variability between offline and online publication types.

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