John Russial of the University of Oregon posed a provocative question at the AEJMC annual conference.

In a research paper, he and co-author Arthur Santana studied whether the industry wants every journalist to have cross-platform skills.

In a survey of 210 US newspapers, he found that different members of the newsrooms rated skills differently.

Russial argued that if role convergence was real, then newsrooms would share a common view of the essential journalism skills of staff.

The most role-convergence was among the online staff, who tend to work across media as a rule.

The survey also found a slight increase in the creation of video by newspapers. But most were online doing a few video reports a week.  And this was mostly done by photographers.

Russial suggested that there was movement towards cross platform work but questioned if this was as extensive as some might believe.

The study found that convergence of skills was taking place in the online parts of the newsroom, but much less elsewhere

Russial concluded that job specialisation remained the dominant organizing principle, with editors prizing depth rather than breadth.

Change, he suggested, was taking place in newsrooms but not on internet speed.

Print PDF