John Russial of the University of Oregon put a provocative question to the 2010 AEJMC annual conference: does the industry actually want every journalist to have cross-platform skills? The research paper behind it, written with Arthur Santana, surveyed 210 US newspapers and tested the claim against what newsroom staff said they valued.
The test was straightforward. If role convergence were real, Russial argued, a newsroom would share a common view of which journalism skills are essential. It did not: different members of the same newsroom rated skills differently. The exception was the online staff, who work across media as a matter of routine and showed the most convergence of anyone. Video production had risen slightly, but most papers were posting a few video reports a week and the work was mostly being done by photographers.
Russial’s conclusion was that job specialisation remained the dominant organising principle, with editors prizing depth over breadth. There was movement towards cross-platform work, but concentrated in the online end of the building and less extensive than the rhetoric of the period suggested. Change was happening in newsrooms, he said, but not at internet speed.