Shaping the Future of News Media
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SHAPING THE FUTURE OF NEWS MEDIA Carles Singla Irene Da Rocha Xavier Ramon (Eds.) Editors Carles Singla, Pompeu Fabra University Irene Da Rocha, Pompeu Fabra University Xavier Ramon, Pompeu Fabra University Scientific committee Núria Almiron, Pompeu Fabra University Aurélie Aubert, Université de Paris 8 – Vincennes Helena Meldré, Linnaeus University Andreea Mogoș, Babeș-Bolyai University Kresten Roland Johansen, Danish School of Media and Journalism Asbjørn Slot Jørgensen, Danish School of Media and Journalism English editing and proofreading Asbjørn Slot Jørgensen, Danish School of Media and Journalism ISBN: 978-84-606-9569-1 Published by: Integrated Journalism in Europe European Commission; 528057-LLP-1-2012-1-ES-ERASMUS-FEXI Layout and printing: Kit-Book servicios editoriales, S.C.P., Barcelona, 2016 CONTENTS Introduction. Teaching journalism in Europe: Technological issues at stake in news making Jacques Guyot ......................................................................7 PART I. CHALLENGES ON NEW practicES OF NEWS PRODUCTION 1. Authors’ rights: journalists, audiences and news organizations Javier Díaz Noci ............................................................27 2. Data analysis and visualisation. Theory and tools Andreea Mogoș ............................................................59 3. Let’s keep them engaged. Exploring strategies of audience participation among the most innovative journalistic initiatives in Spain Miguel Carvajal, José Alberto García-Avilés, Alicia de Lara and Félix Árias .........................................93 PART II. CHALLENGES ON JOURNALISM EDUcatiON 4. Integrated Journalism in Europe, WP4: Public Report and Recommendations Asbjørn Slot Jørgensen .................................................123 5. Broadcast-online integration and long production cycles: a senior-year experience in Journalism School Samuel Negredo, Bienvenido León and Avelino Amoedo ...................................................151 6. Computational Thinking and Journalism Education Radu Meza ..................................................................179 7. Participatory Journalism enrolls in the University Bella Palomo and María Sánchez .................................207 8. JPN, a teaching laboratorial experience on the news digital platform of Communication Studies in University of Porto Ana Isabel Reis and Helena Lima ................................. 233 9. Relationships between student interdisciplinary teams and their media industry liaisons: design thinking methodology in a university laboratory Beñat Flores, Txema Egaña and Aitor Zuberogoitia ......259 FINAL REMARKS ................................................................. 281 INTRODUCTION TEACHING JOURNALISM IN EUROPE: TECHNOLOGICAL ISSUES AT STAKE IN NEWS MAKING Jacques Guyot (Université de Paris 8 – Vincennes) For the last three years, along with our colleagues from Pompeu Fabra University, the Danish School of Media and Journalism, the University of Babes Bolyai in Cluj Napoca, the University of Linnaeus and the University Paris 8, we have been investigating within the European Project called Integrated Journalism in Europe1. Now, this international conference organized in Barcelona by Prof. Carles Singla and Dr. Irene Da Rocha is the concluding event of this project and we would like to share with all the participants our reflexions about Shaping the future of news media, a theme expressing special concern for educational issues in the field of journalism. My intervention is also a way to point out some of the problems we have met during this 3-year research programme where we have tried to assess the main issues the schools of journalism in Europe have to cope with nowadays in what is usually referred to as the age 1 All the documents and reports related to the project can be consulted on the IJIE website: http://integratedjournalism.upf.edu/ 7 Jacques Guyot of digital media. The expression “integrated journalism” that we have tried to address and analyse crystallizes the main technological change news desks do presently go through, a situation which directly questions the way to train journalists. Now, ever since the emergence of the print media in the 17th century, and all the more so during the industrial revolution, news making has always had to cope with important technical factors. During the 20th century, the introduction of ICTs in the 70s as well as the computerization of newsrooms or the development of the Internet and social networks in the 90s brought major changes in the way journalists work and considerably speeded up the part played by technology in the production and circulation of news. In this particular context, if we go back upstream to the educational institutions training future journalists, we can see that the schools of journalism are directly confronted with this changing and unsteady situation when organizing their curricula, their teaching programme. Therefore, how do schools deal with such challenges in Europe? In educational terms, what are the priorities, what is the ideal ratio between theory and practice, between polyvalence and specialization, between the fundamentals of journalism (related to social sciences and general knowledge) and technical skills? What are the specificities of journalistic practices compared to the news produced by ordinary citizens or activists in the social networks? What are the schools’ strategies to offer the best training to their students, to keep up with technological change, starting from the principle that following the pace of endless innovation processes often has a heavy cost? In other words, how do the schools of journalism take into 8 Introduction. Teaching journalism in Europe account technological change and its consequences on journalistic practices in their curricula? These are some of the issues I would like to briefly introduce in my presentation, both in an historical and socio-economic perspective; these questions will also be debated more thoroughly by the lecturers participating in the IJIE International conference. I will develop four points: 1- technique and its historical background in the field of journalism; 2- the journalist as a mythical figure; 3- the debates around journalism studies; and 4- the future of journalism studies. THE HISTOricaL BacKGROUND Historically speaking, technique has been an essential constituent of journalism practices from the very beginnings of printed press; then, later on with the arrival of electronic audiovisual media and more recently of digital media and Internet, this technological dimension quickly invested all the different stages of the production line with a variety of tools and techniques to collect information, shape and broadcast it, and used by professionals who are expected to master multimedia skills. Typically the production of news is the outcome of an industrial process, born within the development of capitalism and thus ruled by the logics of the division of labour (even if the nature of this division of labour changed with the rise of what is called the information society after the 1940s) with, on one side, the journalists, i. e. a group of people composed of intellectuals, novelists, writers (Let me mention Victor Hugo, 9 Jacques Guyot Émile Zola, Jack London, Ernest Hemingway, among others), globe-trotters or adventurers who often have another job; they are often loners working on their own, jealously guarding their independence, in short individuals belonging to the world of arts, literature and social sciences and therefore a job with no specific identity as pointed by Ruellan (1993), who talks about journalism as a profession with fuzzy frontiers, and on the other side. the technical staff, i. e. groups of highly-specialized workers in different fields of technique, with a strong professional identity – they often belong to powerful and influential trade unions- and clearly defined tasks. Even if there are few research works focusing on the real technical process of news making (Ruellan, 1993), which, by the way is more a collective work, this division determined the relationship journalists have with technique over time: from a clear separation particularly in the case of printed press – though the format of the paper and the necessities to respect the deadline imposed specific constraints on journalistic routines - towards the gradual integration of new skills when newsrooms switched to computerization, digitalization and networking. Indeed, for a long time, journalists were not directly involved into technical matters, which were in fact delegated to the “technicians” or press workers. Even though both groups are all strongly committed to the media they work for, they do not share the same values, the journalists being concerned with the content, and above all aware of their role as mediators, and the technical staff with the form 10 Introduction. Teaching journalism in Europe (rendering of the printing, quality of the live broadcast in the case of television, etc). Indeed, technique always framed – and still does – journalistic practices or routines, and the services in charge of the production process are key players in media industries. As mentioned by the head of the news desk of a French regional paper, “I have always known systems where the weight of technique was important [and] in my father’s days, the technical director was number two of the paper” (Guyot, Aubert & Zagyi, 2014). The situation changed again with the development of audiovisual journalism and when