Are journalists supposed to stay home while audiences roam? Professional implications of structural expectation regimes between Europe and the United States

Abstract

Abstract European journalism educators and practitioners seem to expect professional outcomes which are quite different from those in the United States. The 50 competencies and qualifications published as the Tartu Declaration of the European Journalism Training Association in 2006 have been compared with a list of 22 competencies and qualifications discovered in a wide-ranging review of editorial employment advertisements in the United States in 2008 and 2009. Results suggest a very narrow overlap in otherwise disparate sets of expectations. This raises questions for future research such as does this disparity impede professional migration for journalists between the two continents, and does it undermine intercultural transferability of contemporary journalism curricula. An unexpected additional finding is that, while US media rhetoric and history emphasize Constitutional first Amendment press freedom issues, only the European list accords any importance to journalists’ awareness of media’s societal role.