Abstract
The changing societal context of professional journalism has brought many challenges for 21st century journalism to the forefront. The transition from a sender-oriented mass media model to an interactive network model is still in progress, but there can be little doubt that journalism will have to adapt to the new infrastructural reality in order to avoid a deepening of the current crisis in journalism. In the news industry innovation is mainly defined in terms of technology and commerce and often the cultural component is missed. However, the transition to the network model not only requires new business models and platforms, but also a new balance in the various roles of professional journalism. Although research shows changes for the better, there are no clear-cut indications that in daily practice an ambitious restructuring of the goals of journalism has yet taken place. Instead, interesting new technologies are often used for achieving traditional ends: old journalism in new digital bottles. But journalism is of central importance to contemporary society and its future cannot be left to its current producers alone. In the process of renewing the culture of journalism, education plays a central role. Students will have to learn to master the essential routines of their future profession, but next to that it becomes more important that journalism students learn to critically reflect on the future role of journalism in society. In this article the views of Ukrainian teachers on the roles of journalism are compared to those of their colleagues in other parts of Europe. It concludes that there are similarities, but also a divide.
Highlights
In most of Europe professional journalism has arrived at a crossroads
In order to compare the views of Ukrainian journalism educator on the future of the three main journalistic roles to the views of their colleagues from other European countries, we have divided Europe into five regions: North (N=317), West (N=286), South (N=349), East (N=286) and Ukraine (N=225)
This research started from the idea that professional journalism is going through a phase of structural change
Summary
In most of Europe professional journalism has arrived at a crossroads. In recent years many studies have suggested that a digital shift alone will not be enough to face the challenges. The essential question for news organizations is: can we move to digital platforms and after that continue on the old, familiar paths, or is a turn into a new direction required? These studies consider journalism as being ‘disrupted’ (Nieman Reports, 2012). It is believed that professional journalism needs to be ‘reconstructed’ (Downie and Schudson, 2010), ‘rethought’ (Peters and Broersma, 2013), ‘reinvented’ (Waisbord, 2013), ‘rebuilt’ (Anderson, 2013), ‘reconsidered’ (Alexander et al, 2016) and ‘rethought again’ (Peters and Broersma, 2017). This article will more or less follow this line of thought by outlining some major developments that paved the way for the so-called network society, how they trigger the need for rethinking the role of journalism and what the task of journalism education could be or perhaps should be
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