The Need of Having Journalistic Creativity in Journalism Education: A Review of the Literature on Media Creativity and Look Beyond

Abstract

AbstractThe research about journalism has been dominated by a discourse of media professionalism and a myriad of research shed light on how it affects the industry’s development, and at the same time, political ideology, career pursuit, and personal desire have also been playing a crucial role in affecting the news industry. The success of both traditional and online journalism is often measured by the degree of creativity in presenting the fact; however, a lack of focus on creativity is brought into the media education. This paper critically examines the notion of journalistic creativity in relations to the twenty-first century development of journalism. The research aims are twofold: First, to investigate what are the antecedents mentioned in the prior research that drive the news industry to achieve creativity. Second, the paper points to the limited discussion of journalistic creativity in the academia and suggests there are underlying antecedents for new media and traditional creativity: political environment, journalists’ motivations, media professionalism and company’s support and resources, etc. which might explain why journalism needs creativity in this day and age, and thus media creativity should be brought into media education in the near future.KeywordsCreativityJournalismMedia creativityMedia educationMedia professionalismNew media