Transformation of a Modern Newsroom Workforce

Abstract

Digital transformation continues to impact the news industry and news organizations are adapting accordingly through shifts in required skills and prescribed job positions of journalists. In order to examine the changing nature of the modern journalist, a case study was conducted examining the employment histories of New York City journalists (n = 3587). Social network analysis was used to better understand the career trajectories of journalists within the dataset, with a specific focus on understanding the development of new jobs for journalists in data, analytic, social, and mobile-oriented job positions. Findings demonstrate important differences between traditional employment patterns and those of employees in jobs requiring new skills and knowledge of new technology.

KEYWORDS:

• career paths
• journalists
• network histories
• news industry
• news professionals
• news transformation
• social network analysis

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Four undergraduate research assistants, Priya Ashish, Akshar Patel, Samantha Nitting, and Abhisek Vyas, helped with the collection of this information.

2 Industry codes include broadcast media, consulting, education, entertainment, finance, government, health, marketing, newspapers, nonprofits, online media, publishing, research, retail, technology, and other.

3 According to the American Society of News Editors (ASNE), there were 32,900 full-time journalists in 2015 (Doctor 2015); this sample thus captures approximately 11% of U.S. journalists based on the ASNE estimate.

4 Significant changes in degree centrality scores for individual organizations often tend to be explained in part by significant structural changes. For example, the degree centrality score of ABC News increased from 0.04 in 2012 to 0.17 in 2013. In 2012, ABC News announced an intended partnership with Univision to launch an English-language cable news channel targeted at the Hispanic population (Guthrie 2012). Fusion officially launched in 2013 with 200 new employees (Chozick 2013). This type of organizational restructuring can indeed impact year to year fluctuations in degree centrality scores.

5 Data are reflective of information current at the time of data collection (February 2016 through July 2016).

Additional information

Funding

This research was conducted with the support of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University and Rutgers University School of Communication & Information.