Modern journalism & the digital technology skill gap (Blog Group 1)

As the use of digital technology continues to rise, professional journalists face a new career crossroad: intelligently embrace tech or face irrelevancy.

As digital technology has become an ingrained part of our personal lives, the major impact that it's having on professional communication sectors such as marketing and journalism is accelerating. Journalism, in particular, is reflecting a growing employee skill set gap. The push to better align with the public's accelerated demand for content and adoption of technical online and mobile applications, is exposing lapses in journalist's abilities to keep the pace. Journalists are now faced with having to quickly learn how to leverage new technologies like Twitter and Instagram which allow faster and more immediate live event reporting and news updates.

Additionally the development and growth of networked technologies has provided more opportunities for the general public to self create and communicate news and information fostering direct competition with organizational news reporting and reflects the challenge of lessened gate keeping control over the news exercised by journalists (Zeller & Hermida, 2015) .

Figure 1. How the 21st Century Changed Journalism.

Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmFlKKOKenw&feature=youtu.be

Access to https://www.youtube.com/ required for video play.

"Practicing convergence journalism requires understanding the media technology landscape and being flexible enough to navigate it to the benefit of the news audience while adhering to the best principles of journalism" (Kolodzy, 2013).

Social platforms and mobile applications are reflective of where the communication professional's targeted audience now primarily congregates. Digital technology is much more conducive in supporting direct consumer feedback creating a tremendous influx of customer insight data; including how users are interacting with each other, what articles they're reading and the products and services they consume (Day, 2011).

Professional communicators who choose not to move beyond the traditional conventions of content collection, verification, and dissemination put both themselves and their respective organizations at risk for decreased profitability and market share. Recognizing the immediacy of online new production requires journalists to proactively bridge existing skill gaps through refined usage of digital tech, development of the critical thinking skills necessary to intelligently analyze consumer data, and working with their organizational management to address evolving business model and digital training requirements.

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References

Day, G. (2011). Closing the marketing capabilities gap. Journal of Marketing, 75(4), 183-195. doi:10.1509/jmkg.75.4.183

Kolodzy, J. (2013). Practicing convergence journalism. New York, NY: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.

NowThisWorld (2015, September 5). How the 21st Century Changed Journalism [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmFlKKOKenw&feature=youtu.be

Zeller, F., & Hermida, A. (2015). When tradition meets immediacy and interaction. the integration of social media in journalists’ everyday practices. Sur Le Journalisme - about Journalism - Sobre Jornalismo, 4(1) Retrieved from https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-01371345