Abstract
The role of the journalist has changed so much that we must think again about essential skills, says this newspaper editor
Since becoming editor of the Derby Telegraph in 2012, I regularly challenge myself with one question. What is a journalist? Years ago, it seemed straightforward. We believed that all journalists needed to have the same basic skills, whatever their particular medium. They also tended to have similar attributes and attitudes, including a belief in being know-alls and a certain disdain for commerce. Nowadays, it is not so clear.
Is a journalist someone who works for a printed product, radio or television? In which particular roles? Are photographers or videographers journalists? Or can a journalist also be someone who breaks news on social media? It's a question I think we need to answer, for how otherwise are we going to train the next generation of journalists?
While fewer careers are available in traditional print media, more are being created in unconventional arenas. Even in the traditional roles that remain, the lines are becoming more blurred. Most reporters now take it for granted that they must become multi-skilled. They take photographs and record video. They are also increasingly expected to play a commercial role. Back in the day, a reporter wrote a story, handed it to the news editor and had no knowledge of the business of newspapers. It was not unusual to see hostility towards commercial teams from the editorial side.
Today it has become second nature for journalists to give advertising leads to the commercial teams, and in some publishing centres they are incentivised to do so. It may seem an anathema to past editors, but modern ones take part in big commercial pitches alongside managing directors or senior commercial executives. Does it compromise our editorial independence? I point to the tough conversations I continue to have over my insistence that factual stories should be published.
I believe we have grown up. Editorial staff no longer swagger around as if owning a monopoly on intelligence. We care about our advertisers because they fund our titles. We care about the subjects of our stories because they are our readers. We engage with them in a way in which we should have done decades ago.
Our arrogance in the past lost us readers in the long term. They had the impression that we didn't care about them and so were left wondering why they should care about us. If only we had tried to understand our audience when we were the only game in town.
In recent times, I have found myself the centre of attention, even derision, among some in our industry for deigning to consult our readership on whether we should print certain types of story. We had one recently about an employee who had been caught looking at soft porn on his work computer. I asked our readers, through Facebook, whether they found that interesting. They didn't, so I dropped it. I was condemned among some for not having the strength of my own convictions. The truth was that I had been caught in two minds. I wasn't sure whether the indiscretion of the employee justified wrecking his life in newsprint and across the web.
I believe any editor who claims they are confident about every decision is lying. If our experience offers answers to most of the daily conundrums that come our way, it does not resolve all. If we have the potential to use a barometer of mood among our readers, why shouldn't we?
Some former journalists are so backward-looking that they give the impression of wanting to return to typewriters and carbon paper. I was around in 1984 when computers were gently placed in a side room off the main news hall because nobody believed they would be robust enough to bring out a multi-edition newspaper.
The truth is that however much we hanker after those days, they are not coming back. Neither are newsroom bullying, smoking at our desks or three-hour lunch breaks down the pub. We are in an age where communication is vastly different, so editors who want to survive in the industry have to be fleet of foot in a host of arenas.
None more so than in recruitment. I still want lively people who have a thirst for the news. But I also want them to challenge me with their ideas of how to increase audience. That may mean curation as well as creation. Interaction with the public, whichever sphere they work in, will become more important not less. People are eager to funnel their own exclusives into an information-hungry world and it is up to us to make sure we are the conduit for the best material, rather than condemn it for coming from outside the trade.
We need an intelligent attitude towards user-generated content – a much-misunderstood buzz phrase – and be a filter for the best contributions. At Derby, our picture editor, Victoria Wilcox, has created “TogsQuad”, which began as a camera club for our readers. Now it is so much more.
Not only are its monthly meetings at a local arts centre sold out, she has 400 followers on a closed Facebook page and regularly calls on them to supplement our photographic capabilities. For example, an appeal on social media will discover how many of them will be at a major city event and are prepared to send us photos. She has trained members to work to such a high standard that some have been able to make photography their careers.
New skills for next generation
TogsQuad works through social media, a form of communication that has become so important to our daily routine that I recently hired a bright young woman who specialises in it. It is possible that she will never attend a council meeting or a court case, and never need to take a shorthand note. She is an integral part of our office, coming up with quality ideas that she sees through with the purpose of engaging more than 60,000 readers. So I return to my question at the start. Is she a journalist? I think so.
But she has a problem, for the skills that she has developed are not the skills of the journalist as they have traditionally been understood. She would not, for instance, get too far with the qualification currently offered by the UK training body, the National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ), which allows young journalists to demonstrate to editors that they have the skills necessary to operate in their news organisations.
There are scores, if not hundreds, of people in her position across the country and there will be more as the media develops. The NCTJ – an organisation with which I have worked for 30 years and on whose board I now sit – is reviewing the skills that should be expected of the next generations, talking to traditional and to new media organisations and to some of the people who work for them, including my social media specialist. It found that representatives of some media platforms did not believe public affairs and shorthand to be essential. I can understand why.
In 2015, the piece of journalism I admired most was an investigation by the Sky News reporter Ian Woods, who also happens to be a good friend. Woods immersed himself in the case of Richard Glossip, a death row prison inmate in America scheduled to be executed for a crime that Woods believes he did not commit. Glossip's story had been ignored by the media across the Atlantic, but Wood's doggedness in pursuing it was the main reason for a campaign that kept him from the lethal injection.
My point is that Ian doesn't have conventional journalism qualifications. His break into our industry came through commercial radio and his bosses did not insist on him achieving 100 words per minute shorthand or having passed an exam in public affairs. Of course, he was a rarity in the 1980s, but his example is more relevant today than ever.
Put simply, there are different types of journalist depending on the demands of the individual businesses for which they work. Within a year, I would expect to need a data journalism specialist or perhaps a web page designer. I would not expect either to have the need to go to court or achieve 100 words per minute shorthand. But I think it would be incumbent upon me to give them the best training I possibly could.
I would like that to be under the umbrella of the NCTJ.
There are those who believe that the so-called traditional skills of journalism must not be diluted. They tend to take a narrow view. For example, they might say that a web designer is not a journalist. This baffles me, because some of the best journalists I have known have been those who could bring words to life through page design in printed products.
There was a time when the page one designer was seen as the editor-in-waiting, particularly in the regional press. I worked for successful editors such as Ian Dowell at the Birmingham Evening Mail and Graham Glen at the Nottingham Post. They were fine journalists who had been page designers. I often wonder where they would have fitted into today's ever changing industry. Perhaps they would have been at the forefront of adding flair to our web pages, and encouraging that skill would have been more important than teaching them shorthand.
So what are the skills that we should regard as basic? As the NCTJ discusses the different routes that could lead to the awarding of its diploma – the gold standard of journalistic training – it has found itself at the centre of controversy. Some criticism has come my way: members of the twitterati with a belief in tradition have been forthright in their opinions on the teaching of shorthand and public affairs.
But I speak as the editor-in-chief of two daily titles and two small weeklies. I liaise daily with other editors within our group and am aware of their demands. The type of journalists required for our industry differ from those of years ago.
Story-telling and accuracy are key, but so is time management. Journalists have to be multi-skilled and fast. In the old days it was circulation: today we are examined much more on audience figures. The editors know that, analyse the data and respond with the kinds of agenda that will increase our reach.
We are guided in the direction of the big hits. Our journalists need to be full of ideas as to how to exploit a story that is trending well. It is a fact that local politics stories and, in particular, health stories do not do as well as many others.
I love campaigning and my papers have won the awards to prove it. I think scrutiny is vital. But it is an arena for specialist journalists. As an editor, I do not need every trainee to be expert in public affairs, but I do need them to know a bit about everything. The important point about the changes to training is that we are trying to make it relevant to everyone who is entering the industry and not put off those who no longer need those elements once seen as must-haves.
I took my proficiency test – that rite of passage of every young reporter in those days – on a typewriter in 1986. I achieved 100 words per minute shorthand and passed an examination in public affairs.
At that time, there were no mobile phones or social media and the thought of reporters taking photographs was laughable. Our young people expect to be ready for the day-to-day work when they come into jobs whatever type of journalism they practise. It is our duty to make them ready and that is why we need to look at new agendas for training.
