Abstract
This twin survey of online journalism professionals and students examines their perceptions of journalism skills, duties, and concepts. Using samples of online journalists and journalism students in Hong Kong, Asia’s media hub, it attempts to offer updated insights into the changes taking place in journalism classrooms and newsrooms and uncovers the discordance between online journalism education and practice. The study finds that traditional journalistic skills remain prioritized over technical skills in online newsrooms. The findings also suggest that today’s journalism students are fairly proficient in new media skills. Therefore, journalism curricula should not forgo training students in traditional journalistic skills for computer skills.
Introduction
The gap between journalism practice and journalism education has long been a subject for debate and contention in the field. Antipathy or estrangement between journalism educators and the working press has been a hot topic for discussion. On one hand, newsrooms generally demand that journalism graduates immediately fit in with newsroom routines. Professional journalists chide journalism professors for not equipping their students with hands-on skills and practical capabilities needed for work. On the other hand, journalism educators tend to focus more on teaching broader conceptual bases than training students in specialized occupational skills. They argue that journalism education has a greater purpose than just preparing students for entry-level jobs as working journalists because journalism education must prepare graduates for a variety of media and non-media jobs as well as for graduate school.
In the last two decades, the rise of the Internet and other new media technologies has brought more profound changes to the field of journalism than ever before. This driving force has changed the way information is collected, produced, delivered, consumed, and paid for, affecting journalism practice and journalism education in almost every way imaginable. The skills that media professionals need to survive and succeed have shifted with the evolution of technologies, and today’s journalism graduates are walking into a field that is constantly changing. The mission of journalism educators is to train future journalists to develop the capability to overcome such challenges. While the industry undergoes revolutionary changes, are journalism schools moving in the same direction? Are journalism educators responding accordingly? And are they teaching the skills and concepts that keep pace with the demands of the industry? Amid the emergence and evolution of online journalism, as journalism and mass communication programs integrate online and digital components into their curricula, it is vital for educators to understand what is needed in today’s newsrooms as well as the disconnection between newsrooms and classrooms. The “practice–education” gap needs to be revisited and reinvestigated constantly, particularly in the changing new media context.
This study attempts to reexamine such a “practice–education” gap by comparing online journalists and online journalism students’ current perceptions of skills, duties, and concepts. It provides an overall report of the latest demands in the news industry and the current state of journalism education. It attempts to generate insights that journalism educators and program administrators can utilize in assessing and reforming the curriculum to meet the latest industry needs.
Literature Review
The “Practice–Education” Gap in Journalism
Journalism education has been criticized for failing to move in tandem with the real world of the newsroom for decades. 1 There are ongoing debates between media professionals and journalism educators about what is needed in newsrooms and what should be taught in classrooms. 2 It seems the only thing on which these media professionals and journalism educators agree is that something must be done to narrow the divide.
Research on the gap between journalism practice and education seemingly can never reach a definitive conclusion. In the relevant studies, 3 media professionals tend to express a general dissatisfaction with journalism graduates’ job skills and abilities, primarily with regard to their writing abilities, general knowledge, technical skills, and ability to communicate. At the same time, journalism educators have argued from their point of view that a journalism school is more than a vocational training center because it aims at preparing graduates for a wide range of media and non-media careers. 4 Numerous recent studies have also confirmed that professionals generally agree that journalism education should place more emphasis on journalistic skills and career preparation than on conceptual issues such as theory, history, and laws pertaining to journalism. 5 The educators, however, argue that the conceptual components of the curriculum are more important than the skill ones. 6
New Challenges in the Digital Age
In the last two decades, the rise of digital technologies has brought immense and penetrating changes to the field of journalism. This pressing force has changed how journalism is practiced in almost every way conceivable. The vital skills that media professionals need to possess have shifted in many ways with the evolution of technologies. Since the emergence of the Internet and other new media, researchers have investigated how practicing journalists tackle new challenges by adopting interactive, individualized, and convergent features in their news-reporting routines. 7 First, while the interactive features allow users to exchange views with others on a particular news story or even to generate news content, 8 the news industry has demanded that journalists be able to incorporate interactive elements into their job routines (e.g., blogging tools, site traffic monitoring). 9 Meanwhile, the challenges are not limited to the technical level. While journalists struggle to cope with the interactive environments, they still have to uphold traditional journalistic norms and thus face a dilemma when deciding to what extent to utilize biased, subjective, or poor-formatted content generated by users. 10 Some major media players have upheld their journalists’ news-judging (gate-keeping) role in their blogs to control the quality of user-participatory news, thus requiring that they are also proficient in online community management skills such as moderating discussion, screening, and integrating user-generated content. 11
Second, while individualized features can provide customized news content to cater to users’ needs and preferences, practicing journalists are under pressure to acquire such skills as hyperlinking, search engine optimizing, and writing summary content for the web. 12 For example, online journalists need to be able to write a news story with a non-linear and layered structure: cutting a story into smaller pieces of text (i.e., blurbs) and spreading them across various web pages or sections (i.e., page links presented with headlines, captions, and labels) to allow individualized selections. 13
Third, while the Internet’s multimodal nature offers users opportunities to consume a news story in various media forms, including texts, graphics, sound, voice, images, and movies, 14 online journalists are required to use multimedia tools and software packages such as HTML, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Soundslides, and so on to provide such content. To converge different media formats for different parts in a news story properly, they also need to master storyboarding techniques and user interface design skills. 15 In the end, they have to cope with a higher level of multitasking stress and greater time pressure than before. 16
Overall, journalists nowadays are facing tremendous digital challenges. They need to equip themselves with a wide range of new technical skills. Nonetheless, while carrying out web and multimedia duties, they are expected to maintain journalistic norms in both traditional (e.g., news judgment) and digital (e.g., online community building and management) arenas.
Gap in the Digital Age
With the onset of the digital age, research into the practice–education gap has been extended to the online context. In the past decade or so, researchers have studied the possible gaps between newsrooms and journalism classrooms in the rapidly developing new media environment. 17 The major stream of this research focuses on the perception of skill-based and conceptual needs between the two camps. In earlier years, researchers mainly focused on the media industry’s rapidly emerging demands for new multimedia skills and concepts. Compared with the early 1990s, when research found that most editors perceived writing, spelling/grammar, and knowledge of journalism ethics to be the most important skills and experience with computers and computer writing skills to be the least important for new journalists, 18 these new studies found that computer skills rose high on the list of importance, although the newsroom editors suggested these skills do not replace the foundations of journalism; the basic skills of writing, spelling, grammar, and critical thinking remain the most important. On one hand, most journalism program administrators acknowledged the necessity of integrating the latest online news technologies into their curriculum while course instructors equip themselves via continuous learning with recent new technologies 19 ; on the other hand, most journalists attributed their skill deficiency in reporting news and producing stories through multiple platforms to the lack of sufficient training in school. 20 When the research results from both sides are combined, they indicate a certain gap in terms of students’ preparedness for practicing journalism in the digital age.
While the online news media continued to develop in recent years, researchers have shifted their focus to the broad skill-based and conceptual requirements perceived by either side. Although newsroom employers, editors, and professionals, in general, believe that learning computer- or web-assisted reporting and multimedia production skills should be increasingly prioritized, the top priorities—of fundamental skills and concepts such as writing, critical thinking, time management, and team collaboration—remain unchanged. 21 Moreover, online news employers and professionals particularly stress the equal importance of both traditional and technical components in practice. 22 From the perspective of journalism program directors and educators, while technical skills such as those needed in multimedia storytelling and visual communication have become a rising priority in most of the core courses rated “important” by program directors, storytelling, news gathering, writing, and media ethics still retain their top ranks. 23 For instance, although educators mentioned teaching mobile technology as a particular necessity for next-generation journalists, they also emphasized the need to develop students’ basic news gathering, reporting, and writing skills for satisfying the expectations of mobile news readers. 24
Overall, the research findings imply that both journalism professionals and educators generally agree to strike a balance between traditional journalism and new technical skills and concepts. It is important to remain focused on the basics of solid reporting and writing skills while also teaching journalism students new technologies as they emerge.
Revealing the Gap via Direct Comparisons
While the aforementioned studies did not provide any direct comparisons for the investigation of any actual gaps, several comparative studies with direct comparisons have revealed such gaps in more detail in terms of similarities and discrepancies between the two sides. 25 For instance, Kraeplin and Criado found that TV and newspaper managers and journalism educators equally agreed on the highest importance of writing/reporting skills, news judgment, and Internet researching skills, and attributed the least importance to web language and design skills. 26 In a more recent study by Chung and her associates, both journalists and educators shared the perception that blogs can be increasingly used as constructive tools in the journalism profession as well as in its curricula. 27 The educators, however, were more critical in evaluating the efficiency of blogs.
The most recent comparative research conducted by Du and Thornburg investigated perceptions regarding a broader range of duties, concepts, and skills. 28 With regard to the duties that are most often performed, both online news professionals and educators surveyed mentioned writing or editing scripts in the top three. However, while professionals reported project management, blogging, and user interface design as their top duties, educators expected reporting and writing original stories, story combining/shortening, and multimedia authoring to be at the top of their students’ lists. As for concepts, professionals regarded multitasking, ability to learn new technologies, and attention to detail as the three most important elements, while educators considered news judgment, ability to work under pressure, and teamwork to be the most essential elements for their students. In terms of skill proficiency, both groups commonly mentioned grammar and style and news judgment as the top skills. However, the educators’ ratings regarding their students’ skills in web usage, HTML, Photoshop, video production, user interface design, information/graphic design, and staff organization were significantly lower than the average self-ratings of journalists. In all, this twin survey indicated that journalists tend to concentrate more on technical and management skills and practical concepts than educators do; however, both groups commonly emphasized the basic traditional skills of writing and news judgment.
Journalism Education in the Asian Contexts
Researchers have also studied journalism practice and journalism education in some Asian countries. 29 These studies 30 primarily focused on countries such as China, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Vietnam, and Kyrgyzstan, where news organizations are or were under state or ruling party control and have or had limited press freedom. Some studies revealed that journalism educators in these countries recognized the increasing industrial need for internationally prevalent practical skills and thus introduced to students more Westernized curricula. 31 However, other studies found that some journalism educators were ignorant of the new demands and kept on teaching propaganda theories or the ruling party’s ideology. 32 Journalism professionals in some of these countries have expressed their strong dissatisfaction with the performance of journalism graduates. It is notable, however, that these studies have not specifically addressed the “gap” issue in a digital context.
In early 2000, during the “Dot Com” upsurge, journalism programs in Hong Kong came under pressure from the demands of online news reporting and thus started to restructure their journalism curricula to include more modules for technical skills than for traditional concepts. 33 Although these schools had reserved extensive financial resources for nurturing students’ technical knowhow, there was a shortage of well-trained instructors with relevant expertise. During this same period in Singapore, as observed in the case study of “Straits Times Interactive,” 34 although most journalism programs had already equipped students with different levels of knowledge for running newspapers online, it seemed that educators had yet to amend the design of students’ assignments to increase their practical exposure, such as dealing with tightened deadlines over multiple tasks with interactive elements. 35 In India, on the other hand, while students criticized instructors for failing to provide practical demonstrations and a lack of knowledge about online and multimedia production, journalism educators blamed schools for not providing sufficient training and equipment for their students to master online and multimedia production techniques. 36
Overall, these studies suggest that in Asia, (1) in some places journalism education is still ignorant of digital demands and (2) where journalism educators are aware of digital demands, technical skills may be either over-emphasized in a curriculum to the extent that traditional conceptual training has to take a back seat or under-taught because of technically deficient instructors or a lack of up-to-date facilities and equipment.
Research Questions
It should be noted that few studies in this research line have captured journalism students’ perceived needs and evaluations of their curricula. The literature, thus far, does not contain a more detailed and broader analysis of students’ perceptions regarding journalism-related duties, concepts, and skills. Using educators as a surrogate sample or a “proxy” of students to speak for journalism education, as in most previous “gap” studies, is likely to create measurement errors. 37
Furthermore, empirical research on the practice–education gap in online journalism is rather scarce in the Asian context, which in fact accounts for about 44 percent of the world’s Internet usage, with an annual growth rate of 20 percent. 38 Overall, the state of online journalism practice and education in Asia has been overlooked by researchers. Massey’s research team noted that Asian online journalism is relatively stronger in terms of news content than in its interactive features. 39 This suggests the existence of possible differences between Western and non-Western online journalism.
Why Hong Kong?
In Asia, Hong Kong has a well-developed and vigorous media industry because of its open society and press freedom. It is a major center for broadcasting and publishing and home to many of the biggest international media players in Asia, such as The Asian Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg. As of July 2013, Hong Kong housed 53 daily newspapers and 701 periodicals, 2 domestic free TV broadcasters, 3 domestic pay TV broadcasters, 18 non-domestic TV broadcasters, 1 government-funded public broadcaster, and 4 radio broadcasters. 40 Journalism education is popular in Hong Kong, and half of its public-funded institutions, which are its leading universities, provide either a bachelor’s or a higher degree in journalism programs. As in other advanced regions of the world, Hong Kong’s journalism or media programs have begun to offer courses and training in online journalism. Thus, Hong Kong is one of the most suitable places in Asia for studying the practice–education gap in online journalism.
The present study attempts to fill the research chasm in the existing literature by extending the geographical scope of this research line to an Asian context. Certainly, it should be noted that the research findings in Hong Kong may not necessarily represent an area as large as Asia. This Hong Kong study aims to explore the practice–education gap in online journalism in Hong Kong by comparing online journalists’ and journalism students’ current perceptions of journalism-related skills, duties, and concepts. Based on previous research, this study proposes the following general research question:
Method
Development of the Questionnaire
The survey questions were developed in light of Du and Thornburg’s 2011 study. 41 The questionnaires presented to online journalism students and online journalists for rating their own skills, duties, and concepts are essentially identical except that the wording of each question was adjusted to the target sample accordingly. In addition, students were also asked to rate their perceptions of how the online journalism course imparted skills, allowed them to practice their duties, and taught them concepts, and so on. These question items, along with basic demographic questions, were administered to the students in class in the form of a fourteen-page printed questionnaire. The questionnaire was delivered to the journalists via the Internet as an online survey. 42
Samples and Procedures
The student sample was identified through a multi-stage procedure starting from the course directories published by all government-funded universities in Hong Kong. Those courses with the major learning objectives of online or digital journalism were screened and selected. As a result, five undergraduate courses offered by four local universities were identified. All the instructors for these courses were then contacted for their approval for the researchers to collect data from students enrolled in their classes. The survey was launched in March 2012. The students were invited to complete the questionnaire in class. The filled questionnaires were then collected. In all, 117 out of 152 students enrolled in the four courses responded to the survey, resulting in an overall response rate of 77.6 percent, which is excellent.
The journalist sample was obtained via a two-stage procedure. First, the Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA), as the oldest local journalists’ trade union, was contacted to send its members an e-mail message regarding the survey, along with a hyperlink to the online questionnaire. Second, the HKJA was further asked to send the same invitation message to the journalists on its Facebook contact list with a hyperlink to the online questionnaire. The Google Docs System, which provides functions of survey data collection, was used as the platform in collecting the journalist data. Data collection for the journalist sample went through three rounds of contacts to achieve a higher response rate (at one-week intervals). The data collected underwent an independent samples t test, which confirmed that the two different ways of contacting respondents resulted in very few significant differences (only two out of the fifty-three items for skills, duties, and concepts were found to be significant). This indicates that the possibility of a response bias caused by different contacting methods is of minimal concern. In all, 105 journalists out of 610 contacted responded to the survey, resulting in a response rate of 17.2 percent. This response rate, though not first rate, 43 can be regarded as reasonable considering that these journalists are very busy professionals and as acceptable considering that it is an online survey. 44
Among these 105 respondents, 34 reported to have more than one year of full-time work experience in online journalism. Their responses were used for further data analysis.
Data Analysis
First, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) with principal axis extraction and oblimin rotation was conducted for identifying factor structure. 45 The satisfactory KMO (Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin) measure of sampling adequacy of .801 and the significant Bartlett’s test of sphericity at p < .001 level verified the factorability of the data. 46 Using a minimum Eigenvalue cut-off of one, eight factors explaining 66.94 percent of total variance were extracted. The items with factor loading over .30 were reported in Table 1.
Exploratory Factor Analysis.
Note. Keys: DBusMgt = Perceived Duty Performance in Business Management; Concept = Perceptions of Concept Importance; STradWri = Perceived Skills Proficiency in Traditional Writing; DTradWri = Perceived Duty Performance in Traditional Writing; SAVRept = Perceived Skills Proficiency in Audio and Video Reporting; DStoryWk = Perceived Duty Performance in Story Work; SWebProd = Perceived Skills Proficiency in Webpage Production; DMMedia = Perceived Duty Performance in Multimedia.
As Table 1 indicates, three factors are related to skills: Perceived skill proficiency in “Audio and Video Reporting” (SAVRept), “Traditional Writing” (STradWri), and “Webpage Production” (SWebProd). Four factors are associated with duties: Perceived Duty performance in “Business Management” (DBusMgt), “Traditional Writing” (DTradWri), “Story Work” (DStoryWk), and “Multimedia” (DMMedia). The remaining factor is related to perceived importance of concepts (Concept). Table 2 shows that all factors, except for DStoryWk, reported satisfactory scale reliability (i.e., .77–.89), according to the Cronbach’s alpha test. DStoryWk is a two-item-only factor but its Cronbach’s alpha still exceeds a recommended threshold value of .60. These indicators supported that DStoryWk is a reliable measure. 47
Mean, Standard Deviation (SD), Cronbach’s Alpha, and Correlation Matrix.
Note. 1, 2, and 3: rated in 5-point scale (5 = expert, 4 = advanced, 3 = intermediate, 2 = basic; 1 = none); 4, 5, 6, and 7: rated in 10-point scale (from 10 = most performed to 1 = least performed; 8: rated in 10-point scale (from 10 = most important to 1 = least important). SAVRept = Perceived Skills Proficiency in Audio and Video Reporting; STradWri = Perceived Skills Proficiency in Traditional Writing; SWebProd = Perceived Skills Proficiency in Webpage Production; DBusMgt = Perceived Duty Performance in Business Management; DTradWri = Perceived Duty Performance in Traditional Writing; DStoryWk = Perceived Duty Performance in Story Work; DMMedia = Perceived Duty Performance in Multimedia; Concept = Perceptions of Concept Importance.
significant at the .05 level (two-tailed). **significant at the .01 level (two-tailed).
As a follow-up step, the corresponding items for each factor were averaged to form a new composite score. Thus, eight factor measures in total were established for further data analyses. The fact that the correlation test among eight factor measures shows no coefficients to be over .70 indicates adequate discriminant validity of all factors.
Second, a series of one-way repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed to determine whether there is any significant difference among the eight factor measures rated by either students or online journalists. A series of t tests was then conducted to check whether there is any significant mean difference between the two groups’ perceptions regarding the skills, duties, and concepts associated with online journalism.
Results
Respondent Profiles
Table 3 summarizes the respondents’ demographic profiles. Among the online journalists, 80 percent had worked in the journalism industry for more than three years. It is interesting to note that more than 80 percent of the student respondents are female. More than 90 percent of the online journalists identified themselves as a “reporter” or “editor.” Less than 10 percent claimed to be a “producer.” Compared with the findings in Du and Thornburg’s U.S. study, 48 which discovered that 41 percent of the newspaper journalists identified themselves as producer instead of by the traditional labels of reporter or editor, the much lower percentage of producers in Hong Kong could be an indication of a much lower level of convergence.
Profile of Respondents.
Perceptions of Skill Proficiency in Online Journalism
Table 4 indicates the differences in the perceived proficiency level of skills possessed by students and online journalists. With regard to mean ranking examined by one-way repeated measures ANOVA and its pairwise comparison, the journalists’ ratings had a non-significant difference in proficiency between traditional writing (3.54) and audio and video reporting (3.19; p = .18). But their rating for webpage production (1.85) was significantly lower than that for both traditional writing and audio and video reporting (p < .05). The students’ ratings in their proficiencies revealed the following descending order: first, audio and video reporting (3.17); second, traditional writing (2.93); third, webpage production (2.24; p < .05).
Comparison of Skill Proficiency Perceived by Students and Journalists.
Note. Factors were rated in 5-point scale (5 = expert, 4 = advanced, 3 = intermediate, 2 = basic, 1 = none). Rank was listed in accordance with the significance test (p < .05) of mean difference across factors by one-way repeated measures ANOVA and its pairwise comparison. ANOVA = analysis of variance.
significant at the .05 level (two-tailed). **significant at the .01 level (two-tailed).
In terms of group difference examined by t test, online journalists’ mean score for skill proficiency in traditional writing (3.54) was significantly higher than that of the students (2.93; t = −4.94, df = 150, p < .01). In contrast, the journalists’ mean score for webpage production (1.85) was significantly lower than that of the students (2.24; t = 2.70, df = 150, p = .01).
Perceptions of Duty Performance in Online Journalism
Table 5 indicates the differences in students’ and journalists’ perceptions of duties to be performed. With regard to the mean ranking examined by one-way repeated measures ANOVA and its pairwise comparison, journalists’ ratings in their duty performances showed the following descending order: first, shared by both traditional writing (6.29) and story work (7.21); second, shared by both business management (3.47) and multimedia (3.78; p < .05). In contrast, students’ ratings of duty performances indicated the following significant descending order: first, story work (7.65); second, shared by both traditional writing (6.92) and multimedia (6.86); third, business management (4.99).
Comparison of Duty Performance: Perceived by Students and Performed by Journalists.
Note. Items were rated in 10-point scale (10 = most performed to 1 = least performed). Rank was listed in accordance with the significance test (p < .05) of mean difference across factors by one-way repeated measures ANOVA and its pairwise comparison. ANOVA = analysis of variance.
significant at the .05 level (two-tailed). **significant at the .01 level (two-tailed).
Both groups consistently ranked story work as the top duty. Likewise, there were no significant group mean differences in this factor. However, the online journalists’ mean scores were significantly lower than the students’ corresponding scores in the following two factors (figures presented in the format of “journalists/students”): business management (3.47/4.99; t = 4.17, df = 150, p < .01) and multimedia (3.78/6.86; t = 8.92, unequal variance-adjusted df = 44.13, p < .01).
Perceptions of Concept Importance in Online Journalism
Data analyses found that there was no significant difference between the journalists and the students in terms of their perceived importance of the concepts (i.e., journalists: 8.08; students: 8.33; t = 1.03, df = 149, p = .30).
Discussion and Implications
This study is, thus far, the first empirical analysis to compare online journalism practice and education in the Asian context. It affords new insights into the “practice–education gap” discussion in the journalism field. Consistent with the main research stream, this study confirms the presence of a gap in the perceptions of professionals and learners regarding the key skills, duties, and concepts associated with online journalism.
In particular, this study reveals that there is much discordance regarding skills and duties between journalists and students in Hong Kong. A variety of duties related to multimedia work and business management are performed by journalists far less in reality than the students presume. In line with these findings, journalists are far less proficient than students in the skills of webpage production. However, journalism professionals are more proficient in the traditional writing skills than students, which is not surprising at all.
These research outcomes imply that, in Hong Kong, journalists tend to focus more on traditional backbone skills and duties such as those in writing and news judgment, but less on technical skills and duties than students. This major finding is somewhat contradictory to those of Du and Thornburg’s U.S. study, 49 in which journalists overall stressed technical skills and duties more than the students did. One possible reason for this may be that journalists in Hong Kong are relatively stronger in offering news content but are less competent in providing new media features. Insufficient human resources and time for producing online news could be the key underlying factors. 50 Another possible reason might be that journalists in Hong Kong give more importance to traditional journalistic values than their counterparts do in the United States. 51 Thus, news judgment as well as writing and reporting retain their supremacy over all other skills and duties across media platforms in Hong Kong.
Based upon the present research findings, the administrators of journalism schools in Hong Kong, and probably in other Asian countries, are urged not to directly adopt the approaches for online journalism education suggested in the Western literature. Perhaps the online journalism educators in Hong Kong should continue curricula that emphasize traditional backbone skills and duties pertaining to writing and news judgment. This does not mean, however, that journalism schools should neglect teaching new technical skills to students, as this is now an essential part of journalism training. As the findings in this study suggest that today’s journalism students are already fairly proficient in new media skills (possibly acquired from both inside the specific online journalism classroom and the pervasive digital environment), journalism curricula should not forgo training students in traditional journalistic skills for the sake of computer skills.
Limitations, Future Research, and Conclusion
The present study collected data from a Hong Kong sample of journalists and students for examining the practice–education gap in online journalism. The twin survey approach was used to ensure a direct and thorough comparison of the broader perceptions of key skills, duties, and concepts related to journalism. These methodological advantages can be regarded as successful in producing fruitful comparative results, meaningful implications, and practical recommendations.
This study obtained its journalist sample, as representative of online news professionals, via one single journalists’ association. Future studies can strive to maximize the variation and thoroughness of the sample by including other journalists’ trade unions or directly approaching media firms. It was unfortunate that, due to the very small number of online journalism instructors in Hong Kong, this study was unable to include a sample from this third group for comparative analysis. It is desirable and beneficial for future research to include in the design, if practical, course instructors’ perspectives, which may be quite different from those of students and practicing journalists.
This research field may also require more advanced statistical analyses in the near future. For example, a two-way ANOVA or even a hierarchical linear modeling analysis can be employed to explore the possibility of an interactive effect from other factors, such as media type and class size, to provide further insights. This study also recommends that researchers continue to revisit the “practice–education gap” regularly in the ever-evolving field of online journalism.
To conclude, the results of the present study indicate that traditional journalistic skills such as writing and news judgment are still more important than technical skills such as multimedia and website work in online newsrooms in Hong Kong. Hence, this study suggests that, while new media and technology components have become essential in journalism practice, online journalism educators and program administrators should not forgo journalism curricula that value traditional backbone journalistic skills.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The authors are thankful to the Hong Kong Research Grants Council for supporting this research with a General Research Fund grant.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Research Grants Council of Hong Kong (Grant/Award No. GRF242411)