Journalism students’ professional identity in the making: Implications for education and practice

Abstract

Changes in journalism spurred by technological shifts and industry restructuring have left observers questioning both the nature of the profession and what educators ought to do in order to prepare aspiring journalists. Despite attempts to rethink what it means to be a journalist and the educational experience needed to prepare students, few qualitative studies have emerged that track how learners are negotiating professional values. This article does precisely that by providing a case study of how students in an undergraduate Canadian university’s journalism program are conceptualizing the profession against the backdrop of changing practices and principles. Based on the data generated from 96 open-ended reflections, this investigation offers some important findings about the student professional identity experience within a 4-year program. More precisely, the results indicate that the ideals of ‘high modernism’ (especially those surrounding objectivity, the role of the public watchdog, and ethical practice) are being negotiated by journalists in training in important and meaningful ways.

Keywords

Ethics high modernism journalism education journalism students objectivity occupational ideology professional identity formation public service

Introduction

The journalism landscape continues to shift in ways that have educators and practitioners scrambling for understanding and looking to adapt, plan, and anticipate the future. Few could have predicted the effects the last 30 years of technological innovation and disruption would have on mainstream media companies across the globe, including thousands of jobs lost, news organizations downsized, decreasing advertising revenues, and the decline of traditional information gatekeeping roles (Anderson and Ward, 2007). In retrospect, it is easy to characterize these changes as gradual and expected; however, many of the large structural transformations that define journalism today took those working in the profession by surprise (Shirky, 2008).

Amid this chaos, journalism scholars have written extensively about ‘blowing up’ the curriculum (Claussen, 2009; Skowran, 2010), re-envisioning journalism education (Mensing, 2010; Shapiro, 2015), and articulating a holistic definition of journalism that is increasingly reflexive (Deuze, 2006; Nolan, 2008). Scholars have unpacked what they see as the problems associated with privileging vocational skill-based training at the expense of critical thinking (Clark, 2013; Skinner et al., 2001), with some even proposing new strategies for conceptualizing the notion of professionalization writ large (Nolan, 2008: 747).

A ‘stakeholder perspective’ (Hewett, 2015) that is absent in many accounts about the future of journalism education, however, is that of journalism students themselves. As Shardlow (2009) remarks, ‘there is little information about the experience of aspiring journalists across the two primary crucibles of occupational identity development – the university and the newsroom – and thus there is a limited knowledge base upon which to build research’ (p. 8). Moreover, Franklin and Mensing (2010) suggest that ‘journalism educators who understand the changing conditions faced by students and work to adapt curriculum and training experiences to better respond to those conditions will provide a valuable service not only to their students but to the profession overall’ (p. 9). We see student voices as providing a necessary baseline for appreciating how the profession is being understood, the specific areas that require further investigation, and possibilities for pedagogical interventions. This discussion thus aims to enrich the existing literature about the qualities and challenges associated with understanding journalism training in the contemporary context.

An ideology for the professional journalist

The notion of professional identity as it relates to journalism has a rich history. As Hallin (1992) reminds us, a specific ‘culture of professionalism’ was apparent from the end of World War II well up until the late 1980s. This period, which he labels ‘high modernism’ centered around a ‘social responsibility model’ and an explicit faith in the ‘unity and rationality’ of professionals and intellectuals to be expert communicators for the public. Based on the political economy of industry and Cold War politics, this time frame solidified many of the values people equate with what it means to be a journalist in our contemporary environment. It also helps explain why many journalists identify themselves more readily with the profession itself as opposed to the medium or media company that employs them (Russo, 1998).

Building on the ideas presented by Hallin (1992), Deuze (2005) operationalizes the categories which represent the essential elements of high modernism. He suggests that journalists are bound by a ‘social cement of an occupational ideology’ based on five ideal types: public service, objectivity, autonomy, immediacy, and ethics. Deuze (2005) is explicit in his use of the term ideology in reference to these categorizations (in contrast to other descriptors, such as a ’genre’, ‘profession’, and/or ‘culture’) because it refers to a process whereby journalists constantly refine and reproduce ideas about what ‘real journalism’ is and what parts of the news media at any specific time should be given explicit recognition as such (p. 445). In addition, he argues that several key disruptors (new media and multiculturalism) have recently jarred these accepted norms, potentially offering new ways of thinking about journalism.

Not only has professional identity been examined historically in the context of high modernism but also it has come to be understood to be committed to a set of readily identifiable ideals and obligations, and widely shared attitudes and dispositions (Hanitzsch, 2007). Commonalities in a professional ethos and potential areas of divergence have been explored for almost a decade by the Worlds of Journalism Study (WJS). Since its inception in 2007, this investigation has brought together 66 researchers from across the world and interviewed over 27,000 journalists (WJS, 2016). Deploying a consistent quantitative survey tool, the WJS interrogates journalists’ views on a series of issues and has generated a multitude of comparative and country-specific explorations of journalism culture and media systems globally (see, for example, Hanitzsch and Berganza, 2014; Hanitzsch and Mellado, 2011). Despite the differences sometimes manifested at national level regarding the aspects of occupational culture journalists identify with most, the WJS envisions professional identity as something that can be measured in terms of extrinsic (autonomy and outside influences) and intrinsic (understood roles, ethical frameworks, and concepts of trust) motivations.

The importance of understanding journalism professionalism from a comparative perspective has also been explored by Hallin and Mancini (2004). In their groundbreaking 2004 quantitative study of 18 countries, they formulated a conceptual framework for comparing and characterizing media systems. Professionalization in this case was conceptualized as something which could be measured by the degree of autonomy journalists have, distinct rules and norms that they accept, and their general level of public service orientation. In a follow-up to this work and as a response to their critics, they urged scholars to engage in efforts to view professionalism as not only something to be quantified but also something that should be studied via fieldwork and detailed case studies to further refine the complexity of such variables (Hallin and Mancini, 2012).

Journalism students and identity

Just as the construct of professional identity for journalists has been studied quantitatively and comparatively, so too have the views of student journalists, albeit on a more limited scale. Recognizing in this case the unique pressures that journalism students are facing as they try to develop an occupational identity amid industry upheaval, a parallel project to the WJS (2016) is attempting to map their views on the profession: Journalism Students Across the Globe. At present, several publications have emerged about the development of student professional identity in specific countries and comparatively (see, for example, Hanusch, 2013; Mellado et al., 2013).

Additionally, Stigband and Nygren (2013) have explored the state of journalism education in a comparative manner. Their investigation examines five universities in the Baltic Sea Region, from the perspectives of educators and students, in relation to motivations and common challenges of a media landscape in flux. They note despite differing demands within institutions and unique political tensions, there also tends to be a ‘convergence of perceptions of journalism independent of national context’ (Stigband and Nygren, 2013: 5). Their findings indicate, while the ideals may be the same, the significance attributed to them may be different based on the cultural heritage and social–political conditions in which the journalists are being educated (Stigband and Nygren, 2013: 121).

Finally, some survey data suggest that students still enter journalism programs carrying at least an outline picture of the professional journalist in traditional terms, with the possibility of change throughout their training. For example, in regards to the watchdog role, Australian journalists in training identify more strongly with this value as they progress in their studies (Hanusch, 2013), American students show a decrease in social responsibility motivations as time progresses (Carpenter et al., 2015), and learner attitudes toward this ideal in the United Kingdom seem not to be transformed by formal education, illustrating the same commitment to a public service role when they complete journalism programs as when they enter them (Hanna and Sanders, 2012).

Methods

In the context of the important work on the world views/ideology of journalism, the growing interest in student views, and the fact that the vast majority of studies in this area have thus far been survey based, the research team felt a case study approach guided by qualitative methods was in order. To accomplish this, we began with a broad research question: How do students form a concept of themselves as journalists throughout their undergraduate journalism degree program?

The decision to follow a case study design responds to the need for gaining rich context-dependent information about learning – from a student perspective. Case studies are detailed examinations of a single bounded phenomenon (Gerring, 2004: 341). They are well-suited for exploratory projects and are ideal for answering research questions related to the ‘how’ or ‘why’ of a specific phenomenon (Yin, 2014). Cases can be ‘critical’ in which they allow the testing of an informed theory, ‘extreme’ in which they are distinguishable because of their particularity, ‘representative/typical’ of the topic they are exploring, ‘revelatory’ in that they uncover previously inaccessible information, or ‘longitudinal’ in that they investigate changes in a topic over time (Yin, 2014).

Our case in this instance is ‘representative’, in that it investigates a ‘typical’ cohort of journalism students in a mid-size undergraduate institution in Western Canada. This study focuses on journalism students from all 4 years of a journalism degree. Students are required to contribute to the program’s flagship news publication (which has a print and online platform) as part of their coursework. They must also complete at least one 450-hour, full-time professional work experience term in the final 2 years of study. In the fall of 2014, 96 students from Years 1–4 (Year 1, N = 39; Year 2, N = 22; Year 3, N = 23; and Year, 4 N = 12) consented to share a reflection assignment with the research team. The sample of students solicited could be described as a non-probability convenience sample (Bryman and Bell, 2016). Classes were selected based on the willingness of instructors in each year of the program to integrate the research tool into the classroom without disruption. The written assignment consisted of questions about students’ definition of journalism, their identification as journalism practitioners in light of their own definitions, their perceived challenges and strengths in the practice of journalism, and their views of the journalism industry. The case had two phases of analysis.

The first phase involved a careful reading of all of the data and the development of a preliminary coding scheme to organize our findings. Our initial goal was a descriptive content analysis that focused on identifying the manifest (surface responses) and latent (underlying meanings) themes in the data (Bryman and Bell, 2016). Student responses were coded with the qualitative software Dedoose. The research team read and re-read the entire data set before determining three main parent codes – identity influences, competing definitions of journalism, and perspectives on the state of the industry – various sub-categorizations emerged as each researcher reviewed the data.

In the case of identity influences, the sub-categories were (1) experiences with friends, family, and others; (2) experiences with academic learning (professor, class, assignment, peers, program, and others); (3) industry exposure (contact with professionals, internship, jobs, and other); and (4) media exposure (general, television, print, internet, social media, websites, and others). The parent code ‘competing definitions’ was further broken down into journalistic ideals, designed to capture student views of what journalists should be in terms of character traits, skills, and employment. The sub-code ‘journalist in practice’ (i.e. students’ views of themselves) was also divided in terms of character traits, skills, and employment. Finally, under ‘perspectives on the state of the industry’, the research team coded neutral, negative, positive, and ambivalent views from students. Members of the team divided the transcripts for analysis, and all codes were cross-checked at the beginning of the process to increase inter-coder reliability; percent agreement was used to determine any inconsistencies (Bryman and Bell, 2016).

In the second phase, the research team – struck by the degree to which students were engaged with questions of objectivity, public service, and ethical practice – adopted a thematic content analysis approach again. Inspired by the work of Deuze (2005) on journalism occupational ideology (public service, objectivity, autonomy, immediacy, and ethics), the researchers saw a deeper way to answer the initial research question regarding how students form a concept of themselves as journalists. The goal in this instance was to evaluate students’ personalization of traditional professional and institutional discussions about journalism practice and values.

Deuze’s framework was selected as a coding scheme because it could be easily operationalized into broad categories that were representative of some of the areas of concerns students raised in the initial pass of the data. For coding purposes, public service was defined as references to the ‘watchdog’ function typically associated with journalism practice. Autonomy referred to students’ discussion of independence or restrictions in the practice of journalism. Under objectivity, the research team highlighted students’ discussions of unbiased and neutral reporting. Immediacy was defined as any reference to actuality and speed as constitutive elements in journalism practice. Ethics referred to discussions of legitimate professional behavior and values. Excerpts were coded at a paragraph level to show evidence of the ideal in practice. A second step during this stage involved the analysis of the data under each code to identify broad patterns or trends as is a common practice in content analysis (Bryman and Bell, 2016). Of the five themes, students were seen to be most heavily engaged in the negotiation of objectivity, ethics, and public service. Issues of autonomy and immediacy appeared less frequently in the data, even though autonomy is still seen as a condition for ethical practice among professional journalists (Markham, 2009) and an important professional competence (Laban and Kovacic, 2007). It is possible many students have not yet faced threats to their autonomy, nor deadline pressures that allow for a strong appreciation of immediacy.

Key findings

The coding scheme used for the first phase of the study can be simplified to encompass three major themes: (1) formative influences in the development of a professional identity, (2) challenges and strengths in the learning and practice of journalism, and (3) views of the future of the profession and the media industry, in general. Researchers found that students identify academic learning as the main formative influence in their development of professional identities. Media representations of journalism (i.e. pop culture) have more of an influence in the early years of the degree (while still secondary to academic learning), until students complete their internships and gain some industry exposure. In the fourth year, industry exposure becomes the second-most-cited influence behind academic learning. In terms of students’ experiences of journalism practice, respondents said they struggled with finding and contacting sources, managing timelines, and incorporating professional norms, such as objectivity. The easiest aspects of journalism practice were identified as talking to sources (a procedural concern), and the emotional ideal of feeling inspired by their stories or sources and being motivated by their ability to make a difference. Finally, students were relatively excited about their future as journalists. In the first year, this was because they saw themselves as ‘agents of change’ but by fourth year they cited ‘job prospects’ as the most frequent source of hope. Our respondents also demonstrated more excitement than negativity about new media but technology was also the largest source of pessimism throughout all four years. These results are consistent with the qualitative exploration of Blaagaard (2013) regarding how students of international journalism make room for citizen journalism ‘within an already stable idea of journalistic practices’ rather than envisioning it as a challenge (p. 1088). Furthermore, they confirm what Carpenter et al. (2015) posited regarding American students’ shift in views; that upper years students may experience a shift away from idealism to realism as they pursue their studies.

This first round of coding revealed two findings of note. The first was the salient role of academic learning in students’ professional identity development over any other external sources, such as professional journalists and media representations of journalists/journalistic practice. The second was that despite the dire warnings of the death of the industry, students were more optimistic than pessimistic about their future and its possibilities, and not overly worried about the technological shifts in the discipline. These findings were significant in helping to appreciate the powerful influence that formal academic training can play in shaping an ideology of journalism and the multifaceted ways students are imagining their futures. However, what was even most striking was the prevalence of high-modernist ideals of journalism operationalized by Deuze (2005). Consequently, the research team decided to investigate in greater detail how these ideological categorizations were being conceptualized and understood by our students.

Objectivity, ethical practice, and the public good

While study participants were never prompted to write about the specific occupational ideals associated with high modernism, our analysis shows them to be deeply engaged in the work of negotiating such ideals, especially objectivity, public service, and more broadly, ethical practice. Of the five high-modernist ideals described by Deuze (2005), objectivity is cited by students more than any other, with more than half of the 96 participants making reference to managing their voices, opinions, or experiences against the backdrop of fairness, balance, and impartiality.

Deuze (2005) describes objectivity as ‘an ideological cornerstone of journalism’, but he also acknowledges the ‘problematic status in current thinking about the impossibility of value-neutrality’ (p. 448), which explains why most journalism professional codes in North America no longer mention objectivity, instead favoring related concepts, such as fairness and impartiality (Ward, 2015). In 1996, the US-based Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) rewrote its code, replacing ‘objectivity’ with a requirement that journalists ‘seek deep truth drawn from multiple sources, including original observation’ (Black, 1998: 11). The ethical pillars found in the SPJ’s (2014) recently updated code of ethics include ‘seek truth and report it, minimize harm, act independently, and be accountable and transparent’. In Canada, the ethical pillars articulated by the Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ) (2011) include accuracy, fairness, independence, transparency, diversity, respect for sources, and accountability. Internationally, the objectivity norm is also seen to be present across multiple journalism codes. A 2002 review of codes in Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and Muslim Asia showed ‘factual, correct, and unbiased coverage’ to be an agreed upon value across continents (Hafez, 2002: 228).

Despite the move away from explicit objectivity in such codes, the occupational ideal has remained present, though deeply contested. Journalists, scholars, and educators continue to debate its place in practice and principle (Hampton, 2008; Krøvel et al., 2012; Pavlik, 2000; Ryan, 2001; Schudson, 2001; Ward, 2015).

The debate is captured in this study as well, with the majority of students wrestling with aspects of objectivity and related ideals. Simple declarative statements, such as ‘getting both sides of the story’, sharing ‘unbiased information with the world’ and ‘finding the truth’ are represented across the sample. For example, a student notes that a journalist is ‘a strong, persistent individual who is on a crusade for the truth’, while another states that journalists ‘seek the truth, they are accurate, they find the hidden important information, they read between the lines, they see beyond a basic fact’. Both responses point toward a general objectivist understanding of truth as independent from the observer, in this case the journalist.

While many reflections contain seemingly emphatic statements about truth-seeking, impartiality, and serving the public good, these declarations are often followed by statements that show student-journalists struggling to reconcile such ideals with practice. An excerpt from a third-year student captures this struggle:

A journalist, in the most refined sense of the word, is someone who seeks the truth for the sake of others. Someone who is journalistically-inclined is inquisitive, above all. In the best of cases, they would be driven and unbiased, but this does not always apply.

The same student then writes about mostly positive experiences working as an editor for the program’s news publication. The reflection then concludes with the student’s decision to avoid working as a ‘hard-hitting’ news reporter. ‘I want no part of it. At the risk of beating a dead horse, I’d much rather be able to express my own opinions in a creative manner’.

This example and others show students struggling with how objectivity connects to practice. A first-year student writes, ‘I don’t know if I like the idea of objective journalism, since it can be rather robotic. I do not see the point of it’. Another first-year student articulates the challenge of writing without bias, ‘especially if it somehow affects you and makes your blood boil or makes you feel any kind of emotion’. Yet, the same student continues, ‘even in that instance, the journalist must remain fair and strive to tell the story in a balanced way’.

Dissatisfaction with seemingly restrictive ideals surfaces not only in this case study but also in the scholarly discourse. Narrow conceptions of objectivity became popular in North American newsrooms at the beginning of the 20th century (Ward, 2015). The high-modernist view demanded the journalist’s detachment and neutrality toward facts and sources in order to serve as ‘public mediators’ of information (Ward, 2014). According to Ward (2014), the rise of digital journalism and other social factors resulted in questioning the principles of objectivity and impartiality by merging genres and styles, proposing advocacy and interpretative journalism as legitimate expressions, and challenging the power of traditional newsrooms to define newsmaking (Shirky, 2008). In this context, the discomfort that many students experience in relation to traditional objectivity may be a response to their own experience and awareness of changing professional conditions. Ward (2015) proposes a ‘pragmatic objectivity’ that invites opinions and partialities alongside context, analysis, interpretation, and even passion. While Ward (2015) is unbending about the requirement of objective methods whereby journalists subject their work to ‘the restraint of objectivity to test their claims’ (p. 328), his framework creates space for a more nuanced and complex approach.

At times, this complexity is mirrored in this study, as some students strive to connect issues of objectivity to more sophisticated ideas, such as situatedness, enculturation, and framing. For example, a first-year student writes,

One of the hardest parts of being a journalist is overcoming personal and societal biases and assumptions to get to the truth, and to then convey that truth to the public in an honorable way. So many things influence these biases, and they are so deep-[seated] that they have become second nature to us.

A third-year respondent expands on the challenge of recognizing and managing bias. The student worries about the impacts of approaching journalism from an ‘individual thought process’, especially when reporting on those differing belief systems:

This is my enculturation, and I think a trap that has negatively influenced coverage of minority groups, for example Indigenous and Muslim groups. We assert our individual thoughts about human rights within these groups when they are taught that the collective is more important than the individual.

References to ‘framing’ are also frequent in students’ broader discussion of ethical practice. Some see the framing of a story as potentially close to bias and lacking impartiality. For example, a first-year student explains that

I have found that the word journalist is not always warmly received. There is a perception of journalists as people who bring their own agenda for a story to the table when they do an interview and reframe the words of their interviewee to align with their agenda.

Another first-year student writes,

… viewing these different mediums has also made me more aware of how the news is framed, and how even today, the news still quietly but consistently marginalizes and relegates certain groups of peoples (such as minorities, aboriginal, transgender, homeless people) to a certain voice and a certain frame.

So while traditional professional claims speak to journalists being able to produce news stories that are accurate, balanced, and objective, some student participants appear to be well aware of evidence showing the pervasiveness of framing in news production (Davis and Kent, 2013).

In addition to discussing objectivity and related ideals, such as impartiality and neutrality, students in this study also spent much time delving into overall ethical practice. They define ethical practice as honest and fair professional behavior with many viewing honesty as a professional character trait. As one student writes,

I would say that their [journalists’] personality includes (having) perspective (and being) engaging, open, and most of all honest. This ensures that (what) they produce will be transparent but also involve the ‘public’.

Another student notes that ‘a journalist (is) a person who is honest to both their sources and audience regarding factual evidence or concepts’. The discussion of ethics as a character trait is in line with professional interpretations of ethical practice as a matter of ‘common-sensical character traits’ and a ‘constitutive element of professional identity’ (Markham, 2009).

Fairness is another consistent theme that underlies students’ concerns about their sources. It implies a commitment to search for and tell the truth while respecting the integrity of sources and their stories. This is well captured in the following participant’s quote: ‘The hardest part is doing the job of telling someone’s story. People trust you to tell their story right and do justice to it’. A fourth-year student expands on issues of fairness and trust:

Journalists craft interview questions that will force the interview subject beyond answering with either ‘yes’ or ‘no’. These professionals are fair to their interview subjects by not crafting questions with the sole intent of humiliation. Questions are crafted in order to reveal the personality of the interview subject and also bring about thoughtful reflections from the interviewee.

It should be noted that for these students being fair is not only about respecting a source’s story but in the words of another student, ‘to read between the lines of what someone is telling you, why they are saying this, and their motivations for divulging this information’.

The link between professionalism and ethical practice is a strong one seen across student responses. Having a sense of ethics is characterized as a sign of ‘good journalism’ or ‘professionalism’. For example, a student writes, ‘I would define a journalist as someone who does their best to not just report on or tell a story, but someone who utilizes their skills and language to ethically and purposefully create a dialogue with meaningful outcomes’. While some in the sample acknowledge that a sense of ethics seems missing in much of professional journalism, following ethical guidelines is seen as the difference between good journalism that serves the public and bad journalism that instills fear and misinforms. In this sense, students reproduce the hegemonic occupational ideology discourse that introduces ethics as a legitimizing value and a requirement of professional practice (Deuze, 2006; Laban and Kovacic, 2007). Also noticeable is the near absence of references to the cultural and historical specificity of ethical codes; an aspect of students’ responses that are in line with professional views (Markham, 2009). This may, of course, be a reflection of how they are taught.

Just as tension exists in student discussions of objectivity, it is also present in their broader discussions of ethical practice. According to some participants, an ethical practice demands a fragile and difficult balance between an impartial and critical stance, and a caring and respectful attitude toward sources and stories. Some students express concern about coming across as insensitive or disrespectful when reporting a ‘true story’. A first-year student notes,

Journalists should not be cold and uncaring; there are moments when individuals are struggling with life, and they will let the journalist into their lives. In that moment, the journalist has created a bond with the individual, and it is their job to make them feel as comfortable and open as possible, unless the journalist is purposefully going after an individual who has needs to confess and come clean about whatever it is that they have done.

Study participants are seen to be grappling with rich ethical problems that include managing strongly held opinions, framing how best to present issues they wish to report, and respecting the relationships they build with sources. Their responses show them also to be engaging directly with the idea of their journalism as public service.

Deuze (2005) proposes that the public service value encompasses the ideal that journalists are representative ‘watchdogs’ or ‘newshounds’ who play an active role in the dissemination and collection of information (p. 447). He notes that researchers can ‘find evidence of such a value by specifically examining journalists’ images of their audience, and by looking at their views on what they do and how their work may affect (intended) publics – as citizens or consumer’ (Deuze, 2005: 447). Recent work on this topic has attempted to evaluate how successful journalists are in achieving this ideal (Kalogerpoulos et al., 2014) and how this ideal varies in present-day news cycles (Eriksson and Östman, 2013).

Generally speaking, students within all years of study situated the public service ideal in the context of specific national and international events (both past and present) that they described as good examples of this value in action. They pointed to Watergate, the Ferguson riots, the Hong Kong protests, and even a personal experience of being the focus of a news story. However, as Deuze (2005) notes, the public service value is prone to one dimensionality. This was readily apparent in the student responses as many of them tend to use phrases, such as journalists need to be ‘eyes and ears of the global citizen’, ‘the voice of the public’, and offer ‘voice to the voiceless’. Despite the general positive tone, some students in the upper year of the program question the feasibility of the public service role, similar to findings in a US study that showed a decrease in social responsibility motivations among students by the end of their degree (Carpenter et al., 2015). In our study, a fourth-year respondent writes,

As far as being idealistic, I think that I am but maybe not as much as I used to be. I still strive for perfection and to some extent, I want to change the world, but, at this point in my academic and journalistic career, I understand that is unrealistic.

Students suggest a difference between traditional public service aims, and what is actually achievable, noting their practice would not always encompass public service values.

Deuze (2005) also highlights the fact that the public service ideal has changed over time. More specifically, he suggests that we are seeing a shift from the idea of journalists as ‘telling people what they need to know …’ to one in which journalists are capable of ‘amplifying the conversations society has with itself’ (p. 455). Put differently, we are moving into an environment where journalists can promote a culture of ‘doing’ as opposed to simply propagating a culture of ‘knowing’. This tension is readily apparent in the responses given by students. For example, there are those who construct a more top-down approach to the public service ideal of journalism, seeing themselves simply as a ‘check and balance’ for society that could ‘police society and culture for wrong-doings and report it to the public’ in a relatively neutral manner. Other students are more ambitious in their hopes, as this first year’s quote indicates,

I am passionate about journalism that contributes to an awareness of overarching social narratives like gender based injustices, consumerism practices, lack of funding for arts programs and living sustainably. I hope that the work I do as a journalist will help bring light to the interconnectedness of the world and help audiences understand the role they play within the greater social narratives. I hope that the stories I tell will go beyond giving audiences awareness of issues and events and mobilize a response of action.

As this statement demonstrates, journalists are indeed sometimes viewed as catalysts for change.

Finally, students also focus on a negotiation of power in the context of the public service ideal. Several participants recognize that journalists can transform the status quo via this public service ideal, evidenced by a third-year participant who writes,

Journalists are gatekeepers of the public eye. In this day and age, they decide what the public sees and what is kept out of the spotlight. This is a huge responsibility with equally huge potential for abuse. As such, if a journalist intends on having a long and significant career, they must hold themselves to a certain standard in regards to keeping the public well-informed.

Nevertheless, this position of power is not something all students are comfortable with. In fact, some fear doing more harm than good, as the following statement from a first-year student reveals: ‘The difficulty or rather fear, I face is the pressure of transcribing the story to audiences correctly. I would hate to get something wrong, mislead or misinterpret something’. The student is seemingly threatened by the broader ideological expectations associated with the public service ideal, allowing it to potentially even constrain their creativity or desire to communicate a story to the public. This could, of course, also be equated to discomfort with being new to the program as well.

In sum, this data set suggests that journalism student views are consistent with codes within the profession, and they present such standards as universal and unchanging. However, they are also shown to be struggling to connect their understandings of these principles with their emerging practices.

Discussion

As the findings above reveal, the student journalists’ reflections suggest that the professional identity of journalists is contested on many levels in different ways. For example, the public service ideal revealed a myriad of emotions as students attempted to negotiate the meaning of this concept. While it appears to be a core definer of why students entered the program in the outset, reaffirming a trend also observed by others (Carpenter et al., 2015; Hanna and Sanders, 2012; Hanusch, 2013; Stigbrand and Nygren, 2013), this ideal also invokes both hope and anxiety in its articulation. Being a watchdog is something they aspire to when seeking ways to describe journalistic practice that represents more than simply reporting the truth. However, it is not seen as realistic given the constraints they feel are offered by ethical and objective practices and not wanting to ‘get it wrong’. Students’ ambivalent experience and understanding of ethics and objectivity mirror professional discussions of these topics (Schudson, 2001; Ward, 2014, 2015). Additionally, while students’ views of the profession are largely aligned with high-modernist views, their discussion of objectivity as a professional and ethical requirement indicates a potential departure from narrow views of objectivity that characterized the industry’s approach since the beginning of the 20th century (Ward, 2014, 2015). The discomfort with a traditional view of objectivity that emphasizes detachment, neutrality, and impartiality is visible in students’ discussion of objectivity and ethics. Students acknowledge the difficulty of eliminating ‘deep-seated’ biases and maintaining detachment from stories and sources on an everyday basis, which may explain the questioning of the public service role by some senior students, also observed among American students (Carpenter et al., 2015). However, they also regard objectivity as linked to ethics, and ethical journalism as ‘good journalism’ – which might explain their difficulty in conceptualizing alternative forms of ‘good journalism’ that propose reflexivity, interpretation, and advocacy as legitimate practices.

As the introduction and literature review within this article note, there is a paucity of qualitative studies that unravel how journalism students themselves are conceptualizing professional identity against the backdrop of shifting technology, practices, principles, and industry restructuring. This investigation suggests that while it may appear the high-modernist ideals consistent with journalism identity identified by scholars like Deuze (2005) might be accepted fairly unproblematically by journalists in training, albeit with a potentially different emphasis on significance based on country of origin (Mellado et al., 2013; Stigband and Nygren, 2013), a more careful consideration of their articulations tells a different story. Within the student responses is an ongoing struggle to defend certain traditional occupational ideals to keep the perceived construct intact and to reaffirm specific components of professional identity as being right and/or wrong in the context of their everyday lived experiences. In sum, while categorizations of professional journalism identity appear rather rigid (as is the case with most ideological frameworks), in practice there are consistent efforts for those trying to learn these ideals to also contest them. Consequently, the challenge for journalism educators is to consider how best to respond pedagogically to such struggles, and the task for researchers is to further probe how professional identity associated with such ideals is developed, expressed, and negotiated.

Conclusion

This study is the first stage in a multiyear investigation of journalism students’ development of a professional identity. Its goal is a deeper understanding of trainee practitioners’ views of journalism as a profession and their own identification with – and negotiation of – a set of ideal traits often associated with journalism practice through a widespread ‘high modernist’ occupational ideology. While our findings are revealing, from a methodological perspective the study can be seen as lacking triangulation of data at this stage. The research team’s intention was to explore qualitatively some of the ways in which students reflected on their negotiation of professional practice. However, because students were all part of a journalism program and that their views were captured at a moment in time, it is impossible to determine at this stage what the real effect of their university studies have had on their views of the profession beyond what students have acknowledged in their reflections. Similarly, it is difficult to determine whether students were exposed to an occupational ideology before and/or outside the program beyond their internship. While the majority of students acknowledged academic components (the program or instructors more specifically) as the major influence in their development as journalists, social desirability and acquiescence may have had an impact on their responses. Students knew that reflections would be read by instructors indicating some potential for them to ‘perform’ certain expected roles. In addition, the across program design provided a snapshot of students’ negotiations of professional identity but did not map the development of their professional identities through time. This means that while findings indicate that students engage with and negotiate a professional discourse throughout their degree, a one time prompt cannot show in great detail the potential changes and stages involved in this negotiation or how attitudes and beliefs transform, for instance, when they enter the newsroom (as is investigated in McDevitt et al., 2002).

Despite such limitations, this study introduces an important first step in the analysis of journalism students’ development of a professional identity. This project also remains ongoing. In January 2016, the research team interviewed 13 student participants from the initial data set about their definition of professional ethics. These interviews are a response to the findings just presented, which also showed that students both adopt and personalize a high-modernist occupational ideology, particularly when it comes to ethics and objectivity. Another important avenue for future research is an investigation into faculty’s views of journalism as a profession. In our study, students acknowledged their academic experience and their teachers as the most important influence in the development of their views of journalism. While methodological restrictions prevented this study from investigating the extent to which students were exposed to a high-modernist occupational ideology through their academic learning, this prevalent academic exposure seems highly probable as many faculty members were trained in and practiced journalism during a high-modernist period. A study of faculty’s views of journalism would add to our understanding of the influence of academic teaching on students’ views of the profession. It would also allow for a more extensive discussion on the challenges of teaching ideals that may explain less and less the actual practice and challenges of contemporary journalism. Finally, a replication of the study in different journalism programs would confirm the transferability of the findings. Is such a firmly rooted high-modernist occupational ideology informing journalism students’ identity development across Canada and/or North America? What about elsewhere across the globe?

As with most studies inspired by the scholarship of teaching and learning, a key aim is to offer insights, based on empirical learner-centered data, about the sorts of issues faculty should consider to improve educating journalists of the future. In doing so, we occupy the stance of ‘reflective practitioners’, a role that requires us being ‘the actor in a drama’ on one hand, and ‘the critic who sits in the audience watching and analyzing the entire performance’ on the other (Osterman and Kottkamp, 1993: 2). The key questions our work raises in this context are how willing are journalism educators, who practiced in the high-modernist era, to embrace and teach a more fluid and responsive ethical framework? Some previous efforts have been made to think about the role of educators in this process and how making professional norms more explicitly can lead to changing what students learn about and how (see, for example, Clark, 2013); however, our study indicates more work in this area is imperative.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The research team would like to acknowledge the participation and input of Ron MacDonald in the design, data collection, and initial analysis of this project.

Funding

This research has been supported by the TransCanada Learning Innovation and Collaborative Inquiry Research Program at Mount Royal University, Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Author biographies

Amanda Williams is Adjunct Associate Professor for the School of Communication Studies at Mount Royal University in Calgary, Alberta. She teaches communication theory, research methods, and organizational communication for the Journalism, Information Design, and Public Relations programs. She has also worked as a policy analyst for the Government of Canada, and as a visiting youth researcher for the United Nations Economic and Social Commission. Her previous and current research projects include topics such as the role of metaphor in broadband policy, Massive Open On-line Courses (MOOCs), discourses of sustainability and the Alberta Oil Sands, and research literacy learning as well as student identity connected to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

Maria Victoria Guglietti is Adjunct Instructor in the School of Communication Studies at Mount Royal University, Alberta, Canada, where she teaches communication theory, research methods, and intercultural communication to journalism students. She has specialized in Aboriginal community media and new media art, postcolonial theory, visual culture, and cultural studies. Her most recent research passion is journalism education.

Sally Haney is Associate Professor in the School of Communication Studies at Mount Royal University. She is also the Managing Editor of the Calgary Journal, an online and bi-monthly news publication produced by students enrolled in the university’s journalism baccalaureate program. A former journalist with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Haney’s teaching and research interests include video and audio storytelling for the web, the impact of student-authored learning plans in the capstone environment, and most recently, professional identity among student journalists. Her work is connected to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.

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