Journalism Training

Media in much of sub-Saharan Africa are severely constrained by lack of resources, government pressure, the influence of media ownership, and the quality of secondary education and professional education. In many countries, newspapers are unable to perform the role of watchdog or to educate the public effectively, in part because of difficulties faced by their journalists. Into the breach have stepped myriad foreign, journalism training organizations. Some are non-governmental organizations with a development agenda that seek to promote education about their causes. Others are training arms of professional media groups or organizations that work on journalism education. As with most foreign donor-funded development programs, evidence of impact is expected. But very little academic research exists on evaluation of journalism training programs. Two new studies deployed content analysis and interviews with trained journalists to assess training's effectiveness.

Charitable foundations, media organizations, government agencies and various nongovernmental organizations have invested extensively in the last 10 years in training programs aimed at emerging democracies in an effort to create a journalistic workforce that is independent, well- educated, and well-trained . Despite this growth in training activity, there has been relatively little written about it. Largely unexplored, for example, is the impact these ad hoc training initiative might have on older, more established training institutions and what the future might be in terms of the ways in which journalists are educated in these countries. This paper explores these issues within the context of an evaluation of one particular journalism training program, the Knight International Press Fellowship Program, which has operated since 1994 and has sent American journalists to serve as trainers all over the world. The paper documents structural change, particularly in the area of journalism education, resulting from the training initiative.

Media organizations are immersed in a significant process of technological, professional and business restructuring driven by multimedia convergence and the impact of social media. Regardless of their size and scope, they are becoming increasingly aware of the need to enhance their multiplatform delivery strategies and respond more closely to their audiences’ needs and interests. Professionals working for these organizations therefore must cope with, and learn to thrive in, convergent media environments that call for a high level of cooperative effort and multitasking. These requirements seem to be even higher with regard to online journalism, a sector exposed to continual technological change and oriented towards the development of content in a variety of formats. In the light of this scenario and the recent debates regarding the best way to keep journalism training up to date, this article offers a subject-based case study to examine the challenges involved in incorporating convergence and social media into journalism university curricula. By means of a mix of data methods, the study focuses on the planning, practices and ramifications of a specific course on online journalism newswriting and reporting. The conclusions provide a critical discussion of the objectives and tools used by educators in the classroom and discuss the appropriateness of courses devoted to online journalism for preparing future journalists to cope with daily newsroom challenges resulting from media convergence and social media content production.

For nearly 20 years, the majority of radio journalists in the UK have been trained on courses which both the BBC and the commercial sector have endorsed. Radio news was seen as having certain constant and essential elements – whether it was broadcast on a three-minute bulletin on a tiny independent local radio station in Scotland or on a BBC network flagship news programme. But competition now means that journalists in both sectors are operating in an increasingly market-focused culture, having to adapt to new definitions of what interests the public and what the public needs to know, and it appears that the consensus on news values may be breaking down. Using original data collected from radio news editors and radio journalism trainers in the UK, this article looks at what type of journalist will be needed in the future. It analyses the skills and knowledge required for the job and what personal qualities are deemed essential. It argues that journalism training courses are caught in the middle of a divided and fast-changing industry where long-held ideas about public service and the function of news are being challenged both internally and from new media and that their own move towards increased professionalization is adding to the confusion.

ABSTRACT A small number of programs provide training on scientific and environmental topics to early- and midcareer journalists across the globe. Yet there are questions about the effectiveness of these programs: Do they make a difference in science reporting quality or quantity? What aspects of training are most impactful? Do journalists find the training worthwhile? Using surveys, quantitative content analysis, and semistructured interviews, this study addressed these questions by exploring the process and impacts of science journalism training program on participants' reporting behavior, with a focus on how reporters use scientific information and sources, reporter confidence in reporting scientific stories, and reflections on the training experience. The empirical results reveal journalists felt training gave them more confidence and skills for science reporting, and content analyses show small positive changes in source selection, references to scientific uncertainty, and thematic framing in the year following participants' training experience. Interviews highlighted participants' opinions that interpersonal interactions with scientists are the most valuable part of the training experience.

This paper derives its impetus from the consensus today that the media play an indispensable role in democratic governance for sustained development. The media foster, most importantly, accountability, transparency, rule of law, respect for human rights, and civic participation, which are vital in securing the economic well-being of a people. Language, as the main vehicle that drives communication or journalistic imperatives to the “consumer”, thus becomes a critical factor. The focus here is on the effective and appropriate use of English (Ghana’s official language) in newspapers in Ghana. It is argued that the majority of newspapers display linguistic ineptitude, thereby weakening their capacity to package and make development-oriented messages accessible to the reader. Specifically, the majority of newspapers present news in grammatically faulty and semantically confusing constructions that blur meaning. Thus, through a comparative study of the English and English-related courses in four journalism training institutions in Ghana and the English provisions in the latest UNESCO journalism curricula for Africa (2007), the study shows that English competence appears to be taken for granted in the training institutions. This paper therefore argues for journalism education in Ghana to focus on helping trainee journalists to acquire English language competency. A more worthwhile complement will be to de-emphasise the “core” journalism or media knowledge and skills students are made to focus all their attention on in the schools and rather emphasise English use and usage. The paper suggests a reorganisation of English studies including institutional structure, curriculum and syllabus development, infrastructure, teaching, and learning methodology as ways of broadening English language pedagogy to produce the calibre of journalists who can really champion the democratic and developmental aspirations of Ghana and Africa.

Journalism education in Europe is entering a new phase of collaboration and potential standardization. This phase, which in some ways parallels earlier developments in the United States, also provides alternative models for the future training of professional communicators. To some extent, the changes taking place in Europe are the result of “European” thinking associated with the creation of a common economic market at the end of 1992 and the expected monetary and possible political union during the following decade. At least partly as a result of this new way of thinking, there are unprecedented European efforts to share ideas and otherwise collaborate on journalism education. Most notable among these efforts is creation of the European Journalism Training Association (EJTA). Striking among the current activities of EJTA are attempts to standardize programs and provide some preliminary evaluations of journalism training offered in the various European countries today.

In this article, I seek to inform Peace Journalism (PJ) education and training in conflict-affected countries in particular. Based on a case study of the professional experiences of Afghan photojournalists, I offer insights into the acceptability and adoptability of PJ practice by journalists from conflict-affected countries. I present six key findings of a larger study on Afghan photojournalists in this article and discuss the lessons they hold for PJ training in conflict-affected countries. In sections 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, I provide some important theoretical, contextual and methodological background. In section 6, I discuss three professional adversities faced by Afghan photojournalists and evaluate the obstacles that implementation of PJ faces as a result of them. In section 7, I describe one professional motivator for Afghan photojournalists and discuss the opportunity it presents for PJ adoption. In Page 18 Journalism Education Volume 6 number 2 section 8, I describe two other constraints faced by Afghan photojournalists related specifically to donor-funded media development in post-2001 Afghanistan and discuss their implications for PJ training. Finally in section 9, while noting the limitations of the current study, I offer two ways forward for PJ training in conflict-affected countries like Afghanistan. Journalism training in conflict-affected countries Training in PJ is often offered as “continuing professional development as a form of donor aid” in conflictaffected countries (Lynch, 2015b, p.194). As such, PJ has a responsibility to engage with the emerging cognizance among scholars that donor-funded journalism training in conflict-affected countries often do not take into account the socio-cultural, political-economic and professional realities of the particular conflictaffected society where they are offered (Betz, 2015, pp. 219-232; Relly et al., 2015, pp. 471-497; Relly and Zanger, 2016, pp.1-23). Though the question of the influence of sociological realities of a country on journalists is not new in academic discussion of PJ1, scholars writing about the rationale for offering PJ training in conflict-affected countries however have maintained2 that PJ is more readily acceptable to journalists in societies “that have experienced the ravages of violent conflict” (Hackett, 2006, p.11). Little to no concrete sociological evidence3 has been offered to support these observations and instead the consensus sometimes has been that this question is “effectively settled” (Lynch, 2015a, p. 25) by content analysis studies that show elements of PJ exist in manifest news content in different countries. More recently, the case for identifying “ideational distinctions, beyond the level of manifest content, in the representation of conflicts and match them to those in the PJ model” (Lynch, 2015b, p. 194) has been made by Nohrstedt & Ottosen (2015, pp. 225-6). The current article is inspired by this proposal but applies it in the context of training journalists in PJ in conflictaffected countries, rather than the representations they produce. PJ and sociological particularities of journalistic profession Sociological studies of journalism have long noted that journalism as a form of cultural production varies according to its socio-cultural context. Studies have been undertaken by both qualitative methods based on participant observation (e.g. Pedelty, 1995) and interviews with journalists (e.g. Rantanen, 2004, pp. 302314) as well as more quantitatively oriented survey and questionnaire-based studies (e.g. Fahmy, 2005) utilizing theoretical frameworks such as the hierarchy of influence model (Shoemaker and Reese, 2014) to understand the sociological particularities of journalistic practice. In the particular context of developing, transitional or conflict-affected countries, journalism has been shown to be affected by the particular history of where it is practiced (e.g. Coman, 2004; Shafer & Freedman, 2003; Skjerdal, 2012) as well as cultural specificities (e.g. Ibrahim, 2003), religious factors (e.g. Pintak, 2014) and national affiliations (e.g. Nossek, 2004). Comparative studies of journalistic self-perception 1 For example, see Tehranian (2002, p. 60); Blasi, 2009, Rodny-Gumede (2016) 2 See the continuity of this argument from Lynch and McGoldrick (2005, p. 223) and McGoldrick (2006, p. 4) to Lynch and Galtung (2010: p. 195) and Hackett (2011, p. 45). 3 Important exceptions are Onadipe and Lord’s study (1999 quoted in McGoldrick, 2006) and Weighton (2015). For a discussion of the latter, see Mitra (2016a, p. 12).

Purpose: The purpose of the study was to determine whether gaps exist in the Kenyan journalism training thatare now filled by other professionals. Materials and methods: The three study sites were local FM radio stations - Radio Citizen, Radio Jambo, and Radio Maisha. Using a 2014 Media Council of Kenya study of radio talk shows in Kenya as a background,the thesis placed more emphasis on the radio presenters and their content. The study applied Social Responsibility Theory which posits that media should be more responsible and accountable to the society. The study employed a descriptive survey using qualitative and quantitative approaches. In this study, four presenters, two key personnel from the Media Council of Kenya were interviewed. as well as a sample of their radio talk show content. Results: The media council of Kenya lacked the capacity to ensure that only trained radio broadcast journalists were hired by media houses. In addition, despite MCK having developed a curriculum for middle level journalism training institutions, its impact in standardising training had been negligible. Recommendations: The study recommended improvement of the journalism curriculum as well as embracing of the MCK curriculum by middle level colleges. Key words :  journalism, gaps, training, other professionals

Journalism training encompasses training in a wide variety of skills, according to this writer, who looks at those skills, and offers suggestions for improving journalism courses.