Reports

Managing a 21st-Century Newsroom Workforce: A Case Study of NYC News Media

Weber, Matthew S.; Kosterich, Allie

In recent years, much has been made of the introduction of new skills into the modern newsroom. The modern business environment, including ongoing technological change, globalization, and the fluid movement of professional workers, has set the stage for significant change in industry practices. Today’s professional newsroom worker is the latest iteration in the emergence of new skills that embody the ongoing reframing of the nature of the industry as a whole.

Thus, this research report examines the changing nature of the twenty-first-century newsroom workforce, focusing on the skills and job roles that exist in newsrooms today. In order to address the evolving skills and job roles, the researchers used a case study approach and examined thousands of job listings, employment postings, and company profiles for news media companies in the New York City metropolitan area. The analysis of the data utilizes social network analysis to assess the development of new genres of newsworkers, specifically job roles that represent the intersection of traditional newsroom positions with data, analytics, and platform-oriented (herein referred to as DAP) job roles. As the nature of newsrooms continues to evolve, the current definition of newswork and newsworker requires new thinking.i Specifically, the focus of this research is on understanding the employment trajectories of newsworkers such as programmers, coders, data specialists, and those dedicated solely to producing content for social and mobile platforms, as opposed to traditional newsworkers.

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More About This Work

Academic Units
Journalism
Tow Center for Digital Journalism
Publisher
Tow Center for Digital Journalism, Columbia University
Series
Tow Center for Digital Journalism Publications
Published Here
March 22, 2018