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4: The Work of the Journalist

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    294855
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    The previous chapter showed you how to identify news and where to find news. Before we talk about the process of compiling stories once you have found news, we discuss different types of newsrooms.

    Journalists (the term, as throughout this book, refers to both professional journalists and ordinary citizens who create journalism) work across many different news platforms, from websites and podcasts to newspapers, magazines, radio, and television, and even on social media.5

    New technologies have made it possible for anyone with a computer to disseminate (distribute) information as widely as the largest news organisations. It is now possible for bloggers, independent journalists, and social media news creators to reach as many, if not more, people than major news organisations. In South Africa, for example, Boitumelo Thulo, entrepreneur and actor, had 5.6 million followers on Instagram in May 2022. She uses her Instagram page to promote her brand but also to motivate her followers. Another example is Uleen Fourie, a health coach who had 41 700 followers on Instagram in May 2022. Compare this to the news website with the most followers in South Africa in July 2021 – namely News24, with 7.4 million likes on Facebook but only 321 000 followers on Instagram – and you can see how single people with many followers on Instagram can easily have as much influence as large media organisations with many employees. However, remember that there is a difference between influencers who simply promote their work or products, and journalists or journalism influencers (they do exist!) who distribute news content and who should understand and follow the principles of journalism.

    Here is an example of people doing journalism by using their smartphones: in 2020, a video showing a security guard brutally attacking a patient at the Estcourt Hospital in KwaZulu-Natal went viral in South Africa. The legacy media also started writing about this story. The eyewitness observations and discussions on social media about the assault placed the story in the public eye.

    Apart from formal newsroom structures, there are now more informal newsroom structures, where people work independently as journalists. The public now also create and share news because they experience what is happening in their communities and share this on social media. This is a type of journalism, sometimes called citizen journalism. Some researchers now see the work of citizen journalists as just the same a professional or trained journalists (Swart et al., 2022).

    Journalists, whether professional or independent, today have more outlets for their work than at any other time in history, from small community newspapers to worldwide television news channels, online news channels, social media sites, YouTube channels, personal newsletters, podcasts, and even their own websites. Some of these media outlets are legacy media; others are new media. Each has different strengths and weaknesses.

    • 4.1: Journalistic Roles in Newsrooms
      This page explores the changing dynamics of journalism, emphasizing the necessity for journalists to develop a variety of skills beyond traditional reporting. It outlines the evolving roles, such as multimedia journalists and editors, and their responsibilities in producing high-quality digital content across platforms. The summary underscores the trend towards integrated news production in contemporary newsrooms.
    • 4.2: News Providers and their Structures
      This page discusses the evolution of newsrooms from traditional structures to digital and virtual formats, highlighting the rise of one-person operations and converged newsrooms that support multi-skilled journalists. It notes how the internet and the pandemic have transformed work practices and hierarchies. Additionally, it emphasizes the importance of verifying news stories while recommending collaboration with freelance editors to improve quality in video and podcast journalism.
    • 4.3: Journalistic Genres
      This page explores the distinction between journalism genres and article types, highlighting various genres like news, culture, business, celebrity, and investigative journalism in South African publications. It emphasizes the unique characteristics of each genre compared to article types. The chapter wraps up by previewing the next chapter's emphasis on fair and credible journalism, including story types and interview sourcing.

    Reference:

    1. This chapter is loosely based on and adapted from various sources, including a public domain textbook by the United States Department of State, The Handbook of Independent Journalism, written by Deborah Potter (2006), available at: https://ufdc.ufl.edu/AA00011644/00001/pdf, Public Domain, and Writing for Strategic Communication Industries by Jasmine Robberts (n.d.), available at: https://ohiostate.pressbooks.pub/stratcommwriting/ [July 21, 2021], CC BY-NC 4.0.

    This page titled 4: The Work of the Journalist is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform.