Abstract
Winner of an ARC Cultural Research Network Early Career Researcher/Postgraduate Student Conference Subsidy
The more things change...
Since 1990 (and before), journalism practitioners such as the author have experienced an explosion in technological advances. Some of these advances made their job easier but as the new technology was introduced and journalists were expected to use digital technologies while still learning how to and delivering a workload of daily output in news and current affairs, new pressures other than deadlines became a challenge.
This paper addresses the research question: "What is the nature, direction and extent of change which technological developments have brought to journalism since 1980?"
The literature suggests increasing technological demands on journalists are likely to increase the pressure on staff and result in a reduced performance from staff. Therefore the quality of output is compromised and the community does not receive the best quality journalism.
While the author identifies herself as an early adopter and technologically literate, over the years she has seen colleagues struggle, give up and resent the pressures of having to learn "yet another" new skill. Clearly this placed a burden on staff already working long hours trying to generate quality material. The research question investigates whether these technological changes had an impact on journalism and, if so, was it positive or negative and what were the implications of this.
When it is complete the project will examine five case-study individuals, each of whom detail the technology changes they have worked with throughout their careers.
This will form a benchmark for a wider survey of newsroom staff to test the hypothesis that changes have occurred as a result of new technology, and to determine the nature of those changes.
This paper presents the research to date, focussing on the author's ethno-inductive documentation of the contemporary journalism workplace, a review of the literature and the first of the case studies.
Heather Stewart
University of Queensland