Crossing boundaries within journalism education – the case of “a good news story”

Gitte Gravengaard, PhD, Associate Professor
Lene Rimestad, PhD student, Journalist

This paper will address the theme for this seminar by a) describing empirical evidence from a study of how journalist interns learn about what is “a good news story” in different ways at the university and in the professional culture in the newsroom respectively and by b) discussing the theoretical and methodological approaches necessary when aiming to capture, describe and understand these discrepancies between different learning experiences and learning practices in different institutions with different socialising agents.

Taking its point of departure in insights from theories of professions, organisational socialisation, ethnomethodology, conversation analysis, linguistic anthropology, sociocultural theory, and learning theory, this study conceptualise social interaction and discursive practices in the routinised practice as the primordial site for socialisation and learning to take place, and therefore our microanalytical study of socialisation processes examines very closely the novices’ social interaction and discursive practices in the routinised practice in the newsroom.

Journalist students are socialised within two different organisations when becoming professional practitioners: During their studies at the university and in the media organisation, where they do their internship. This dual, and sometimes conflicting or discrepant, socialisation and learning process is the focus of this paper, as we discuss how the concept of news criteria, which students are taught at the educational organisations, as they learn what “a good news story” is, correspond to the reality the interns face in the routinised practice in the newsroom. We generate and describe eight factors, which affect journalists’ assessment of ideas for news stories offering a more adequate description of what “a good news story” is. Furthermore, we argue that the journalism education system as well as media organisations can benefit from implementing this model in the education of interns in order to support boundary crossing and more effective socialisation and skills acquisition processes.