Searching for transferable skills between journalism training and work life: A skill-based approach to journalism interns’ workplace learning

Maarit Jaakkola

Journalism education is expected to prepare students for their first work contract in the newsroom, so academic education of journalists is presupposed to provide students with transferable skills. The aim of this study was to find out how second-year journalism students experienced the transference of the set of skills acquired in journalism training. To track self-perceptions of skills manifest and lacking during a four-month journalistic internship, a category analysis based on a Grounded Theory approach was carried out for reflective reports produced by journalism interns in Finland in 2010–2013 (N=120).

The analysis was conducted by forming categories of the skills mentioned in the ten-page reflective essays in which the students assessed what skills they had acquired at the university and what they needed in journalistic work. The analysis searched for the following questions: Which skills were mentioned as necessary and dispensable? How had they been included in the journalism training received before the internship? The result was a 2 x 2 matrix of basic skills needed and mastered, needed but not mastered, not needed and not mastered and not needed but mastered.

It was found, for example, that the basic skills both needed and mastered were the skills of giving feedback, editing, and mastering written language, while skills not mastered but needed were media monitoring and interaction with audience. In all, journalism training was found to correspond well to the requirements of technical mastery in general, as the perception of skills not mastered were related to cumulative experience typically gained during years of practice.