Journalism students and ‘hierarchies of production’

Jannie Møller Hartley & Maria Bendix 

This paper investigates ideals and aspirations among Danish journalism students by looking at how what we might label ‘hierarchies of production’ have changed from 2005 to 2012. Studies shows that over time the web as a platform has increased its importance for the Danish news ecology and as a consequence opening up for more stories closer to the private sphere of the public, more entertainment and ‘news you can use’ (Hartley 2011). On the same time it can be argued that this development is questioning the strong publicist ideals present in the Nordic co-operate democratic media model (Hallin and Mancini 2010) and it is likely to affect the future journalistic generation entering a media marked under economic pressure from both falling readership and advertising revenue. In this paper we seek to examine what this means for the ideals and aspirations of future journalists? We will focus on hierarchies between different production platforms, between different subject areas and between different types of news organizations. Additionally, we will ask how these ideals and aspirations have changed over time from 2005 to 2012 by looking at the preferred role of the Danish Journalism students and the possible shift from and idealistic watchdog to a cynic lapdog.