From bowler hats and bloc notes to sneakers and
tablets: the transition of the Dutch journalist
Name: Bas Tooms Student ID: 5980275
Supervisor: Damian Trilling
University of Amsterdam, Graduate School of Communication Master’s Thesis in Political Communication and Journalism 14 February 2014
Abstract
This research paper sets out to find the Dutch journalist. By surveying the Dutch press corps I set out to answer the question who the present-day Dutch journalist is, what his or hers role perceptions are and whether he or she still able to perform them. This paper contains the results of an online survey conducted between December 2013 and January 2014, 125 journalists working for all kinds of media responded. I was interested in their demographics and their occupational and professional characteristics. The expectation was that technological developments and economical pressure had changed the three characteristics names above. The results suggest that Dutch journalists, even though faced with profound changes and challenges, adapted well to their new habitat. The Dutch journalist was mainly male,
relatively young and does not always has a form of permanent employment. They maintained their role as objective, autonomous, public servants with a sense of immediacy. There were however some differences between the importance they adhered to these roles and the amount of ability they had to perform them. Dutch journalists also want to produce journalism of high quality and had a higher job satisfaction if the news organization focussed on that aspect, instead of turning a high profit.
Key words Journalism, the Netherlands, news media, Dutch journalists, online survey
Introduction
Call me a romanticist, but if I think of a journalist I see a middle-aged man, armed with a pencil and bloc note, defying weather by bike, cloaked in a long beige trench coat and bowler cap, chasing the news. If he’s not on his bike, he is meeting with another middle-aged man, also wearing a trench coat, in some abandoned car park. While smoking and coughing this man hands the journalist a brown envelop with information. A quick glance at today’s newsrooms will suggest that this image of journalists is romanticized and out-dated.
Journalism has changed in many ways. In journalism, just like any other profession, there is an always-continuing development taking place. In the past decade however, this continuous development gained momentum. Technological innovations created new platforms for journalists to perform upon and required new skills being added to their skillset. In this process some traditional skills of the professional journalist might have changed or
disappeared completely. Steensen (2009) describes that in this process “traditional skills such as specialized, investigative beat reporting and deadline sensitivity have been downplayed and replaced by immediacy in reporting, multiskilling and multitasking, copy-paste mentality and 24/7 deadlines” (p. 702). The skill-changes that Steensen (2009) is referring to, are not by definition negative, but should be assessed critically.
These changes are of course not solely related to technological changes. Another force that has been gaining momentum is that of economic pressure (Witschge & Nygren, 2009). The circulation of daily newspapers is in decline in a lot of countries, including the Netherlands. This results in less income from subscriptions, newsstand sales and ad revenue (Bakker & Scholten, 2011). Comparable struggles can be observed amongst other media types as well. An example of a media company that has been struggling is Sanoma. Sanoma is one of the biggest publishing houses of magazines and exploiter of media titles in the Netherlands. It decided to sell, cancel or combine 32 media titles by the end of 2014, resulting in 700 layoffs. The reason for this drastic wave of redundancies is in part a change of tactics: from off- to online (Volkskrant, 2013). The Sanoma-example shows that both technological and economic developments cannot be seen separately. Journalists are the subjects that need to adept, while at the same time still realizing a profit for their media outlets and produce journalistic work of a high quality (Mitchelstein & Boczkowski, 2009).
It is therefor to the utmost importance that these changes and possible limits are critically assessed. In this paper I will answer to question: Who is the Dutch journalist of the times that we live in, what are his or hers role perceptions and is he or she still able to perform them? By online surveying the Dutch journalist I set out to explore possible alterations in journalistic practices and challenges to established professional dynamics. These practices will be viewed against normative standards. Besides that I will sketch the Dutch journalist of the times that we live in. This will be done by looking at the demographics and contract type of journalists, amongst other aspects. These will be compared to the latest data that is available of the Dutch press corps. The existing data is however out-dated and not applicable in this new news environment.
Theoretical background
The changing environment of the journalists shortly mentioned above, is mostly observed within North Atlantic media systems, as the United States and the United Kingdom, or Mediterranean media systems, as in Spain and Greece. It is depends however where you look for the changes; scholarly focus has mostly been on these countries. The expectation of scholars is that in these media systems the changes are most evident and the journalistic profession is under the biggest pressure (e.g. De Miguel & Pozas, 2009; McManus, 2009; (Downie & Kaiser, 2007). Recent studies have however suggested that the economic and social developments within the journalistic profession are not unique to the North Atlantic and Mediterranean media systems. The journalistic profession within North/Central Europe media system is experiencing similar changes and threats (e.g. Rolland, 2009; Esser & Brüggeman, 2010; Skovsgaard & van Dalen 2013). Even though the Netherlands fall under the
admit that these media systems are ideal-typical. Every country within differs from one another. The Dutch journalistic scene should therefore be researched separately.
It would however be naïve to treat the Dutch journalistic scene as a whole: there is no such thing as one universal journalistic scene. Nor is there one kind of media company, newsroom or let alone a universal Dutch journalist. Weaver (1998) seconds this. As no country, medium or newsroom is the same, it is wise to focus separate counties, media and different kind of newsrooms. Weaver (1998), for example, mostly argues from a North Atlantic, Liberal
Model-perspective (Hallin & Mancini, 2004). The choice of a lot of scholars to focus on those Anglo-Saxon countries, or try to analyse journalists in other countries from this point of view, is limiting the results in these papers. While both Weaver (1998) and Deuze (2005) point out that cross-national research is beneficial for the research field, they admit that is wise to start on an as small scale as possible.
A model that takes this into account is the “hierarchy of influences” model by Shoemaker and Reese (1996). They propose that there is a significant difference between hierarchies within working environments, especially the one of the journalist. These levels of hierarchy should be analysed separately to improve comparability between newsrooms and countries. Tackling a profession as journalism this way has more upsides. Because the profession gets analysed from micro to macro, the true source of our news gets analysed first: the journalist. Then the sociological environment he or she lives in is assessed. This includes both the newsroom that they work in, as the sociological environment outside of the newsroom. Only when these levels of hierarchy are analysed separately you can compare a newsroom to another, or a country to another. Because, as Reese (2001) explains it, “these levels address what factors shape media and news content, and include the individual journalist, news routines,
organizational, extra-media, and ideological, with each carrying a different view of the professionalism issue” (p. 173). While the sociological environment of the times that we live in is beyond the scope of this research, the analyses of individual journalists, news routines and some ideological aspects are not.
Who are they?
But who are these individuals that work in journalism? The journalistic profession is one that is debated lively throughout the years. Their professional boundaries are not as clear as, for example, lawyers. To be a lawyer a clear set of degrees has to be received and be
acknowledged by an institute. To be a journalist however, there are no obligatory degrees or fixed pathways you have to follow. Anyone can be a journalist (De Burgh, 2003). In this research I will not focus on the professional journalist. Examples of these
non-professional journalists are bloggers, civic journalists and citizen journalists. Non-non-professional journalists lack the expertise, duty and autonomy. Professional journalists on the other hand, do exert at these trades (Örnebring, 2013). They also work for acknowledged news
organisations with an editorial charter and self-regulatory system for quality (Cassidy, 2007). Even by narrowing it down to this group of professional journalist, there is still no clear consensus on what or who is a journalist (Weaver, 1998).
The body of literature focussing on the Dutch media system and its journalists is however not that extensive and out-dated. Within these times that changes within journalism are gaining momentum it is crucial to keep track of the developments and identify new possible trends. The question: ‘Who are the journalists that provide the public with their information?’ is a relevant one. Hayes et al. (2007) adhere a lot of value to this question as well. The
journalists in a newsroom are demographically representative for the public they are servicing, then the news subjects are most likely more tailored to the public. The general profile of online journalists in the Low Countries shows they are highly educated, rather young, male and work in a newsroom with a relatively small staff size. They spend most of their time in the newsroom in front of their computer for research and reporting. They rarely leave the editorial floor, even though they would prefer going outside (Deuze & Paulussen, 2001; Kemman et al., 2013). Deuze and Paulussen (2001) however expect that the journalists that work for traditional media are relatively older. Deuze (2002) seconds these findings when taking a closer look on the Dutch journalist in general. The average age of the Dutch
journalist is 42 and highly educated; in two thirds of the cases the journalist is male. 31 percent of the surveyed journalists attended a HBO form of education, 41 percent attended a university. Only two percent of the respondents had a non-Dutch nationality. More than two-third, 68 percent, had an indefinite contract. Only 21 percent of the journalists thought of themselves as freelance-journalists. Two thirds of the press corps worked full-time in
journalism. The freelance-journalists made an average of 1800 euro’s net per month, the other contract-types made an average of 1900 euro’s net per month. They mostly worked for one kind of medium. The use of internet was limited, journalists mostly saw the digital highway as a place where they could ‘dump’ information from their main medium: television, radio or newspaper. They only used internet a couple of times a day, or week and did not see the internet as a reliable news source. Social media did not exist in the time of Deuze (2002) his research.
I expect a lot of the above characteristics have changed in the past decade. As with the introduction and worldwide adaption of the internet, the news media on the internet have become a competitor of the traditional media. A lot of media titles only exist on the internet
and at the same time, traditional media-titles have decreased (Bakker & Scholten, 2011). This suggests that the amount of online newsrooms has increased, while the amount of traditional newsrooms has decreased. The age of online newsroom journalist was suggested by Deuze and Paulussen (2001) to be lower than those working in a traditional newsroom (Deuze, 2002), I therefor expect that the age of the average journalists in this research will be lower than the 42 years found in Deuze (2002) his research. To be more precise, I expect the age of online only-journalists will be lower than those working for traditional- or all-round media.
Hypothesis 1: The Dutch journalist in online only-media will be relatively younger than the journalists working for traditional- or all-round media.
The economic habitat of the media titles has been growing volatile for the past decade, partly due competition, partly due declining interest from the public (Steensen, 2009). News
organisations have therefor adapted to this new environment by enlisting a more flexible workforce: freelancers and 0 hour contracts. I expect that this will have had its effect on the contract-types of journalists. News organizations will no longer hand out indefinite contracts on a regular basis, so they can adept to the changing economical environment.
Hypothesis 2: The amount of journalists with an indefinite contract will be outnumbered by journalists with a different kind of contract: freelance and 0 hour contracts for example.
Another effect of commercial pressure and technological development that I expect, is that journalists will no longer work for just one medium and that they are increasingly becoming a ‘one-man-band’ (Meier, 2007; Steensen, 2009). Because job mobility within journalism is higher than ever before and expected is that most journalists will be freelancers, they will be
learning new trades as well. Steensen (2009) expects that this new and challenging
environment forces journalists to expand their skillset to survive. In Deuze (2002) his research journalists mostly had a single medium they created content for and did not take the internet seriously as a news medium. This will no longer be the case, I expect. Journalists will, if present, create content mainly for internet.
Hypothesis 3: The Dutch journalist will have an expanded skillset and create content for more than just one medium-type. Journalists will create content for the internet most frequently.
Because of the economical pressure, news organisations rely heavily upon press agencies and forms of subsidized news like PR, other media and social media (Davis, 2000; Van Aelst et al., 2008). These forms of subsidized news are cheaper than creating own news (Singer, 2010). The most economical way for a newsroom to be run in these times, is from behind a computer. The need for the journalists that work outside of the newsroom is therefor expected to have decreased.
Hypothesis 4: The Dutch journalist will spend the lion’s share of their time inside behind their computer.
What should they do?
It are not just the boundaries of the journalistic profession that are heavily debated, the roles of journalists within society are lively debated all over the world. Deuze (2005) distinguishes five subsets of professional characteristics for journalists: they should provide a public
service, are objective, are autonomous, have a feeling for immediacy and are ethical.
to have these characteristics: “A philosophy of moral values is shaped by the journalist’s or news organization’s need to be perceived by its audience as contributing to public discourse by providing factual, reliable, timely, and meaningful information” (p. 265). The public service-characteristic is one that you find in many journalist definitions (i.e. Brants & Van Praag, 2006; Plaisance & Skewes, 2003), and not without reason. Even in the early days of journalism, troubadours travelled the world to spread, sometimes fictional, stories of countries far away; the troubadour was the gatekeeper of his time, the disseminator of news and
information (White, 1950).
The journalist of the time that we live in no longer has the monopoly position that the troubadour had. The access to information and news has become a commodity, especially in the Western world. News organisations have increasing problems turning profits (Steensen, 2009). A direct consequence of this is journalists losing their jobs, as seen in the Sanoma-example. The remaining journalists have to create more content, with a substantial smaller workforce, with 24/7 deadlines (Steensen, 2009). This endangers the key-characteristics of Deuze (2005). Because journalistic norms and values are reportedly under pressure, it is the question whether journalists still fulfil their tasks, or if they have been downplayed and journalists no longer have time to do them.
RQ: Do Dutch journalists see their role as objective, autonomous, public servants with a sense of immediacy? And do they have the ability to exercise these roles within their journalistic work?
Because journalists still have to fill the same space they rely more on external sources in the form of subsidized news. They become more dependable upon press agencies, public relations
and pre-packaged news. Davies (2011), a research journalist, sees this as one of the biggest threads to present-day journalism. In his research he finds that 70 percent of the articles in the English newspapers is partly, or solely based on forms of subsidized or recycled news. As journalists become fewer in number every year and the PR-apparatus grows by the day, Davies (2011) finds that the journalist of present-day is increasingly dependent on these forms of subsidized news. This limits his autonomy and the amount of news sources being used. Prenger et al. (2011) second this for the Dutch situation, to a certain extent. Both researches of Hijmans et al. (2009) and Kroon and Schafraad (2013) focussed on the Dutch situation and came to the conclusion that the Dutch news media are using subsidized news, but not to the extent of the English newspapers. They respectively found that printed news media reports contained 32 percent and 52 percent of subsidized news. While most scholars are critical about this shift (Hijmans et al., 2009; Prenger et al., 2011; Kroon & Schafraad 2013), Davis (2000) disagrees with the negative tone in this debate. He points out that it does not have to be harmful; it can also be a chance for journalists. There are more sources than ever before as everyone has a spokesperson or PR-division. They make news packages for journalists and are at their disposal. Journalists should adept to this new situation and use this to their advantage.
Whether it is harmful or not is a normative debate. What both sides however agree upon is that the amount of journalists is in decline, and the amount of PR-personnel is increasing. The ability for journalists to create own news will heave decreased.
Another important barometer of the journalist their ability to perform the professional characteristics named above, is their job satisfaction (Pollard, 1995; Stamm & Underwood, 1993). According to Stamm and Underwood (1993) newsroom policy changes are affecting journalists' job satisfaction. Journalists work within the boundaries of newsroom policies and therefor adhere great importance to them. Changes within these policies are watched with Argus-eyes. Journalists are mostly critical towards changes within the news organization that affect the journalistic quality. They are also very vigilant towards the balance between the balance between business and journalism. Stamm and Underwood (1993) found that journalists were more satisfied with their jobs, if they perceived the journalistic quality of their organisation was improving. If they however perceived that journalism was ‘losing’ ground, and profit-making policies were gaining ground, their job satisfaction was lower.
Hypothesis 6: Journalists will have a higher job satisfaction if the news organisation focuses more on producing journalism of high, average quality, than on earning high, above-average profits.
Method
To conduct this research a web-based survey was set out between 20 December 2013 and 20 January 2014. This research focuses on the professional journalist, as introduced before. Working in journalism has to be their main source of income and they have to work, or have worked for an acknowledged news media company. These newsrooms have standards, an editorial charter and participate in self-regulatory systems to control for quality. The questionnaire focussed on mainstream news journalists, full-time reporters and editors working for media of all disciplines: newspapers, magazines, broadcast news programs, wire
services and online-only media. A total of 125 journalists responded, ranging from twenty news outlets as can be seen in Table 1.
Table 1 Respondents by media
NRC 40 SBS Broadcasting 1
NOS 29 RTV Emmen 1
Omroep West 15 Omroep Brabant 1
Vrij Nederland 10 Nu.nl 1
AjaxShowtime 7 Noord Hollands Dagblad 1
Medium 5 Financieel Dagblad 1
Volkskrant 5 EenVandaag 1
KRO 2 Alphen Stad FM 1
WNL 1 AD 1
VPRO 1 Abc Australia 1
Total 125
The journalists were reached through newsrooms and social media. Multiple Dutch newsrooms were contacted and requested to participate in this research. Journalists of the following newsrooms participated in the research: the Dutch public broadcaster NOS, Omroep West, Vrij Nederland and NRC. The NOS is the biggest news organization in the Netherlands. They produce news programmes for television, radio and online. Omroep West is a local station for the Haaglanden-region. This consists of The Hague and all nearby cities. Vrij Nederland used to be a resistance newspaper during the Second World War in the Netherlands, but is a magazine nowadays. It contains current affairs and some journalistic products that are not present in the two media mentioned above. Vrij Nederland contains interviews for example. NRC and nrc.next are newspapers with an online presence.
As I also wanted to reach freelance journalists, and they are not always currently working for a media title, I contacted freelance journalists via social media. Twitter and LinkedIn were used to contact groups of freelance journalists, whether they were currently employed or not. A total of 30 freelance journalists were reached, 14 of them through social media. The other
16 were reached through the newsrooms of NOS, Omroep West, Vrij Nederland and NRC. It is important to include these journalists. The economic environment of present-day is a violent one for journalists. Job security within the journalistic profession is very low and versatile.
There were three sets of data that I was interested in, which were also used in the research of Deuze and Paulussen (2001): basic demographics, occupational characteristics and
professional characteristics. Aspects of all three characteristics were incorporated in the survey, which can be found in Appendix A. The first set of characteristics focussed on the basic demographics of the journalists. These included sex, age, nationality, work experience in journalism, level of education and type of education.
The second set of characteristics that was incorporated in the survey, were occupational characteristics. The questions covered the aspects of amount of media titles, contract type, salary, hours working as a journalist, type of media organization, function within media organization, specialization, time management and job satisfaction. Salary was measured with a multiple choice question, asking the respondent to indicate their current net salary, obtained from journalistic work, with intervals of 500 euro. Starting at 0 euro, ending at more than 3500 euro net. This was to improve fill-in rate of the question, not everyone knows exactly what he or she earns net a month or wants to share that number, and to cater to the need of freelance journalists. To measure whether salary and hours working as a journalist correlated, a Spearman's rho correlation coefficient was calculated. Time management was measured in multiple ways. The first question regarding time management was regarding media types. Respondents were asked to fill in, in percentages, how much time they spent on: radio, printed media, television, internet and social media. Journalists were also asked what kind of tasks
they performed, and how much time they spent doing them. These included on- and offline research, news selection, handling PR materials, handling press agency materials, chief editorship, final editing, editing content of colleagues, programming, presenting/reporting and editorial meetings. Respondents could rank these tasks according to the time they spent on them, or mark them as not applicable. Job satisfaction was measured in two ways. The first question was regarding salary: how satisfied were journalists with their salary? A follow-up question was about the satisfaction regarding their work. How much satisfaction did
journalists receive from their journalistic work? In the researches of Pollard (1995) and Stamm and Underwood (1993) this distinction was also made and proved to be measuring job satisfaction to a better extent than just the question how satisfied a journalist was with their work. To measure whether these two correlated, a Spearman's rho correlation coefficient was calculated.
The last set of questions in the survey focussed on professional characteristics. This includes aspects as journalist role perceptions: how do journalists think about their own role
perceptions and norms and values? In accordance with a measurement that has been used in multiple researches, amongst Zhu et al. (1997), these role perceptions were measured on a six-point scale. This scale ranged from ‘totally unimportant’ to ‘very important’, including a ‘neutral’ option and a ‘not applicable’ option. The following professional characteristics were measured: immediacy of reporting, analysis and interpretation of the news, entertaining the public, reaching an audience as big as possible, influencing the political agenda, giving the audience a voice, autonomy and objectivity. The follow-up question was regarding whether the journalist thought he or she had enough time and room to fulfil these tasks within their work. There were four answer possibilities: ‘no’, ‘neutral’, ‘yes’ and ‘not applicable’. This last answer option of both questions was not present in the research of Zhu et al. (1997), but
they did not focus on the journalistic profession as a whole. Not all journalists come in contact with these professional characteristics. In this research I was not interested in items that were ‘not applicable’, these were not used for the analysis.
To compare the scores of what the journalists found important with the scores of the ability to perform them, both scores were averaged. The first set of scores consisted of five answer categories was divided by five, the last question consisted of three options and was divided by three. This created an answer scale between 0 and 1: 0 meaning no importance or no ability at all to perform the task, 1 meaning utmost importance or fully capable to exercise the task mentioned. These averages were then compared with a paired sample t-test.
The second part of the survey regarding professional characteristics focussed on source usage. Which sources do journalist use? The question was posed on a five-point scale, ranging from ‘never’ to ‘always’. Respondents answered five type of news sources: own research, press agencies, PR-material, social media and other news outlets. All five news sources were named in numerous researches (e.g. Carpenter, 2008; Davis, 2000; Deuze, 2005). These labels were given scores: never (0), almost never (1), sometimes (2), most of the time (3) and always (4). This created a scale ranging from 0 till 4 with 0 being no usage of the source at all and 4 being permanent usage of this source. These scores were multiplied by their occurrences,
accumulated and divided by the amount of respondents. This created a score between the 0 and 4.
The last subject I was interested in, was how journalists perceived their news organization’s goals. These goals were ‘earning high, above average profits’, ‘reaching a public as large as possible’ or ‘producing high, above average, quality news product’. These options were used
in the research of Beam (1998, 2006) as well. Journalists were asked to choose what they thought their news organization’s goals were, and what they actually wanted them to be. The amount of job satisfaction was measured by dividing the perceived goals in two answer options: ‘earning high, above average profits’ and ‘producing high, above average, quality news product’. The option ‘reaching a public as large as possible’ was removed from the analysis, as there was no sufficient theory to deduce a hypothesis or research question for this option. The remaining two groups were tested in a independent samples t-test, to see whether there was a difference between the groups for the variable job satisfaction.
Results
Basic characteristics
The demographic results of the 125 respondents show that 65.6 percent of them are male, 34.4 percent is female. The average age of the surveyed Dutch journalists at the time of this
research was 33 years; the youngest responding journalist was 18 years, the oldest 61 years. An independent samples t-test showed no significant difference between ages of male and female journalists: male journalists were averagely 33 years (SD = 11.3) of age, female journalists 34 years (SD = 10.6), t (123) = -0.142, p = .887, 95% CI [-4.42, 3.83]. There was however a significant difference between ages of journalists who worked mainly online, compared to the ones that mainly produced content for traditional media. Online journalists were averagely 25 years (SD = 5.0) of age, journalists creating content for radio, television and print were averagely 36 years (SD = 11.2), t (96) = 4.80, p = .000, 95% CI [6.91, 16.64]. Journalists working for online only-media are therefor significantly younger than their traditional media counterparts, as expected in hypothesis 1.
All 125 respondents had a Dutch nationality. The most responding journalists had either finished a HBO- or university education; in 91.2 percent of the cases they finished this higher form of education. In 8.8 percent of the cases the journalists did not finish any form of
education, or a lower form of education. When it came down to the kind of education, 41 respondents indicated that they had finished a journalistic education, 20 finished a
communication education, 29 finished a humanities and social sciences form of education and 35 respondents had finished another kind of education (i.e. exact sciences and medical
sciences). Almost half, 47.7 percent, of the responding journalists were relatively new to the journalistic profession and had a maximum of five years working experience in journalism, as can be seen in Table 2. The responding journalists almost had ten years working experience in journalism, on average (M = 9.88, SD = 9.54).
Table 2 Age and years of professional experience of the Dutch respondents
Years of professional experience
Age 0 - 5 years 6 - 10 years 11 - 15 years 15 > years Total
16 - 25 33 0 0 0 33 26 - 35 15 14 3 0 32 36 - 45 0 1 7 13 21 46 - 55 3 0 2 12 17 56 - 65 0 0 0 4 4 Total 51 15 12 29 107 (N = 107; missing 18) Occupational characteristics
When taking a closer look at the occupational characteristics of the journalists, the amount of media titles that journalists worked for differed from what was expected. More than half (N = 64) of the respondents worked for one media title at the time of the survey. A third (N = 38) of the journalists indicated working for two media titles simultaneously, the remaining 13 journalists worked for three media titles at the same time. Not just the amount of media titles
indicated they had an indefinite contract, 18 had a temporary contract, there were 30
freelancers and 12 respondents had a standby- or 0 hours contract. This results in 47 indefinite contracts (43.9 percent, SD = .50), compared to 60 contracts on another basis (56.1 percent, SD = .50). This is in line with hypothesis 2, in which I expected that the amount of indefinite contracts were outnumbered by the other contract types. They worked an average of 31 hours a week, and as in Table 3 can be seen, their salary differed greatly. The salary median was 2000 euro’s net. There is a significant, strong positive correlation between the amount of hours working in journalism and the amount of salary the journalists received for it: the more hours you work in journalism, the more you make a month, rs (91) = .52, p = .000.
Table 3 Salary for hours working as a journalist
Hours working as a journalist
Salary 0 1-10 11-20 21-30 31-40 41-50 51-60 Total 0 euro 3 2 0 1 0 0 0 6 1-1000 euro 0 9 7 0 2 1 0 19 1000-1500 euro 0 0 2 3 2 0 0 7 1501-2000 euro 0 0 0 8 12 0 0 20 2001-2500 euro 0 0 0 3 17 1 1 22 2501-3000 euro 0 0 1 1 8 2 0 12 3001-3500 euro 0 0 0 0 6 1 1 8 > 3500 euro 0 0 0 0 8 1 2 11 Total 3 11 10 16 55 6 4 105 (N = 105; missing 20)
Another field of interest within the occupational characteristics is the one of time
management. When looking at the time spent working on different kind of media, a diverse division can be observed, as can be seen in Table 4. The average journalist spent most of their
time, almost two thirds, creating content for printed media and internet. Journalists spent relatively less time creating content for television and radio and creating content for social media gets the least attention from journalists. Hypothesis 3 is supported by these results, expected was that the average Dutch journalist would have an expanded skillset and spend their time mostly creating content for internet. Print media however follows closely in second place, only trailing by 2.44 percent when looking at time management.
Table 4 Time spent in percentages on creating content for different kinds of media
Radio Print media Television Internet Social media
Mean 11,49% 31,10% 15,09% 33,54% 8,78%
SD 23,45 39,19 23,99 32,49 12,04
Total = 100% (N = 98; missing 27)
The surveyed journalists spent their time mostly (M = 84 percent, SD = 20.24) inside the confinement of an editorial floor and behind a computer. They spent an average of 16 percent (SD = 20.24) outside in the field. This results supports hypothesis 4, in which was predicted that journalists would spend the lion’s share of their time inside behind a computer. The journalists however admit, on average (M = 63.27 percent, SD = 24.81), that they want to spend less of their time behind a computer and on an editorial floor, t (97)= 8.85, p = .000, 95% CI [16.08, 25.37]. The desire of the journalists to work outside in the field is higher than the average they actually spend outside. They averagely want to spend 36.73 percent (SD = 24.81) of their time outside in the field, but only get to do so 16 percent (SD = 20.24) on average, t (97)= -8.85, p = .000, 95% CI [-25.37, -16.08].
The last aspect of time management that was measured, is the tasks that journalist perform. Journalists sometimes spent no time at all performing certain tasks, while being swamped with others. The results show that all tasks were performed by journalists to a certain degree.
As can be observed in Graph 1 online research, editorial deliberation and news selection are the respective top three of tasks that were mostly performed by the journalists.
Graph 1 Percentage of tasks that were performed by journalists.
When taking a closer look at the time that journalists spent on the tasks that they performed, another ranking was created. This showed that journalists spent most time doing online research, followed by news selection and offline research. Journalists spent relatively less time on presenting and reporting, editing content from peers, final editing, editorial deliberation, editing content from press agencies and chief editorship. The last two tasks, handling PR-content and programming, were the least time-consuming for journalists.
Journalists are relatively content with their work and salary. 23.7 percent of the respondents were ‘unsatisfied’ or ‘very unsatisfied’ with their wage. The percentage of journalists that were ‘neither satisfied nor dissatisfied’ was 23.7 percent as well. The most respondents were satisfied with their salary: 52.6 percent was either satisfied or very satisfied. The responding journalists were even more positive about their job gratification. Only a small portion, 4.3 percent, indicated getting little or very little gratification from their journalistic work. 8.6 percent of the journalists responded neutral regarding job satisfaction; they neither received
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% Online research
Editorial deliberation News selection Editing content from peers Offline research Handling content from press agencies Presenting/reporting Final editing Handling PR-content Programming Chief editorship
little or much job gratification. Almost nine out of ten respondents, 87.1 percent, reported getting either much or very much gratification from their work. There is a significant, weak positive association between salary satisfaction and job gratification. The higher the salary of the journalist, the higher the job gratification, rs (91) = .27, p = .009.
Professional characteristics
A set of paired-samples t-tests was conducted to compare the role perceptions, norms and values that journalists had with the ability they could perform them in their journalists work. A score of 0 means journalists did not adhere any importance to the task, or that did not have the ability at all to perform it. The score 1 on the other hand means that journalists adhere great importance to the to the task, or fully have the ability to perform it. Graph 2 shows these results graphically and also gives the difference in concrete numbers. There was a significant difference in the scores for the importance that journalists adhered to the immediacy of reporting (M = .84, SD = .13) and the ability they had to do that (M = .92, SD = .15), t (82)= -4.21, p = .000, 95% CI [-.12, -.04]. These results suggest that journalists have a significantly higher ability to quickly report news; compared to the importance they adhered to it. The surveyed journalists however adhere significantly more importance to providing analysis and interpretation (M = .91, SD = .13), compared to the ability they get to do so (M = .84, SD = .25), t (85)= 2.80, p = .006, 95% CI [.20, .12]. Journalists had significantly more ability to entertain the public (M = .84, SD = .18), than they whished to do so (M = .74, SD = .18), t (78)= -3.91, p = .000, 95% CI [-.14, -.05]. Reaching a big as possible audience was an aspect that journalists significantly were able to perform to a greater extent (M = .80, SD = .20), than they adhered importance to (M = .85, SD = .17), t (85)= -2.43, p = .017, 95% CI [-.10, -.01]. There was no significant difference between the importance that journalists adhered to influencing the political and public agenda (M = .73, SD = .17) and the ability they had to do
that (M = .75, SD = .24), t (79)= -.98, p = .330, 95% CI [-.09, .03]. Journalists significantly adhered less importance to giving the public a voice in the media debate (M = .70, SD = .21), compared to the ability to do that (M = .84, SD = .20), t (81)= 4.55, p = .000, 95% CI [.20, -.09]. There was no significant difference between the importance adhered to working
autonomously (M = .89, SD = .13) and the ability to perform that task (M = .87, SD = .21), t (86)= -.95, p = .346, 95% CI [-.03, .08]. The difference between the importance of being objective (M = .93, SD = .12) and the ability to do so (M = .92, SD = .16) was also not significant, t (83)= -.56, p = .557, 95% CI [-.03, .05].
Graph 2 Means of professional characteristics of journalists: perceived importance vs. the
ability to perform them.
* Significant difference on the 95% confidence interval.
Immedia cy of reporting * Provide analysis and interpret ation* Entertain the public* Reaching a big as possible audience * Influenci ng the public and political agenda Give the public a voice* Working autonom ously Being objective Importance 0,84 0,91 0,74 0,80 0,73 0,70 0,89 0,93 Ability 0,92 0,84 0,84 0,85 0,75 0,84 0,87 0,92 Difference -0,08 0,07 -0,10 -0,06 -0,03 -0,14 0,02 0,01 0,60 0,65 0,70 0,75 0,80 0,85 0,90 0,95 1,00 M e an sco re s
Table 5 Ranking of journalistic role perceptions and tasks
Ranking Importance Ability
1 Being objective Immediacy of reporting
2 Provide analysis and interpretation Being objective
3 Working autonomously Working autonomously
4 Immediacy of reporting Reaching a big as possible audience
5 Reaching a big as possible audience Give the public a voice
6 Entertain the public Entertain the public
7 Influence the public and political agenda Provide analysis and interpretation 8 Give the public a voice Influence the public and political agenda
The results suggest that Dutch journalists still see their selves as relatively objective, autonomous public servants with a sense of immediacy and that they had the ability to
perform these roles most of the time (RQ). There were however some differences between the importance that the journalists adhered to some roles, compared to the ability they had in their work, as can be seen in Graph 2 and Table 5. Journalists their thoughts about objectivity and working autonomously did not differ from the abilities they had within their journalistic work. They also adhered great importance to fulfilling their role as public servant. Journalists
thought that giving the public analysis and interpretation was very important, they however did not always get the ability to perform that task. Reaching a big as possible audience, entertaining the public and giving the public a voice were deemed less important than the ability the journalist had to perform them.
To see what kind of sources journalists used the most, all five news sources were scored on a scale. If a news source scored ‘0’ it was not used at all, a score of ‘4’ means it was being used every time. Journalists used other media (2.35) as a source the most, closely followed by social media (2.29). Journalists produce own news (2.15) as third most used source, followed by the use of press agencies (2.05). PR-material (1.42) gets used the least by far to create news stories. This leaves hypothesis 5 only partly supported. It was expected that journalists
would use all forms of subsidized news more frequently than own news. Of the five news sources ‘own news’ however ranks third.
The last point of interest was whether journalists have a higher job satisfaction if the news organisation focuses more on producing journalism of high, above-average quality, than on earning high, above-average profits and keeping the size of your audience as large as possible (H6). The results support this hypothesis. An independent-samples t-test was conducted to compare job satisfaction of journalists for media organizations that focussed on journalistic quality and media organizations that focussed on making an above-average profit. There was a significant difference in the scores media organizations that focussed on quality journalism (M = 4.2, SD = .96) and media that focussed on turning an above-average profit (M = 3.40, SD = .97), t (59)= -3.21, p = .002, 95% CI [-1.29, .30]. These results suggest that the goals of a media organization do have an effect on job satisfaction of journalists. Specifically, the results suggest that when media organizations focus more on journalistic quality, journalists their job satisfaction increases.
Discussion
In this research I set out to answer the question who the present-day Dutch journalist is, what his or hers role perceptions are and whether he or she still able to perform them. As already expected in the introduction, this study has shown that the journalist is no longer a middle-aged man, armed with a pencil and bloc note, defying weather by bike, cloaked in a long beige trench coat and bowler cap. The results suggest that the journalist might be wearing a sweater and sneakers, and has a tablet instead of a bloc note. The Dutch journalist is mainly male, but no longer is he, or she for that matter, middle-aged. Especially journalists working for an online newsroom seem to differ from the journalists that works in the traditional
newsroom and are significantly younger. Literature (i.e. Deuze & Paulussen, 2001) already suggested that the online journalist was significantly younger. A possible explanation for this can be that older, traditional media journalist do not have the skills, or the expanded skillset that Steensen (2009) talked about. They seemed to have stayed within the confinements of the traditional newsroom. Relatively young journalists seem to have these skills and trades, most likely because they grew up with them and the fact that their education tracks will have incorporated these new skills.
The average journalist, both traditional and online-only, no longer needs a raincoat or bike, as there are not that many meetings in person anymore. The abandoned car parks have most likely been exchanged for obscure parts of the internet or other forms of digital
communication. Working in the field has become a scarce commodity in the Dutch
journalistic scene. The Dutch journalist has become domesticated. Its habitat has changed and the journalist adapted to it. The journalist transformed from a news hunting tiger, which hunted the streets for news, to a domesticated news cat that stays inside the confinement of the newsroom behind a computer. This domesticated journalist no longer needs to chase the news outside and catch it; the present-day journalist gets his information handed on a plate. The news gets delivered by express: in the form of press releases, press agency content, information from social media and content from other news media. This sounds relatively negative, but radical changes within a profession are always met with a high degree criticism and Argus-eyes, especially the profession that is journalism. The fact however that all these things are possible and evident, does not mean journalists do this all of the time, or even want to do it for that matter. This research shows that both technological and economical
developments of the past decade have indeed brought about changes within the demographics and occupational characteristics of journalists. The journalistic workforce had to adapt to its
new environment and seems to have done so accordingly. The production of own news stories is still prominently present and journalists still adhere great importance to their role of public servants and even under pressure of difficult economical times they seem to be able to operate autonomously and objectively. Even the tasks or roles that the journalists adhered more importance to than that they were able to perform are still ranked relatively high. Perhaps they want more possibilities more to provide the public with analysis and interpretation, but it is still a relatively small difference between what they want, and what they are able to do. The results suggest that there is a relatively strong basis and moral amongst journalists in the Netherlands. The journalistic horror stories from Davies (2011) do not seem applicable to the Dutch setting. The Dutch journalist does not produce ‘flat earth news’, but seems to be down to earth instead. The wide array or sources used by the Dutch press corps and the amount of PR-material they report to be using seem quite the opposite compared to the situation in the United Kingdom and some Mediterranean countries. A possible explanation for this could lie within the respondents of this research. They were mostly employed by renowned newsrooms and public broadcasters, known for their quality journalism, or worked for public
broadcasters, who cannot turn profits. Other studies incorporated tabloids as well, which might account for some of the differences.
Even though the survey was designed to be robust for all the kinds of journalists, there were some remarks from freelance journalists working for multiple media titles. All remarks had the same scope: they had difficulties answering the questions regarding journalistic role perceptions and tasks. A foreign correspondent said: “I adhere great importance to most journalistic values mentioned in the last questions, but the problem is: I am a ‘gun for hire’. I sometimes get orders in telling me what to produce, under which circumstances. I am not in such a luxurious position that I can decline these orders, or produce them to my own
satisfaction. Every item I make is different and so are the circumstances. I produce items that sell, journalistic norms and values come second.” The correspondent, together with a few other freelancers, found it therefore difficult to summarize their abilities within their
journalistic work. The limitation of the online survey was, that it captured a snapshot of their journalistic career. Even though this was the aim of this research and a longitudinal research design was beyond the scope of this paper, it is still a very interesting remark nonetheless. To have a full comprehension of the struggles that individual journalists, freelance or not, another method of research would be a qualitative one. Interviewing journalists will possibly raise new concerns or question and might solve existing ones with this survey. Another alternative would be a Delphi-study, in which experts in the field of journalism can elaborate on the challenges and changes that face journalism. A Delphi-study is also very suitable for making predictions. And those predictions and projections would be very interesting: where is
journalism going? With this growing body of freelancers, the chances are the amount of these “guns for hire” increase as well. The question will be what that does to journalistic values and role perceptions of Deuze (2005): will they move to the backseat, while profits will take position in the drivers seat? The current body of literature and the results from this research suggests that even though journalists, both permanently employed and freelance, think their news organization is aiming for profits, the journalists themselves are still aiming for quality journalism.
Another remarkable result in this research was the difference between the usage of social media as a source and a place to create content for is a big one. Journalists apparently do not see social media as news medium, but more as a source on which they base their stories on. Will this have changed in a couple of year’s time? Deuze (2002) found in his research that
transformed to a proper news medium by the end of this decade.
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Appendix A: The survey
Beste deelnemer,
Bedankt dat u mee wilt doen aan mijn scriptie-onderzoek ter afronding van mijn Master Communicatiewetenschap aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam. Het invullen van deze vragenlijst duurt ongeveer 5 minuten. In dit onderzoek staat de Nederlandse journalist centraal, in de breedste zin van het woord. Dit onderzoek wordt uitgevoerd onder de verantwoordelijkheid van de Graduate School of Communication, Universiteit van Amsterdam, daarom heeft u de garantie dat:
1. Uw anonimiteit is gewaarborgd en dat uw antwoorden of gegevens onder geen enkele voorwaarde aan derden zullen worden verstrekt, tenzij u hiervoor van tevoren uitdrukkelijke toestemming hebt verleend.
2. U zonder opgaaf van redenen kunt weigeren mee te doen aan het onderzoek of uw deelname voortijdig kunt afbreken. Ook kunt u achteraf (binnen 24 uur na deelname) uw toestemming intrekken voor het gebruik van uw antwoorden of gegevens voor het onderzoek. 3. Deelname aan het onderzoek geen noemenswaardige risico’s of ongemakken voor u met zich meebrengt, geen moedwillige misleiding plaatsvindt, en u niet met expliciet
aanstootgevend materiaal zult worden geconfronteerd.
4. U kunt uiterlijk 5 maanden na afloop van het onderzoek de beschikking over een onderzoeksrapportage krijgen waarin de algemene resultaten van het onderzoek worden toegelicht. Als u meer informatie wil, nu of in de toekomst, dan kan u zich wenden tot Bas Tooms (Bas@tooms.net). Voor eventuele klachten over dit onderzoek kan u zich wenden tot het lid van de Commissie Ethiek namens de Graduate School of Communication via
graduateschoolofcommunication@uva.nl.
Met vriendelijke groet,
Q1 Wat is uw geslacht? Man (1) Vrouw (2) Q2 Wat is uw leeftijd? Q3 Wat is uw nationaliteit? Nederlandse (1) Anders, namelijk (2) ____________________
Q4 Wat is uw hoogst genoten of huidige opleiding? mavo/vmbo (1) havo (2) vwo (3) mbo (4) hbo (5) wo (6) Anders, namelijk (7) ____________________
Q5 Wat voor opleiding heeft u genoten? Het gaat in dit geval om uw hoogst afgeronde opleiding.
Journalistiek (1) Communicatie (2)
Humane wetenschappen/opleidingen (letteren, wijsbegeerte, psychologie, rechten, criminologie, economie, politiek etc.) (3)
Exacte wetenschappen/opleidingen (fysica, scheikunde, ingenieurswetenschappen, etc.) (4)
(Bio-)medische wetenschappen/opleidingen (arts, logopedie, farmacie, kinesitherapie, etc.) (5)
Anders, namelijk (6) ____________________
Q7 Voor welke mediatitel werkt u momenteel, of was u als laatste werkzaam? Indien u voor meerdere mediatitels werkzaam bent, wilt u hier dan aangeven voor welke mediatitel u de meeste uren werkzaam bent.
NOS (1) Telegraaf (2) Volkskrant (3) AD (4) NRC (5) NRC.next (6) Vrij Nederland (7) Omroep West (8) ANP (9) Financieel Dagblad (10) Anders, namelijk (11) ____________________
Q8 Hoeveel jaar krijgt u al betaald voor uw journalistieke werkzaamheden?
Q9 Wat voor contracttype heeft u? Voor onbepaalde tijd (1) Voor bepaalde tijd (2) Freelance (3)
Oproep/0-uren (4)
Q11 Hoeveel verdient u momenteel gemiddeld per maand (netto), met uw journalistieke werkzaamheden? 1 - 1000 euro (1) 1000 - 1500 euro (2) 1501 - 2000 euro (3) 2001 - 2500 euro (4) 2501 - 3000 euro (5) 3001 - 3500 euro (6) Meer dan 3500 euro (7) 0 euro (8)
Q12 Hoe zou u uw functie omschrijven? (Bijvoorbeeld: bureauredacteur, correspondent, verslaggever, journalist, etc.)
Q13 Heeft u een specialisatie binnen de journalistiek? (Bijvoorbeeld: economie, politiek, sport, milieu etc.)
Q14 Wilt u in procenten aangeven hoeveel tijd u besteedt, in uw journalistieke werkzaamheden, aan: Totaal = 100 procent
______ Radio (1)
______ Papieren media (2) ______ Televisie (3) ______ Internet (4) ______ Sociale media (5)
Q15 Hoeveel tijd (in procenten) besteedt u: Totaal = 100 procent
______ Binnen op de redactie/achter de computer/op kantoor (1) ______ Buiten in het veld (2)
Q16 Hoeveel tijd (in procenten) zou u willen besteden:Totaal = 100 procent
______ Binnen op de redactie/achter de computer/op kantoor (1) ______ Buiten in het veld (2)
Q17 Nieuwsbrongebruik: op welke bronnen baseert u uw berichtgeving?
Nooit (1) Bijna nooit
(2) Af en toe (3) Bijna altijd (4) Altijd (5) Eigen nieuws/onderzoek (1) Persagentschappen (2) Pr-materiaal (3) Sociale media (4) Andere nieuwsmedia (5)
Q18 Welke van de volgende taken voert u wel eens uit? Wilt u de taken links naar de vakken rechts verslepen. Vervolgens kunt u de werkzaamheden sorteren van boven naar beneden. Wilt u, indien u de taak wel (eens) uitvoert, de taak waar u de meeste tijd aan besteedt bovenaan zetten en de taak die u het minste uitvoert onderaan zetten.
Wel Niet
______ Online research (1) ______ Online research (1)
______ Offline research (2) ______ Offline research (2)
______ Nieuwsselectie (3) ______ Nieuwsselectie (3)
______ Materiaal van persagentschappen kopiëren/redigeren (4)
______ Materiaal van persagentschappen kopiëren/redigeren (4)
______ Pr-materiaal kopiëren/redigeren (5) ______ Pr-materiaal kopiëren/redigeren (5)
______ Hoofdredactie (6) ______ Hoofdredactie (6)
______ Eindredactie (7) ______ Eindredactie (7)
______ Programmering (9) ______ Programmering (9) ______ Presentatie/verslaggeving (10) ______ Presentatie/verslaggeving (10)
______ Redactioneel overleg (11) ______ Redactioneel overleg (11)
Q19 Hoe tevreden bent u met uw salaris voor uw journalistieke werkzaamheden? Zeer ontevreden (1)
Ontevreden (2)
Tevreden noch ontevreden (3) Tevreden (4)
Zeer tevreden (5)
Q20 Hoeveel voldoening haalt u uit uw journalistieke werkzaamheden? Zeer weinig (1)
Weinig (2)
Weinig noch veel (3) Veel (4)
Zeer veel (5)
Q21 Wat is in uw ogen het hoofddoel van uw nieuwsorganisatie? Winst maken (1)
Een zo groot mogelijk publiek bedienen (2)
Het produceren van journalistieke stukken van hoge kwaliteit (3)
Q22 Wat zou in uw ogen het hoofddoel van uw nieuwsorganisatie moeten zijn? Winst maken (1)
Een zo groot mogelijk publiek bedienen (2)
Q23 Wilt u aangeven in welke mate onderstaande opvattingen belangrijk voor u zijn. Totaal onbelangrijk (1) Onbelangrijk (2) Onbelangrijk noch belangrijk (3) Belangrijk (4) Zeer belangrijk (5) Niet van toepassing (6) Zo snel mogelijk het publiek informeren vind ik (1) Het publiek voorzien van analyse en interpretatie vind ik (2) Het publiek vermaken (infotainment bijvoorbeeld) vind ik (3) Een zo groot mogelijk publiek aanspreken vind ik (4) De publieke en politieke agenda beïnvloeden vind ik (5) Het publiek de mogelijkheid geven hun mening te uiten vind ik (6) Autonoom kunnen opereren vind ik (7)
Objectief zijn vind ik
(8)
Q24 Krijgt u, naar uw mening, voldoende ruimte binnen uw journalistieke werk om:
Ja (1) Neutraal (2) Nee (3) Niet van
toepassing (4) Het publiek zo snel mogelijk te informeren (1) Het publiek te voorzien van analyse en interpretatie (2) Het publiek te vermaken (infotainment bijvoorbeeld) (3) Een zo groot mogelijk publiek aan te spreken (4) De publieke en politieke agenda te beïnvloeden (5) Het publiek de mogelijkheid te geven haar mening te uiten (6) Autonoom te kunnen opereren (7) Objectief te zijn (8)
