Although basic features of journalism have remained the same over the last decades, the tasks journalists perform, the skills they need and the position they have within news organizations have changed dramatically. Usually the focus in the discourse on changes in journalism is on skills, especially on multi-media and research skills. In this paper we also focus on changes in professional roles of journalists, arguing that these roles have changed fundamentally. We distinguish between different trends in journalism that have caused this shift. Firstly, journalism has become more technical, ranging from blogging and editing video to programming and SEO. At the same time, many journalists are now more ‘harvesters’, ‘managers’ and ‘curators’ of information instead of producers of news. Thirdly, journalists are expected to gather information from citizens and social media, and edit and moderate user-contributions as well, working as ‘community managers’. Lastly, many journalists are no longer employed by media, but work as freelancers or independent entrepreneurs. We track these trends and provide a detailed description of developments with examples from almost a hundred job descriptions in the Netherlands, taken from the most popular Dutch journalism recruitment site, from media websites and a journalism internship website.

1. Mr. Gates
Returns
Curation, community management
and other new roles for
journalists
Piet Bakker
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2. Do journalists need...
technical skills (multimedia, social media,
datajournalism, video, blogs)?
social skills (UGC, community management,
social media)?
content skills (aggregation & curation, content-
management)?
and a commercial attitude (entrepreneurship,
branded journalism)?

3. 3
“What tasks, skills and qualifications
are asked from new journalists?”
Method:
- Villamedia vacancies
- Media vacancies
- Mediastages.nl
Method:
- Villamedia vacancies
- Media vacancies
- Mediastages.nl
New jobs for new journalists

4. Results I - vacancies
# Technical Community Content Commercial
Broadcast 10 10 4 - 3
Magazines 6 6 3 4 3
Online 5 5 3 3 4
Business 3 3 1 2 1
Non-profit 4 4 1 2 2
Total 28 28 12 11 13

5. # Jobs Internships
newspaper publishers 11 2 3
magazine publishers 16 1 12
national broadcasters 19 - -
regional broadcasters 13 - 2
commercial broadcasters 3 - 3
Total 62 3* 20^
Results II -
media jobs
* community / crossmedia / freelance
^ content, social media, blogs, crossmedia

6. Results III - internships
# Technical Community Content Commercial
Broadcast 37 37 12 15 3
Magazines 4 4 1 1
Online 1 1 1
Business 2 2 1 2
Total 44 44 15 15 6

7. Traditional
•Creation
•Research
•Interviewing
•Reporting
•Writing
•Critical
•Independent
Traditional
•Creation
•Research
•Interviewing
•Reporting
•Writing
•Critical
•Independent
•embrace the free speech principle
•creativity is vital
•writing of journalistic texts
•Interviewing
•researching different sources
•writing texts
•a feeling for language
•an eye for news
•storytelling
•searching sources
•writing skills

8. Technical
knowledge
•Programming
•SEO, html, ccs
•Social Media
•Polls
•Video, photo, maps
•Data-journalism
•Scraping
•Visualization
Technical
knowledge
•Programming
•SEO, html, ccs
•Social Media
•Polls
•Video, photo, maps
•Data-journalism
•Scraping
•Visualization
“proven track record in multi-
media journalism”
“experience in video production”
“text, tables and graphs”
“SEO optimization knowledge”
Twitter, blogs, YouTube, Facebook,Vimeo, Creative Suite,
Photoshop, Premiere, Final Cut Pro, Flash, Office, InCopy,
Woodwing, Wordpress, Typo3, CMS, HTML, CSS, SEO, Google
Analytics, infographics, (interactive) animations, design, maps,
tables, video-editing, screencasts, data-analysis, data-cleaning,
scraping, newsletters, iPad-magazines, mobile apps.
“Asking for Superman
rather than for old plain
Mr. Kent”
(Alexandre Gamela)
“Asking for Superman
rather than for old plain
Mr. Kent”
(Alexandre Gamela)

9. Social tasks
•Community management
•Moderation
•User-generated content
•Discussions
•Social Media
Social tasks
•Community management
•Moderation
•User-generated content
•Discussions
•Social Media
“to get into conversation with
our audience”
“organizing social intranet”
“engage with our community”

10. “editing content from partners”
“gather content”
“track, value and implement
trending topics to convert them in
successful stories”
Content
skills
•Curation
•Aggregation
•Social Media
•Live-blogging
Content
skills
•Curation
•Aggregation
•Social Media
•Live-blogging

11. “getting people to join our
community”
“making commercial partners happy”
“brand-thinking”
Entrepreneurship
•Freelance
•Diversification
•Innovation
•Personal branding
•Business knowledge
Entrepreneurship
•Freelance
•Diversification
•Innovation
•Personal branding
•Business knowledge

12. • Journalists substituted by interns?
• Traditional skills still important
• Journalism is becoming very technical & digital.
• Social/content skills & commercial attitude expected.
• What are the consequences for journalism education?
Conclusion & discussion

13. twitter: @PietBakker
mail: piet.bakker@hu.nl
web: journalismlab.nl