Pushing the Right Buttons? Training Television Journalists in the Digital Age

This paper reports findings from surveys of three groups operating in television news: senior managers, working journalists and third-year journalism students from one Australian university. The surveys - qualitative interviews with managers and quantitative questionnaires with journalists and students - sought opinions on the importance of technological proficiency compared with other journalistic skills in television journalism. The data indicted that the 'pre-digital' skills required for journalistic work - finding stories, critical thinking, ethical sensitivity, news sense, and the television specific 'writing-to-pictures' and 'presentation' skills - consistently rated as more important across all three groups of participants. These results appear to have implications for the role of the professional journalist in a world where anyone can now publish.