Journalism education and online journalists in Belgium, Germany, and The Netherlands

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Journa lism educa tion and online journa lists in Be lgium,G ermany, and The Ne therlandsMark Deuze a; Christoph Neuberger b; S teve Paulussen ca University of Amsterdam. The Ne therlandsb Westfä lische W ilhe lms-Universitä t. G ermanyc University of Ghent. Be lgium

To cite this Article: Mark Deuze , Christoph Neuberger and S teve Paulussen ,'Journa lism educa tion and online journa lists in Be lgium, G ermany, and TheNe therlands', Journa lism S tudies, 5:1, 19 - 29To link to this article: D OI: 10.1080/1461670032000174710URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1461670032000174710

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Journalism Studies, Volume 5, Number 1, 2004, pp. 19–29

Journalism Education and Online Journalists inBelgium, Germany, and The NetherlandsM.DeuzeUniversity of AmsterdamThe Netherlands

MARK DEUZE University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

CHRISTOPH NEUBERGER Westfalische Wilhelms-Universitat, Germany

STEVE PAULUSSEN University of Ghent, Belgium

ABSTRACT This paper addresses an overlooked perspective in the literature and practice of online journal-ism education: an explicit connection in educational approaches and handbooks between scholarly work ononline journalists, and conceptual publications regarding the change role of professional journalism online.The authors come to this issue from the perspectives of research and educational practices in theirrespective countries: Flanders, Germany and The Netherlands. By coupling the results from surveys amongonline journalists in these countries with emerging approaches in online newsrooms as well as onlinejournalism education programs, the authors find that most educational programs do not embrace aninnovative role regarding online journalism, and generally tend to focus on a strictly vocational andtechnological approach in teaching. While online journalists seem to be facing particular challengesregarding new roles, relationships with audiences and journalists from “offline” media, and ethical dilemmas,education seems to be geared towards using new media on top of existing practices. The authors argue thata more conceptually rigorous approach towards teaching online or even multimedia journalism is called foron the basis of both empirical and theoretical work on journalism and new media.

KEY WORDS: Journalism, Online Journalism, Internet, Journalism Education

In this paper we analyze the findings of oursurveys among online journalists in Belgium(more specifically, Dutch-speaking Flanders),Germany and The Netherlands, in the contextof emerging education and training programsfor online journalism in these countries. Ouraim is to identify possible approaches to inte-grate the profiles and experiences of these pio-neer reporters and editors with existingcurricula. Although the literature on educatingjournalists for working online is expanding, onecould argue that the case studies offered insuch texts hardly take into account the day-to-day, first-hand experiences of journalists in on-line newsrooms (see, for example, commonlyused handbooks for online journalism in theGerman, Dutch and English languages: Red-dick and King, 2001; Pavlik, 2001; De Wolk,2001; Hall, 2001; Hulsens et al., 2001; Jager and

Van Twisk, 2001; Callahan, 1998; Ward, 2002;Meier, 2002a; Alkan, 2003).

The literature on (online) journalism edu-cation connects to online journalism particu-larly on the level of (new) technologies andusing the internet as a reporting tool. Populareducational handbooks such as the work ofHulsens and colleagues in Belgium (2001), Jagerand Van Twisk in The Netherlands (2001), Red-dick and King (2001) in the United States orAlkan (2003) in Germany tend to focus onvocational issues (writing skills for the web,using certain software such as Dreamweaver,Photoshop or specific content management sys-tems) and the development of additional skillsfor journalists who want to find information (asin: using search engines, mining databases,finding the best portalsites) online. Researchpublications in the field of (online) media pro-

ISSN 1461-670X print/ISSN 1469-9699 online/04/010019-11 ! 2004 Taylor & Francis LtdDOI: 10.1080/1461670032000174710

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duction studies on the other hand are morelikely to address the characteristics of onlinejournalists (such as reported in this paper), theresponse of journalists regarding the introduc-tion of new technologies in the newsroom, andthe changing work environment of journalistsin news operations that have taken the initia-tive in recent years to add new media options(like desktop publishing, computer-assisted re-porting, and website publication). This schol-arly work particularly addresses the rathermixed response of journalists to all these newbells and whistles in their work: journalistsseem to embrace the new media insofar as thesefacilitate the existing workflow or make theestablished organization of newswork easier(see for similar conclusions the work of Garri-son [2000] for the United States, Pleijter andcolleagues [2002] for The Netherlands and vari-ous publications of Neuberger (see references)for Germany). Beyond the educational and em-pirical literature there have been several schol-ars who have taken the initiative to publishmore conceptual work on journalism and newmedia, and in particular online journalism.Such books tend to build on the scholarly textsand local or national case studies, emphasizingthe changing role of the journalist in an onlineworld with specific reference to professionalvalues like credibility, objectivity and ethics(see in particular Hall [2001] and Ward [2002]for the United Kingdom, Pavlik [2001] andGunther [2003] for the United States and Alt-meppen and colleagues [2000] for Germany).What we find missing in these three disciplinesis an explicit connection for educational pur-poses made between empirical studies amongonline journalists, and conceptual consider-ations regarding the changing roles of pro-fessional journalism online (vis-a-vis publics).The research on online journalism education isscarce, but does seem to suggest that mostschools and programs specifically opt for tech-nology (computer networks, hardware andsoftware) as the vehicle for curricular appropri-ation (see Bromley and Purdey, 1998; 2001;Bierhoff et al., 2000; Neuberger, 2002b; Deuze,2003b). The mentioned handbooks for onlinejournalism education generally do not refer tomuch of the scholarly work in the field (see in

particular Hall [2001] and Gunther [2003] forsuch examples). It is our intention to offer someinsight into how such a connection might look,coupling the results from our respective sur-veys among online journalists in Flanders, Ger-many and The Netherlands to emergingpractices in online newsrooms as well as onlinejournalism education programs. We willspecifically focus on that what connects theseissues in our countries, rather than what makesfor any national particularity.

This paper outlines the various methods usedfor conducting our respective surveys, brieflydescribes the national profiles and then moveson to consider the various approaches and pro-grams in online journalism which are offered inFlanders, Germany and The Netherlands. In thediscussion section of the paper, we synthesizethese sections into a number of recommenda-tions for consideration when building a newonline program at trade schools, universities ormid-career training institutions, particularlyfocusing on online journalism as an emergingpractice on a professional and conceptual ratherthan a technological and vocational level,thereby hopefully adding a somewhat over-looked perspective to the existing literature onjournalism education and new media.

Research Design

The online journalists in the operational popu-lation have been defined as those media profes-sionals who are directly responsible for theinternet content of news ventures (be it existingprint or broadcast media or be it independentonline ventures). Online journalism wasdefined in Germany—similarly in the sepa-rately organized projects in The Netherlandsand Flanders—in two steps: in a first step, thecore domain of journalism was isolated (criteriawere universality of topics, relevance, periodic-ity and publicity). Included were daily news-papers, national weekly papers, general interestmagazines as well as regional and nationalbroadcasting stations. Based on a content analy-sis, in a second step, only websites withjournalistic characteristics were selected (mea-sured according to diversity of topics and up-dating frequency). Moreover, independent

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online services that could be categorized as“journalism” were added. “Independent” sitesare not owned by, nor partnered with, othermedia organizations whose flagship propertiesare in non-web media. For the study in Flan-ders and The Netherlands, a web survey wasestablished among journalists working for on-line news media. These news websites could beeither “online only” (stand-alone, “net-native”)or related to an existing (mainstream, corpo-rate) print or broadcast medium (Deuze andPaulussen, 2002). The study on online editorialboards in Germany was carried out in the formof a standardized mail survey of all online-jour-nalism services in Germany (Neuberger, 2000a;2001; 2002a). The total number of Flemish on-line media with original news content, dated2001, can be estimated at about 30. The totalnumber of online-journalism services in Ger-many was determined at the end of 1999 at 317(Neuberger, 2000a, p. 311; 2000b). From Apriltill June 2000 we received 187 completed ques-tionnaires, representing a return quota of 59 percent. In The Netherlands we found in 1998 atotal of 67 news media with websites (Deuzeand Dimoudi, 2002).1

The questionnaire used for the web surveysin the Low Countries was divided into fivesections, which probed for social demograph-ics, working conditions, daily practices, journal-istic tasks and role perceptions of onlinejournalists. Standardized email messages weresent to the general email address of all newswebsites, as well as to those online journalistswhose personal email address could be re-trieved online. The aim of the Flemish ex-ploratory survey was threefold. Firstly, to gaina general profile of the journalists working foronline news media in Flanders, we probed forsocial demographics and working conditions ofthe respondents. Secondly, we wanted to lookat how these online journalists use the internetas an instrument for research and reporting intheir daily work. Here we probed, for example,for the time respondents spent searching infor-mation online, writing news stories or prepar-ing articles for the website (e.g.HyperTextMarkupLanguage [HTML] design).Thirdly, we tried to examine the attitudes of thejournalists towards the internet’s potential in

terms of interactivity, hypertext and multi-media by looking at how the online journalistsperceive the importance of several journalistictasks. Respondents were also asked to indicateto what extent they (dis)agreed with statementsabout their profession, such as “the future ofonline journalism lies in the idea of interactiv-ity” or “online journalism is a distinct form ofjournalism next to print and broadcast journal-ism”. Dimensions of the German study werethe internet strategies of media companies, par-ticular economical and organizational circum-stances involved, level of success regarding theimplemented internet strategy, effects of inter-net on the ‘parent media’, index of all elementson the news website, collaborations betweenonline and offline departments, and sociodemo-graphic characteristics of online journalists,their activities and competences. Dimensions ofthe Dutch study were competition analysis (ef-fects of the internet on traditional media typesand/or the particular basis media type, successof own online service), the chosen online strate-gies as well as their content-related and organi-zational realization, further characteristics ofthe online service (exhaustion of the technicalpotential, functions, collaborative efforts con-cerning content), online journalists and onlineeditorial boards (number of editorial staff,sociodemographic characteristics, professionalskills and training, requirement of qualification,professional activities, structure of editorialboard) and the professional standards of onlinejournalism (agreement over rules, often usedwebsites).2

National Profiles

Flanders

Based on the survey results of 2001, we esti-mate that Flanders has about 130 online jour-nalists, of which 73 responded to the web-basedsurvey. Only 37 per cent of these online jour-nalists are recognized as “professional journal-ists” by the Belgian journalists’ unionAlgemene Vereniging van Belgische Beroep-sjournalisten (AVBB).3 According to this insti-tution, Belgium has approximately 4200“professional journalists” working for all mediatypes; half of them are Flemish. We did not find

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any figures concerning the total number of non-recognized journalists.

The Flemish online journalist can be de-scribed as a highly educated young man. Sixty-two per cent have a university degree, while 27per cent graduated from high school. Only oneout of five respondents is female and 38 percent are older than 35. The fact that onlinejournalists are rather young does not necess-arily mean that they have a lack of professionalexperience: a quarter have been in the pro-fession for more than ten years and almostthree-quarters (74 per cent) worked for a tra-ditional medium before going into online jour-nalism. Two-thirds of the respondents (67 percent) work for an online-only website; the oth-ers are mostly employed by a print-relatedwebsite (29 per cent) and only a few work for aradio or television website. Today, the averageFlemish online newsroom has four editors.

Flemish online journalists seem to be familiarwith online research: the web and email havebecome the most popular resource tools in con-temporary (online) newsrooms. Most respon-dents (70 per cent) spend more than one hourper day on research on the internet. Much timeis also spent on specific tasks of the onlinejournalists such as re-purposing content fromother media (“shoveling”) and the technologi-cal preparation of material for the website: re-spectively, 44 per cent and 55 per cent of therespondents spend more than one hour per dayon these tasks. This means that online journal-ism tends to be more technology-driven thantraditional journalism—an assumption that isalso supported by the finding that 68 per centof the Flemish respondents agree that onlinejournalists need to develop new technologicalskills.

Does the role of journalism change on theinternet? Looking at the Flemish survey results,there is evidence to answer this questionaffirmatively. More specifically, we see thatFlemish online journalists seem to be aware ofa “stronger” public, so audience-oriented func-tions become more important online. Journal-istic functions such as “disseminatinginformation quickly”, “interaction with read-ers” and “providing discussion forums” are ontop of the journalist’s priority list: respectively,

90 per cent, 80 per cent and 69 per cent of therespondents consider these functions as (very)important (see also Deuze and Paulussen,2002).

Another finding was that 74 per cent of therespondents agree (and 14 per cent disagree)that online journalism is a distinct form ofjournalism, next to print, radio and televisionjournalism. In addition, nine out of ten respon-dents are convinced that online journalism iscomplementary to its traditional counterparts,from which it can distinguish itself by takingadvantage of the medium-specific characteris-tics of the internet, such as interactivity, hyper-text and multimedia. More than two-thirds ofthe Flemish respondents believe that the futureof online news production lies in interactivity(67 per cent agree), hypertextuality (82 per centagree) and multimediality (70 per cent agree).However, an analysis of 20 Flemish news web-sites in 2002 indicates that few of them exploitthe internet’s potential in an advanced way. Inother words, there seems to exist a gap be-tween, on the one hand, online journalists’ per-ceptions of the internet’s potential and, on theother hand, the actual use of interactive fea-tures, hypertext and multimedia in practice(Paulussen, 2002). This finding is in line withresearch in many other countries (see, for exam-ple, Massey and Levy, 1999; Neuberger, 2000a;Jankowski and Van Selm, 2000; Quinn andTrench, 2002; Quandt, 2003).

Germany

As an additional step in our sampling pro-cedure, the editors-in-chief were asked for in-formation about their journalistic staffmembers.4 The total number of online journal-ists in Germany was a little under 2000 inspring 2000. Thus, online journalism still repre-sents a relatively small occupational area, forthe total number of full-time journalists is esti-mated to be 69,000 by the German journalistunion Deutscher Journalisten-Verband (DJV;2001). On average, significantly fewer onlinejournalists work on the online editorial boardsof daily newspapers (3.1) and general interestmagazines (5.1) than on the editorial boards ofbroadcasting stations (11.6) or independent on-

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line services (13.4). Online journalists are ratheryoung: more than half of the staff members arebetween 25 and 34 years old (60 per cent). Thepercentage of women in online journalism (40per cent) is relatively high. Newcomers seem tohave an easier start in online journalism than inother media sectors: 15 per cent of the recordedonline journalists were newcomers, 16 per centwere people who had never worked in journal-ism before. Only 33 per cent of the journalistshad learned their job as a trainee (Volontar),against approximately 60 per cent for Germanjournalism as a whole (Weischenberg et al.,1994, p. 155). More than 50 per cent of journal-ists at daily newspapers had such aprofessional training, compared with 15 percent of those working at independent on-line services. At the time of our survey about 45per cent of the online journalists had more thanone year of professional experience as ajournalist.

To what extent are online journalists facedwith activities that exceed their core pro-fessional tasks of gathering, selecting, writingand editing the news? At general interestmagazines, in broadcasting stations and in in-dependent online services a temporal displace-ment of journalistic activities is hardlyrecognizable: at more than three-quarters ofonline services, online journalists use most(anywhere between 50 and 100 per cent) oftheir working time for journalistic tasks. Theydiffer from colleagues working at newspapers,where 34 per cent of online editors and re-porters spend 25 per cent or less of their work-ing time on traditional journalistic duties. Theway online journalists use their working timecorrelates with the wide variety of their activi-ties: staffers of daily newspapers spentapproximately half of their time writing andediting their own materials, or on investigativereporting (34 per cent). Apparently, they aremostly occupied with selecting texts (90 percent), editing (60 per cent) and shovelingtexts. In addition, they are comparativelyoften entrusted with non-journalistic tasks intechnical and economic areas. On the otherhand, journalists of the less independentonline services put their focus on writing(83 per cent) and investigating (61 per cent).

New journalistic tasks that already have largesignificance, e.g. for daily newspapers, are pro-cessing and answering emails (82 per cent) aswell as moderating interactivity through mess-age boards, discussion forums and chatrooms(28 per cent).

Press and broadcasting pursue cross-mediastrategies online, i.e. they refer to site users aseither Probenutzer (trial users, who will becomeusers of offline media via the internet) or Dop-pelnutzer (“composite users” who use the inter-net as a complement to the parent medium).The internet offers media organizations addedvalue regarding the (re)distribution of content.In return, the companies hope for a positiveeconomic effect on, for example, their parentmedia: new readers or a stronger commitmentof regular viewers or listeners. Especially fordaily newspapers this results in a close relation-ship with the parent version: 42 per cent of thejournalistic staff in online services also workregularly for the printed newspaper. The per-centage at general interest magazines (26 percent) and broadcasting stations (18 per cent) issignificantly lower.

The Netherlands

Through a round of phone calls to all onlineservices, we established that the total numberof online journalists in The Netherlands at thetime of the survey was 155—out of an esti-mated 14,000 professional journalists in TheNetherlands (based on estimations of the Dutchassociation for journalists, the NederlandseVereniging voor Journalisten [NVJ]). Selectedresults are structured in terms of competences,technical and organizational attributes associ-ated with online journalism (for a full reportsee Deuze and Dimoudi [2002]). Competencesare operationalized into variables indicatingwhat journalists bring to the job: social-demographics, education, training and opin-ions regarding the role of journalists on theWorld Wide Web. Technical attributes in-clude the use of computers and the internet,skills and standards regarding the appli-cation of hypertextuality and interactivity.Organizational attributes are defined as vari-ables describing the organization of labor in the

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online newsroom (categorization followingDahlgren [1996]).

The demographics of the participating onlinejournalists show that most respondents aremales within the 26 to 35 years age range. Onewould have expected online journalists to beyounger—since their job is still relatively newand new media in general are omnipresentamong young people and journalism studentsin particular, and given the results from Ger-many and Flanders. Only journalists workingfor the websites of Dutch broadcasters are bothyounger and more equally balanced in terms ofgender representation. The respondents arehighly educated (54 per cent holding pro-fessional degrees, 37 per cent academic de-grees), with younger journalists more likely tohave gained a higher education than their oldercolleagues. A nationwide overall survey ofDutch journalists shows that reporters tend toenter the profession late in their twenties (26–27years), which perhaps explains the fact that wefound relatively few younger online journalists(Deuze, 2002).

In terms of work, most respondents are em-ployed by newspaper organizations: about halfof them, with 20 per cent working for broadcastmedia, 6 per cent for magazines and 27 per centfor online-only services. More than half of thejournalists mentioned working exclusively forthe online medium; the rest shift between theparent medium and the online edition—whichshifting to and fro particularly happens in printmedia—as shown in the German data as well.Most of the participants work full time: 77 percent, with 6 per cent freelancing (worldwide anaverage of 23 per cent of journalists work free-lance; see the International Federation of Jour-nalists [IFJ], 1999). For roughly one-third ofrespondents this is their first job as a journalist.These are not the youngest journalists though:71 per cent within the age group of 16–25 yearshave already had two or more employers as ajournalist. This suggests high job mobilitywithin the new media profession. On averagethe online news desk consists of four editors,which seems more or less in line with a world-wide survey among online news desks by theSwiss-based company Interactive Publishing in1999.

The organization of labor shows a picture ofan isolated, relatively autonomous group ofpeople. The online departments of broadcastersoperate as a separate branch of the main orga-nization, whereas newspapers tend to integratethe internet desks with the regular news-room(s). Only one-quarter of respondents re-ported having 100 per cent original content ontheir website. Original content can be definedas content exclusively produced for the onlineedition, which should be understood as articles(written text based) as well as video footage,still images (such as photo galleries), audioclips, (animated) infographics and specific in-teractive features such as a discussion forum orchatroom (see, for example, Schultz, 1999;Jankowski and Van Selm, 2000). Most onlinejournalists produce up to a maximum of 50 percent original content. Almost all of them fillmost of their day with “new” journalistic taskssuch as reading and answering emails, re-searching the net for stories and rewritingshoveled texts, much like their colleagues inGermany and Flanders. This indeed explainsthe predominance of so-called “old school jour-nalism” in many of the web publications foundat European news sites (see Quinn and Trench,2002).

A range of competence-related questionsdealt with the perceived necessity of learningnew specialized skills, application of interactivefeatures, the notion of (both virtual and geo-graphical) community building online, andcredibility online. More than 90 per cent ofrespondents agreed wholeheartedly with thestatement: “The development of additionaltechnological skills is a necessary preconditionfor the online journalist”—but only 63 per centfeel that it is HTML or other specific technicalfeatures that one needs for the job.

In the concluding part of the web survey therespondents were asked to reflect on a numberof propositions regarding online journalism.Their answers show that 78 per cent feelstrongly that online journalism is developingnext to print and broadcast journalism as anew, distinct professional type of journalism.Moreover, 73 per cent of online journalists sup-port the claim that building a stronger andinteractive relationship with the public is the

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best way to do “online journalism”. In terms ofthe classic agenda-setting theory of the press,half of the participants believed that such atraditional monopoly on the agenda setting ofjournalists is diminished online. The compe-tition with non-journalistic news sources—oneof the most problematic characteristics of jour-nalism online—was perceived by 75 per cent asa development that forces online journalists toexplicitly prove the “added value of the pro-fession”. This idea relates strongly to a specificmindset regarding the work for the online edi-tion.

The final question posed to the respondentswas: “Which professional title do you thinkdescribes you better: Online journalist, Printjournalist, Broadcast journalist or Journalist?” Itis perhaps striking to see that exactly 50 percent of the respondents ticked the box for On-line Journalist, the other half the box for “just”Journalist.

Education and Training

Belgium

Belgium does not have a long tradition ofjournalism training and education. At univer-sity level, journalism courses are integratedin the education programs of communicationsciences. Although it is beyond the cope ofour paper to describe these programs in detail,it is safe to say that most of the existing pro-grams pay little attention to the impact of theinternet on journalism. Only the Catholic Uni-versity of Leuven (KUL) has established a spe-cialized program of one academic year in“e-communication”, focusing on the opportuni-ties of ICT for various professions, includingjournalism. Leuven also offers an optionalcourse in multimedia production for third- andfourth-year students in communication science;similar (small) courses exist at the Vrije Univer-siteit Brussel (VUB). Furthermore, 15 Belgiangraduate schools—of which eight are in Flan-ders—offer particular programs and courses forjournalism students. Although most of thesethree-year programs recognize the value of theinternet for journalism, in particular with re-

spect to using it as a reporting tool, there do notexist specific full programs for online journal-ism. Mostly, it is not until the third (final) yearthat students can opt for training in print, ra-dio, television or new media production(Hulsens et al., 2001).

Undoubtedly, one of the reasons for this isthat the job market for online journalists is verylimited, especially in such a small country asBelgium. Furthermore, several teachers seem-ingly assume that online journalism remainsjournalism in the first place, which means thatthe most basic professional values and skillsone must learn are at the heart of all journalism,whether it be online, print, radio or televisionjournalism. From this perspective, learning newskills for using the internet effectively is notseen as a crucial part of journalism educationand training in Belgium.

Germany

The German educational system is manifold:universities, journalism schools, as well as me-dia have their own training programs forjournalists. About sixty institutions of highereducation offer communications or media sci-ence majors, although most do not focus onjournalism (Homberg and Hackel-de Latour,2000). The universities of Dortmund, Eichstatt,Leipzig and Munich offer majors in journalism(Journalistik) and began integrating the internetinto practical and theoretical training early. Atthe University of Applied Sciences in Darm-stadt a major in online journalism has beenadded, which accepts 40 new students yearly(Meier, 2002b). The first students will graduatewith a major from the university after eightsemesters. In addition to universities, there areother training programs that prepare studentsfor online journalism. Due to the ongoing realor perceived crisis in the “new economy”, how-ever, the number has decreased from 56 in 2001to 18 at the end of 2002 (Hooffacker, 2003). Thefederal labor office in two-fifths of cases sup-ports the tuition fees for these training pro-grams. Media companies, especially largepublishing houses, have created positions foronline trainees. In 2001 the number of online

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trainees was estimated at between 120 and 150(Stegers, 2001), but in this area too jobs havebeen reduced. The dramatically decreasing de-mand in the job market has put a damper oninterest in the online journalism field outsideuniversities.

Because of the internet and other new media,an abundance of new jobs and positions havesprung up in a wide variety of professionalfields (Michel, 2000). There has been effort inGermany to integrate the positions of “OnlineJournalist” and “Online Editor” and createtraining standards (Neuberger, 2002b). Accord-ing to a survey among German editors in 2000,a huge gap existed between the demands ofeditors and the available qualifications of em-ployees. Above all, solid training in journalismwas seen as an essential requirement, whichonly a handful of journalists possessed. TheDJV drafted an employment agreement for on-line trainees, in which training was included asa binding element. The trainees should be intro-duced to the basics of journalism, including thetechnical side, as well as working on and withthe internet within 24 months. An increasingnumber of textbooks now define skills and as-sist in their acquisition (Hooffacker, 2001; Hei-jnk, 2002; Meier, 2002a; Alkan, 2003), and agrowing body of literature supports the re-search side of the field (see Kopper et al., 2000;Altmeppen et al., 2000; Neuberger, 2003).

The Netherlands

There are four trade schools for journalism inThe Netherlands, while three universities offerspecific graduate courses ranging from tenmonths (Rotterdam) to two academic years(Groningen). All schools offer specific coursesin computer-assisted reporting and allow theirstudents to participate in publishing studentnews online, sometimes as part of an onlinejournalism course or seminar. These schoolsalso offer the option of graduating differen-tially, meaning: opting to get your BA in radio,television, magazine, newspaper or online jour-nalism—a situation similar to that in Belgium.Online journalism is not very popular amongstudents: programs have been scaled down,acceptance among offline faculty is low and the

job market seems to be anything but promisingfor graduates. Groningen University an-nounced in 2000 its plan to start a multimediajournalism program, but has not pursued theidea into actual teaching practice at the time ofwriting (mid 2003). Rotterdam and Amsterdamtrain students for newspaper jobs only. Severalcommercial agencies offer mid-career onlinetraining courses, even though most of thesecourses get cancelled because of low interest.All in all, the online journalism education andtraining market in The Netherlands is run by asmall number of enthusiastic professors amidsta vast number of sceptical colleagues—and stu-dents. This is not to say various schools are notwilling to invest in new technologies—multi-media plans are on top of the agenda for thefour institutions in Tilburg, Utrecht, Zwolle andEde (Bierhoff et al., 2000; Drok, 2002). It justseems that online journalism is not integratedinto the curriculum, does not seem to enjoy thesupport and cross-fertilization of other depart-ments in the schools and has no vision of a real(or realistic) future for its students. The schoolsin Tilburg and Zwolle have chosen to integratethe internet in most of their courses in one wayor another, while Utrecht has opted for special-ized coursework in digital journalism. Ede en-joys the benefit of having a relatively smallprogram, allowing for more specific teachingand supervision of online projects.

The profession does embrace the online en-vironment, since virtually all Dutch journalistswork with email, surf the web and work formedia that do have an online presence (seeDeuze, 2002). Even though most news sites inThe Netherlands do not turn a profit, manysites seek or employ professionals who canwork with gathering, creating and distributingcontent online. This is a market largely under-served by journalism programs—particularlyon the university level. On a final note: theUniversity of Amsterdam is working on a pro-gram for “multimedia research”, which intendsto train students to facilitate desktop investiga-tive reporting for broadcast news organiza-tions. An interesting aspect of the onlinejournalism-training environment is the exist-ence (since 1999) of a lively online discussionlist on these issues called “I-J Ned” (see

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! http://groups.yahoo.com/group/i-j-ned/ " ).This list is an initiative of the four trade schools,and enjoys the support and contributions of arelatively large (100 # membership) group ofDutch online reporters, editors, educators andscholars.

Discussion

“Courses in web journalism exist, but on theperiphery and chiefly with new media practicesgrafted on to established forms” (Bromley andPurdey, 1998, p. 77). This observation regardingUK journalism education and training in 1998still holds true today in the three countriesdiscussed in this paper. Efforts for special train-ing programs in online journalism have beenslowed down or remain on the books mainlybecause of the economic crisis in the mediafield. Although the impact of convergence anddigitalization on media and society is widelydebated and (thus) acknowledged, journalismschools show a certain reluctance to adapt tothe changing media landscape. This reluctancehas to do with economic considerations, but isalso due to the unpopularity of the topic amongstudents and educators alike, and seems to befuelled by a journalistic culture that only em-braces change wholeheartedly when it does notrequire a fundamental shift in existing and es-tablished ways of doing news work (Deuze,2002).

At this moment, it is fair to say that jobopportunities for online journalists within themainstream news media are quite limited. Thenumber of journalists working exclusively fornews websites is very low compared with thoseworking for traditional media types. But in thelight of increasing convergence, media cross-ownership and further digitization, the need formulti-skilled journalists will most likely in-crease in the future (Aquino et al., 2002). Mediacompanies will ask more and more for“convergent” journalists who can handle, over-see and think across all media types. Still, turn-ing this wisdom into a framework for educationand training in journalism remains a challengefacing most of today’s journalism schools inBelgium, Germany and The Netherlands. More-over, we are convinced that online journalism

should be treated as a distinct form of journal-ism with its own characteristics and, thus, itsown requirements—as the comments and an-swers we got from the respondents in our na-tional studies confirm.

Not only must online journalists get familiarwith computer-assisted research and databasemanagement—in fact, all journalists of thetwenty-first century should be able to use thecomputer and internet for newsgathering(Koch, 1991). Even more important for the edu-cation and training in online journalism are thenew modes of news presentation on the WorldWide Web. Interactive features, hypertext andmultimedia demand new—technical andjournalistic—skills that go beyond the tra-ditional skills (see, for example, Deuze, 2003a).Given the audience-oriented and service-minded nature of online media, for instance,the need for media professionals who aretrained to moderate discussions, interact withthe public or work with multimedia will be-come more and more important. The discon-nection we have observed in our studies shedslight on a fundamental problem for journalismeducation: is it to be a follower, or an innovatorof journalistic practices? At the time of re-searching and writing this paper, most if not allprograms and schools seem to be embracingthe “follower” model of education.

A way out of this bind is to see multimedia,digital and online journalism courses and pro-grams as a method to effectively prepare stu-dents for what Handy (1998) has called“portfolio work lives” and what Michel (2000)dubbed as “patchwork careers”, in whichyoung professionals are increasingly requiredto be flexible and to handle multiple careersinstead of focusing blindly on a full-timelifelong contract at a single company. A coher-ent cross-media program can be considered tobe best suited to address the changing realitiesof the labor market, according to these andother authors (see for example, Bierhoff et al.,2000; Pavlik, 2001; Neuberger, 2002b; Deuze,2003b).

A final argument for such a program is apoint regarding quality in journalism: in orderto prevent web-based journalism becoming theexclusive domain of portals and search engine-

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based news services like Google and Yahoo, wewill have to start considering building a cur-riculum based on potential added values ofjournalism online, and a thoughtful consider-ation of the consequences this may have forjournalism ethics and its role as a profession incontemporary society. As we have shown, thereare a number of building blocks already inplace to support such a curriculum: (1) a grow-ing body of skills-based literature; (2) a vastnumber of studies particular to the impact ofthe internet on journalism; (3) an expanding“knowledge-in-practice” among the first gener-

ation of online journalists in the various coun-tries; and (4) a strong conviction among peoplein industry (such as editors), education (such asa relatively small number of excited teachers)and research (such as the authors of this paper,and the above-mentioned conceptual scholarslike Altmeppen and colleagues, Hall and Pav-lik) that digitalization, convergence and a corre-sponding rethinking of journalistic roles,practices and responsibilities will set theagenda for twenty-first-century news work and(thus) journalism education.

Notes1 Findings of the study “Journalism and Internet”, including publication references, can be retrieved from ! http://www.

ku-eichstaett.de/SLF/JOUR/projekt " . Findings from the Dutch project are available at the website of the Dutch trademagazine De Journalist at ! http://www.dejournalist.nl " . Results from the survey in Flanders are online at ! http://allserv.rug.ac.be/ ! spauluss/resultaten.htm " .

2 More details regarding methodology and response rates can be found in earlier publications of the various national projects;see the references for details.

3 For the French-speaking community the Belgian journalists’ union is called l’Association Generale des Journalistes Profes-sionels de Belgique (AGJPB). The AVBB/AGJPB is further divided into a Flemish, Dutch-speaking union (Vlaamse Verenigingvan beroepsJournalisten; VVJ) and a French-speaking union (l’Association des Journalistes Professionels; AJP). This is one ofthe consequences of the complex Belgian federalization process of recent decades.

4 In the questionnaire, online journalists were defined as persons who in the context of news are regularly involved in thejournalistic formation of their online service (those employed as journalistic staffers responsible for gathering, writing andediting news content). These persons execute at least one of the following professional activities: writing and editing of owntexts, investigating, selecting and editing of another person’s text and organization of the above-mentioned activities.

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