On June 17^th, 18^th and 19^th  will take place the wrap-up activity of the “Integrated Journalism in Europe” (IJIE) project. Coordinated by Universitat Pompeu Fabra, four other European universities have also taken part: Université Paris 8, Danish School of Media and Journalism, Babes-Bolyai University and Linnaeus University. The conferences will be delivered by researchers from the international community, including presentations from keynote speakers and state-of-the-art lectures. It will also integrate newsroom’s software innovations demonstrations and new trends on Journalism teaching workshops.

This conference has born as a result of the moment of change, experimentation and restructuring that journalism is currently living. One of the main driving forces behind the changes in newsrooms today is media convergence. For this reason, European universities face the challenge of adapting their curricula to fit the new educational, economic and professional environments. The challenge is to train a generation of “integrated journalists”.

How are universities anticipating the changes that media convergence is bringing? What is the profile of a young trainee journalist? Is it the same one the industry is demanding? All these questions and a few more, will try to find answer during the conference.

“Shaping the future of news media” is part of the project “IJIE”, which is linked to changes in the European higher education curriculum and global media changes. In this ever-evolving media landscape, universities should foster research and encourage the adoption of new dynamics and innovative techniques in newsrooms, in order to train a new generation of versatile journalists.

In synthesis, the aim is to promote four key cornerstones in journalism education today: innovation in media convergence; collaborative ties between universities and media organizations; professional simulation in classrooms and internationalization of teaching. The long-term goal of the project is to create an innovative methodology of journalism integration that establishes what media companies expect nowadays from future journalists.

Now so far, “Integrated Journalism in Europe” has created a database, a guidebook and an interactive online map of European universities that provide training in journalism and offer different national reports on the academic and professional situation of integrated journalism.

On the other hand, it has also developed the online platform EUROMAIN, which would be the system for the future European Network of Journalists Student Correspondents. This will make possible the cross-border collaboration between European students in the design of journalistic contents. All these outputs were tested during a pilot week held at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in March 2015.

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Mireia Rom

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Lluís Codina is a professor at the Communication Departament of Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF) and director of the Support Unit Educational Quality and Innovacció (USQUID) of the Communication Faculty. He also coordinates the research group Digital Documentation and Interactive Communication and is part of the Research Group in Journalism, both at the UPF and the latter recognized by the Catalan Government. He is also the author of over 200 publications and six books, the latest of which is titled The Semantic Web and Information Systems Documentary. According to his expertise subject, he is the founder and co-director of the first master taught entirely in Digital Documentation, related to Anuari Hipertext.net.

Pere Masip is a professor and a research coordinator at the Communication Faculty of Blanquerna (Universitat Ramon Llull). He is also the coordinator of Program Officer Digilab Certificate in Advanced Studies in the Communication Faculty. Moreover, he is involved in the research group “Convergence digital media” and works in the project “Journalism on the Internet: comparative study of cybermedia Spain-Brazil”, cooperating with researchers from Brazil

Javier Díaz-Noci is a professor at Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Doctor in History, Master in Law and graduated in Journalism, he has been part of several research groups, as well as of a working group between Brazil and Spain. He has also participated in the European network researchers COST A20. Furthermore, he has been a visiting professor at Oxford University (1998-1999), University of Nevada (USA, 1997), Università da Bologna (Italy, 2007) and Universidade Federal da Bahia (Brazil, 2005 and 2008).

Laura Pérez-Altable is a PhD researcher from Universitat Pompeu Fabra. Her thesis was titled “Networks digital media, online journalism and citizen participation during the Arab Spring: Tunisia, 17 December 2010 – 23 October 2011”, tutored by the professor Javier Díaz-Noci. Graduated in Audiovisual Communication, she did a Master of Advanced Studies in Social Communication at UPF. Her main research areas are cyberjournalism, new media, social networks and the history of mass media.

Joan Soler-Adillon is a professor of Audiovisual Communication at Universitat Pompeu Fabra and a member of the Research Group DigiDoc, in which participates in the project “Active audience and journalism. Interactivity in web search of journalistic information”. Graduated in Philosophy, he also did a master in New York called “Interactive Telecommunications Program”, which was pioneer in digital media art. His academic research focuses on the idea of ​​emergence and its scientific and philosophical roots.

The moderator will be Mario Pérez-Montoro, PhD in Philosophy and Educational Sciences at Universitat de Barcelona and Master in Organization Documentation Systems to the Company by Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. His scientific career centres its attention to some of the different aspects of the theory of information and knowledge management. He is currently an associate professor at Library and Documentation Faculty at Universitat de Barcelona.

The first plenary session on Wednesday afeternoon, will be “Teaching journalism in Europe: Technological issues at stake in making news”, by Jacques Guyot (Université Paris 8 – Vincennes). Guyot is a PhD in Information Sciences from Université Rennes II and currently teaches at Université Paris 8 Vincennes, where he directs the Center for the Study of Media, Technology and Internationalization. His field of study is based on the internationalization of media, cultural and linguistic minorities and European audio-visual policy.

The second plenary session will have the title “Convergence and Divergence in Journalism Education” and will be led by Donica Mensing (University of Nevada, Reno). Mensing teaches a variety of courses, from the introductory class in journalism to a graduate seminar in interactive publishing. Recently her study interests have been dedicated to networked journalism and what it means for journalism education, journalists and communities. A sample of her research papers include: “Popularity Is Not The Same Thing as Influence: A Study if the Bay Area News System”, “Rethinking Journalism Education”, “Participatory Journalism and the Transformation of News”, and “Doing Journalism Together: Experiments in collaborative news gathering”.

The third and final plenary session will broached the following topic: “Towards a citizen storytelling: when transmedia activists and journalists work together”, and will be presented by Sergio Villanueva (Universitat de Barcelona). Villanueva is a researcher and teacher at Universitat de Barcelona. He currently works at Library and Documentation Faculty in relation to Audiovisual Communication studies. His fields of research include the involvement of the media, the public and the media community and gender representation in media narratives. His doctoral thesis was following this line: “Film and Social Change: analysis and characterization of participatory video as a documentary subject,” and was co-directed by Mario Pérez-Montoro and Lydia Sanchez.

Mireia Rom

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With these new demands of the profession, the newsrooms need more people with various skills and willingness to cooperate with their colleagues when making a news story. The competence to write a good article might not be enough to make a satisfactory report. It’s also necessary to have the knowledge about video, audio, graphics and design in the newsroom if you want to produce complete digital journalism for the web.

During the week of 23^rd to 27^th of March of 2015, 15 students and 13 teachers from Romania, France, Sweden, Denmark, Portugal and Spain got together in Barcelona to exchange knowledge and produce integrated journalism. The news pieces included different elements, such as video combined with text and graphics, and this pushed every group to organize the work to make the most of the skills inside the group and benefit the quality of the final product. “It’s a good way to work, I think it is going to be the next thing around every newsroom”, says Peter Dalsgaard Thomsen, student at the Danish school of media and journalism.

In the Pilot Week, students with different backgrounds, qualifications and interests worked together doing journalism from a European perspective. Besides publishing articles with integrated journalism on the so-called Euromain platform, the students made a radio show about the future of Europe. “It was an interesting experience, as it was very intense in the sense that it was necessary to take control of so many things. For example we had to set up a phone connection during the show and manage to report about breaking news. At the end the results were positive and we had a 40 minute talk show about the attachment people have to the European Union”, says Georgina Garriga, editor of the radio show.

The stories published on the website treated different topics, for example the youth unemployment in the European Union, smart cities and Erasmus students.

This time was also an opportunity to test the new digital platform for journalism, Euromain. The purpose with the platform is to help students and teachers around Europe to improve the journalistic education. Hopefully the week can give the universities a wider perspective on digital journalism for the future and the Euromain platform might assist them in collaborating with each other.

“The pilot week is a good experience for teachers and students and has been a practical experience of both defining your style as a journalist in comparison with others. Also the team work has expanded and integrated with technology”, says Annelie Ekelin, lecturer at the Linnaeus University.

At the end, it has been quite an intensive week where integration either cultural or journalistic exchanges had taken the leading role.

Maria Gabriela Medina and Pontus Persson

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The conference was held at Trier University. At the round table session dedicated to “What we are facing: International perspectives on challenges to journalism education”, Da Rocha made it clear that those involved in the teaching of journalism have to face the challenge of adapting its curriculum to the new dynamics of media convergence and demand greater research regarding the teaching of media convergence in the classroom. Da Rocha was joined at the table by Natalia Makarova and Veronika Yarnykh from the Russian State University for the Humanities and Michael Harnischmacher from the University of Trier. ECREA is the most important forum for communication research and education in Europe. All activities within ECREA are developed and organised to serve the community, enhance the quality of communication research and higher education, provide opportunities to exchange, share and collaborate, and to promote the interests of communication scholars.

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Irene Da Rocha

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The researcher delved into the key trends and outcomes of the comparative report produced within the IJIE research.

Xavier Ramon

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In his presentation, Jorgensen delved into the key findings of the IJIE project. More precisely, he addressed the core dilemmas facing the teaching of cross-media journalistic work that have emerged from the national reports and comparative report, documents produced within the research. Those include: (1) the multi-skilling/de-skilling schism; (2) the diverse tech-savvy among journalists and (3) the constant restructuring of journalism education.

In his talk, Jorgensen also shed light on central recommendations from the IJIE project, such as the following:

• We seriously need mobile thinking in our curricula.
• The market demands highly specialised experts and fast-working generalists; and nothing in-between.
• There is an urgent need for updating ethics codes and teaching practices, with regards to changes in the way we collect, assess, and disseminate story elements.
• Journalists must master cross-media platforms, and must also possess collaborative skills.
• Entrepreneurial skills are needed while a new media industry is taking over from legacy media.
• Journalists must speak the language of the IT experts; coding is a candidate for journalism curricula.

Xavier Ramon

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In the presentation, which was a part of the opening plenary session “Adapt or Die – Journalism education and big changes in the media landscape”, findings from work packages 2 and 3 were presented with specific focus on the Nordic educations and media industry. The following questions were posed to the audience: Being journalism educators, which methods, material and technology do we need to prepare the students for cross-media and collaborative journalism? How does a digital and convergent media landscape affect journalism ethics and the journalistic identity? And facing the radical changes in the media landscape, should we teach new business models and entrepreneurship?

The Nordic Conference for Journalism teachers takes place every second year with participation from 20 Nordic journalism educational institutions from Finland, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Greenland and Denmark.

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Kresten Roland Johansen and Asbjørn Slot Jørgensen

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In the section “Results” you can consult more details about the contents of each one of the reports and download them on PDF format.

Xavier Ramon

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In the section “Results” you can consult more details about the specific areas covered by the document and download the full text on PDF format.

Xavier Ramon

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At the round table session dedicated to “Journalism and Digital Culture”, Da Rocha, Tulloch and Fernández, from the UPF, made it clear that those involved in the teaching of journalism have to face the challenge of adapting its curriculum to the new dynamics of media convergence and demand greater research regarding the teaching of media convergence in the classroom. According to the three IJIE researchers, the changing communicative scenario requires a response from the university to be able to meet demands in the workplace. Before a specialized public, the IJIE researchers outlined how this newsroom integration and media convergence is being taught within Journalism faculties in Spain.

Their preliminary results show that, despite some pioneering experiences, the Spanish university has still not adapted itself to the everyday dynamics of the profession. In the majority of cases, this challenge is met from a highly theoretical standpoint and as a branch of cyberjournalism. As part of this study, and in conjunction with all the IJIE partners, Da Rocha, Tulloch and Fernández explained that the curriculum of 36 Spanish universities offering journalism has been analysed and that in-depth interviews with experts in media convergence, journalism teaching staff and media professionals have also been carried out.

Da Rocha, Tulloch and Fernández were joined at the table by Hibai López, fellow researcher at the UPF, who presented a paper on social media conversation in the Spanish sports press and Guillermina Franco and David Garcia from the Universidad Carlos III in Madrid who offered a complementary paper comparing citizens networks and alternative communication platforms with the mainstream press in the field of political communication and public opinion.

The AEIC Congress is the most important forum for communication research in Spain. This year, it was held from the 21st-24th of January, over 400 researchers participated and 250 academic papers were presented.

Christopher Tulloch

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