Tag Archives: Online Journalism Review

Female online journalists on how the internet has changed the gender landscape

There is an interesting post on the Online Journalism Review site today following a gender and mass media class at the University of Iowa.

A group of students and their teacher, Pamela Creedon, have compiled an interview series featuring female online journalists around the world discussing experiences of gender bias.

The result is a wide-reaching archive of comments documenting the variations across continents and an insight into how the internet has changed the gender landscape.

Several comments of particular interest:

I actually consider being a female journalist to be one of my advantages. I think it’s because people consider women to be less aggressive, less hardcore. I feel like that stereotype really helped me to hide my true aggression, my true, hardcore journalism. When I go out to report I always try to show a very feminine side but inside I know I’m a hardnosed journalist. Xin Feng, journalist from China.

In terms of promotions, gender bias [exists] when assigning reporters in the field, men always send women to weaker assignments, give them weaker positions. I’ve been senior reporter for over five years and yet those coming in are being promoted on the basis of gender. Delphine Hampande, a senior reporter in Zambia.

In terms of countries like the US and the UK I consider men and women to play an equal role in the media already, and therefore in the years to come would like to see both working to high standards of respectable and reliable journalism… In developing countries and oppressive regimes I would love to see the number of female journalists continue to rise. Online journalism and blogging both have a huge scope for anonymity and so can (and should) be used to tell stories that would otherwise be kept hidden. Natalie Hart, an English freelance journalist.

The interviews have been transformed into an interactive source for students to access industry opinion, using OJR’s OurBlook.com platform.

The full interview series can be read here…

OJR: ‘Does your site really need to be in Google News?’

Just how important is it to get your site into Google News? Robert Niles raises the question on the Knight Digital Media Center’s Online Journalism Review.

“For many online publishers, affiliated with newspapers or not, the Holy Grail of traffic is inclusion in the Google News index.

(…)

“But is inclusion in that index or other search engines’ news indices really worthwhile for the majority of online news publishers? I’m going to argue… no. (Well, at least it’s not worth making a fuss over.)”

Full post at this link…

Online Journalism Review finds new home at Knight Center

The Online Journalism Review, run by the University of Annenburg’s journalism school, has been resurrected by the Knight Foundation’s Digital Media Center, Geneva Overholser, the university’s new director of the school of journalism, announced yesterday.

The site closed in its previous incarnation in June after 10 years of reporting on the ‘transition from other media to online reporting and production’ for mid-career journalists.

Major OJR contributor and media academic Robert Niles will continue to write for the new-look site, which will focus on the following:

  • Reporting and writing in a conversational environment
  • Investigative reporting in the internet era
  • Entrepreneurial journalism
  • ‘Guerilla-marketing’ the news

New articles will be added to the site twice-weekly on Mondays and Fridays.

Online Journalism Review closes, “good night and good luck”

Online Journalism Review has closed its doors after a decade of covering developments in new media publishing.

The website, run by the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication, aimed to “help mid-career journalists make a successful transition from other media to online reporting and production”, and now intends to continue to do so via the Knight Digital Media Center and its blogs.

OJR author Robert Nile has now left the University of Southern California but continue to write about new media and journalism at his new website SensibleTalk.com.