Newsrooms are fairly static workplaces where jobs don’t change that often — as opposed to tech companies where new teams get spun up more liberally, and where (often odd) job titles and responsibilities seem to be handed out more creatively.
These career and personal questions haven’t come up too often in recent years, but next year the managers of digital teams will find themselves having to think about how to develop their staff and handle less common aspirations: making work fit better within larger life goals, moving from tech skills to more writing and reporting, and more.
As the CAR/interactive journalism field matures, news nerds around the world continue to hone their tech skills, which have become essential in modern digital news organizations.
These skills are their ticket to the front seat of all of the big events and stories — whether a general election or a large investigative series. Coder-journalists’ ability to produce original digital journalism has made them pivotal elements of many newsrooms, often being relied upon much more quickly than, say, a graduate trainee.
Next year, news nerds will ask themselves the question: “Career-wise, what is my next move?”
With advanced technical skills being in high demand, it’s easy to be pigeonholed into certain types of roles — and hard to move away from them. In addition to this, more senior roles within newsroom don’t exist yet, leaving news nerds with a conundrum: Does moving forward in your career mean abandoning some of the very talents that brought you there?
This relatively new breed of people seems to be stuck in the same dilemma between being a writer or an editor — some journalists shouldn’t become editors as they’d be wasted not writing, but that path is nonetheless the only one leading to more responsibilities and a higher income. And as often for interactive journalists, it’s not all media paradigms: Developers and programmers seem to agonize in similar ways over being promoted away from what they do best — writing code and building things.
Can newsrooms deliver career development paths, or would news nerds have to look for opportunities elsewhere and hide some of their skills in order to access more editorial positions? Can we create incentives for newsrooms and managers to create these paths and help people grow professionally? And what should we teach journalism graduates on this topic?
Basile Simon is a coder-journalist at The Times and Sunday Times and a lecturer at City University, London.
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Kim Fox Audience teams diversify their approach
Miguel Castro The arrival of the impact producer
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José Zamora Revenue-first journalism
Craig Newmark Working together toward sustainable solutions
Monique Judge Letting black women tell their own stories
Frédéric Filloux External forces
Juliette De Maeyer A responsible press criticism
Jassim Ahmad Thriving on change
Kinsey Wilson Facebook and Google: Help out or pay up
Charo Henríquez Training is an investment, not an expense
Andrew Haeg The year journalists become relationship builders
Rubina Madan Fillion Unlocking the potential of AI
David Skok Finding an information-life balance
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Sam Ford The year of investing in processes
Corey Johnson The pro-fact resistance
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Feli Sánchez The year for guerrilla user research
Mary Walter-Brown Show a little vulnerability
Trushar Barot The Jio-fication of India
Mary Meehan Real lives are at stake in rural areas
Carlos Martínez de la Serna The new journalism commons
Federica Cherubini The rise of bridge roles in news organizations
Kawandeep Virdee Zines had it right all along
Alastair Coote The year of self-improvement
Kyle Ellis Let’s build our way out of this
Sam Sanders Shine the light on ourselves
Daniel Trielli The rich get richer, the poor scramble
Tim Carmody Watch out for Spotify
Jesse Holcomb Information disorder, coming to a congressional district near you
Carrie Brown-Smith Transparency finally takes off
Andrew Ramsammy The year ownership mattered
Dannagal G. Young Stop covering politics as a game
Kristen Muller The year of the voter
Ruth Palmer Risks will grow for news subjects — especially minorities
Lanre Akinola Making noise is not a strategy
Pete Brown Push alerts, personalized
Niketa Patel Live journalism comes of age
Dan Shanoff You down with OTT? (Yeah, DTC)
Mariano Blejman News games rule
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Alfred Hermida Going beyond mobile-first
Rodney Gibbs Tech workers turn to journalism
Rachel Schallom Better design helps differentiate opinion and news
Michael Kuntz The only pivot that might work
Matt DeRienzo A recession, then a collapse
Gordon Crovitz Serving readers over advertisers
Yvonne Leow The rise of video messaging
Ray Soto VR reaches the next level
Sara M. Watson Feeds will open up to new user-determined filters
Rodney Benson Better, less read, and less trusted
Marcela Donini and Thiago Herdy Collaboration is the way forward for Brazilian journalism
Monika Bauerlein The firehose of falsehood
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Rasmus Kleis Nielsen The Snapchat scenario and the risk of more closed platforms
Emily Goligoski Looking beyond news for inspiration
Sarah Marshall Loyalty as the key performance indicator
Tanya Cordrey Finally, the seeds of radical reinvention
Doris Truong Computer vision vs. the Internet vigilantes
Laura E. Davis Writing answers before you know the question
Renée Kaplan The year of quiet adjustments (shhh)
Hannah Cassius The year of the echo-chamber escapists
Julia B. Chan Looking for loyalty in all the right places
Jennifer Brandel and Mónica Guzmán The editorial meeting of the future
Cristina Wilson The year of the Instagram Story
C.W. Anderson The social media apocalypse
Pia Frey Address users as individuals
Manoush Zomorodi Self-help as a publishing strategy
Millie Tran and Stine Bauer Dahlberg (Hint: It’s about your brand)
Evie Nagy Pivot to mobile video frustration
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P. Kim Bui The reckoning is only beginning
Amie Ferris-Rotman More female reporters abroad (please)
Joanne Lipman Journalists inventing revenue streams
Jessica Parker Gilbert Design connects storytelling and strategy
Damon Krukowski Reviving the alt-weekly soul
Juleyka Lantigua Women of color will reclaim and monetize our time
Joanne McNeil Gatekeeping the gatekeepers
Pablo Boczkowski The rise of skeptical reading
Felix Salmon Covering bitcoin while owning bitcoin
Bill Keller A growing turn to philanthropy
Mario García Storytelling finally adapts to mobile
Edward Roussel Eyes, ears, and brains
Amy King Let’s amplify visual voice
Eric Ulken The year local publishers get smart(er) about change
Molly de Aguiar Good journalism won’t be enough
Justin Kosslyn The year journalists become digital security experts
Tracie Powell The muting of underserved voices
Valérie Bélair-Gagnon Seeking trust in fragmented spaces
Will Sommer The year local media gets conservative
Michelle Ferrier The year of the great reckoning
Rachel Davis Mersey AI, with real smarts
Luke O'Neil The end is already here
Corey Ford The empire strikes back
Matt Carlson Attacks on the press will get worse
Matt Boggie The intellectual equivalent of the Dead Sea
Caitlin Thompson Podcasting models mature and diversify
Amy Webb Listen to weak signals
Cindy Royal Your journalism curriculum is obsolete
Zizi Papacharissi Women come back
Mike Caulfield Refactoring media literacy for the networked age
Tamar Charney We get serious about algorithms
Ernst-Jan Pfauth Publishing less to give readers more
Caitria O'Neill The new court of public opinion
Mandy Velez texting is lit rn, fam
Taylor Lorenz Social and media will split
Helen Havlak Keywords, not publishers, power the world’s biggest feeds
Nushin Rashidian Publishers seek ad dollar alternatives
Matt Thompson Here come the attention managers
Jacqui Cheng Retailers move into content
Julia Beizer A longer view on the pivot
Heather Bryant Building the ecosystems for collaboration
Jennifer Coogan The future is female
Alan Soon The rise of start of psychographic, micro-targeted media
Kathleen McElroy Building a news video experience native to mobile
Rick Berke Value is the watchword
Debra Adams Simmons And a woman shall lead them
Cory Haik Suffering from realness, pivoting to impact
Michelle Garcia Navigating journalistic transparency
Mariana Moura Santos Think local, act global
Jim Brady With the people, not just of the people
Jim Moroney Newspapers have to be good enough for readers to pay for
Vivian Schiller Pivot to tomorrow
Elizabeth Jensen Show your work
Marie Gilot No assholes allowed
Emma Carew Grovum Newsroom culture becomes a priority
Steve Grove The midterms are an opportunity
Lucas Graves From algorithms to institutions
Mira Lowe The year of the local watchdog
Jarrod Dicker Honesty in advertising
Aron Pilhofer We can’t leave the business to the business side any more
Adam Thomas Sharing is caring: The year of the mentor
Jared Newman Venture funding and digital news don’t mix
Joyce Barnathan It will be harder to bury the news
Basile Simon We need better career paths for news nerds
Richard Tofel The platforms’ power demands more reporters’ attention
Brian Lam Sketchy ethics around product reviews
Tanzina Vega It’s time for media companies to #PassTheMic
Sally Lehrman Trust comes first
Christopher Meighan Passive partnership is in the rearview
Andrew Losowsky The year of resilience
S. Mitra Kalita The arc of news and audience
Ståle Grut Reclaiming audience interaction from social networks