The Journalism Breakdown

Book excerpt: One of the issues facing journalists is a lack of training that focuses on creating editorial content with the changes to media platforms, economic models, and the mode of communicating with their audience. There is a lack of guidance on how to apply their storytelling style and lessons from college with newer content management systems and fragmented journalism workflows. There is a need for journalists to gain mastery in performing the "series of non-routine tasks" that will face them in the future. Journalists entering the job market must have a level of social intelligence to understand the changing nature of audiences and their news consumption habits. New journalists must also apply critical thinking practices and creative problem-solving skills toward the complex news-gathering process.The Journalism Breakdown integrates praxis and research from journalism, social psychology, computer science, and visual communication along with the best practices from media organizations to provide skills and techniques to apply essential journalism practices to the dynamic and often chaotic world of the newsroom. Parts of the lessons from this book will teach the reader how to use flexible thinking, a growth mindset, solution-focused thinking, audience awareness, and community engagement to craft stories worth reading now and the future.