Current Edition 2019, Vol. 2 (3) December 2019

Relying on interviews with journalists and founders of German News-start-ups our authors Alexa Keinert, Annett Heft and Leyla Dogruel identified…

By Alexa Keinert, Annett Heft and Leyla Dogruel / In view of fundamental transformations in the media landscape, the future of professional journalism is not only debated among communication scholars but also among journalists and media professionals. Relying on interviews with journalists and founders of German news start-ups, we contribute to this debate and present news entrepreneurs’ perceptions on (1) the core functions of journalism in the future and (2) trends regarding journalism concepts, organisational forms, and revenue models of professional journalism. Based on our findings, four trends can be identified: (1) Professional journalism must focus on comprehensively investigated ›good stories‹. (2) The illusion of objective journalism is replaced by journalism with attitude. (3) Collaboration is the future organisational form in journalism. (4) The funding of professional journalism must increasingly come from civil society.

By Gerret von Nordheim / Gandhi saw journalism as an irreplaceable means of power in his fight against oppression. As a publisher and deskman, he developed the ethical principles that are presented systematically in this paper. Even today, 150 years after Gandhi’s birth, they still give us cause to reflect. Gandhi’s principles are not those of a journalist who idealizes practice at a hypothetical level, nor those of a theorist guilty of creating an implausible utopia. Instead, they bear witness to a life spent dealing practically with the ethical problems of journalistic work. Given the increasing fragmentation and sense of outrage in today’s society, his publications’ absolute proximity to the reader – in both form and content – and his strict avoidance of unnecessary affectation appear almost prophetic. Other aspects appear stranger: Gandhi rarely reported on political events and rejected both advertising and the exercise of journalism as a profession.

By Felix Koltermann / Although photojournalistic images have long been an elementary part of journalistic media, communication science has always been guilty of neglecting research into the actors and structures of photojournalism. Addressing this will require the establishment of applied photojournalism research.

By Werner D’Inka / Long frowned upon, use of the first person form is now becoming more prevalent, especially in reportage journalism. Potential causes include the media transformation, a change in the way journalists see their role, and erosion of the credibility of established media.

Stephan Russ-Mohl greets the reader on the inside of the cover with a broad smile. But the book is far from cheerful. What he describes on the next 300 pages of Die informierte Gesellschaft und ihre Feinde leaves the reader feeling both alarmed and ultimately helpless.

What do users click on? How much time do they spend on an article? Do they watch a video all the way to the end? In the digital world, the use of content can be analyzed with a great deal of precision – a process that has become known as ›analytics.‹ Journalists themselves also use data, learning ever more about how many people access their page, how often which articles are read, and how intensively users interact with a post on Facebook. For more than a decade now, journalism research has also focused intensively on how journalists use these new possibilities and how they are changing journalism.

Today, we still find ourselves in the opening stages of digital development. Reflecting on and discussing how children and adolescents grow up with it, in it, and creating it, presents numerous dimensions and aspects – some of which actually do justice to this radical and much cited transformation. There are undoubtedly normative decisions to be made and education questions to resolve – but this needs to be done in as up-to-the-minute a way as possible, which is rarely the case in this book.

At the start of 2015, there was no way of knowing that the issue of refugees in the media and the relationship between the European community and the refugees would continue to shape political debate to this day. By the time the events of New Year’s Eve came around, society’s view and the media resonance had changed beyond all recognition – as is shown by the term »refugee crisis« and the way refugees and migration are framed as a security problem for European countries. This makes the issue ideal for research into political events and the dynamics of media and society.