‘NETWORK JOURNALISM’: CONVERGING COMPETENCES OF OLD AND NEW MEDIA PROFESSIONALS. Jo Bardoel & Mark Deuze Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR) University of Amsterdam The Netherlands Indiana University USA Leiden University The Netherlands Formal Reference: Bardoel, Jo, Deuze, Mark, (2001). Network Journalism: Converging Competences of Media Professionals and Professionalism. In: Australian Journalism Review 23 (2), pp.91-103. Keywords: Online Journalism, Internet, Public/Civic/Communitarian Journalism, Journalism Studies1. Introduction The impact of the Internet and other new information- and communication technologies on the profession of journalism should not be underestimated. The Internet is changing the profession of journalism in at least three ways: it has the potential to make the journalist as an intermediary force in democracy superfluous (Bardoel, 1996); it offers the media professional a vast array of resources and sheer endless technological possibilities to work with (Quinn, 1998; Pavlik, 1999); and it creates its own type of journalism on the Net: so-called digital or rather: online journalism (Singer, 1998; Deuze, 1999). This contribution will take the developments in journalism on the Internet as the starting point for a discussion about the changing face of journalism in general. The key characteristics of journalism on the Net - convergence, interactivity, customisation of content and hypertextuality - put together with the widespread use and availability of new technological ‘tools of the trade’ are putting all genres and types of journalism to the test. The outcome seems to suggest a turn towards what the authors of this article call 'network journalism’; the convergence between the core competences and functions of journalists and the civic potential of online journalism. This contribution will first briefly discuss the developments and characteristics of journalism on the Internet, drawing on our research covering the range of scholarly and professional literature, discussions on mailing lists for (online) journalists and relevant newsgroups. Secondly, the paper will refer to the public journalism debate, paying more specific attention to the shift towards the audience (or: publics) in contemporary journalism. Concluding the authors argue that convergence as such takes place on several levels: technological, professional and cultural (see also: Jenkins, 2001). The combination of these levels of convergence socially constructs ‘network journalism’. Although convergence as it is introduced in this paper – in the context of journalism on the Internet – has a powerful deterministic component in terms of (the uses and impact of) technology, it must be stressed here that technology initself cannot be seen as the determining factor in defining what professional convergence and overall change in journalism means. This last point turns back upon the notion of the role that journalism plays in a given democracy: reinforcing the ideal of participatory citizenship through effective dissemination of public information. It must be noted though that in an individualised, electronic society, notions such as social integration, political participation, community and debate, are definitely becoming less self-evident and seem to be in need of redefinition in a contemporary context (see Bardoel, 1996; Schudson, 1999). 2. Journalism and the Internet The fourth kind of journalism - next to radio, television and print - is online journalism, seen as gathering and distributing original news content on the Internet. Research shows that the genre has outgrown the status of ‘shovelware’ production: online journalists do not merely repurpose content for the Web, and more of them are generating original content (see for example the Ross and Middleberg online journalism surveys of 1996-2000; Deuze, 2000). The definition of journalism online and indeed journalism in general has posed researchers for problems throughout the history of journalism studies (see for example debate in Sparks and Splichal, 1989; Scholl, 1996). A working definition of journalists in general and online journalism in particular should nowadays be sensitive towards calls in the literature for a broader and wider notion of journalism - in other words: a call for a more ‘catholic’ definition of journalism (Sparks, 1991: 67). Such a definition would adopt hierarchical elements of journalism varying from the micro level of the communicator and the meso level of his or her professional environment (i.e. the workplace) to the macro level of (inter-) national economics, politics and culture influencing the individual media professional. At the same time a wider definition would include a horizontal view on journalism, looking at the range of different genres, niches and specialisation’s contemporary journalists work for (Deuze, 1999). In the context of the Internet, a definition must have a technological dimension, since the practice of journalism online is in its essence hardly different from any kind of other journalism; its main determiningcharacteristic is that it is being practised in an online (or ‘wired’) computer-mediated communication environment (Singer, 1998). Journalism in general is defined here as the professional selection of actual news facts to an audience by means of technological distribution methods – which general definition allows for a particular discussion of online journalism in a distinctly technology-driven context (Bardoel, 1997). Especially in recent years the role of technology in effectively distributing media messages has changed and has taken centre stage in the modern journalistic theatre and should therefore serve as essential or even starting point of any scholarly venture into online journalism (Deuze, 1998). With respect to the individual communicator this means that journalists are those individuals working within an editorial board or newsroom (be it full-time or freelance) who perform one of four