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Thursday, July 14, 2005

Researching the training needs of editors

Guy Berger , professor of journalism at Rhodes University, has been working on ways to help editors do better for some time now. His 1998 research paper, with Peter du Toit, “Exploring training needs of editors in the countries of Southern African Development Community (SADC)” still warrants a look-see (follow links to research>leadership).

More recently, the South African National Editors Forum (Sanef) published the results of a commissioned study, “Managerial competencies among first-line news managers in South Africa's mainstream media newsrooms” , which included both qualitative and quantitative approaches and a very well-constructed sample.

To help inform the Journalism Leaders Programme at UCLan, we did a little bit of research ourselves. While I’m still working on a conference paper that will report the full results, there’re a few tidbits in a piece on our website and in another one that ran in the UK Press Gazette .

Tuesday, July 12, 2005

What for?

What's this blog for, you ask? Simply this: To gather research and information about journalism leaders for those who care, which are likely to be other researchers, students, journalists - and, perhaps, even those who lead them.

Why? The answer to this one has a few more angles. For one, I lead the new Journalism Leaders Programme at the Lancashire Business School in Preston, UK, and am keen to create a public depository of related research documents, both those that are freely available and those that are access-protected.

Another reason for this effort is that I'm also researching journalism leadership and change to inform our course and my teaching, certainly. But I'm also working on of my doctorate in journalism education at City University, London. In that capacity, I'm also keen to create a network of journalism scholars - or would-be scholars, like me - who are keen to swap ideas.

Like with other forms of journalism, this blog's success depends on the extent to which we all share. So, go ahead, send me a note at leaders@ukjournalism.org and let's get this depository - and discussion - going.