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The Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) leadership charged a 13-member Presidential Task Force on Careers to obtain membership's thoughts on preferences and needs regarding career-assistance programming and activities. This Spring 2019 report details a survey of the interest of educators, of all ranks, in current AEJMC efforts and the need for more targeted and accessible opportunities, both at annual conferences and online modules. Results included members' thoughts on professional development, burnout, tenure and posttenure processes, academic culture, and the importance of being forward thinking regarding news and strategic communications industries outside of academia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Journalism hackathons are computationally based events in which participants create news product prototypes. In the ideal case, the gatherings are rooted in local community, enabling a wide set of institutional stakeholders (legacy journalists, hacker journalists, civic hackers, and the general public) to gather in conversation around key civic issues. This study explores how and to what extent journalism hackathons operate as a community-based laboratory for translating open data from practitioners to the public. Surfaced from in-depth interviews with event organizers encompassing nine countries, the findings illustrate that journalism hackathons are most successful when collaboration integrates civic organizations and community leaders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With profitability for newspapers waning, publications are seeking new investments to bolster their bottom lines. At the same time, newspaper executives are experiencing pressures to generate new value from "first-mover advantages"—the company's uptake of new products, processes, or markets. This research examines 4 years of 10-K filings from a sample of the United States' publicly owned newspapers, finding that corporate newspapers expanded notions of value to encompass the impact of their newsgathering operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the digital transition within American newspapers, newsroom librarians were among the first newsworkers to have their labor automated. In response, these practitioners operating in converged newsrooms shifted their on-the-job routines and roles to align with the increasing centrality of machines in journalistic production. Using an actor-network approach, this research integrates in-depth interviews to explore how American newsroom librarians interface with machines in acting as guardians of institutional knowledge within news organizations. Examining the modern duties of newsroom librarians can provide broader context for the next generation of industry automation in journalistic practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Similar to prior cycles of newsroom specialization, news organizations must integrate the expertise of data journalists. Based upon 18 in-depth interviews with data journalism leaders within American newspapers, this study examines how newsrooms are restructuring to accommodate data news work. More specifically, the research identifies four “critical junctures” by which newspapers expand data journalism operations. The interviews establish that expanding a paper’s commitment to data journalism requires reorganizing the newsroom with new layers of structural complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]