Ainara Larrondo Ureta

Keeping pace with journalism training in the age of social media and convergence: How worthwhile is it to teach online skills?

Media organizations are immersed in a significant process of technological, professional and business restructuring driven by multimedia convergence and the impact of social media. Regardless of their size and scope, they are becoming increasingly aware of the need to enhance their multiplatform delivery strategies and respond more closely to their audiences’ needs and interests. Professionals working for these organizations therefore must cope with, and learn to thrive in, convergent media environments that call for a high level of cooperative effort and multitasking. These requirements seem to be even higher with regard to online journalism, a sector exposed to continual technological change and oriented towards the development of content in a variety of formats. In the light of this scenario and the recent debates regarding the best way to keep journalism training up to date, this article offers a subject-based case study to examine the challenges involved in incorporating convergence and social media into journalism university curricula. By means of a mix of data methods, the study focuses on the planning, practices and ramifications of a specific course on online journalism newswriting and reporting. The conclusions provide a critical discussion of the objectives and tools used by educators in the classroom and discuss the appropriateness of courses devoted to online journalism for preparing future journalists to cope with daily newsroom challenges resulting from media convergence and social media content production.Media organizations are immersed in a significant process of technological, professional and business restructuring driven by multimedia convergence and the impact of social media. Regardless of th...

Features and Dimensions of Health Care Journalism: A Case Study on Spanish Free Magazines:

More and more individuals are turning to the mass media in search of information related to health care. Moreover, health care accounts for an important percentage of modern economies and household expenses. Since the 1990s, this demand has been to a degree satisfied by free healthcare magazines that offer useful advice and information related to health services and wellness. As the article argues, Spain can be a representative case for analyzing the health care magazine phenomenon. Using a methodology based on quantitative and qualitative variables, the article synthesizes the results of a broader research project carried out between 2012 and 2015, focusing on the news content and advertising in three free health and wellness magazines aimed at the general public in Spain: El Periódico de la Farmacia (The Pharmacy Newspaper), Estar bien (Feeling Well), and Health 21 (Salud 21). The conclusions discuss the main features and dimensions of these publications from an educational and social viewpoint, considering their fight for survival in an environment conditioned by financial crisis, competition from online publications, and the decrease in advertising and marketing specializing in health.More and more individuals are turning to the mass media in search of information related to health care. Moreover, health care accounts for an important percentage of modern economies and household...

La convergencia narrativa en el periodismo móvil. Aproximación a la integración del contenido audiovisual en los productos nativos para iPad

This article offers results of a case study on six Ipad native publications with iOS operating system. The study has aimed to offer an approximation to the narrative possibilities that these journalistic apps encourage, along with the role that audiovisual contents play in these digital native products. This approach follows previous studies on the role of the audiovisual content in online and transmedia journalism (Salaverria, 2001; Mico y Masip, 2008; Tognazzi, 2012; Machado y Ferreira, 2012; Mayoral y Edo, 2014). Its main premise is that tablets offer a higher potential for distributing audiovisual content, in contrast with the extended idea about their appropriateness for reinventing print press (Diaz Noci, 2010; Lopez Garcia, Westlund y Silva, 2015).

La convergencia multimedia y su impacto en las redacciones de las radiotelevisiones públicas de proximidad. Un análisis de caso

The economical, technological and consumption related factors have encouraged media companies to begin business and professional processes for change which aim to make the most of the production, optimizing it. The newsrooms of these media have thus started to perform new ways of planning, creating and distributing the content, which promote the confluence of different media platforms (print press/radio-television and the web), giving rise to a multi-platform and multimedia content strategy. Even if originally the research on media convergence has focused mainly on press companies, in the last years there is a growing interest for analyzing convergence developments also in the broadcasting media context. In Europe, concerns about the evolution of Public Service Broadcasting (PSB) and the specific implications of the convergence for this (Ferrell and Hujanen, 2003; Ferrell and Bardoel, 2007; Bardoel and D’Haenens, 2008) have lead to explore their convergent experience at the newsroom level (NRK, BBC Scotland, VRT, CCMA). In view of it, and on account of the need of carrying out further studies on cases of all sizes, regardless their scope (Erdal, 2009; Saltzis and Dickinson, 2008; Garcia and Carvajal, 2008), this article approaches to the experience of a regional public radio and television, the Basque Euskal Irrati Telebista (EITB). This can be considered a representative case whose analysis offers results which could be constructive for other companies of similar characteristics and scope.