How should journalism education deal with evolving newsrooms? – Learning experiences from internships through online collaborative tools

ABSTRACT

How should journalism educators prepare students for future newsrooms characterised by digital collaborative tools and increased remote work practices? This article takes a pedagogical perspective on the ongoing discussion on evolving newsrooms and their future role. Informed by 39 qualitative interviews about Norwegian journalism students’ learning experiences while doing their internships during the pandemic, the article discusses how such transformed newsrooms are perceived as learning spaces. We found a clear discrepancy between the students’ anticipations and their actual experiences. The students had no problem managing the technical aspects of the digital tools used in these newsrooms, but this mode of working was simply not their preferred way of working, nor was it the space they preferred as a learning environment. One implication is that when learning takes place in such newsroom environments, it is perceived as more difficult and alienating for the student. This represents challenges both journalism educators and the industry should consider when developing their curriculum or wishing to attract new talents.

KEYWORDS:

• Journalism education
• evolving newsroom
• internship
• workplace learning
• learning experiences

Introduction

What happens when journalist interns are trained remotely from home or off-site locations, relying on digital collaborative tools for their learning space and communities of practice? How should journalism schools prepare students for this? And should they? Departing from a discourse on the future role of the physical and materialised newsrooms (Maares, Banjac, and Nölleke 2023; Usher 2015; 2019; Wall 2015), this article takes a pedagogical perspective exploring how the evolution towards smaller, more digital, and virtual newsrooms may impact dominating pedagogical models in journalism education. Perhaps the most noticeable intersection between the academy and industry is found in the programs internship or work placement modules. Internships currently represent the most dominant model for structuring journalism education (Valencia-Forrester 2020) and are a required component of the majority of journalism programs (Gotlieb, McLaughlin, and Glenn Cummins 2017). They are widely regarded as the most important and valuable learning experience by the students (Dahlstrøm 2016; Gollmitzer 2021).

If journalism education continues to mirror the historical traditional newsroom into their pedagogical college newsroom, the evolving nature of newsrooms represents a significant challenge. The practices and environments students encounter upon entering the industry may be numbered and unrecognisable from what the students were taught and exposed to. The role of journalism education in addressing these shifts has become increasingly important (Wall 2015). Traditionally, the newsroom has served as a highly effective pedagogical space – a physical environment embodying all the most important dynamics a student should learn (Payne et al. 2023). However, pedagogical models must also be able to mirror or reflect the current realities of industry practice, ensuring that students develop skills, knowledge, and expectations aligned with the realities they will encounter.

The debate around evolving newsrooms intensified during and after the Covid-19 pandemic. Collectively, the new technological-driven practices adopted during this crisis are often referred to as part of a new normal (Carroll and Conboy 2020). In the post-Covid-19 era, news media are increasingly discussing how to organise the newsroom and the amount of remote e-working (Wilson David 2021). With this backdrop, Quandt and Wahl-Jorgensen (2021) argue that the coronavirus pandemic has profoundly impacted journalism and should be considered a critical moment for digital journalism (Quandt and Wahl-Jorgensen 2021).

Rather than focusing on how journalism education adapts to changing media landscapes and new technological skill requirements (Ferrucci and Perreault 2021; Hossain and Wenger 2024), this article examines the impact of physical newsroom changes and how that affects the pedagogical environment students learn in. In addition to problematising a dominating pedagogical model for journalism curriculum in this perspective, the article uses the pandemic situation as a window or a snapshot into what such future newsrooms might look like. To inform the discussion we conducted qualitative interviews with 39 Norwegian journalism students doing their internships during the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 and 2021. The students were asked about, e.g. how they dealt with online collaborative tools, their feelings of belonging, and their perceived learning outcomes during their 10-week internships. The research questions that follow from this, are:

RQ 1: How do journalism students perceive their learning outcomes from internships during Covid-19?

RQ 2: What are the possible implications for journalism education in preparing students for work in newsrooms characterised by increased use of digital collaborative tools and remote work practices?

Imitating the field as a pedagogical principle

Today, colleges and universities serve as the most important source of education for journalists, as most journalism jobs worldwide require a university or college degree (Mensing 2019). Journalism education is often measured on its ability to deliver suitable candidates to an existing job market (Skinner, Gasher, and Compton 2001, 356) and terms like vocationalism, preparedness, industry-readiness and employability illustrate this vocational emphasis. The vocational orientation and the strong connection to the industry make journalism education particularly sensitive to contemporary changes within the industry.

Internships in journalism training are found to be particularly important for students’ self-perceived learning outcomes, with the majority viewing it as the most valuable part of their training – particularly for acquiring practical skills (Dahlstrøm 2016, 308 & 317). Within the students’ internship training, the newsroom was identified as the most important artefact for learning (Steensen 2018).

The dominating theories and perspectives on learning and pedagogics tied to journalism programs stress the importance of being relevant to and prepared for the existing job market. Therefore, the pedagogical terms associated with journalism education often highlight concepts such as situated learning (Lave and Wenger 1991), communities of practice (Wenger 1998), experiential learning (Kolb 1984), learning by doing (abbreviated from Learn to do by knowing, and to know by doing. McLellan and Dewey 1889, 182), but also observational learning and learning through imitation. Even though these pedagogical terms and models have been treated slightly differently in different institutions and in different parts of the programs teaching, the ‘newsroom as learning space’ has served all the qualities to address these kinds of learning.

Therefore, journalism programs are often structured along with an internship, apprentice-oriented or industry model of training (Garderström 2016; Gravengaard and Rimestad 2014; Wall 2015; Willig 2016) where the physical environment (the newsroom), role interactions and collegial expectations have filled much the pedagogical space the students enter and negotiate within (Jaakkola 2018; 2019). This ‘internship pedagogical model’ extends beyond a standalone course module of work placement. It encompasses preparing students for internships in various ways in a range of courses (Dahlstrøm 2016) – most prominently demonstrated in modules simulating a newsroom environment and organisation structure through program-driven student media, internal internships, college newsrooms, or practicums (Payne et al. 2023; Wall 2015). Ideally, this would facilitate a quite seamless transition from the role of student to a competent working journalist, integrating them into the communities of journalism practice. Barab and Duffy (2000) provide a distinction between practice fields and communities of practice. Practice fields are learning environments distinct from real-world settings but serve as designed learning contexts for activities they will encounter outside school (Barab and Duffy 2000). Maarit Jaakkola describes this practice field as the pedagogical newsroom – not being a direct adoption of the professional newsroom but rather a surplus reflecting the relationship between journalism education and the professional field (Jaakkola 2018).

Although internships play a highly important role in journalism education and are widely considered the most important and valuable experience by students, workplace placements and their learning outcomes have long been a lacuna in journalism studies, with limited investigation into their effectiveness as a learning tool– especially from the perspective of the interns’ perspectives (Forde and Meadows 2011; Gollmitzer 2021). According to Maarit Jaakkola, perspectives on learning experiences have often been repressed on behalf of occupational and structural perspectives within studies on workplace learning (Jaakkola 2019).

Evolving newsrooms and its role in journalistic practice

A scholarly discussion within journalism studies addresses the role of the contemporary and future newsroom. Part of this discussion questions how representative the newsroom is for capturing and identifying professional journalistic practice and culture. Wahl-Jorgensen (2009) points out that much of the scholarly understanding of journalism practice and professional culture has historically relied on newsroom studies since these entities have been centralised and concentrated there. However, Wahl-Jorgenson argues that newsrooms are highly dynamic, cautioning against scholarly over-reliance on newsroom-centric approaches since newsrooms evolve and the days of the newsroom as a central ethnographic location may be numbered (Wahl-Jorgensen 2009). Similarly, Witschge and Harbers (2018) caution against a one-sided newsroom-centric approach and argue that we should not take for granted that the activities in the newsroom will continue to determine what journalism entails (Witschge and Harbers 2018, 108).

Nikki Usher has conducted extensive research on evolving newsrooms and what role the physical working surroundings play (Usher 2014; 2015; 2019). She highlights the newsroom as a highly symbolic place with strong cultural meaning and strong power connections tied to it (Usher 2015). Usher advocates for a place-based understanding of journalism practice, suggesting that studying newsrooms’ physical and digital space provides insights into growing trends and wide industry shifts. This might help us understand the role of the newsroom in a range of various perspectives (Usher 2019). Through her research, Usher illustrates numerous examples of fundamental changes in the physical newsroom and how these alterations have reshaped how we perceive and treat this place in a totally different manner compared to decades ago.

Usher found that a majority of US newspapers have relocated and centralised over the past decade. Furthermore, many newspapers revamped their newsrooms to fit breaking news and digital-first initiatives. Physical production staff such as copyeditors and page editors were often outsourced with remote work arrangements (Usher 2019, 113 & 114), underscoring the extensive transformation of the newsroom. For those newsrooms that had not yet moved, the vacant physical space resulting from the reorganization was sometimes repurposed to foster a culture of entrepreneurship and innovation. Consequently, these areas previously occupied by journalists are now utilised by tech people and designers doing infographics or R&D (Usher 2019).

Usher also highlights how the rise of mobile journalism equips journalists with all capabilities, potentially making physical entry into the newsroom obsolete (Usher 2014). This raises questions about justifying spending money on resources in the physical newsroom, as many journalists and editors argue that physical orientation may no longer be essential (Usher 2014). Usher refers to a growing sentiment that newsrooms are no longer – and should not be – the centre of where news work gets done (Usher 2019, 31). Despite these significant transformations, including staff reduction and the downsizing and relocations of newsrooms, many still value newsrooms as spaces for collaboration and exchanging ideas. These physical encounters are seen, by many, where the organizational culture manifests (Usher 2019) and where the communities of practice and group belonging are best preserved (Maares, Banjac, and Nölleke 2023).

The enforced digital work environment developed during COVID-19 represented a temporal and new learning environment shared by both professionals and students. Numerous scholars argue against treating the pandemic as merely a temporary crisis. In Spain, García-Avilés et al. (2024) find that despite COVID-19 being a crisis situation, it speeded up some ongoing innovations regarding news production, newsroom organization, distribution, and commercialization in a significant way. Carroll and Conboy (2020) argue that even if some of the practices were short-term solutions, the reality of the pandemic is by no means short-term. García-Avilés (2021) conducted interviews with news managers on how they managed their newsroom during the pandemic, revealing that the most significant change reported was the reconfiguration of the newsroom concept. Collaborative virtual environments and more flexible workspaces, according to García-Avilés, have altered the newsroom forever. One of his informants even claims that ‘The classic newsroom model is going to disappear (…)’ (García-Avilés 2021, 1249).

These examples demonstrate changing digital practices for maintaining and developing already established practices and social relations. However, none of them focus on digital collaborative spaces as spaces for learning and integrating newcomers into their ‘newsrooms’.

When expectations meet reality

Journalism students tend to possess a clear view of journalism and journalism practice upon entering journalism schools (Hovden and Ottosen 2016). Drawing on surveys among nearly 5000 journalism students from 30 Nordic institutions spanning a period of 7 years, Hovden and Ottosen (2016) identified a strong, shared orientation towards journalism as a profession in the Nordic countries. They emphasise that although these students may lack direct journalistic experience, they are not unconscious or without predispositions. In this social space, their habitus and clear vocational aspirations manifest through their desire and striving for a journalistic life based on the tasks, the beats, and the journalistic ideals that are attractive to them (Hovden and Ottosen 2016, 53). This foundational professional outlook tends to remain relatively resistant to alteration (secondary socialization) throughout their education.

Journalism students look forward to contest and develop their skills in real life settings, learning from senior peers and journalistic role models. It is reasonable to believe that journalism programs based on an internship model both sustain and cultivate specific expectations among students – both physical and emotional. This follows a premise around anticipatory future-oriented practices (Kronstad and Eide 2015). In their study of online journalists, Kronstad and Eide use the term ‘anticipatory reflection’ to describe this expectation that precedes Schön’s notions of reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action (Kronstad and Eide 2015, 234). If journalism programs either imitate or create expectations of a newsroom environment that significantly diverge from reality, these expectations are likely to go unfulfilled. Such discrepancies can lead to uncertainties when students find themselves in a learning context that differs from what they anticipated. Moreover, if students encounter a workplace environment where their role models are not physically present, their desired expectations of the community of practice may be challenged.

Method

The empirical material is based on qualitative semi-structured interviews with 39 of 94 journalism students who completed their internships during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021. These students were all enrolled at Volda University College, one of eight accredited institutions offering a bachelor`s degree in journalism in Norway. Fifteen students undertook their internship in 2020, and twenty-four did so in 2021. Their ten-week mandatory internship in a Norwegian newsroom takes place during the final semester of their BA. Typically, the students receive a reduced salary indicating that they do proper journalistic work but as novices under training. Prior to this final internship, the students undergo two six-week internal internships in college newsrooms.

In May 2022, we conducted a post-pandemic survey of all 39 students who completed their internship in 2022, after all restrictions were abandoned. The survey questions were guided by the qualitative interview protocol, focusing on the students’ perceived learning outcomes, their feelings of belonging, tutoring in the workplace, and whether their pre-internship training gave a realistic picture of what met them at their internship workplace. The post-pandemic survey data indicated that conditions had returned to normal, with the majority of students reporting a high level of coherence regarding the alignment between their educational training and internship realities. This post-pandemic survey will not be given any more treatment in this article.

The interview respondents were selected to ensure diversity in terms of gender and media specialisation. Of the interviewees, there were 18 women and 2, all Norwegian. Each student had internship placements aligned with their specialisation, with 18 students in broadcasting (TV and radio) and 21 in print/online news. The internships were distributed across national (24), regional (13), and local (2) media outlets situated all over Norway. All interviews took place between March 16 and May 6, 2021. The 2020 students were therefore interviewed approximately a year after their internship, while the 2021 students were interviewed during (mid/late) or shortly after their internship. Most students (24) had previous experience working in an editorial office outside of school.

The interviews were conducted, transcribed, and coded by the authors in a manner inspired by grounded theory and open coding. As Kvale and Brinkmann (2009, 202) put it, ‘the purpose of grounded theory is not to test existing theory, but to develop theory inductively. (…) The goal is the development of categories that capture the fullness of the experiences and actions studied.’ Four of the 39 interviews were inter-coded by two authors to ensure reliability.

Some of the authors were directly involved in teaching activities at earlier courses on the journalism program and some teachers work at other parts of the institution – not directly affiliated with the program. None of the teachers interviewed students they had previously taught, were currently teaching, or were responsible for grading. The interviews followed a semi-structured format based on a standard interview protocol, including allowing students to elaborate on topics the students found important and wanted to emphasise. This conversational part of the interview was essential as many students often hesitated and were not able to give clear answers due to the fact that they had no previous internship or practice to compare their experiences to. Each interview lasted approximately 40 min and was conducted via the video conferencing tool Zoom. All students gave their informed consent to take part in the study. The interviews were conducted aligned with SIKT`s guidelines for data collection, treatment, and storage of research data in Norway. In this case, the interviews were transcribed without any personal data and were stored on the university internal servers, complying with Norwegian research data requirements.

The fact that we interviewed students who did their internships in two consecutive years naturally influenced their answers, as the pandemic situation was different in 2021 as compared to 2020. The lockdown occurred approximately four weeks into the 2020 student internship. By contrast, in 2021, the initial period of chaos had subsided, and most of the Norwegian society, including the media industry, had adjusted to a new normal characterised by increased use of digital tools and remote work practices. While this variation poses methodological challenges, it also offers insights into how different contexts impacted the students’ internships experiences.

Maares, Banjac, and Nölleke (2023) describe the emergency nature of COVID-19 as an unanticipated opportunity to explore the effectiveness of virtual newsrooms on a broader scale and provide a snapshot into future practices that might otherwise be challenging to identify. Despite Norway experiencing relatively lower impact from the COVID-19 situation compared to other countries, with high job security and high familiarity with digital practices, the daily work life was significantly transformed. The newsrooms operated with reduced staff physically present, and the work was more characterised by digital and remote working practices.

Therefore, understanding students’ learning experiences, their feeling of belonging to a community of practice, and their online collaboration experiences during the pandemic contributes to a deeper understanding of how the evolved newsroom works as a learning environment.

Findings

Many of the students who had an internship in 2020 were sent home to work during the internship period in mid-March 2020, due to the pandemic. Those who had internships in spring 2021 were also affected, albeit to varying degrees. Some were able to work partly from home and partly at the workplace, while others were able to remain in the workplace full-time. A few were required to work entirely from home throughout their internship period. Regardless of the specifics, all students experienced a shift to a different newsroom environment and relied heavily on digital tools for collaborating and completing their work.

Digital tools are no hassle

The students were exposed to numerous digital tools in their internship, but when asked how the tools helped journalistic work processes and collaboration, they found it difficult to articulate a clear answer. This difficulty likely stems from their ubiquitous use of several of these tools both for work and for communication, both formally and informally. We requested the students to list all the tools they used during a regular week and enumerate the tools they used for communication, excluding, e.g. editing software. Slack, Microsoft Teams and Facebook’s Workplace were by far the most preferred internal communication tools in the newsrooms. Many newsrooms made use of more than one of these systems concurrently. On average, students participated in six editorial video meetings per week, mostly consisting of morning meetings on Teams or Google Meet and group meetings for evaluation, etc. Notably, the use of video meetings became more widespread in 2021 than in 2020, reflecting an evolving trend in remote collaboration practices.

Our respondents had no problems learning and utilising digital tools, including those of a specialised character. The majority expressed satisfaction with the internal training provided by their internship employers. The number of tools varied, as did the duration of software training, ranging from a couple of hours to over a week of training. Several of the students did their technical training remotely.

Feelings of belonging – physical presence matters

One might assume that inexperienced students could feel uncertain when entering a newsroom full of professional journalists, potentially taking a more active role towards the end of their internship as they become more familiar with internal structures and workflows. However, in this case, the students found it easy to follow and understand internal communication and editorial discussions through Slack, Workspace, and Teams.

Looking into the actual participation in these digital discussions, the findings revealed a more nuanced picture. We asked the students if they found it more challenging to participate or make comments in digital settings compared to physical meetings. Approximately half of the students reported a low barrier to participation, with some noting that digital collaborative tools facilitated their inclusion in the editorial workflow and made participation easier. Conversely, those who perceived a ‘medium’ or ‘high’ barrier to participation attributed this to low self-confidence and lack of experience in communicating with more experienced reporters.

Overall, a large majority of the students felt they belonged to a professional community, though 8 out of 39 indicated that they didn’t feel included.

Table 1 above, ranked by the researchers based on their qualitative answers, highlights that those individuals consistently physically present at the newsroom all the time felt a strong sense of belonging. Among those who worked both from home and in the newsroom, one-third did not experience the same sense of belonging. A higher proportion felt included in 2021 compared to 2020, suggesting improvements in both physical newsroom environments and remote work readiness, with better-established routines for digital collaboration in 2021.

Table 1. Did you get the feeling of belonging to a professional community?

	Total	100% at home	Combination	In the office	2020	2021
Yes	31	1	12	18	11	20
No	8	1	7	0	4	4

The majority of the students reported feeling quickly at ease in their internship settings. For those who did not, the physical work environment played a significant role:

It took a very long time. I think it’s a bit about who you are as a person and about self-confidence. But it also has to do with integration. It’s harder when you don’t know the people on the other side. (Student working only from home, 2021)

It takes a few weeks. Maybe I haven’t found my place, even now. I imagine that it's like getting to know people again if I'm going to be on duty with physical attendance. You may have had meetings with the person at zoom, but when you meet them physically it is something completely different. So no, maybe I'm not quite sure about my role yet. (Student with a combination home and office work, 2021)

Out of the interns, 24 had prior experience working in an editorial office. Among them, 14 felt immediately at ease, whereas only 2 out of 15 respondents without prior work experience felt comfortable right away. Within this latter group, 6 out of 15 students never felt confident in their roles. Clearly, respondents with previous work experience found it easier to navigate, find and define their role within the newsroom.

Students’ reflections on their learning outcomes

Most of the students rated their learning outcomes from the internship as either ‘very good’ or ‘good’. Only five students reported low satisfaction with their learning outcomes. However, despite the generally positive feedback, two out of three students felt that their outcomes were below what they expected due to the Covid situation. Many of them gave home office, lack of physical relations, and lack of feedback as the primary reasons for this perception.

Some of their prior expectations, both formal and informal, to the internship, were: working in the high-end newsrooms with reputable staff, living in dense and busy city centres, and building a professional network for their career start. In reality, the internship involved far more digital communication than anticipated or prepared for. Two-thirds of the students found this digital work environment to negatively impact their internship experience.

I worked from home for the first one and a half weeks. And to have video meetings then (…) when I hadn’t met those people once. Absolutely 100 percent harder. There is no question about that. (Student, combination of home and office, 2020)

The combination of being new in an environment, a novice in your field, and perhaps unsure about your role, underscores the importance of a supportive and safe learning environment. Many students found it more challenging to ask for help through digital tools. The threshold for reaching out via messages or calls felt higher compared to simply turning to a nearby colleague for assistance. The students’ responses show a strong need for feedback, driven by their newness in the newsroom environment and their status as beginners or novices in the profession. They highlighted that receiving feedback from experienced reporters was one of the desirable goals of their internship, yet proved most difficult to obtain during the pandemic due to limited physical interactions.

Additionally, students expressed a desire to observe their colleagues’ work routines to learn about both organisational culture and professional practice. Those who physically interned in the newsroom also mentioned this desire for imitated learning. The reason for that was that most of their colleagues were sent home while interns were often given priority for physical presence.

Absolutely. When you communicate over Slack, you don’t know how they will react to your messages, if they think I am whining, for example. Maybe they’re busy? Or is there another reason why people don’t respond? When you work as a journalist and are going to interview people, and just sit at home, you lose quite a lot, observation, body language, follow-up questions, etc. (Student, combination of home and office, 2020)

Discussion

We often refer to journalism practice and editorial culture as tacit knowledge – even as knowledge ‘embedded in the walls.’ During internships, we discovered that physical environments play a crucial role in facilitating journalism students’ ability to understand and to be socialised into the editorial culture. Our findings identify a clear gap between expectations and actual experiences during internships, largely due to increased remote digital collaboration and less populated newsrooms. A vibrant and busy newsroom seems to be the students’ expectations of a high-impact learning environment and reflects their desired work setting. This discovery is consistent with Steensen (2018) finding that newsrooms serve as the most important artefact for journalism interns.

The overall impression from our study indicates that while the technology itself did not hinder inclusion in internal communication, the remote working environment did. Being present in a physical newsroom during the internship was paramount for students to feel included in a community of practice and confident in their role as interns. Even students with prior newsroom experience preferred physical engagement over remote work for learning – remote work was simply not their desired learning space. These findings are supported by Maares, Banjac, and Nölleke (2023) study which strongly emphasizing the significance of physical newsrooms for journalists` sense of belonging. This shift from physical to more virtual newsrooms seems to make the transition from the pedagogical newsroom to the professional industry even more challenging without physical encounters. When these physical qualities are lacking, their importance becomes even more apparent.

This indicates that integration or socialisation of newcomers into a workplace culture is more difficult and alienating in a learning context when this is happening through digital collaborative tools. Most students found the remote working environment to be a significant obstacle to getting work done. Without physical proximity to their colleagues, and without being able to see who was available, they faced greater difficulty initiating contact. When the students lack the opportunity to observe, copy, easily collaborate with, and seek advice from others in the newsroom, a crucial aspect of the internship learning model is fundamentally altered. One could argue that the supportive structures necessary for facilitating effective and secure learning processes are no longer present. This could explain why our findings suggest that the absence of physical presence of staff and colleagues during the internship is a significant barrier to the learning process and students’ anticipated learning outcomes. In contrast, a study from Australia on journalism students during the pandemic found that their pedagogical newsroom played a vital role in developing real-life skills, with students feeling somehow lucky to be working as journalists during the pandemic (McCarthy et al. 2022). However, their pedagogical model follows a work-integrated learning model (WIL) similar to the teaching hospital model, diverging from the real-life workplace internship model dominating the Nordic context.

While the majority express satisfaction with their learning outcomes, they believe they would have learned significantly more without remote work practices. Possible explanations for that could either be because their training in the pedagogical newsroom at school was different, not their preferred learning environment, or preconceived expectations of what a newsroom experience should involve. This aligns with Steensen’s (2018) findings among Norwegian journalism students showing that most students were extremely newsroom-bound in their internship. This suggests that ‘traditional’ newsroom serve as a desirable, suitable, and effective pedagogical space in their internship. This is a noteworthy consideration for the industry when recruiting new talents, but also for journalism schools that play a role in preserving the ‘historical’ understanding of the newsroom.

An essential aspect is the students’ experiences of being newcomers, both to journalism as a field of work and to the specific newsroom where they intern. What does it mean to enter a newsroom (or any other workplace for that matter) for the first time? While this is not a novel question, our students’ experiences certainly shed new light on the social and technological dimensions. Despite having prior work experience, students often feel insecure about work practices, routines, and organisational culture. This implies that being new is also a governing factor – not just being a novice to the profession. Unlike established and/or experienced journalists who benefit from ‘knowing the ropes’, their colleagues and the embedded cultural practice, the students lack these advantages. So, while these established relations, made physical before the pandemic, seem crucial for translating collaboration into digital means, this is likely to make the disadvantage considerably bigger for the students. Asking a colleague to comment on your work is more difficult to do when you are unable to see who is available. Similarly, seeking assistance from someone you hardly know is even more daunting when you are newcomer both to the industry and the specific workplace. Consequently, the risk of not feeling or being included in the community of practice increases.

A Reuters Institute report (Cherubini, Newman, and Nielsen 2021) on journalism industry leaders revealed that hybrid working will soon be the norm, although there are uncertainties about whether this flexibility will be able to attract new and retaining talent. A consequence of this is that news organisations are investing in upgraded technologies, redesigning and downsizing their offices since COVID-19 redefined what the office is for (Cherubini, Newman, and Nielsen 2021). The Reuters Institute Report identifies challenges arising from evolving newsrooms yet to be seen in the long run. These changes will likely challenge the existing internship models of journalism education in the future.

In some countries, the changing media landscape and shrinking newsrooms have resulted in difficulties finding a work placement for student internships prompting educators to explore suitable alternatives for providing essential practical experiences (Mabweazara and Taylor 2012; McLaughlin, Gotlieb, and Cummins 2020; Valencia-Forrester 2020). Examples of these models include College newsrooms (Payne et al. 2023), pop-up newsrooms (Wall 2015), work-integrated learning model (WIL) (McCarthy et al. 2022), practicums (McLaughlin, Gotlieb, and Cummins 2020), and the teaching hospital model (Olsen 2020). These models are all different teaching models aiming to equip students with the necessary practical and editorial skills. These models are often characterised as simulated practice managed by academic staff – often in collaboration with the industry.

However, adapting and adjusting pedagogical models alone may not be sufficient if the evolved newsrooms offer a working environment not aligned with the students’ initial perceptions of the profession and desired work environments. Therefore, industries should consider creating attractive workplace environments as part of their long-term strategy to attract and retain new talents. Previous criticism of the industry has often been that they do not see internships as spaces for learning, but rather a way of finding talented journalists (Valencia-Forrester 2020, 699). Also, instead of complaining about highly educated kids who don’t know anything about the real-world employers could be better off taking in students to do structured work that actually teaches them something (Scott 2016). If newsrooms evolution mainly prioritises maintaining already established practices and social relations, it risks reinforcing the status quo. At worst, it will gradually become a different workplace than what aspiring students desire and both educational programmes and the industry might be recruiting a different type of talent than what we currently do.

Conclusions

The combination of increased use of digital tools, a diminished sense of belonging, and different learning outcomes indicates a clear discrepancy between students` expectations and their actual experience during workplace internships. While they acknowledge significant learning, this was not their preferred way of learning. They highlighted the lack of informal networking, the absence of learning through imitation and observations, and the lack of immediate feedback as the main drawbacks (referring to RQ1).

It is one of the many roles of journalism educators to provide suitable learning situations. If the current pedagogical newsroom-oriented model diverges too greatly from the evolving newsrooms in the industry, it may leave students in uncertain learning situations during their internship (referring to RQ2). This gap could foster a discussion of the future of learning and vocational training for journalism students.

It would be unwise to change the structure and content of journalism education solely based on the way media organizations behave during an emergency situation, not representative of future journalism. However, trends like increased use of remote e-work and digital collaboration tools, alongside trends like downsizing and relocation of newsrooms contribute to long-term industry shifts that journalism schools should address to maintain a sustainable equilibrium between suitable pedagogical models and preparing students for work-life.

As argued by Witschge and Harbers (2018), we shall not assume that the understanding of what journalism is, and how it should be practiced, solely develops within newsrooms. Therefore, journalism educators should actively share insights and experiences from digital internships to future workplaces taking interns to secure the best possible learning environments. Furthermore, industry attention should be directed towards the recruitment of talents (if they do not wish to work in these environments), raising awareness of effective integration of newcomers into the newsrooms’ cultures and practices, especially in light of the long trends in evolving newsrooms.

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Olaug Bjørneset (employed in the Norwegian State Broadcaster NRK) for contributing to conduct some of the interviews and providing insightful industry perspectives. Additionally, the authors sincerely thank all the participating students for spending time during their busy internship period, often using their evenings, for the interviews.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes on contributors

Kjetil Vaage Øie

Kjetil Vaage Øie (Ph.D) is an associate professor at the Faculty of Media and Journalism at Volda University College, Norway. He has authored and co-authored several articles on emerging fields within journalism both from the perspective of design, content, and use. Other research areas and pedagogical projects include new media, mobile media, digital journalism, and communication and media design.

Ivar John Erdal

Ivar John Erdal (Ph.D) is a professor of journalism and media studies at Volda University College. His publications are in the fields of digital journalism, mobile media, cross-media production and organisation studies, and have appeared in journals such as Journalism Studies, Convergence, Media and Communication, and Journalism Practice.

Charlotte Louise Loxley Helleland

Charlotte Louise Loxley Helleland is an assistant professor at Volda University College where she teaches journalism and journalism production. Helleland is a former journalist and has been producing several screened documentary films.

Tormod Utne

Tormod Utne is an associate professor at the Institute of Film and Amination at Volda University College. He is a former editor in several Norwegian news organisations and has been teaching journalism since 2014. He has authored and co-authored articles and book chapters on immersive journalism and production.