Managing a 21st century newsroom workforce: A case study of NYC news media
This article tells us about a case study which focuses on 16 companies in the New York City news media. The sample set for the study was chosen using CisionPoint, an extensive media database. The random sample set was further reduced to only include companies which have a LinkedIn page. The study focused on all types of news companies, from print newspapers to digital-only newspapers. After selection of the companies was complete, the researchers used network analysis to track employment history of those working for the companies, again using LinkedIn.
The aim of the social network analysis done in this case study was to decipher the change in hiring patterns by these companies. It was noticeable that employment in this industry was evolving due to changes in the contemporary business world. Once data for the companies and employees was collected, a network was created. The network had two types of vertices, one for employees and one for companies. There was a tie between two companies if an employee had worked at one company and moved onto another within the network. There were four main findings in this analysis.
First, employees in broadcast were more likely to have switched jobs than employees in newspapers or online media. Second, newsroom employees account for half of the people in the analysis regardless of the gradual shift towards employees with digital skills. Third, jobs including “programmers, coders, data specialists, and those dedicated solely to producing content for social and mobile platforms,” have heavily increased. Finally, the growth of these jobs [programmers, coders, …] came from within the industry.
It was very compelling to learn about the changing newsroom workforce in terms of network analysis which we studied in class. It was especially intriguing that they used LinkedIn, a professional social network, to do this analysis. It reminded me of the Facebook study on users’ friends which we looked at in class.
The researchers also at centrality within the network, companies which were influential or important within the network were central. This reminded me of Zachary’s Karate Club; The most important companies had the most edges in the newsroom network similarly to how the administrator and the instructor had the most edges in the Karate network.