My research paper has been published and is available to be downloaded online. This study is the result of my year as a Journalist Fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.
The title – ‘What Is Quality Journalism and How It Can Be Saved’ – may sound slightly pompous but it does describe what it is about and what I am interested in.
Here’s what James Painter, director of the Fellowship, writes about it on the RISJ website:
“Johanna Vehkoo, the literary editor at the Aamulehti newspaper in Finland and a Helsingin Sanomat-sponsored fellow, has written an extensive and very readable study examining the nature of quality journalism and how it can help to save print media. In her research paper, entitled ‘WHAT IS QUALITY JOURNALISM AND HOW IT CAN BE SAVED’, Johanna focuses on what needs to be done in terms of preserving quality content and making it better.
She starts by examining how media experts have defined ‘quality journalism’, and concludes that journalism’s key role is to be an independent monitor of power and the servant of citizens. But good journalism must also try ‘to make sense of the chaotic world around us. It interprets, analyses, and strives to give meaning to all the babbling that’s going on’.
Johanna interviews eleven key newspaper editors, journalists and media academics to get a sense of the role that quality journalism could and should play in the future of news, whatever platform it may be on. She concludes with seven detailed recommendations to save quality journalism, including ‘content must come before business models’, ‘journalists must specialise’, and ‘invest in quality’.”
