Journalists in the Making

This article examines Norwegian journalism students’ views about their profession and education at different phases in their career and also outlines the social background of the new generation of journalists. The article presents key findings from several surveys of students conducted at the two most popular and prestigious journalism schools in Norway between 2000 and 2004. The main aim is to investigate any development in attitudes to different professional values between the beginning of students’ studies through to their first years as working journalists. What do the journalists of tomorrow consider to be the most important tasks for journalism in society? What motivates them to study journalism? What kind of knowledge, skills and traits are seen as crucial for journalists? And to what extent do the J-schools actually make a difference in the shaping of the next generation of journalists? An important finding is that most professional attitudes seem to stay quite stable from the beginning of studies until early career, though the results also indicate a general decline in classical journalistic professional idealism after entering the newsroom.