Welcome to the structured-journalism-developer-community wiki!

Contents:

1. What is Journalism?

2. How does Journalism work?

3. Challenges in Journalism

4. Future of Journalism: Structured Journalism

What is Journalism?

Journalism is the way of communicating with the different communities of people about things that happened across different places that they might not hear/know about it.

Journalism comes in several different forms:

I. News

A. Breaking news: Telling about an event as it happens.
B. Feature stories: A detailed look at something interesting that's not breaking news.
C. Enterprise or Investigative stories: Stories that uncover information that few people knew.

II. Opinion

A. Editorials: Unsigned articles that express a publication's opinion.
B. Columns: Signed articles that express the writer's reporting and his conclusions.
C. Reviews: Such as concert, restaurant, or movie reviews.

Online, journalism can come in the forms listed below, as well as:

Blogs: Online diaries kept by individuals or small groups.
Discussion boards Online question and answer pages where anyone can participate.
Wikis: Articles that any reader can add to or change.

The best journalism is easy to read, and just sounds like a nice, smart person telling you something interesting.Source

How does Journalism work?

What does a Journalist do?

A journalist investigates, collects, and presents information as a news story that can be presented through newspapers, magazines, radio, television, and the internet.

Journalism is a broad career with many opportunities. Within different areas of media (television, radio, newspapers, magazines, etc.), there are specialized tasks for journalists. Depending on the size of an organization, a journalist may work one or many of these tasks:

Reporters - are directly involved in the gathering of information. They conduct interviews, find sources, and pull together all the information needed to write a well-rounded news story. Reporters also present the information in a written or spoken form in news stories, documentaries, or feature articles. General reporters cover all kinds of news stories, but some may specialize in certain areas such as sports, politics, or lifestyle. Some reporters may work on staff for large news organizations, or as freelance writers, writing stories for whoever is paying them.

Sub-editors - take stories written by reporters and put them into a form that suits the special needs of their particular newspaper, magazine, or website. Sub-editors do not gather the information themselves but rather they concentrate on how existing stories can be better tailored to match a specific audience.

Photojournalists - use photography as a way of reporting the news. They may cover events with a reporter, taking photographs to represent a written story, or attend news events on their own, doing both jobs. A photojournalist must carry photographic equipment with them and must make decisions instantly in order to capture important events at the time they take place. At times, they may be exposed to physical danger, crowds, or harsh weather.

The editor - is in charge of deciding what goes in a newspaper, magazine, or news bulletin. He or she is responsible for the content that is to be written by the journalists and makes all final decisions.

The news editor - is the person in charge of all news journalists. They make all the decisions about what stories to cover and who will do the work. In large news organizations, the news editor may have a deputy, often referred to as the chief of staff, whose job is to assign reporters to selected stories.

Feature writers - write longer stories, which give more background to a news story. This type of writing involves a lot more in-depth research to give readers a lengthy and informative article.Source

Here is a short video about a journalist work process:

Challenges in Journalism

Some of the evolving changes in the field of journalism are –

1. Content has to be produced for multiple platforms – Printed version, web version and if necessary then blog version.

2. A news needs to be covered and updated at jet speed competing with global news agencies and other electronic or digital media platforms. ‘Breaking news’ is the need of the hour.

3. Social media is of utmost importance. An incident that might not look that important otherwise may become a trending topic on social media. Things go viral at the speed of light and one has to get comfortable with the speed and trends of social media.

4. News no longer is associated directly with the newsmakers. Now there are a lot of middlemen who handle the communications of their clients. They are PRs or celebrity managers and it becomes often important to cater to their needs also. Meeting their unending demands may come across as a difficult task.

5. Lastly, the newsroom is much more chaotic now. With numerous amounts of press releases pouring in from different sources, it’s essential that a journalist understands how to screen the important ones out of them. Picking the right news for your coverage or headline and touching the pulse of your audience is an art that journalists now need to become experts on. Source

Apart from the above challenges, some other areas have also been revealed and statistics been attached below.

Getting it right vs. getting it first. 51% said, “‘getting it right’ was most important to their [media] organization”; followed by “revenue” (34%), “exclusivity” (10%), and “being first to publish” (5%).

The potential performance of a story after its published matters. “65% of journalists said audience metrics have changed the way they evaluate stories”; additionally, “43% of journalists globally reported their organization’s primary measure of success for their content is readership or viewers.”

The volume of work. “More than 1/3 of journalists globally publish more than seven articles a week”; and “42% of respondents work on stories no more than a day in advance.”

The atmospherics of trust. When “asked journalists if the public lost or gained trust in the media over the last year, 63% feel the public lost trust. While this is still high, it’s the lowest it’s been in years.” [Note: it looks to me like the structure of this question changed from last year, which was a 5 point Likert scale].

A deluge of pitches. “75% of journalists say fewer than a quarter of the pitches they receive are relevant or useful.”Source

Here are the statistics observed when conducted through a survey:

Future of Journalism: Structured Journalism

In recent years to attract the reader's attention as well as to provide enough information about facts in a shorter time, numerous improvements been done on personalizing news stories based reader's mentality. Here is a short video to understand Personalised news.