The formation of the journalist profession by the media industry: The impact of internship on journalist students

Professions are defined by the fact that they consist of more or less exclusive groups of individuals acting in situations characterized by uncertainty, thus requiring professional judgement based on the professional's theoretical knowledge as well as experience (Abbott, 1988). Professions are reproduced through recruitment mechanisms (Harrits & Olesen, 2012) and through specialized training and internships with experienced professional practitioners as teachers. This also applies to the journalistic profession in Denmark, which in large part is reproduced through the four-year bachelor program at the Danish Media and Journalism School with 2.5 years of schooling and 1.5 years of internship in news, entertainment media and communications organizations. The journalistic profession is formed in two very different settings. The school curriculum is primarily oriented towards providing the skills set out in the Act of the Bachelor in Journalism, while the internship is also characterized by the terms and conditions which apply specifically to the media and communications industry as commercial, political or publicist organizations or companies. In other words, there is no reason to assume identical content or outcome of the two processes of formation, which also can be considered as the distinctions in literature between media and journalism profession (Svith, 2011). This paper examines how the industry forms the profession. What happens to the students' professional standards (how the professional practice should be) and their perception of professional practice (how to practice) during the year and a half internship? It is examined by a panel survey pre and post 18 months internship (4th-6th semester). Recruitment patterns and journalist training in the first 18 months will characterize students’ attitudes and perceptions at 3th semester. The attitudes and perceptions of the students at the 7th semester are impacted by the 18 months internship period, where they participated in the production processes of the industry. On a micro level, the results based on a comparison of responses pre and post internship from individual students show changes in more than half of their responses. On a meso level, less change is observed for the cohort as changes are opposing. Future research will focus on the explanations of these observed changes.