A two-year long internship in a medium, usually linked to an academic institution, is still the most important entrance track into journalism in Germany (von Matt, 2012). This is combined with a four-week-long intensive course in an independent institution for journalism education. For further education, there is a good range of offers in terms of journalistic techniques, genres, data journalism, cross-media production, and so on. These offers include not only skills but also knowledge training. Four of the sampled news media run their own academy, and there is a wide range of academies, courses, and university-based certificate courses for professional journalists.
The editors-in-chief interviewed underlined that they are extremely interested in journalists from their newsrooms undergoing further education, and journalists themselves also claimed that they can go for further education if they want.
Big Data analysis has become a hot topic and is mentioned as an opportunity by most of our interlocutors. However, there is no obligation for continuous training. Those newspapers which have explicit investigative departments claim their journalists are fit enough for investigation and that they do training on the job and in specific cooperative networks. One of these networks (Netzwerk Recherche) organises an annual conference with hundreds of participants and several dozens of short workshops.
In most cases, there also exist possibilities to attend extra courses at academies and institutes, or courses held by experts providing specialised knowledge; only one editorship does not offer any journalism training. The journalists’ unions also provide a small number of professional training courses.
However, the representatives of trade unions state that there is still a big need not being met, as editors-in-chief do not promote possibilities for further education: “Not all journalists are up to date in training on Big Data analysis. We have noticed that the willingness of companies to actively offer such a service is very weak”. This is why the trade unions have made it a component of the collective wage agreement. Whenever a journalist wants to level up in the salary hierarchy, this is connected to further education; thus, employers are structurally forced to offer this opportunity. Data journalism is more of interest to young journalists, with older journalists often refraining from taking it seriously.
Further training for female journalists is not an issue, although the trade unions admit that they want to push more strongly for it. Continuous training is expensive, as the newsroom must be sufficiently staffed for one or two colleagues to attend a course lasting several days. Also, sufficient funds must be set aside for ongoing professional training. Finally, journalists need to be encouraged by their superiors. Therefore, as most of the news media in our sample belong to financially sound publishing or broadcasting corporations, they have sufficient financial and staff resources at their disposal to enable ongoing journalism training, but conditions are not that positive in small and regional news outlets. Additionally, training in diversity, gender, and inclusion issues are rarely booked, and we have no data on the quality of trainings: “There is still room for improvement in gender-oriented continuing education. Here the German media landscape still has a considerable need for improvement”.
