• DOI:10.1080/21670811.2012.740264
• Corpus ID: 219540468

EDITORIAL

@article{Franklin2013EDITORIAL,
  title={EDITORIAL},
  author={Bob Franklin},
  journal={Digital Journalism},
  year={2013},
  volume={1},
  pages={1 - 5}
}

• Bob Franklin
• Published 1 February 2013
• Sociology
• Digital Journalism

Welcome to this first issue of Digital Journalism, a peer-reviewed, international journal published by Routledge, Taylor & Francis, designed to provide a critical forum for the scholarly discussion, analysis and responses to the wide-ranging implications of digital technologies for the practice and study of journalism. For those eager to read the articles in this launch issue, I promise to be brief. I do not intend that Editorials should be a routine part of the editorial mix in Digital Journalism since space is always at a premium in a busy journal; except for those published solely online. But I want to spend a little time unravelling the editorial ambitions for Digital Journalism by posing the six questions which typically inform journalists’ inquiries when researching and writing news stories: who? what? why? where? when? and occasionally, how?—although not necessarily in that order. But let’s get on! Why is there a need for a new journal? I think the answer here may seem fairly self-evident, to the great majority of journalists and scholars of journalism who have become increasingly aware, across the last few years, of fundamental changes which have been restructuring all aspects of journalism and journalism studies. And, because journalism is such a significant institution, these changes have in turn had implications for the economic, social, political and cultural life of communities and nations. The development of digital media technologies has been particularly crucial and radically altered virtually every aspect of news gathering, writing and reporting. The collapse of traditional business models to fund and resource a critical and independent journalism, as well as the absence of any widely accepted alternative funding strategy, has triggered a radical reshaping of journalists’ employment, their work places, products, role perceptions, ethical values and ways of working. These important changes challenge traditional assumptions in journalism practice, but also journalism scholarship and education, make definitional boundaries fluid and suggest reassessment of even the most fundamental questions such as “Who is a journalist?” and “What is Journalism?” So these changes in journalism have already proved significant, fundamental, wide-ranging and, for journalists and scholars of journalism studies, intriguing, challenging, sometimes alarming, but always fascinating. I believe that the absence of a journal devoted to exploring these developments in journalism has constituted an extraordinary omission in scholarly publishing provision within the field of journalism studies and I am delighted that Routledge, Taylor & Francis have decided to try to fill that gap. What are the editorial ambitions for Digital Journalism? In broad terms they are no more than twofold. First, Digital Journalism intends to provide what journals have always offered readers and contributors, which is a place of intellectual companionship, a public discursive space in which common academic concerns can be addressed and in which argument and evidence can be tested; if necessary to destruction. So Digital Journalism will be a place for addressing common concerns with scholars and journalists who share a similar interest and enthusiasm for journalism studies but without any whiff of orthodoxy. In short, a place where scholars and researchers can “hang out” or “hang their intellectual hat”. Second, because the pace of change has been rapid and looks set to continue at some considerable if not accelerating pace, it is important to