Media companies may have sunk millions in to technology to create shiny new multi-media newsrooms, but their failure to match that with investment in their journalists is resulting in plummeting levels of quality and overstretched, underpaid workers, according to the National Union of Journalists (NUJ).  In Shaping the Future, a study it published today looking at the effects of media convergence, the NUJ presents a bleak picture of media companies scrambling to ensure they are not left behind in the stampede toward convergence. While journalists were at pains not to look like luddites, saying they welcomed the challenge of new technology, the report is filled with bitter complaints about the implementation of new media newsrooms.

For example, the study found that, at The Telegraph, scene of perhaps the most notable integration efforts so far, managers tried to “ram through a seven-day, all-media operation” while shedding more than 50 journalists. That is not atypical, the study found, and is a process in which quality suffers while staff stress levels rise. Moreover, many journalists are not being compensated for the extra time they are now expected to put in, the study says. Just 22 percent of union chapels said their members had received extra pay for applying themselves to new media.

NUJ general secretary Jeremy Dear said that it was “clear that new technology isn’t to blame”, laying the blame instead on “short-sighted media employers”. Dear noted: “Instead of seizing the opportunity to enhance journalistic content and build and maintain quality media, many simply seize the opportunity to reduce costs and boost profits, viewing the erosion of quality journalism as a necessary sacrifice.”

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