Researcher seeks merit-based newsroom recruitment

Kemi Busari, a Nigerian researcher based in the United States, is urging media owners to prioritize merit in their newsroom recruitment processes. Busari, a doctoral student at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland, USA, points out that existing research on hiring criteria in journalism is limited, with a notable absence of perspectives from media owners themselves.

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While studies on journalism recruitment criteria exist, they are generally limited, and they focus primarily on Western newsrooms. There is a notable lack of research on African newsrooms, particularly in Nigeria, despite the country’s large and dynamic media sector.

His recent article, titled 'Beyond the degree: Entry criteria and the influence of journalism education in Nigerian news organizations’ hiring practices,' addresses this gap. Busari notes that while some studies have explored newsroom employment, they often focus on Western contexts. His work specifically examines hiring practices in Nigerian newsrooms, a sector characterized by its large and dynamic media landscape.

Historically, newspaper employers have emphasized experience as the primary hiring criterion, followed by factors like salaries, editorial skills, and journalistic values. Busari's study, grounded in gatekeeping theory, investigates how professional boundaries, norms, and values are implemented within Nigerian journalism. He employs a case-study, mixed-methods approach, including a demographic survey across four newsrooms.

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In practice, recruitment and hiring processes function as a gatekeeping mechanism through which news organisations actively negotiate and reproduce professional boundaries. By examining recruitment practices, it becomes possible to observe how journalism’s professional boundaries are enacted in practice and how particular definitions of journalistic legitimacy are privileged over others.

Busari explains that recruitment and hiring processes function as a critical gatekeeping mechanism. News organizations use these processes to define and maintain professional boundaries. By analyzing recruitment practices, it becomes possible to see how journalistic legitimacy is established and which definitions are privileged over others. This extends the logic of gatekeeping theory, traditionally applied to news content, to the hiring process itself, where editors act as gatekeepers determining professional inclusion and exclusion.

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In this sense, editors use recruitment as a key site for determining professional inclusion and exclusion. Recruitment thus functions as an early-stage gatekeeping practice through which newsroom values, norms and competencies are shaped and reinforced.