Celebrated lecturer retires

Professor Jane Singer, who has taught in City’s journalism department since 2013 and served as director of research, has retired.

Before joining City as Professor of Entrepreneurial Journalism, later changed to Professor of Journalism Innovation, she held teaching positions at the University of Central Lancashire, the University of Iowa, and Colorado State University.

Her impressive career is being recognised this year with the Paul J. Deutschmann Award for Excellence in Research, which honours a body of signifcant research over the course of an individual’s career. The award is given by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.

Professor Singer has written and co-written 57 journal articles and two books.

“I am honoured and happy that my explorations of journalistic adaptation to change have proved useful to other researchers,” she said.

Professor Singer began her career as a print journalist on the East Coast of the US in the 1970s. She then went to work for CBS, which was exploring “this wild, crazy idea of delivering information electronically”.

“When I was in graduate school in the mid-90s, no one else was paying any attention to digital at all,” she said.

This meant that she was in demand as a teacher and researcher when publications such as the BBC and The New York Times were going online.

Professor Singer was the founding news manager of Prodigy, one of the frst national online news services in America. Her friends who worked at newspapers continued to ask her why she left journalism.

“I would say ‘I haven’t left journalism. I’m still in journalism, it’s just a different format,” Professor Singer said. “There would be a pause, and then they would say, ‘But do you miss journalism?’”

This reaction to digital journalism ultimately led to her decision to pursue teaching. She explained:

“I thought it might be good to try and get into a university and teach people because younger people would get it.”

After teaching for 17 years in small towns in the US and the UK, it didn’t take “too much convincing” for her to move to City, a university “in the middle of a media capital in a wonderful cosmopolitan city”.

Journalism is one of the best things at City, Professor Singer said, and “it has been for a long time”.

Throughout her tenure, the department has continued to evolve.

“We’re continually innovating in the way that we teach and fnding better ways to connect to students,” she said.

Research also plays a part in the evolution, she added.

The expert in journalism innovation is always thinking about what is coming next in the feld and said that virtual reality is something she is keen to keep an eye on. While museums are using the technology, it’s yet to get a lot of pickup in news.

“It would be interesting, not necessarily positive. There is potential for an immersive experience to be an unpleasant experience. There are opportunities for journalism to engage people’s senses in different ways, which has led to ethical issues.”

What comes next, Professor Singer explained, could be something “completely different that we haven’t envisioned yet”.

Ella Kipling

Cost crisis could freeze women out of fnance journalism

The head of fnancial journalism at City has expressed her concern for how the worsening economic climate will impact female reporters.

Jane Martinson, the Marjorie Deane Professor of Financial Journalism, a columnist for The Guardian, and an honorary committee member of the Women in Journalism network, fears that the cost-of-living crisis will force female journalists to turn to extra freelance work or leave the profession altogether.

“It’s always worrying when there is an economic downturn as it’s often women who leave the workforce frst, something we’re conscious of,” she said, speaking about the WiJ network.

“More women leave fulltime employment, not just due to caring responsibilities. It is a lack of confdence, feeling like they need the fexibility or freedom to be freelance. But then are more likely to be in vulnerable jobs,” Professor Martinson added.

Professor Martinson has stressed that more needs to be done to protect the livelihoods of women in media. According to research by the World Economic Forum, women are more likely to have insecure jobs. Refecting on the success of editors in the past year, she said: “The editors of the Financial Times,

The Wall Street Journal and The Guardian are women, which is great. It’s not been a bad year but we have to be careful that women don’t suffer disproportionately from the economic downturn.”

Professor Martinson has been working on her upcoming book, How to Buy an Island, on the power and fortune of the Barclay brothers.

Katie Daly