The Journalist's Personality: An Exploratory Study

Abstract

Personality, a little-explored variable in studies of journalists, may prove useful in understanding news people's values and motivations. A short test of two personality dimensions was applied to a random sample of 173 Australian journalists, who were found to be more extroverted than the general population, but not significantly different on the dimension of neuroticism. Job stress was related both to neuroticism and to extroversion, while extroversion was related to the valuing of information disseminating roles of media and of direct feedback from the public. Early success in journalism was related positively to extroversion and negatively to neuroticism. Further approaches to the study of personality in journalism are suggested.

An Examination of Print and Broadcast Journalism Students’ Personality Traits

“…A sample of award-winning photojournalists ( n = 21) showed a split on extraversion and introversion scores (Freeman, 2004). A 1963 study found a career as an author or a journalist negatively correlated with extraversion (Bendig, 1963), whereas other exploratory research on Australian journalists revealed that they were more extraverted than the general public (Henningham, 1997).…”

“…Extraversion and conscientiousness are two often studied personality concepts relevant in predicting career and job behaviors (Barrick & Mount, 1991; Henningham, 1997; Wang, Jome, Haase, & Bruch, 2006). Extraverted people’s interactions tend to be aggressive, and collaborations may be negatively affected if too many extraverts exist in one unit because of their dominant interaction style (Kichuk & Wiesner, 1998; Mazur, 1973; Mohammed & Angell, 2003).…”

Untitled

“…The personality traits of journalists are associated with entrepreneurship (Brandstätter, 2011;Collins et al, 2004;Zhang, 2008). Generally, they are extraverted, independent and open to new experiences (Henningham, 1997;Siu & Lo, 2013). They usually possess high self-confidence (Chen, Greene, & Cricke, 1998) and firmly believe in their own capabilities to adapt to the external environment and control their performance (Simon, Houghton & Aquino, 2000).…”

The news value of Dutch corporate press releases as a predictor of corporate agenda building power

“…News selection is fundamental to the journalistic process (Reese, 2001). Although journalists themselves and early studies on the selection process suggest that its outcome depends highly on individual treats (Henningham, 1997), the currently well established paradigm suggests that there is a stable pattern in all these individual news decisions (Eilders, 2006;Harcup & O'Neill, 2001). This paradigm is based on the news factor theory, as introduced by Galtung and Ruge and combines individual perspectives with professional and organizational routines and cultural influences (Eilders, 2006;Harcup & O'Neill, 2001).…”