Since being founded in 2019 MVJ has built a vibrant organization of current, former, and aspiring veteran-journalists with an immense variety of backgrounds and skill sets. As of May 20, 2020 MVJ has over 267 members across the world, from all kinds of military backgrounds, and in a variety of stages in their journalism careers. This is up significantly just this year from 189 members on February 18, 2020.
I. Backgrounds and Experiences of MVJ Members
MVJ members have a significant amount of military experience with an average years of service of 10.31 years. While MVJ members primarily come from an active duty background, numbering 68.54% or 183 out of 267 members, significant amounts come from the reserves (4.49%), National Guard (6.37%), and multiple components (20.60%).
In terms of branch MVJ members vary widely and MVJ is proud to have a membership representing a cross-section of our nation’s armed forces. 102 (38.20%) members come from the Army, 48 (17.98%) from the Navy, 51 (19.10%) from the Marine Corps, 45 (16.85%) from the Air Force, 1 (0.37%) from the Coast Guard, and 19 (7.12%) with multiple branches of service.
Beyond military experience MVJ members also demonstrated extensive geographic diversity. While large portions of MVJ members come from the media hotbeds of New York (38 / 14.23%), California (30 / 11.24%), and the DC-area (35 / 13.11%), many members also come generally from the South (106 / 39.70%), Northeast (55 / 20.60%), Midwest (25 / 9.36%), and the West (69 / 25.84%).
MVJ members also showed themselves to be in very different stages of their journalism careers. 102 (38.20%) considered themselves aspiring journalists as compared to 40 (14.98%) as staff journalists, 80 (29.96%) as freelance journalists, and 49 (18.35%) as journalism students.
MVJ has also benefited from a multi-vantage distribution and awareness network as shown by how MVJ members have come to hear about the organization. 121 (47.83%) heard about MVJ through social media, 61 (24.11%) from another person, 34 (13.44%) from publications, and 13 (5.14%) from veterans organizations.
II. MVJ Membership Survey Results
In early January Military Veterans in Journalism (MVJ) reached out to its members to find out the kind of support, training, resources, and opportunities that those with a service connection are looking for in journalism and media. The results are in and MVJ members sent the message loud and clear:
1. MVJ Members Want Training In Technology Tools.
Those choosing “Very Relevant” or “Relevant” overwhelmed those choosing “Average,” “Irrelevant,” and “Very Irrelevant” in expressing interest in training on podcast production (91.4% “Very Relevant” or “Relevant”), video journalism (94.3%), data analysis (68.6%), and social media analysis (88.6%). A lot of MVJ members found themselves interested in gaining these skills, with those saying they had a “Little Experience” or “Not Experienced” in them, as compared to “Some Experience” or “Very Experienced,” standing out in podcast production (85.7% “Little Experience” or “Not Experienced”), video journalism (91%), data analysis (77.1%), and social media analysis (51.4%).
Yet there is more to journalism than only the technical skills, as useful as they are. Journalism also requires critical and strategic thinking, the creativity to be able to unearth information and patch together stories, and the determination to overcome the hurdles inherent in the course of all of that. 80% of MVJ member survey respondents considered training in national security reporting to be “Very Relevant” or “Relevant” to their interests and 97.2% for investigative journalism. MVJ Members also were interested in connecting with those who are stakeholders or participants in the industry, with 88.6% considering networking to be “Very Relevant” or “Relevant” and 42.9% saying they had “Little Experience” or were “Not Experienced.”
Investigative reporting is a broad topic that focuses on unearthing the stories that you may not even know exist. It is not the bread-and-butter reporting on events that are relatively clearly in the public eye but rather finding the bits and pieces that uncover a story of perhaps great public concern but for which either it is difficult to notice generally or for which there are those trying to hide the story. For MVJ members investigative reporting was as split as national security reporting, with training on conducting interviews (37.1%) and open source investigation (22.9%) ahead of database research (17.1%) and FOIA (14.3%). Interest in learning to work with legal documents and in developing stories was minimal.
3. MVJ Members Want Training and Opportunities
MVJ Members were also given the opportunity to simply write what they wanted to see as training or opportunities in journalism and that MVJ might be able to provide. The responses included “Photojournalism,” “Audience Analysis/Engagement,” “Mentorship,” “Safety in Dangerous Environments,” “Narrative or Literary Reporting” and more.
As shown, it is clear that MVJ members are eager to develop their skills to adapt to the modern journalism and media environment. MVJ members want to master both the strategy/tactics of journalism as well as the tools of the profession.
MVJ is grateful for those who participated in the survey! We hope to do our best in providing resources, training, and opportunities to help our fellow veteran brothers and sisters succeed in the journalism world.
MVJ is looking to partner with newsrooms and non-profit organizations to provide trainings on topics like these to our veteran community. Get in touch to discuss collaboration.
Places To Learn More About Coding and Data Visualization:
Journalist’s Toolbox: Data Journalism Tools: https://www.journaliststoolbox.org/category/data-visualization-and-online-tools/
Codecademy: http://www.codecademy.com
Code School: http://www.codeschool.com
Creately: http://creately.com
Dipity: http://www.dipity.com
Easel.ly: http://www.easel.ly
Eloquent JavaScript: http://eloquentjavascript.net
Icon Archive: http://www.iconarchive.com
Infogr.am: http://infogr.am
Piktochart: http://piktochart.com
Venngage: https://venngage.com
Visual.ly: http://visual.ly