What are the skills most often used by online journalists?  Topping the list in a recently published survey was…drum roll, please… writing or editing scripts.

Yes, in a poll of 49 online journalists, researchers Ryan Thornburg and Ying Roselyn Du asked practitioners to rank their daily duties from a list of 26 possibilities.

Here are their Top 10:

1. Writing or Editing Scripts

2. Project Management

3. Blogging

4. User Interface Design/Photo Shooting (tie)

6. Video Production

7. Staff Organization/Administration

8. Story Combining/Shortening

9. Reporting and Writing Original Stories

10. Photo/Image Editing

What’s interesting is how many basic multimedia journalism skills appear on the list.  Ranked last on the list of 26 duties was audio production and analyzing site usage metrics was second from the bottom.

Those working as online journalists were also given a list of concepts and asked which was most important on the job.  Number one was multitasking, followed by the ability to learn new technologies and attention to detail.

The research was published in the Autumn 2011 edition of Journalism & Mass Communication Educator.