Abstract
Live journalism is a new journalistic genre in which journalists present news stories to a live audience. This article investigates the journalistic manuscripts of live journalism performances. With the focus on texts, the article reaches beyond the live performance to explore the wider implications and potentials pioneered by live journalists. The data were gathered from <em>Musta laatikko</em> (‘Black Box’) manuscripts, a live journalism production by the Finnish newspaper <em>Helsingin Sanomat</em>. The manuscripts were analysed as <em>eudaimonic journalism</em> through four conceptual dimensions: self-transcendence, autonomy, competence, and relatedness. The results show how eudaimonic journalism can contemplate history, the future, and the meaning of finite human life. Moreover, by describing self-determinant individuals and communal social relationships, eudaimonic news stories can foster a sense of meaning and agency in audience members. By employing eudaimonia, journalists at large can reflect on the meaning and purpose of contemporary life and offer a more comprehensive understanding of the world. Such understanding includes not only facts and analysis, but also values, affects, and collective meanings mediated through the subjectivity of a journalist.
Highlights
Several experiments of live journalism have emerged during recent years in response to the many challenges facing contemporary journalism
Especially the Musta laatikko stories appear as slow journalism: They detach from the daily and weekly news cycles to longer temporalities which span decades or even centuries
This article has investigated an emerging journalistic form of live journalism in which journalists present their stories to a live audience
Summary
Several experiments of live journalism have emerged during recent years in response to the many challenges facing contemporary journalism. Journalists often respond to the assumed needs of the audiences by offering them affectively engaging content or, increasingly, individual and communal experiences (Vodanovic, 2020). Previous research on live journalism has focused on the human presence of a journalist in live performances and the different aspects of audiences’ engagement with the journalism and each other. The article approaches the Musta laatikko manuscripts as eudaimonic journalism which presents and analyses news events from the perspective of human virtues, meanings, and potentials (see Ryan, Huta, & Deci, 2013). The article explores how live journalism and eudaimonic journalism can contribute to existing conceptualisations of contemporary journalism These considerations give rise to the following research questions: RQ1: How is a sense of eudaimonia implied and produced in Musta laatikko manuscripts?.
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