Between Structures and Identities: Newsroom Policies, Division of Labor and Journalists’ Commitment to Investigative Reporting

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study examines the connection between newsroom policies, division of labor and journalists’ willingness to engage in investigative reporting. Based on extensive qualitative research carried out at three different Swiss media organizations, it suggests that policies meant to foster investigative journalism may actually have counterproductive effects and increase competition in the workplace, both over material resources, such as time, and symbolic resources, for example legitimacy and status. From newsrooms with loosely integrated structures to very separate autonomous units, observed policies fail to integrate investigative journalism into the general beat system in an inclusive way, thereby creating divisions between those who benefit from it (insiders) and the others (outsiders). This, in turn, may impact journalists’ investigative commitment and undermine the legitimacy of investigative reporting in all the newsroom. The study’s findings highlight the ways in which investigative journalism challenges the traditional division of journalistic labor and point to a growing need to consider investigation both as a practice and as a cornerstone of journalistic identities when formulating investigative management policies.