Networked News Time

Abstract

What kind of news time does a public need? The production, circulation, and interpretation of news have always followed timelines and rhythms, but these have largely been seen as artifacts of press sociology, not central aspects of journalism’s public mission linked to the design and deployment of journalism infrastructure. Since different types of news time make possible different kinds of publics, any critique of the press’s material cultures of time-keeping is a critique of the press’s power to convene particular people and issues, at particular times. Motivated by the temporal needs of one type of public (a pragmatic public that ensures a public right to hear), this paper proposes a unit for studying news time (the temporal assemblage), and traces it across four intertwined sites in the contemporary, networked press: labor routines, platform rhythms, computational algorithms, and legal regulations. Beyond this article’s investigation of this public in relation to these dynamics, my aim is to contribute to the emerging “slow journalism” movement by asking: how slow—or fast—do different publics need news to be? And how are networked press paces set?