Abstract
The crisis in the journalism industry, intensified with the popularization of the World Wide Web, warrants radical rethinking of the professional identity of journalists and their role in society. This paper first suggests replacing the Habermasian public sphere with Dutch historian Johan Huizinga’s magic circle of play to describe the relationship between the press and its audience. Within this new model, the writer configures the rules and boundaries in which the reader is free to respond and subvert, an interplay that increasingly shapes both current news production and expectations of the public. This paper then explores play and playful attitudes in newsroom practices and output through semi-structured interviews with journalists, game designers and educators. The “Game Team” at the news and entertainment Web site BuzzFeed acts as a primary case study of a group of journalists who make a variety of playful products — from full-fledged games to interactives — which they iterate and improve over time, in response to readers’ feedback.
Highlights
Foxman outlook — emerged as an archetype of the press at play and became a primary case study
Such a mindset reflects a changing professional identity, which does not adhere to the traditional “occupational ideology” (Deuze, 2005) of newsmakers, and in which audience preferences, understood through metrics, have increasing influence on journalistic output
Previous assertions about digital journalism in the United States have dwelled on the increasing conflicts between old and new forms of reporting (Dahlgren, 1996; MacGregor, 2007) that were expected to precipitate the “demise of journalism as it was known during the better part of the twentieth century” [1]
Summary
Foxman outlook — emerged as an archetype of the press at play and became a primary case study. The research finds play manifested for a subset of mainstream digital journalists: First through the creation of a variety of playful formats that are iterated for some, but not all, news content; and as a playful attitude, typified by the expectation to experiment, fail and toy with content creation Such a mindset reflects a changing professional identity, which does not adhere to the traditional “occupational ideology” (Deuze, 2005) of newsmakers, and in which audience preferences, understood through metrics, have increasing influence on journalistic output. With tools, practices, products and readership shifting, the everyday work, and the press’ occupational ideology, no longer correspond to the emergent online news environment It is hardly unprecedented for the press to inspire ferment and appeals for change. Current and Webbased platforms have left a profound impact on the key attributes of the sphere as a model, rendering it an inadequate description of contemporary civic activity
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