Newsroom Culture Research Articles

Still a ‘blokes club’: The motherhood dilemma in journalism

The largest survey of female journalists working in the Australian news media was undertaken in 2012 and asked participants to respond to questions about perceived gender discrimination in working conditions. This article focuses on participant responses in relation to promotional opportunities. The keys themes that arose centred on the impact of childcare responsibilities and a masculine newsroom culture that worked to exclude them. A total of 577 female journalists working in broadcast, print and online platforms from all states and territories and in regional/rural, metropolitan and suburban news publications responded to the online survey. Most respondents articulated a perception of gender bias around the issue of promotional opportunities but often blamed themselves and/or their child-rearing responsibilities for their lack of opportunity. The responses indicate an ongoing and systemic gender bias that disadvantages women, particularly mothers, and has been largely left unacknowledged in Australian media debates.

Institutional Disconnects as Obstacles to Diversity in Journalism in the United States

The 1968 Kerner Commission identified the monocultural perspective of US media as contributing to 1960s social unrest. Ten years later, the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE), a primary journalism gatekeeper, declared a mandate to diversify newsroom staff and news coverage. Journalism in the United States has been under this mandate for change for more than three decades. The year 2000 target date passed seriously short of achieving the diversity goal. Staffing demographics of 2013 show little promise for reaching the newer 2025 target. We suggest why only minimal, superficial diversification occurred during the last three decades, despite diversity goals promoted by journalism's professional associations and educational accreditation body. We conducted and helped to supervise in-depth interviews with 613 reporters, editors, and news directors from high-circulation newspapers, and radio and television broadcast newsrooms. We also examined journalism program descriptions and course syllabi. Finally, we reviewed professional association documents and reports, the ASNE newsroom census, and other studies. Findings indicate that such change requires a cohesive mission, consistent philosophical and material reinforcement of new values and practices, and changes in practitioner role definitions. These conditions must be met across relationships structuring the profession, and require “connectedness” among journalism institutions. Study results indicate that meaningful diversification of staff and news coverage is impeded by established newsroom culture and by the lack of structural mechanisms to facilitate such change. Findings indicate serious “disconnects” among the institutions of professional journalism, dissipating the “environmental pressure” for diversification and miring contemporary US newsrooms in outmoded monoculturalism.

Women's Struggle for Top Jobs in the News Media

This chapter provides an overview of the rise of women and women leaders in the Australian news media and outlines aspects of newsroom culture that continue to hamper women’s career progression. The chapter draws on a recent global survey and literature on the status of women in the news media. The most recent and wide ranging global data shows that while women’s position in the news media workforce (including reporting roles) has changed little in fifteen years, women have made small inroads into key editorial leadership positions. Nevertheless, the relative absence of women in these senior roles remains glaring, particularly in the print media, and points to a hegemonically masculine newsroom culture that works to undermine women’s progress in the industry.

Still a 'Blokes Club': The Motherhood Dilemma in Journalism

The largest survey of female journalists working in the Australian news media was undertaken in 2012 and asked participants to respond to questions about perceived gender discrimination in working conditions. This article focuses on participant responses in relation to promotional opportunities. The keys themes that arose centred on the impact of childcare responsibilities and a masculine newsroom culture that worked to exclude them. A total of 577 female journalists working in broadcast, print and online platforms from all states and territories and in regional/rural, metropolitan and suburban news publications responded to the online survey. Most respondents articulated a perception of gender bias around the issue of promotional opportunities but often blamed themselves and/or their child-rearing responsibilities for their lack of opportunity. The responses indicate an ongoing and systemic gender bias that disadvantages women, particularly mothers, and has been largely left unacknowledged in Australian media debates.

Negotiating convergence

This article critically interrogates the impact of new information and communication technologies on the institutional practices of mainstream journalists in Nigeria with particular reference to current newsroom practices and how user-generated content (UGC) was incorporated into mainstream media coverage of the 2011 Nigerian election. Rooted in the sociology of journalism, the study employs an ethnographic approach to examine the implications of new information and communication technologies for journalistic practices in Nigeria. With a reading of new information technologies as “alternative journalism”, the ethnography, which deployed in-depth interviews with print journalists as well as newsroom observation, investigated whether “alternative journalism” is challenging traditional newsroom culture in Nigeria. The findings suggest that alternative journalism is redefining the roles of mainstream journalists as “news producers”. Journalists have become “gatewatchers” with everyone else, especially during the 2011 elections when citizens actively engaged with alternative journalism in reporting the elections. However, mainstream journalists continue to contest their hegemonic traditional practices of giving prominence to “official” sources in news reporting, and negotiate how “alternative journalism” in the form of UGC is networked into mainstream reporting to avoid publishing rumours. The study concludes that contrary to scholarship that sees digital technologies as “de-professionalising” journalists, mainstream journalism in Nigeria maintains the dominant discourse by articulating and appropriating content from “alternative” sources for subtle economic motives.

Job satisfaction of journalists: Professional aspirations, newsroom culture and social context

Job satisfaction is one of the most popular topics in organisational behaviour research, as it affects organisational productivity and job commitment. This study examines various factors contributing to the job satisfaction of journalists by contextualising the research in the unique Singapore environment, where the news media, as state-protected monopolies, provide journalists with job security and good monetary rewards. Singapore’s news media clearly deviate from the liberal norms in terms of the legal framework within which they operate, yet the Singapore journalists compete well against professionals from other countries for international awards for editorial excellence. The newsroom culture ensures that the local journalists see themselves as supporters rather than adversaries of the government but at the same time require them to question the government about its policies and decisions. Singapore thus serves as an interesting context to test various factors that may contribute to journalists’ satisfaction with their job. Through a survey of 447 Singapore journalists, this study examines various factors that may affect the job satisfaction of journalists, including individual characteristics, job rewards, newsroom culture, perceived role of journalism, and the performance of their news organisations. The findings show that what matters most to Singapore journalists is how they see their institution perform in informing the public. Journalists who feel greater autonomy and believe in the adversarial role of the press are more satisfied with their job as journalists. In the meantime, monetary reward, job security and demographic differences are not significant factors in determining job satisfaction.

The Gendered World of Sports Reporting in the Australian Print Media

The mainstream news media have long been charged by feminist and critical media scholars of largely excluding women from its sports coverage, and concomitantly highlighting the ongoing relative absence of female sports reporters. With the 2012 London Olympic Games just past, it is timely to reflect on two areas of sports journalism that receive sparse scholarly interest from the majority of Australian journalism academics, as technology issues and the future of journalism debates take precedence. The Olympics typically generate more media exposure for female athletes than usual, nevertheless, it remains that there are particular types of ‘gender appropriate’ events that attract mainstream news media attention during the Games, and other sporting events in general. This paper analyses a month of pre-Olympic sports coverage and general sports coverage in two major Australian newspapers, finding that while pre-Olympic coverage includes more women’s sport than in general sport, sportsmen and men’s sport remains highly privileged in both areas. The fact that horseracing receives three times more media coverage than women’s sports in this study clearly identifies sportswomen’s marginalised status. The paper also maps the number of female sports reporters at these two newspapers, and concludes with some insights into a newsroom culture that typically rejects women as athletes and as sports reporters.

Convergencia de medios y redacciones: el caso de <i>la Radio Televisión Pública Vasca (EITB</i>)

This article offers results derived from research on the convergence process of the Basque public broadcasting group Euskal Irrati Telebista ( EITB ). The essay focuses on the relationship and the synergies between EITB ’s radio, television and internet newsrooms, by analysing this group’s production and distribution model. This study is prompted by the convergent purposes made public by EITB in its most recent Strategic plan (2010-2013) and uses both qualitative (in-depth interviews with managers, ethnographic observation in the newsroom and focus groups) and quantitative (survey of reporters) analyses. The conclusions indicate that EITB is headed toward a cross-media newsroom structure, even though there are still many challenges to face, as a consequence of the strong, established newsroom cultures and the need of promoting further editorial coordination between the three platforms.

ICTs and radio in Africa: How the uptake of ICT has influenced the newsroom culture among community radio journalists

This article highlights the influence that new ICTs and Computer Mediated Communication is having on the newsroom cultures among community radio journalists in Africa, especially the use of mobile phones and the internet. The discussion is based on findings from a research study that investigated the impact of ICTs on community radio using regional case studies from three African countries – Mozambique, Uganda, and Mali. We argue that the integration of ICTs impacted journalism practice positively as it improved information gathering, processing, distribution, storage, and engagement with the communities, particularly through the use of mobile phones and the internet. However, the synergy with rural community radios that tend to be located in remote areas is yet to be felt in the three countries. While the community radio stations in semi-urban areas or those situated in areas with fairly good infrastructure have better capacity for integration of ICTs and their sustainability, the rural-based community radio stations are greatly inhibited in their integration of new ICT due to lack of the electricity or regular power supply, the high fees charged by the service providers (internet and telephone), as well as the high cost for the ICT equipment, maintenance expenses and operational costs. The article calls for more support for infrastructural development to rural-based community radio stations to close the rural–urban gap and to enable the journalists working there to benefit from ICT integration like their counterparts in the semi-urban and urban community radios.

Blokey Newsroom Culture

This paper seeks to address the gap in Australian media studies and feminist media scholarship relating to the way newsroom culture is embodied. How does the numerical dominance of men in journalism, particularly in decision-making roles, affect newsroom culture? How do male and female journalists understand this inequality? The paper first briefly attends to research into occupational culture and feminist theories of the body to address the central question ‘How is newsroom culture embodied?’ It then engages with this question more thoroughly via an analysis of my own interviews with 17 Australian male and female print news media journalists. It finds that, even though women have entered the industry in unprecedented numbers, a ‘blokey’ or hegemonic masculinity continues to shape news newsroom culture.

The Gender 'Problem' in Australia Journalism Education

This paper investigates if and how issues of gender are taught in undergraduate journalism courses in Australia. It examines published descriptions of undergraduate journalism degrees and majors in 30 Australian universities, providing a collective case study about the teaching of gender in journalism education. The research finds that no journalism program offers a unit that specifically addresses the portrayal of women in the media or, importantly, the gendered production of news and gendered newsroom culture. This paper posits the importance of gender education in journalism courses, hypothesises why it is ignored as a valuable part of journalism education, and suggests how tertiary journalism education could address systemic inequity for women in media organisations by adapting its curriculum.

Diversifying the newsroom, diversifying the news: challenges and obstacles in Central and Eastern Europe

As immigration and the flow of labor continue to alter Central and Eastern Europe demographics, the imperative to increase diversity inside newsrooms and in news coverage becomes more critical. Media organizations must respond to that imperative to adequately serve their communities with relevant news and information. Obstacles to diversification of the newsrooms and news include: media consolidation and foreign ownership; economic constraints; established newsroom culture; traditional patterns of professional practice; and lingering communist-era legacies. This article explores major barriers to diversity within news organizations, as well as diversity in the types of stories covered and how reporters cover them in democratic and semi-democratic countries of the region. It includes a discussion of initiatives intended to improve diversity in both those contexts. It incorporates data on media diversity and lack of diversity, interviews with media diversity experts and trainers, and examples of media diversification initiatives in Central and Eastern Europe.

‘Hitting the glass ceiling’ – gender and media management in sub-saharan africa

The aim of this study is to discuss the importance of gender in editorial leadership in African countries. Women in leading positions in the media industry work in a traditionally male-dominated area. In-depth, semi-structured interviews were carried out with five women on their work in media management in Zambia, Uganda, Nigeria and Ethiopia in order to explore how a group of female media managers in a non-western setting manage both their gendered identity and their identity as media professionals. This study challenges a western-based understanding of the role of gender in newsroom cultures. Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of capital is used as an analytical instrument. The study suggests that female gender is regarded as a positive capital, which contradicts other studies of women in media management. Another conclusion is that the ‘velvet ghetto’ is spreading, as women in journalism receive low salaries, if any.

TRANSNATIONAL JOURNALISM EDUCATION

Journalism educators in Europe are gradually implementing training aimed at breaching borders between national newsroom cultures. At the same time, a “European” journalism culture has yet to materialize on a significant scale in the continent's newsrooms. This article examines this disconnect via a case study of a new transnational journalism education program. Graduates of the Master's in French–German journalism program face challenges in locating jobs that utilize their abilities, in large part because the media world still seems locked into national ways of thinking about journalism. As a result, these future journalists often find themselves in a sort of limbo, armed with a cutting-edge preparation but stymied by a profession still waiting to advance to a pan-European mindset.

QUALITY CONTROL

This study of local British newspaper journalists focuses on three aspects of entrenched newsroom culture—news values and norms, work routines and outputs, and occupational roles—to explore the boundaries that journalists see as distinguishing them from outside contributors. Findings suggest they view user-generated content (UGC) from a traditional professional perspective and weigh its benefits in terms of its contribution to the journalism they produce. While most are open to its inclusion on newspaper websites, particularly as a traffic builder and supplemental source of hyperlocal information, they believe UGC can undermine journalistic norms and values unless carefully monitored—a gatekeeping task they fear cannot fit within newsroom routines threatened by resource constraints of increasing severity.

Rejecting the ‘F-word’

Feminist media scholarship in the past 30 years has focused on the representation of women in the media while an understanding of those who produce the representations has received little attention. In this article I am concerned with how some Australian journalists understand and experience the social/political movement of feminism and its advocates, feminists, as news sources and colleagues. I particularly focus on fleshing out how female journalists and those who identify as feminist discuss, negotiate, compromise and sometimes ‘survive’ a masculine newsroom culture. Moreover, I ask why it is that male and female journalists in my interviews — feminist-identified or not — resist or reject embracing or using the terms ‘feminism’ and ‘feminist’ in the context of the newsroom. A decade ago, Kay Schaffer astutely noted that feminism had become a ‘scare word’ in media discourse. I take this idea a step further by analysing more broadly how some journalists talk about ‘feminism’ and ‘feminists’.

‘Blokey’ Newsroom Culture

This paper seeks to address the gap in Australian media studies and feminist media scholarship relating to the way newsroom culture is embodied. How does the numerical dominance of men in journalism, particularly in decision-making roles, affect newsroom culture? How do male and female journalists understand this inequality? The paper first briefly attends to research into occupational culture and feminist theories of the body to address the central question ‘How is newsroom culture embodied?’ It then engages with this question more thoroughly via an analysis of my own interviews with 17 Australian male and female print news media journalists. It finds that, even though women have entered the industry in unprecedented numbers, a ‘blokey’ or hegemonic masculinity continues to shape news newsroom culture.

GENDERED EXPERIENCES OF INDUSTRY CHANGE AND THE EFFECTS OF NEOLIBERALISM

In a time of dramatic and rapid change in the global media industry and when technological advances and media concentration are shaping the way news is produced and consumed, little research has focused on how the producers of news are affected by such change. This paper explores narratives of confidence and cynicism as told to me by Australian print news media journalists. I am interested in journalists’ memories and experiences of personal change that arise from an intensified workplace and how neoliberal discourses affect newsroom culture. How do the journalists I interview experience and speak of changes in the newsroom? In what ways is being a journalist different now to when they entered the industry? In effect, how have journalists changed as a result of journalism's changes? The interviews with 17 print media journalists contain rich narratives with which to explore how participants remember and make sense of industry changes. This paper finds that the intensification of work practices, ethical constraints and gender bias, underpinned by neoliberalism, have aided in creating a cynicism among many of the journalists interviewed. Nevertheless, the majority of interviewees suggest that a career in journalism has increased their personal and/or professional confidence. There are, however, gendered differences in this experience.

Digital Scholarship and Pedagogy, the Next Step: Cultural Science

Digital Scholarship and Pedagogy, the Next Step:Cultural Science John Hartley (bio) "How well he's read, to reason against reading!" (Love's Labour's Lost, I.i.94) There are two aspects to the problem of digital scholarship and pedagogy. One has to do with scholarship, the other with pedagogy. In scholarship, the association of [End Page 138] knowledge with its printed form remains dominant. In pedagogy, the desire to abandon print for "new" media is urgent, at least in some parts of the academy. Film and media studies are thus at the intersection of opposing forces pulling the field "back" to print and "forward" to digital media. These tensions may be especially painful in a field whose own object of study is an analogue form of communication, neither print nor digital. Although print has been overtaken in the popular marketplace by audiovisual forms, this was never achieved in the domain of scholarship. Even when it is digitally distributed, the output of research is still a "paper." Meanwhile, in the realm of teaching, production- and practice-based pedagogy has become firmly established. Nevertheless, a disjunction remains between high-end scholarship in research universities and vocational training in teaching institutions. Neither is well equipped to deal with the digital challenge. Knowing and Doing. Common sense suggests that knowing and doing are intricately linked. But doing has been separated from knowing in formal education. Harking back to a medieval distinction between action and contemplation, some professional practitioners assert that practical "doing" is in opposition to academic "knowing"; so the best (indeed, the only) qualification for teaching in universities is that of having worked in the industry. Among the media-related disciplines, journalism education is especially wedded to this idea. Those who have not worked as an employee in the newsroom culture of industrial-era media organizations are not always welcome in J-schools. It seems the students are too busy doing journalism to spare a thought (as it were) for studying its historical development, social impact, and cultural form, or for considering critical theories about journalism. Is this the future of pedagogy and scholarship for cinema and media studies? Are they destined, like journalism, to favor doing over knowing—craft skills over conceptual models, practice over research, contact with industry personnel over contact with scholarship, and the fetishization of the current industrial form over the study of a given medium's historical development, social problems, or untried potential? The trouble is, the further the field has pushed toward practical pedagogy, the further it seems to have retreated from scholarship. Would a move toward more active scholarly engagement with the digital and audiovisual media, that is, knowing through doing, hasten or prevent such a future? Obviously, some media and film production programs are already committed to the practical path, but these remain exceptions. In general, the two fields remain founded in social problems (media) and textual forms (cinema). Typically, practice-based teaching is an adjunct to traditional forms of pedagogy, curriculum, and assessment. Unlike journalism education, cinema and media studies are not generally vocationally oriented in an instrumental way. Not many film or media companies are organized along the lines of large-scale corporations with standardized entry-level recruitment. Nor do media courses face a coherent professional body along the lines of the law, medicine, engineering—or, indeed, [End Page 139] journalism, which does have professional ambitions (but is reluctant to concede entry certification to universities). What faces the media graduate is not a stable industry or profession with a career structure, but a globalizing market with chaotic needs. This market is characterized by rapid change, high failure rates, high rates of casual and freelance labor, winner-take-all innovation, team-based and project-based companies that dissolve and re-form around opportunities, and the certainty that everything they know, from enabling technologies to production processes, will be obsolete all too soon. Faced with such a prospect, where the technologies they may use are not yet invented, the name for their job is not yet known, and the global enterprise in which they might do it is not yet formed, what—and how—does the newly minted media graduate need to know...

Rejecting the ‘F’- Word: How Feminism and Feminists are Understood in the Newsroom

Feminist media scholarship in the past 30 years has focused on the representation of women in the media while an understanding of those who produce the representations has received little attention. In this article I am concerned with how some Australian journalists understand and experience the social/political movement of feminism and its advocates, feminists, as news sources and colleagues. I particularly focus on fl eshing out how female journalists and those who identify as feminist discuss, negotiate, compromise and sometimes ‘survive’ a masculine newsroom culture. Moreover, I ask why it is that male and female journalists in my interviews– feminist-identifi ed or not– resist or reject embracing or using the terms ‘feminism’ and ‘feminist’ in the context of the newsroom. A decade ago, Kay Schaffer astutely noted that feminism had become a ‘scare word’ in media discourse. I take this idea a step further by analysing more broadly how some journalists talk about ‘feminism’ and ‘feminists’.