Newsroom Work Research Articles

Authorship in the coverage of the war in Ukraine: Newsroom work takes precedence over correspondents’ dispatches

The war in Ukraine has grabbed headlines around the world. This analysis asks who is covering it and what this says about war reporting. The advent of the Web and the subsequent polarization of the media pits the constant demand for information against the journalistic expectation of calm analysis. While traditional media seem to guarantee credibility, more and more people are turning to alternative information providers. To explore these changes’ repercussions on war correspondents, this study analyzes 11,268 bylines of the news on Ukraine published digitally by the most widely read newspapers in Spain (El País, El Mundo, El Correo, and La Vanguardia) and the USA (The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today and New York Post), during the first week of the conflict, from February 24 to March 2, 2022. Through these, the authors’ working relationship with each newspaper is investigated, employing LinkedIn or Twitter when necessary. While relevant literature suggests that freelancers and agencies dominate international news, this analysis concludes that most of the war coverage (65,64%) has been generated in newsrooms, away from the frontline. While confirming the significant contribution of agencies and a decreasing presence of freelancers, it also confirms the survival of foreign bureaus.

Who is a journalist now? Recognising atypical journalism work in the digital media economy

For the past two decades, understandings of the scale of digital disruption in journalism work in post-industrialised countries have relied on data about newspaper closures, newsroom job losses and the creation of new full-time jobs in journalism. Yet, the digital economy has fostered new employment and work arrangements, and there is less secure employment in journalism, making it more difficult to define who is a journalist now. Using a case study of Australian journalists seeking re-employment after newsroom job loss, this article examines some of the emerging patterns of atypical journalism work. It concludes that attempts to measure the current extent of journalism work need to explicitly account for hybrid careers characterised by professional activities at the margins of or outside of traditional newsroom work. In the digital economy, journalists may undertake a range of journalism and non-journalism work simultaneously or sequentially.

“They’ll Never Make Newspaper Men”: Early Gendering in Journalism, 1884–1889

Scholars have long noted that journalism is a heavily gendered profession. An examination of the initial five years of the Journalist, the first news trade publication dedicated to defining and standardizing modern journalism in the late 1800s, finds that gendering in the news industry began as early as 1884. This early establishment of gender-based newsroom work suggests that gender and professionalization shaped each other, intertwining so that modern journalism was gendered from the start. The Journalist provides evidence that male news workers standardized masculine character traits and behaviors as benchmarks in the field—ideals that still persist today.

Chillin’ Effects of Fake News: Changes in Practices Related to Accountability and Transparency in American Newsrooms Under the Influence of Misinformation and Accusations Against the News Media

This study examines how newsroom work in the United States has changed in response to some of the latest developments in the news media environment. Using nationally representative survey data, we explore what professional routines American journalists have adopted to avoid spreading or being accused of publishing misinformation. Findings suggest that journalists have added new or intensified practices to increase accountability and transparency. In addition, role conceptions, perception of fake news, and responsibility for social media audiences impact the adoption of such practices. Journalists are more likely to embrace transparency than accountability, suggesting the emergence of new journalistic norms in today’s newsrooms.

“Songs of the Craft”: Newsroom Work Poetry in Twentieth-Century American Journalism

ABSTRACT Throughout the twentieth century, reporters and other news workers not only wrote about the news, they wrote about each other, their bosses, their daily grind in the newsroom, and journalism itself in the form of workplace poetry. This occupational verse was a way to relieve tension, vent about controlling editors and annoying readers. Writing the verses fulfilled a playful impulse and killed time between assignments. It helped to bond news workers with each other in the newsroom, and it allowed them to form their group identities in the face of difficult circumstances. This article briefly explores how occupational poetry, sometimes called “doggerel” by critics but even by its own creators, became part of the professionalization of American journalism and reflected changing newsroom values, priorities and a growing white-collar consciousness among news workers during and after the interwar years and during the early Cold War. Paradoxically, it echoed the blue-collar roots of many reporters, and their struggle and resistance. Ephemeral by nature, newsroom poetry survives into the present as an important commentary on the occupation.

Protecting News Companies and Their Readers: Exploring Social Media Policies in Latin American Newsrooms

This study uses a survey of journalists from throughout Latin America (n = 1,094) to understand the relationship between policies (or lack thereof) and journalists’ work environments and editorial decisions. Results show most journalists work in newsrooms with no policy in place. Country, newsroom size, geographic scope, and revenue source all are significantly related to presence of a policy. Despite differences in organizational factors and country contexts, this study suggests newsrooms in Latin America mostly approach the use and regulation of social media in the same ways. Journalists’ descriptions of policies suggest they extend traditional practices and ethics to the social media realm, representing a missed opportunity as journalists lack the guidance they need to deal with the latest technological advancements. Journalists described outward-facing policies focused on protecting the news companies’ brands, readers, and sources, rather than protecting journalists.

Russian newsrooms in digital era: challenges and prospects

ABSTRACTThe ongoing digitalisation of mass media changes the environment within the newsroom and the media product through the implementation of new work routines driven by technologies and multimedia elements in the final media texts. This article is based on the results of a survey of newsroom correspondents and editors’ working for the Russian news media, both in print and online. The survey results indicate that journalists have adapted to working faster with technology and social media, but the newsroom work has pivoted away from the production of audio and visual content and shifted focus more towards the creation and packaging of content for varying platforms. The research confirms that multimedia elements are included in the majority of media reports, though the overall level of ‘multimediatisation’ is low.

Transformation of newsroom work in the digital era

Transformation of newsroom work in the digital era

Examining Education and Newsroom Work Experience as Predictors of Communication Students’ Perceptions of Journalism Ethics

This study examines education and work experience in newsrooms as predictors of ethical perceptions among communication undergraduates at a large Singaporean university ( N = 826). Results indicate that education is associated with ethical ideologies, perceived importance of journalism ethics codes, justifiability of using contentious news gathering methods, and concern towards journalistic plagiarism and fabrication. However, in this context, education is not a significant predictor of agreement with ethical principles or support for sanctions against journalistic plagiarism and fabrication. Ethical ideologies (idealism and relativism) are associated with ethical principles and the degree to which using contentious news gathering methods is justifiable. Work experience in newsrooms is associated with perceived justifiability of using contentious news-gathering methods but not with ethical ideologies. The pattern of results was not entirely as predicted and may be a function of the way journalism is practiced and perceived in Singapore.

WHAT'S STOPPING THEM?

Findings in recent research suggest that online journalism is much less innovative than many researchers and scholars predicted a decade ago. Research into online journalism has, however, been biased towards a focus on online news journalism, thereby neglecting the magnitude of new styles and genres that are currently emerging online. In this paper the findings of a longitudinal ethnographic case study of the development of a section for feature journalism in the Norwegian online newspaper dagbladet.no is presented. The study is framed by an understanding of innovation as a process where organizational structures and individual agency interact. The findings suggest that individual action has been downplayed in previous research as a determinant for processes of innovation in online newsrooms, and that a substantive grounded theory of innovation in online newspapers is comprised of five factors: newsroom autonomy, newsroom work culture, the role of management, the relevance of new technology and innovative individuals.

Editorial Structures and Work Principles in British and German Newsrooms

Work in newsrooms can be organized in various ways following different principles. For historical reasons, German and Anglo-Saxon newspaper offices operate quite differently. Whereas British and American newspapers favour centralized newsrooms with a high division of labour, German newspapers tend to decentralize their work by maintaining many more branch offices which produce complete sections of the paper. In addition, employees in German newsrooms have more responsibilities and perform a greater range of journalistic tasks than their Anglo-Saxon counterparts. The reason is that in Germany a `holistic' understanding of journalism prevails; editorial work is regarded as an `integrated whole' not to be broken up. As the present study demonstrates, editorial work can be modelled on different organizational principles — each having advantages and disadvantages. The known and established routines of one country are neither the only ones nor necessarily the best. This article sets out to compare British and German newsroom structures, discusses characteristics, causes and consequences of the different models and evaluates them in context of the respective journalistic systems. It also demonstrates that in newsroom analyses, `open' and `closed' organizations as well as `personal' and `organizational bias' must be distinguished.

Journalism Career Paths and Experiential Learning

Print journalists gather, interpret, and report the news to a nation that is 40 percent minority and more than 50 percent female. Despite the ethnic and gender diversity of the population at large, however, print journalists as a group are 90 percent white and male. These statistics lead us to consider the factors that direct people into journalism and determine their success. A secondary analysis of an American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) research study (1989) helps to answer these questions. Using logit regression analysis of ASNE data, this researcher found that one's first job in print journalism has significant impact on future employment. The size of one's first employing company is a significant contributor to the size of later employing companies. Length of experience is also important. The longer an individual works within print journalism, the more likely it is he or she will move to an executive position at a large paper. Moreover, the longer one remains with an organization the better one's chances are for upward movement within that organization. Would-be journalists often have opportunities to engage in activities related to their chosen occupation before they leave school and enter the professional work world. Many schools offer experiential learning opportunities, such as internships and working on school papers or yearbooks. These opportunities have a positive relationship to early employment in the field of journalism. Method The ASNE survey was administered to a sample of 83 randomly selected newspapers for a possible 1,595 newsroom employees in the United States. Seventy-two newspapers participated in the ASNE study, for a total of 1,345 respondents. The ASNE study also addressed some of the variables concerning pre-career activities and career choice of print journalism. In this population, the vast majority of respondents (more than 90%) described themselves as male and white. Analysis of the careers and pre-careers of print journalists reveals a number of major themes. Logit regression analysis was appropriate for these data because categories which defined the group gender and ethnicity created a very small number of cases for females and non-whites.(1) The procedure used for a secondary analysis included the nonsubstantive effects in the regression model, but refrained from interpreting them. Thus, with three independent variables (A, B, and C), and one dependent variable (D), one would automatically include any interactions between A, B, and C in the regression equation.(2) Logit regression analysis of this survey data produced several significant themes, three of which are presented in this paper. 1. The typical print journalist in America is a young, college-educated white male. Analysis confirmed the findings of previous studies that have revealed a great deal about the demographic make-up of the journalism workforce.(3) Many of these studies focused on all journalists; few exclusively examined print journalists. The profile of the typical print journalist has remained fairly constant over the past few decades. Print journalists tend to be slightly younger than the labor force in law or medicine. According to the ASNE survey (1989), slightly more than half (53%) are age 35 or younger. Sixty percent of all newspaper reporters are under the age of 36, as are 30 percent of news executives.(4) In terms of their education, journalists surpassed national education levels. Weaver and Wilhoit found that in 1982, 86 percent of contemporary journalists had attended college for one or more years.(5) College graduates constituted 58.2 percent of print journalists, 18.6 percent of whom had also undertaken some graduate study, and 8.1 percent of whom had graduate degrees. According to the ASNE report, 85 percent of the current newsroom work force was college-educated and 15 percent had graduate degrees. Educational specialization, however, seemed to have only a modest impact on career choice. …

Maps with the News: The Development of American Journalistic Cartography by Mark Monmonier

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 553 Maps with the News: The Development ofAmericanJournalistic Cartography. By Mark Monmonier. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989. Pp. xii + 331; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $24.95. More than most books aspiring to a truly interdisciplinary status, Maps with the News imaginatively blends insights from seemingly disparate helds—journalism, technology, and cartography. The result is a book well worth the attention of historians of technology, even though history and technology are not always the centerpieces of the inquiry. Mark Monmonier, a geographer specializing in cartography, traces how newspapers, magazines, and television news programs have used maps since the advent of journalism. He looks at technologies involved in preparing, transmitting, and reproducing maps as well as the social and economic constraints on their use by the news media. Monmonier concludes that “the rise of journalistic cartography is related at least as much to development of organized sections, precision journalism, pleasing page layout, and an increased appre­ ciation ofcolor, as it is to machines that can generate maps rapidly and distribute them economically” (p. ix). Among the technologies that Monmonier considers are wood engraving, electroplating, photoengraving, telegraphy (especially phototelegraphy), facsimile, lithography, offset printing, television, microcomputers, laser printers, and satellites. He sketches the nature of each technology, noting its general effect on the media, and then examines its specific implications for cartography. Many readers will find his thumbnail sketches of how technologies operated to be convenient, accessible overviews; for most technologies that he covers, however, more specialized and detailed studies exist elsewhere. Monmonier’s discussion of telegraphy’s influence on journalistic cartography stands as one of the book’s most original contributions. Telegraphy, he notes, was crucial in obtaining simultaneous observa­ tions over a wide area—an essential feature in forecasting the weather and preparing maps. But sending finished maps by wire awaited the development of phototelegraphy. In this case, as in many others, journalists were principally motivated by a desire to transmit photo­ graphs; relaying graphics, including maps, was an afterthought. Besides technological developments, Monmonier examines the influence of institutional imperatives, newsroom work culture, and professional values. News syndicates and wire services, he notes, became powerful gatekeepers in the dissemination of maps because, unlike stories, maps could not easily be edited by the news organiza­ tions receiving them, at least before the computerization of graphics. Monmonier even ventures into the sociology ofjournalism to explain newspapers’ preference for photographs over graphics (now chang­ ing somewhat, he believes), and the importance of specialized profes­ sional organizations such as the Society of Newspaper Design. 554 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Monmonier combines the typical tools of the historian with some unusual ones. A content analysis of midsized newspapers in central New York State revealed how maps were used over a 100-year period, showing, for example, the importance of wars in heightening interest in maps. Interviews with journalists, graphic designers, and cartogra­ phers, along with observations of how they worked with maps, enrich the book. Monmonier thoroughly mined the literature ofjournalism and cartography, plus trade journals for technical details, but he consulted few scholarly works central to the history of technology. Befitting its subject, the book liberally deploys maps and other graphics to good effect. As nearly half the book deals with contemporary journalistic cartography, historians of technology might find it a bit thin on history. But technology—and its institutional constraints—occupies a central place in the analysis. Monmonier’s book joins other recent works showing how, in some situations, technological possibilities only haltingly became institutional realities. Richard B. Kielbowicz Dr. Kielbowicz, an assistant professor of communications at the University of Washington, is the author ofNews in the Mail: The Press, Post Office, and Public Information, 1700-1860s. He is currently studying the relation between telegraphy and journalism. The Psychology of Everyday Things. By Donald A. Norman. New York: Basic Books, 1988. Pp. xi + 257; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $19.95. A highly popular gift book recently was David Macaulay’s wonder­ fully, whimsically illustrated volume on The Way Things Work. While its popularity was due in part no doubt to the graphic talents of its author/artist, it was well received also because many people genuinely want to...