A Typology of News Sourcing: Routine and Non-Routine Channels of Production

ABSTRACT

This article presents a novel typology for analysing the routinisation of news and daily newsroom practices. Drawing inspiration from the work of Sigal, Tuchman and others, the framework—comprising eight categories—provides a reconceptualisation of routine and non-routine channels of news production to facilitate an exploration of source material, focusing on initial story triggers. One contribution which is particularly useful relates to the subcategorisation of the traditionally singular “routine” channel; although the broad concept of routine source material is familiar, it has generally not been systematically deconstructed in previous analyses. Considering different types of routine news allows for a deeper understanding of how these channels are integrated into contemporary daily news production and the role of internal newsroom and external actor dynamics. This is particularly relevant in an era in which there is a high usage of information subsidies, passive news reporting, cannibalised content, and desk-bound work. As such, the application of this model provides insights into the dominance and subordinate use of various channels in contemporary newsrooms. The discussion also illustrates how such a typology can aid empirical research with reference to the content analysis study from which this framework was developed.     

STRUCTURING THE SCIENCE BEAT

Science journalism, as one specialisation within journalism, has undergone remarkable changes in the past two decades; not only in content but also in the way work in the newsroom is structured. This paper takes a closer look at science beats and their organisational variance. Observational studies conducted in German newsrooms are reviewed and concepts from organisational theory are discussed. Two heuristic concepts are introduced for the analysis of journalistic work processes in newsrooms, the beat concept and the mental editorial plan. The paper then constructs four ideal types of science beats to describe possible development trends within newsrooms: the current news science beat, the creative science beat, the audience- and business-oriented science journalism team, and the science beat as a specialised correspondents' office. The latter cooperates with various other beats or departments and is engaged in dynamic topic teams. For this new work-structure, the paper argues, a high level of journalistic proficiency is demanded of science journalists to sustain and improve the quality of science journalism in changing newsrooms.     

REPURPOSING OF CONTENT IN MULTI-PLATFORM NEWS PRODUCTION

One of the characteristics of convergence journalism is the prominence of repurposing of content. This article analyses news production processes at the Norwegian public service broadcaster, NRK, through the concepts of genre and adaptation. Convergent, or cross-media, news journalism involves media content travelling across media boundaries. As different media platforms use different sets of sign systems (audio, video, writing, images and graphics), this requires some form of translation or adaptation. This article analyses some examples of audiovisual content that travels across media platforms; mainly from television and radio to the Web, but also between radio and television. News content made for a specific programme on a specific platform, with a characteristic rhetoric, is adapted in part or as a whole to be republished on a different platform with a different rhetoric. In conclusion, the article outlines a typology of different forms of repurposing in cross-media news journalism, expanding on those found in Dailey et al.'s (2003) “convergence continuum”.     

The Evolving Journalistic Roles on Social Media: Exploring “Engagement” as Relationship-Building between Journalists and Citizens

ABSTRACT

Scholarly and pragmatic definitions of the term “engagement” vary drastically. This article attempts to capture the nuances of the term by exploring journalists’ roles on social media where “engagement” is supposed to be particularly prevalent. Using in-depth interviews, we gauge the attitudes of traditional political journalists as well as those who think of themselves as “engagement specialists” about their responsibilities in interactive spaces. In addition, we analyze what kinds of engagement are happening in these spaces, and how citizens’ expectations are being articulated, in terms of journalist-audience relationship—an organic resultant of engagement. We found that journalists are taking on new kinds of roles in social spaces—often in the name of “engagement”—but that work is not always particularly interactive with citizens; rather, content is engaged with. In contrast, citizens look to journalists to play a number of roles that range from civic guide to therapist. Thus, relationship building happens sporadically. Furthermore, engagement level is dependent on the platform and its affordances. This research offers a continuum of social media engagement conceived as relationship building that can reconcile the disparities in how we define engagement, and suggests newsrooms appreciate the nuances via a series of recommendations.     

Stabbing News

There is a comprehensive body of scholarly work regarding the way media represent crime and how it is constructed in the media narrative as a news item. These works have often suggested that in many cases public anxieties in relation to crime levels are not justified by actual data. However, few works have examined the gathering and dissemination of crime statistics by non-specialist journalists and the way crime statistics are gathered and used in the newsroom. This article seeks to explore in a comparative manner how journalists in newsrooms access and interpret quantitative data when producing stories related to crime. In so doing, the article highlights the problems and limitations of journalists in dealing with crime statistics as a news source, while assessing statistics-related methodologies and skills used in the newsrooms across the United Kingdom when producing stories related to urban crime.     

Citizen Media Practices at the Digital Startup Mvslim

Belgium-based Mvslim.com is a citizen media platform that aims to create a space for Muslims and non-Muslims to contribute content dedicated to challenging stereotypical portrayals of Muslims in legacy media. Launched in 2015, this non-profit digital media startup claims to reach over 10 million unique visitors per month worldwide and is one example of a successful grassroots citizen media initiative that attracts and appeals to a global community. Based on a combination of content analysis and in-depth interviews with the platform’s editors and contributors, this paper examines the citizen media practices used by the editorial team at Mvslim to foster participatory engagement amongst contributors and connect Muslims and non-Muslims. Theoretically, the study takes the practice approach proposed by Stephansen, which enables us to understand “what citizen media do” not only as news-making practices, but also as “public-making practices”. We argue that digitally native citizen media platforms like Mvslim are blurring the boundaries of journalism, as they can fulfil democratic functions once limited to legacy media.     

INNOVATIONS IN CENTRAL EUROPEAN NEWSROOMS

This paper is an overview of modern newsroom models in Central European countries, especially Austria, Germany and Switzerland. Editorial job divisions, as well as routines and work practices, in newspaper and news agency newsrooms, have experienced revolutionary changes in these countries—not only through the global trend towards convergence, but also by bridging traditional barriers between departments and by introducing more flexible structures. Large and open newsrooms, for example, are now becoming increasingly popular. Using a combination of qualitative and quantitative data drawn from a case study of the innovations process of the news agency Austria Presse Agentur in Vienna, it is suggested that modernized newsrooms can increase speed and journalistic quality. At the same time building structure and space play an important role in the innovations process of a newsroom. There are significant correlations between satisfaction with the work site and the assessment of rising quality.     

An Insidious Poison or a Door to the Story?

The aim of this paper is to grasp the influence of the newsroom on frame-building processes. First, journalists’ own understanding of “frames” and “framing” is discussed. Second, from an academic interpretation of these concepts, journalists’ framing practices are studied. To this end an ethnographic study was conducted at two newsrooms, one in Belgium and one in the Netherlands. The findings reveal that while the noun “frame” is sporadically used as a tool, the verb “framing” is considered as something from which a journalist should refrain. This is explained by the associations journalists make with strategic framing from sources as well as by the newspapers’ explicit attempt to no longer view the world from a single ideological frame. It is argued that the studied newsrooms have replaced ideology by, respectively, a counterframing strategy that strives to disprove existing frames (deframing) and a narrative approach that, one the one hand, sharpens existing frames but, on the other hand, offer more opportunities to create alternative frames (reframing) for events.     

Crafting News Narratives on Social Media

Thai news organizations are developing innovative cross-media news strategies and several of these strategies revolve around social media, which are fast becoming a hub for repurposing and extending traditional content. This paper reports on an empirical study conducted by using in-depth interviews with journalists from the social-media teams of three news organizations in Thailand – PPTV HD36, Nation Multimedia Group and Thairath – to analyse storytelling strategies. The key finding shows that cross-media content can extend news coverage to different aspects of a story, to inform and explain issues, and engaging audiences. This study suggests the objective use and design of content by dividing it into four types, based on functions: repurposing, engaging, cross-promoting and extending exclusive content to new-media platforms, so that it is designed with narrative styles that will carry a story across multiple platforms while ensuring that the different aspects and presentations remain connected to the main issue. A clear understanding of the function to be served by content can help newsrooms to plan suitable narrative styles and the sequence in which long-tail journalism is distributed across platforms to ensure that the quality of journalism is upheld in respect of providing a well-rounded coverage of diverse issues.     

Color,Caste and the Public Sphere

Broadcast network newsrooms are powerful gatekeepers, setting cultural standards and attitudes for America at large via the stories they tell and the images they project. In 1968, the federal Kerner Commission chastised American news media for ignoring race, and seeing through the “white man’s eyes” and speaking from “the white perspective.” Grounded in critical and cultural studies and organizational theory, this study analyzes the experiences of 23 post-Civil Rights generation black journalists working in broadcast newsrooms who continue to struggle against anti-black cultural norms and attitudes at great physical, psychological and financial cost.     

THE ONLINE JOURNALIST BETWEEN IDEALS AND AUDIENCES

How do online journalists define themselves? Journalistic self-perception plays a big part in understanding developments in the practice of online journalism in newsrooms. This article presents an analysis of the self-perceptions of online journalists using the theoretical framework of Pierre Bourdieu and data from empirical longitudinal observations based on ethnographic fieldwork in three Danish newsrooms. The analytical concepts “journalistic doxa”, “news habitus” and “editorial capital” are applied in an analysis both of ethnographic observations of journalistic practice, and a series of interviews with 35 journalists and editors. This analysis shows that online journalists position themselves in opposition to the “old” forms of journalism, which include the use of such well-known journalistic resources as specialist knowledge, technical skills, and research and writing as professional tools. However, at the same time they accept the “old” as “better” journalism, which indicates that online journalism is deeply embedded in a dominated position in the overall field of journalism. A scheme of four different analytical positions among online journalists is presented within a constructed “field of online news production”.     

MORE NEWS FOR LESS

Using an ethnographic case study of the Newschannel at TV2 Norway, this article reveals ways in which the assembly-line mentality required by 24/7 news production nevertheless encourages reporters to negotiate a certain autonomy over their work and the routines required to produce it. By reorganizing its staff's use of time, space, and resources, TV2 was able to generate roughly 18 hours of “live” news coverage a day during the article's research period from 2007 to 2009. This production process is framed in terms of Schlesinger's “reactive” mode, here qualified as “reactive-active”, because it allows for the possibility of broadcasting live and gathering news at the same time. The article also revisits the concept of “professionalism” with regard to a traditional broadcaster's implementation of a 24/7 news channel within its existing newsroom. As a result of this process, more news—and more content concerning that news—is produced more efficiently while the tenets of traditional journalism remain operative.     

Gatekeeping in a Digital Era

The original concept of gatekeeping within journalism was based on a particular research method, a particular sub-profession within the news media, and a particular—now extinct—technological platform. This article describes and discusses what has happened to the function of gatekeeping as new technologies have developed, and it suggests that three models of gatekeeping are present in the digital era. The first model is based on a process of information, the second model is based on a process of communication, and the third and last model is based on a process of elimination, where the function of gatekeeping is taken over by people outside the newsrooms. All three models have been part of the history of journalism from the very beginning, but their importance for news reporters and the news media have changed with the invention of new technological means, methods and tools. This reassessment of the principles, practices and new technological platforms for gatekeeping concludes by discussing the ways in which our models of journalism can affect not only researchers but also news reporters and audiences.     

Intrapreneurial Informants

As newspapers continue to wrestle with diminishing resources, they have, in part, turned to freelance journalists to help fill holes in content production. In light of this amplified reliance on freelancers, some media scholars have examined the ways in which they fit into the news process, arguing that they have the potential to override traditional journalistic norms in ways that can enhance news work and audience engagement while possibly breathing new life into news organization business models. Semi-structured interviews with 19 freelance journalists and nine newspaper editors in the United States help reveal that freelancers are harnessing social media to engage with and build audiences and individual brands. Freelancers frequently immerse themselves in social media experimentation that editors monitor and often incorporate into organizational strategies that may help inform newsroom practices and audience engagement. This hints at a shift for freelance journalists from the timeworn role of newsroom outsider to one of “intrapreneurial informant.”     

The Form of Content Personalisation at Mainstream,Transatlantic News Outlets: 2010–2016

ABSTRACT

In October 2016 the New York Times announced new content personalisation features for its websites and mobile apps, with the promise of “much more to come”. This article examines such developments via a quantitative content analysis of personalisation features at 15 major news outlets in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Germany and via interviews with senior editorial staff at some of those outlets. Both websites and mobile apps were studied, allowing comparisons to be made across platforms as well as geographically. Longitudinal comparisons were also made against an equivalent survey conducted in 2010. The results reveal significant changes over the last six years with, for example, rises in personalisation on mobile platforms, falls in the use of recommendations by friends, and convergence and commodification in content recommendation platforms. This study provides evidence to support continued debates on classical concerns such as selective exposure, but also raises new concerns about the effects of personalisation, including data protection and security issues.     

ELIMINATION OF IDEAS AND PROFESSIONAL SOCIALISATION

This article investigates and interprets social and cultural production and reproduction as we turn our attention to an important part of routinised practice in the newsroom: the early newsroom meetings. These meetings are essential sites for the building of the craft ethos and professional vision. Our aim is to study how this building of expertise takes place at meetings with a particular focus on the decision-making process concerning ideas for new news stories. In order to do this, we perform linguistic analysis of news production practices, as we investigate how the journalists' ideas for potential news stories are eliminated by the editor at the daily newsroom meetings. The elimination of ideas for news stories are not just eliminations; they are also corrections of culturally undesirable behaviour producing and reproducing the proper perception of an important object of knowledge—what constitutes “a good news story”—in this community of practice.     

浅析台湾电子书平台的运营特色和创新实践--以台湾电子书店Readmoo平台为例

电子书产业是信息社会中涌现出来的新兴业态,近些年来展现出巨大的发展潜力,台湾地区由于市场规模小,资源紧缺,往往难以实现产业发展中的规模效应。针对这一现状,台湾电子书平台在运营中另辟蹊径,以“创新性”“体验性”和“社交性”为发展方向,致力于丰富电子出版物的内容,提升平台的服务质量,培养读者的阅读兴趣,在实践中不断壮大电子出版市场。本文以台湾地区电子书城Readmoo平台的经营经验为例,深入分析台湾电子书平台的创新实践和运营哲学。