University of Amsterdam, Department of Media Studies
Master Program in Television and Cross-Media Culture
Chris Domin
Collapsing Workflows and the
Contemporary Journalistic Practice
in the Digital Age
Table of contents
Introduction
3
Chapter 1
Professionalization of Journalism
5
The Commercialization of Journalism
and the Fourth Estate
8
Stuart Hall and the Construction of News
10
Beatreporting
13
Chapter 2
Restructuring Journalism
15
Does Workflow Collapse in News Production?
19
Chapter 3
Background of Semi-structured Interviews
26
The Journalists
28
The Background
29
The Work
32
Practices in two models: clear-cut and all-in-one The Technology Practices Online and Amateur vs. Professional
Conclusions
52
Bibliography
55
Appendix
57
INTRODUCTION
In the ever-changing media landscape where every innovation and any technological development have their impact on the industry, it is hard not to expect alteration. One of the most significant changes for media in general was a turn into digital data with its endless possibilities. As an effect, once stable and linear processes have been broken down and the collapsing workflows are the most prominent example of such changes for the media industry workers.
The “collapsing workflows” is a term coined by John T. Caldwell whose work has been the main point of departure for this thesis. By studying the production process of the entertainment media, the author describes this way the constant disruptions in the professional practices of those working in the media industry. Those disruptions take on different forms, which I shall describe in the second part of my thesis and identify in the interviews conducted with the professional journalist in the last part. What does it mean to study production? It means to gather empirical data about the complexities of routines, rituals and processes, the economic and political forces that shape roles and technologies, and the distribution resources (Mayer, Banks & Caldwell, 4). For some time now, media scholars studying production have been preoccupied with the entertainment industry, which undeniably offers many areas to explore but at the same time they were neglecting any other media branches.
Following the personal interest in news media and acknowledging the insufficient amount of research considering production in terms described above, I have decided to explore the contemporary journalistic practices and news production. That said, this thesis is an attempt to provide an accessible insight into contemporary journalistic practices and illustrate the challenges of news production. My main research question is whether the journalistic practice is exposed on similar disruptions and therefore, if the contemporary newsrooms’ workflows collapse too, in the light of technological changes.
To explore the area of news production, I have applied two methods. First, a review of relevant literature related to journalistic practices and news production in the broad sense. From the gathered materials I have selected few
titles, which seemed to be of the closest relevance for my topic and provided the best overview of research from the past, starting from late 60’s and finishing on 90’s. This method had a double function. Firstly, it allowed me to describe journalistic field and its structure in the pre-digital times. Secondly, it showed that the focus on production was often a mean to describe other aspects, such as political economy, news values, and reproduction of ideology through journalistic practices. This literature helped me to present the historical background of journalism and news per se, present the approaches by which news production was studied. Additional positions helped me to link J.T. Caldwell’s research to the field of journalistic production and pointed out some previously acknowledged challenges and problems in the news industry. The second part of my research was based on the semi-structured interviews with professional journalists, which provided qualitative material for the analysis of the presented problem.
In the first chapter of my thesis I present the historical overview of the research related to the field of journalism and news production. I depart from describing what made journalism “professional” from a political economy perspective, move to commercialization and Fourth Estate discourse, to finally present Hall’s socio-cultural notions of news production. In the second chapter I switch my focus on more contemporary research concerning changes in the newsroom and on the analysis of the leading idea for this thesis, namely collapsing workflows by J.T. Caldwell. In the last part of my work I provide a broad qualitative analysis of the semi-structured interviews conducted for the purposes of this thesis.
CHAPTER 1
PROFESSIONALIZATION OF JOURNALISM
In this chapter I would like to propose a brief overview of academic research concerning journalism and news production. This background will give an understanding of which areas interested scholars the most, and what approach had been taken to explore them. The central focus of my thesis will be production understood as set of journalistic routines and practices in light of technological changes and digital production. Although in order to look on journalistic practice from this perspective, I would like to point out how the news production has been studied before on selected examples. By doing so, I shall present that what triggered the scholars the most was the political economy of journalistic production, specific agenda setting, structures of power and dominant ideologies. In example “the political economic critique (…) is centred on looking at how large media corporations, media concentration and advertisers corrupt the public service of journalism, undermine its professionalism, and keep it from being serious and nonpartisan, if not objective” (McChesney, 299). This short input into broadly understood news production should help in understanding the profession per se and its history.
News began with newspapers but over time it spread into other media as well. Contemporary news is all-pervasive, and together with a diverse digital landscape it reverberates through all possible distribution channels and platforms. Nevertheless, independent of the medium, news shares the same values, motivations and goals. News is “an orientation toward truth through truthful accounts of contemporary events,” achieved by accuracy, sincerity, location (here) and contemporaneousness time (now) (Harrison, 3). Accordingly the “truth” is a foundation of news. But the journalism contemporarily perceived as unbiased, nonpartisan and politically neutral did not emerge as such from its origins.
During its first decades the notion of truthfulness would be nonsensical. In the beginning the point of journalism was to persuade and inform on behalf of political parties, as the first newspapers were closely linked to them. “A partisan
press system has much to offer a democratic society… as long as there are numerous well-subsidized media providing a broad range of opinion” (Pasley in McChesney, 300). However, during the 19th century, the notion changed from
being political into being primarily commercial. It is the time when the press system “became an engine of great profits as costs plummeted, population increased, and advertising – which emerged as a key source of revenues – mushroomed” (ibidem). It was only a matter of time for this system to become a source of conflict of interest between commercial economics and partisan politics. “Following the logic of accumulation, the commercial press system became less competitive and ever more clearly the domain of wealthy individuals, who usually had the political views associated with their class” (ibidem). All groups, such as feminist or trade unions, who felt underrepresented, established their media to push their own interests. It is important to note that in time of commercially boosted press system, there was no obstacle on the way to open one’s own newspaper. To an extent that even small cities had tens of daily magazines and newspapers1.
Such multiplicity led to the crisis of journalism in the beginning of the 20th
century. Diversity of this sort caused a cacophony of opinions, which no longer held any real sway, and because of economic reasons could not be sustained. “The economics of advertising-supported newspapers erected barriers to entry that made it virtually impossible for small, independent newspapers to succeed,” (301) writes McChesney. Ergo, the biggest industry players started concentrating on fewer chains and supported only the largest, most read newspapers. This put an end to alternative viewpoints and meant that some communities had access to media representing only one viewpoint. This posed a risk for democracy, as press came to serve the interests of the wealthy alone. 1 “Consider, for example, the United States in the early 1900s. Members and supporters of the Socialist Party of Eugene V. Debs published some 325 English and foreign language daily, weekly and monthly newspapers and magazines. Most of these were privately owned or were the publications of one of the 5000 Socialist Party locals. They reached a total of more than 2 million subscribers” (McChesney, 300).
After the waves of criticism –of which a prominent example is The Brass
Check by Upton Sinclair2 – something had to be changed about journalistic
practice to make it more credible. “Savvy publishers understood that they needed to have their journalism appear neutral and unbiased (…) or their business would be far less profitable” (ibidem). The push was initiated by the establishment of professional schools of journalism and consequently a separation of editorial operations from the commercial affairs, which became the recognized professional model. “As trained professionals, journalists would learn to sublimate their own values as well. Readers could trust what they read, and not worry about who owned the newspaper or that there was a monopoly or duopoly in their community” (idem, 302). In other words, the journalists were granted autonomy in decision-making based on their professional judgement, with no regard to the political affiliations of their owners or advertisers. That is when the objective reporting became a value for the first time.
Independent, unbiased and nonpartisan journalism is often referred to as the media as the Fourth Estate in a democratic society. The origin of the term comes from England, during the year 1787. Edmund Burke used it for the first time when he addressed the press reporting from the House of Commons in British Parliament. “It implies, at best, an idealistic claim that the press functions as a watchdog of the powerful in society and brings their misdemeanours to the attention of the public” (Conboy, 110). The epitome of the Fourth Estate became a vital strategy in a journalistic practice called investigative journalism. This strategy assumes a thorough investigation and analysis of public matters and their exposure to the public sphere, also referred to as an “institutionalization of social knowledge” (Boyce, 13). Such cases involved months or even years of investigation and the most common areas of interest were serious crimes, political corruption or corporate frauds. Nevertheless, gaining political and economical status quo “is paradoxically a history of increasing restrictions rather than liberalization” (Conboy, 111); for journalism it meant the development of rigid working ethics and professional codes to follow. 2 Upton Sinclair „provided the first great systematic critique of the limitations of capitalist journalism for a democratic society. Sinclair’s book was filled with example after example of explicit lying and distortion of the labor movement and socialist politics be the mainstream press” (ibidem, 301).
Of course the change did not happen immediately. Multiple local and global events, such as the Second World War and Nazi propaganda, interrupted in shaping nonpartisan journalism. All in all, it took years for the mainstream news media to adapt. Nevertheless, the general idea was quite simple – no one would need multiple newspapers, if one or two could provide the same, professionally driven content (McChesney, 302). With the time though, one issue would became clear: it is quite impossible to provide completely neutral and objective news.
“Decision-making is an inescapable part of the journalism process, and some values have to be prompted when deciding why one story rates front-page while another is ignored” (ibidem). It does not mean that some news cannot be closer to truth and non-partisanship. It rather means that if one cannot fully acknowledge that journalism cannot be actually neutral, “it is impossible to detect the values at play that determine what becomes news, and what does not” (ibidem). One should understand that in order to produce news, the journalist follows a professional code based on which he or she will determine the newsworthiness and importance of one event over another. Stuart Hall’s analysis of news construction during production process, described further in this chapter, presents one of the approaches to understanding the phenomenon. At the same time, the commercialization and professionalization process of the news did not escape further criticism. The transformation of news institutions into profit-making businesses had citizens seriously questioning their intentions and neutrality. The increasing role of commercialism, people realized the commercial not Fourth estate logic was more important. These matters seemed to be at the centre of academic criticism in 1970s and 1980s. THE COMMERCIALIZATION OF JOURNALISM AND THE FOURTH ESTATE “The freedom conferred by the free market was the freedom of capital to indoctrinate labor… A tacit model of society which admitted no conflict of class interest, only a conflict between ignorance and enlightenment and between individual and the state, was the basis on which a free press could
be conceived in terms of both watchdog of the government and guard-dog of the people” (Curran, 60).
Curran’s perspective stresses that even at the very earliest stages of preparing a story and the news production process, several key factors have already been taken into account. As soon as news becomes involved in market mechanisms, these start to influence the ownership, strategies and competitive practices of production (Conboy, 120). This does not necessarily contradict the independency and liberalization of news, but underlines the reasons behind specific decision-making, undermining some supposedly impartial intentions. Curran’s approach evokes Marxist political economy theorists, who focused on the power structures by analyzing the ownership and means of control. It involves incorporating smaller, less prosperous papers, and more contemporary merges, acquisitions, vertical and horizontal integration, and the growth of transnational corporations (Harrison, 26). Hence, the approach requires us to look into news corporations’ actions in gaining profits, “meet[ing] shareholders’ and investors’ demands,” and of utmost importance, maximizing viewership in order to sell it to the advertisers (ibidem). It is worth mentioning that the same model that built news independency simultaneously initiated very important questions raised by political economists.
“News has always been perceived as a commodity, but now this commodity became capitalized;” It became a legitimized product and “an invaluable conduit to the advertisers’ revenue” (Conboy, 120). To come to this conclusion, researchers had to analyze the professional practices and ideologies of news workers dictated in a way by the economic determinants (Harrison, 26). Baladasty presents an opinion that independent news brought growth to the news industry, but only as a commercial product. He is criticizing the transformation of the industry that created a new format in which the news has been shaped, packaged and marketed with a keen eye for profit (140). On the other hand, although the revenue is a trigger, without the change, the popularization of the information flow would never have happened. Ryfe writes that an inevitable separation has to be put between the industry, understood as business entity, and the newsrooms that belong to it. In his account there is a specific uncertainty very often discussed in the literature, “the uncertainty of
making profit.” Ryfe, like Conboy, Baladasty, Curran and others, thinks that news organizations are constrained by profit like every other commercial entity. Nevertheless he argues that those motives might have further and further influence over journalistic routines and practice (679).
“Journalists’ responses to the theoretical concerns voiced by academics vary within different organizational contexts […] usually they regard their own professionalism and autonomy as proof against domination over news and its content” (Harrison, 27). Journalism was and still is perceived as an appropriate example of a profession that attracts people because of its independence, individualism, and paradoxically anti-corporate attitudes, where the professional product remains the intellectual property of an individual, instead of being detached and appropriated by the company (Meyer, 89). Be that as it may, it is still hard to avoid some business/corporate-like connotations when describing the structure or operation model of some newsrooms, a conflict that will be discussed in the last chapter of this thesis. STUART HALL AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF NEWS Stuart Hall’s perspective represents the culturalist approach and suggests that the “news media produce a value-laden product, which may seem ‘neutral’, but in fact represents establishment or other dominant views” (Harrison, 29). His very influential writings were based on neo-Marxist, structuralist and semiotic theories, which portrayed media not as a stream of major ruling ideology, but constant conflict between competing worldviews and social forces (ibidem). Stuart Hall et al. in Policing the Crisis contributed greatly to the discussion about the production of news by unveiling the cultural and social apparatuses standing behind them. Neither news, nor its authors, exists in a vacuum. It is the product of a complex process characterized by systematic selection of events and topics based on a socially constructed set of categories (53). News is nothing more than pieces of our daily life routine, yet those appearing on the pages of the newspaper or on the screen have some particular extraordinariness that often concern some groups of people rather than others. The events that score the
highest in their popularity are the unexpected and dramatic, most of the time with negative consequences, involving human tragedies, events that “will be so newsworthy that programmes will be interrupted – as in the radio or television news-flash – so that these items can be communicated immediately” (Hall et al., 54). It says a lot about us as a society, but at the same time is not surprising in a sense that in order to create a story about the event, it has to posses certain values distinguishing it from the others.
News values allow the journalists and newsmen to decide weather or not the story is newsworthy, that is which stories are significant and should be run. “Although they are nowhere written down, formally transmitted or codified, news values seem to be widely shared between the different news media” (ibidem). Hence, besides the bureaucratic aspect of media industries, which produce the news in specific categories and “the structure of news values which order the selection,” (ibidem) Hall is interested in the moment of their construction and what leads up to it.
To understand the construction of news, Hall introduces the term consensus. To produce news, the journalist must first assume the audience it will address. This assumption is based on the identification and contextualization, the constituents through which media create meaning around events. In order for an event to make sense it has to be located “within a range of known social and cultural identifications” (ibidem). These assumptions of identification and conceptualization create a framework, within which certain issues can be communicated to society. They have a consensual character, because they assume again that everyone has the same interest in society and equal share of power (idem, 55). There are two conclusions from Hall’s theory: The media define what important or significant events are taking place, and by doing so they inherently create a certain understanding or interpretation of the event based on the frameworks they have used for its construction.
One of the distinct features of professional journalism is its access to credible sources. These are the accredited representatives of institutions, which, by giving their insight, allow journalists to spin a topic into a meaningful news event. As it has been said in the beginning of this chapter, journalism is upheld by certain rules and values, mainly circulating around truthfulness, and “one
product of these rules is the carefully structured distinction between the ‘fact’ and ‘opinion’” (idem, 58). Nevertheless, it is important to highlight that the very same rules, to name only impartiality or objectivity, are provoked by the same people who are the journalists’ accredited sources. The very same institutions providing input and information stand behind the predefined rules bounding professional journalists. Hence, in Hall’s opinion “the media tend, faithfully and impartially, to reproduce symbolically the existing structure of power in society’s institutional order” (ibidem).
The most problematic aspect of this theory is the fact that “the primary definition sets the limit for all subsequent discussion by framing what the problem is” (Hall et al., 59), which in turn is sustained by the media and the process of creation described above. Based on that, Hall draws the conclusion that media are obviously not primary definers but only reproducers of opinions, while at the same time media stay reliable because of those accredited sources. “From this point of view, in the moment of news production, the media stand in a position of structured subordination to the primary definers” (ibidem). The conveyance of the dominant ideas is based on the mechanism of their reproduction – “particular professional practice ensures that the media, effectively but ‘objectively’, play a key role in reproducing the dominant filed of the ruling ideologies” (idem, 60).
Hall’s approach focuses on the final effect of journalistic practice – news. His idea of production solely focuses on the workflow from the viewpoint of reproduction of ideology. In conclusion, although the media undeniably seem to lean toward the reproduction of the primary definers’ ideology, in some circumstances they can take another stand and try to reproduce completely opposite opinion. Yet again for Hall, as well as McChesney, the discussion about news production is a departure point to discuss, either the effects of created news in the socio-cultural context, or the entanglement of the process within the organizational structure, its restraints and politics. Both authors touch upon certain activities undertaken by journalists in order to create a story, such as selection of events and topics, identifying the audience and contextualization of the problem for its purposes, obeying to the rules set by primary definers, etc. Nevertheless, what those authors focus on is not how the journalists perform
those tasks, but why; who stands behind the rules and what implications does it have for the society and culture. This again proves that their focus is set on the mechanisms behind not on production per se. BEATREPORTING The last past approach, which I would like to present is beatreporting. “In typical beat coverage, reporters find daily stories by visiting particular locations and observing events themselves or talking with people who observe events. In this mode, most daily stories are about one-time events” (Fishman, 38). In this particular news production process, the journalists become knowledgeable about their beat, which in most of the cases is one place or institution, which is assigned to or picked by them. They meet the people and slowly gain their trust. Eventually they become qualified to judge the information’s newsworthiness, and because of their deeper understanding of the history, key players, and various dynamics, are able to write very fast and straight-to-the-point, providing readers with their take on the most important news. This whole process becomes a routine for the journalist, whether it is a press conference or one-on-one meeting to pry for information. The purpose is to find enough stories to fill the news block (Ryfe, 671). “Much of the literature uses machine metaphors to describe daily newsgathering as an almost mechanical process in which the news is ‘manufactured’ according to widely shared rules in an assembly line (…) the parts of this machine – such as the routines of daily newsgathering – have built up over time in response to a handful of basic uncertainties facing every news organization (…) two uncertainties in particular are vital to daily newsgathering: access and authority.” (Ryfe, 670) In this discourse, effort and investment play a crucial role and that is why the scholar raises the two uncertainties. He acknowledges how the dynamic changes in the news media landscape can destroy something so meticulously built. Both entities, access and authority, are slowly developed by the strenuous process undertaken by the journalist on their way to build a great beat.
journalistic practice, but only to the extent, which led the scholars to begin the discussion about something else. Hence, the production understood as daily practice was neglected. Nevertheless, Ryfe by describing beatreporting comes near the understanding of news production crucial for my thesis. The one, which looks on journalists’ daily routines, task and practices, the repetitive activities undertaken to produce news and provide it to the broader audience. The process, people and technology involved in the story creation; the new solutions and approaches applied in order to expedite the work; the human capacities and struggles accompanying the journalistic profession. By asking what are the routines and practices; what observations do journalists have on the news industry; what type of changes can they notice; what role does the technology play in their profession and what impact had its recent rapid development, I would like to present the story from a bottom-up perspective of professional journalists.
CHAPTER 2
RESTRUCTURING JOURNALISM
Vincent Mosco wrote that there is no future for journalism without journalists, and the prognosis is not good (Mosco, 350). A chain of events and trends, including the fragmentation of mainstream media audiences; the arrival of a participatory Web comprised of bloggers, digital enthusiasts and produsers; the robust emergence of social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or Snapchat, “have all washed together to form a seemingly compelling though incoherent explanation for the inevitable replacement of traditional media and its paid armies of information gatherers – reporters and editors – by a robust, diffuse, distributed self-organized collective of citizens online” (Compton & Benedetti, 53). This change did also affect journalism. It forced the journalist to include new sets of practices in order to meet the expectations of the audience. Many believe that the point at which mainstream news media found themselves now is a sign of the new order, the rules of which will be dictated by the online enthusiasts. Or that is what the promoters claim to open up the media.
Not so long ago an evening radio news bulletin or prime-time news broadcast would gather millions of listeners, whereas today journalism must seek for ways to attract their audience through a range of media outputs. “Technological changes (…) of the news media market have brought in their wake a series of changes in the content and format which seek to retain more of an audience which is fragmenting because of the variety of options open to it” (Conboy, 208).
Nevertheless, technology shouldn’t be seen as such a determining factor, independently influencing journalistic workflow. It must be seen “in terms of implementation, and how it extends and amplifies previous ways of doing things” (Mitchelstein, 566). Hence, all the variations and innovations are explicit examples of how workers adapted to the changes. Four aspects of technological impact in particular have triggered scholars the most: news-gathering practices, acceleration of production process, modifications in workflow and the convergence of distinct media (such as print, broadcast and the Internet), where
the increased speed of production processes plays the most significant role (idem, 568). The source of the “increased pressure on journalists to carry out multiple tasks” (ibidem) in the shortest time possible comes from online media and is allowed by new technologies. That pressure changes the past workflows with novel demands and pushes news workers to become true multitaskers, who juggle their responsibilities and adjust to fast-paced, ever-changing situations. “Journalists complained that additional labor and speed pressures undermine their ability to undertake their craft,” and are “concerned because they are expected to carry out additional tasks for ‘the same salary as before’” (ibidem). Studies show that the platforms became less important than before, which echoes in the words of one of the journalists interviewed by Mitchelstein, who says: ‘I’m not working in a newspaper; I’m working in news’ (ibidem).
It is without a doubt the case that new technologies have broadened journalists’ responsibilities in news production. Nevertheless, they also contributed to drastic cuts made within the industry. The technologies’ role is to constantly introduce more efficient and cheaper solutions. Supposedly, they lead toward lower production costs, while providing the same or better outcomes. “The intensified rationalization of productive resources, [is expressed] through aggressive mergers and newsroom stuff reductions” (Campton & Benedetti, 55), where the 24-hour news channels – the best example of new commercial news media – appear in this light as rather pernicious with their demand for a constant supply of content. “The advent of twenty-four-hour television news and the rapid emergence of instant Internet news sites have eliminated the temporal borders in the news day, creating an informational environment in which there is always breaking news to produce, consume, and—for reporters and their subject—race against” (Klinenberg, 54). By the same token, this new informational environment requires a more flexible labour force to provide it. In this case, it is much more efficient to rely on unpaid volunteers, who happen to be at the place of event, than to invest in paid reporters spread all over the world. The reporters who in the end entail fixed contracts.
The capitalist profit-driven, anti-union, anti-public sector model has had an unforeseeably shocking impact on the industry (Benson, 193). Between 2007 and 2009 alone, more than 20,000 employees of the news media sector were
fired in US due to institutional restructurings and the financial crisis, which was never expected to affect such a firm and wealthy sector as the media industry (see Almiron, Journalism in Crisis). Similar redundancies could have been noticed in the European news media landscape (Compton & Benedetti, 55). This transition to Post-Fordist production, in Bensons’ opinion, alienates the journalists even further from the everyday concerns of the poor and working class (idem, 193). Focused on providing the coverage in the most attractive way to please the tastes of fragmented viewers, modern journalism slowly looses its grip on the mission to deliver the news equally for the broad public. At the same time, however, the transition encourages independent, non-profit voices to rise-up and join the discussion.
A very important distinction has to be made in the case of citizen or amateur journalism and so called professionals. As it has been said, journalism as we have known it is undergoing a big change. “Amateur content is increasingly part of the mix of traditional news media […], the argument that citizen journalism creates autonomous opportunities for pluralistic production of news is a myth” (Compton & Benedetti, 61). Citizen journalism solely focuses on non-institutional sources on account of the lack of access. This might seemingly lead to more pluralistic news coverage. Nevertheless, what the amateur journalists seem to provide reminds of opinion making rather than reporting, and there is a significant difference between those two. Reporting costs money, it takes time and involves knowledge, effort and practice sustained through working experience.
“All news organizations must find a steady and reliable supply of raw material; this is accomplished trough the establishment of a ‘news net’” (idem, 56). That net is nothing other than known beats, from courts and city halls to corporate boards, police, and others. That is why the phone-equipped blogger is hardly a substitute for “the day-to-day grind of reporting, and fact checking” (idem, 58). Well-meaning and good will is not enough and can hardly get anyone into the intricate structures of corporate, government or military bureaucracies. Those bureaucracies strayed from public scarcity and disclosure of information and will continue to require long hours of extensive research and labour –
“developing trusted and knowledgeable sources, studying documents and learning the complexities of such things as health care bureaucracies” (idem, 58). On the other hand, it is hard to discredit this tremendous group of online users who in the end do spend extraordinary time and efforts trying to contribute to on-going debates. Thus, citizen journalism, by relying on mostly non-institutional sources, might be perceived as leading us toward more pluralist news coverage. Jeff Jarvis paints a quite positive perspective for the future of journalism by perceiving citizen journalism as a welcomed development. He envisions this future with an army of workers being always on the spot and populating the Web with endless reportages. From this perspective, professionals will play the additional role of curators and aggregators of information (idem, 56). Wayne MacPhail adds: “Traditional news organs are going to spend as much time curating that coverage as creating their own. And, when they do create their own, they’ll be using the same cellphones and social networks as the rest of us. One or two big network eyes will be replaced by a network of small bearing witness” (56).
Although very positive, that vision seems a bit utopic. Two important things must be said. First of all, according to the authors of Labour, New Media… and
Project for Excellence in Journalism, independent online creators continue to rely on reports from traditional newsrooms and, based on those, develop their own opinion-shaping content (Compton & Benedetti, 58). They produce little, if any, original reporting and coverage. Second of all, they are very unlikely motivated by love; they maintain themselves in constant readiness for their right to work “by shouldering the financial costs of professional development” (idem, 59). The general and rather sad result of changes in the journalistic and news media landscape is the fact that lay offs, restructuring, new responsibilities, content curation among others, resulted in a definite change of the existing workflows. “Not solely in terms of coverage of news events, but in how those events are covered in the converging newsrooms. The remaining staffs are required to post to the Internet, collect audio and video clips, shoot digital photographs, post updates to blogs and most recently live to Twitter” (idem, 60).
The remaining reporters are paid less and expected to do much more which leads us to the phenomenon of disrupted workflows described by John Caldwell in the instance of the entertainment industry. DOES WORKFLOWS COLLAPSE IN NEWS PRODUCTION? The transformation of physical units into endless cyber data3 has opened up a new digital chapter both for the media industry and its consumers/users. Not surprisingly, the most significant impact has been to the workflow of the industry’s employees, forcing them to find the new ways of dealing with daily tasks, which they had developed and practiced through years of work experience.
Caldwell describes workflow as “the route that … content travels through the production organization and its technologies as it moves from the beginning (origination, imaging, recording) to the end (post-production, mastering, duplication, exhibition) of the production/distribution process” (Caldwell, 293). This somewhat traditional route has had to be re-evaluated due to the new distribution channels (mainly Internet and mobile applications), the introduction, implementation and influence of new technologies, changes in the professional landscape (new vacancies due to the new technologies and responsibilities), and last but not least growing user/consumer demands and participation in the process.
Although all of the above-mentioned factors deserve a separate analysis, the participatory role of users/consumers or “produsers”, and how they are often referred to in the contemporary discussions, seems to be the main excuse for the arguments raised by the author of Worker Blowback. The way they are described by the author is not different from the citizen journalists from Campton and Benedetti’s analysis of contemporary journalism tendencies. Especially in the sense of what drives the online citizens. More specifically, one of Web 2.0’s most renowned innovations is “the shift toward user-generated content … the
3 According to Cambridge Dictionary, digitalization is a process of putting
information into the series of 0 and 1 numbers. This new form of information allows computers and other electronic equipment to use it and manipulate it in any way.
empowerment and liberalization as ‘the people’ apparently reclaim the Internet and exercise their ‘collective intelligence’” (Beer, 986). In other words, the shift can be characterized by a participatory and collaborative shift, in which users are allowed to get involved and create content (ibidem). The media industry quite quickly acknowledged the potential of UGC (user-generated content) and despite its presumably uncontrollable nature, learnt how to commodify and commercialize it. UGC for the industry meant a massive amount of discussions between fans and consumers generating ideas for prospective productions, and an unprecedented amount of fan-created content, like videos or imagery. Fan production became so impressive in its quality that it nearly blurs the boundary between original and the copy (see Caldwell, 288).
The phenomenon of user-generated content disinterred the old idea of outsourcing, which originally meant “sending the production work outside of the studios and networks where it could be produced much more cheaply” (286). The prospective “outside” producer was supposed to be driven by the incentive of possible career in the industry, while in the meantime his work would be exploited and generally he would work for free (ibidem). This sort of practice leads to the professionalization of UGC, free and voluntary in its nature, where everyone can become a worker of the media industry. That seemingly innocent practice has far more serious consequences for the current employees, which I will return to later on.
The new workflow offered by digitalization, broke down the once linear process of production. The freedom and somewhat non-linear structure by which digital data can be handled nowadays have destroyed the “sacrosanct” job distinctions. Production and post-production processes have merged because of the recent shifts to digital “visualization and effects functions once reserved for post-production now dominate production, and skills once limited to production now percolate through post-production” (Caldwell, 293). Furthermore, digitalization brought a new demand into the labour market and opened up new positions such as data wranglers, colorists, visual effects supervisors, etc. Those new professions, as important to the digital economy as the old ones, became one of the reasons for the disruption within the once stable workflow, and gave the origin for the new “hybrid” model.
Within the new model, the “physical production process becomes slave to the digital realm” (Patel, 56). Traditional, set-based workers face increasing unemployment on behalf of the new, digital workers, who “encroach on the once stable and regulated production space of the set” (Caldwell, 295). The question that arises in the light of such a change is who pulls the strings of the digital puppet? Whatever type of production is discussed, its main factors comprises of time and manpower with the main goal to create a product in the fastest, the cheapest and the most efficient way available. Caldwell argues that digital technology manufacturers confuse both “workflows and job hierarchies and promise savings by eliminating low-level jobs in order to centralize production” at costly high-level studios (296). The promise is simple and the only requirement to achieve it is to make a high cost investment in technologically advanced equipment, which replaces the redundant amount of human power with a few highly specialized digital workers.
In this point the “produser” phenomenon starts to play an important role for the industry and poses a threat to “professionals”. Users, being aware of the industry’s requirements and motivated by a so-called DIY ethos, “learn their craft in independent and low-budget sectors,” even alongside professionals who have been in the industry for sometime now (idem, 302). As a result, the knowledge economy flattens due to a ubiquitous amount of tutorials, online workshops and other UGC-like self-help material.
Their incentive to achieve a goal is empowered by the industry’s constant wooing and promise of discovery. They dream about getting hired and brought to the set (ibidem). Workers, on the other hand, are exposed to the intersectional threat. One of them appears as constantly evolving technological landscape, which they have to harness. The other is “the army” of ready to take on their jobs “un-professionals”. On the one hand, they must accept and adapt to the constantly evolving technological landscape, and on the other, compete with an ‘army’ of ‘unprofessionals’ ready to take on their jobs. “In the post-Fordist, post-network era outsourced contract workers create socio-professional networks to survive and master constantly changing hardware and software” (idem, 301). Firstly, to keep their jobs they have to constantly develop, keep up the industry’s demands, and invest in their knowledge and skills. Secondly, they fear to be
replaced by the young, self-trained “amateur” who is willing to work for nearly free. Lastly, because of the technological changes and economical instability they need to constantly reaffirm each other of the conviction of their own value. The new digital realm and the new workflow that follows it revived one more not so old phenomenon, namely “professional” workers from media industry started to tighten their bounds in a way reminding the past worker unions. Only this time it takes place in the online environment with blogs, forums and discussion platforms, where they create a symbolic community. Caldwell calls these sorts of activities a worker-generated content4. Among the content
generated by workers one can find personal stories from the set, professional explanations, specifications and advices about particular equipment or software, snarky commentaries on unfairness within the industry, and even leaked materials from unreleased new productions. This sort of backlash has two ethno-sociological explanations worth consideration.
Andreas Wittel describes such shifts into online communities as a “model of networked sociality,” where technology-based activities start to become a substitute for physical communities (Wittel, 70). Caldwell perceives it as not only a way to learn new things and exchange knowledge, but also as a confirmation of their specific and irreplaceable value: “They also work to convince themselves that their distinctive value to the industry lies in some unique speciality of their guild, craft, or trade association” (Caldwell, 306). This model of self-affirmation has been explained by the labour sociologist Harry Braverman: “Trade narratives verify that a story teller has a specialized expertise that goes beyond the obligations of simple labour and proves that he or she can do the one thing required of any professional in film and TV: successfully, and repeatedly negotiate one’s value” (82). In other words, through such activities workers try to emphatically underline that the proper expertise lies in their hands and abilities, and by doing so they re-establish their own values in times of technological change and economic uncertainty. This is presumably the direct impact of technology, which brings uncertainty in the changing workflows.
4 Although such activities also take place between the news workers, they have
not been included in my research. Broader explanation and analysis of this phenomenon can be found in the sub-chapter WGC As Industrial Response:
All in all, to understand digitalization and its impact on the contemporary production process in the media industry means to explore the gap between an image created by corporations (driven by revenue) and the stories of workers, who willingly disclose the ‘real’ behind-the-scenes issues. This gap is being partially exposed by Caldwell, among others5, who also draws some unpromising
conclusions. Firstly, in such an economically broken market, everyone will work “for free” or close to it, because of increasing competitiveness, the amount of circulating content and “wannabes”. Secondly, the monetary economy is constantly challenged by the experience-based economy, where a gain is supposed to enrich a résumé but does not necessarily translate as an actual financial gain. Lastly and the most noticeably, production processes aim for the entirely outsourced workspace.
The analyses presented by Caldwell and other scholars like Vicky Meyer or Miranda Banks focus particularly on the entertainment sector of media industry. Nevertheless, I argue that in some parts they are highly applicable to news production and contemporary journalism. The focus on workflow helps to bring to light the aspects of journalistic production that were not brought to the fore by political economists, Hall and other scholars. In general, there is a substantial gap in the field of media and communication, and the lack of material that would deal with news production in terms of routines and practices before and after the introduction of digital channels or outlets. The gap concerns all media platforms, from newspapers, through radio, to television, and now the Internet and mobile applications. While the entertainment sector of the industry was striving for innovation to surprise the audiences with novelty, to immerse and engage with them on the constantly new level, news providers kept the new trends at a distance, contemplating them rather apprehensively.
For the news industry even the transition to computer from typing machines and pencils meant redundancy packages for some employees who could not find their place in the new environment. “Consequently, the age profile of newsrooms was changed, leaving fewer older and more experienced journalists to pass their wisdom on to new recruits” (Harrison, 73). Although digital technology and the development of interactivity offered new ways of distribution and accessing the 5 See for example Vicki Mayer, Below the Line.
news, it complicated the workflow, dividing employees into those in favour of legitimate or proven methods, and those seeking new ways of engagement (very often with directors and managers more focused on the rating points and general viewership), and redefined some previous roles within the newsroom.
“Technological change has enabled the broadcast news media to enhance their management of the constraints of space (via multi-screens and broadband capacity) and time (via rolling news, twenty-four-hour channels and videophones)” (Harrison, 76). Those few listed changes contributed greatly to the core values of journalism, such as accuracy, sincerity, location space/place (here) and contemporaneousness (now) – and mostly appear as leading arguments defending and supporting progressive development and the adaptation of newsrooms. Nevertheless, the changes are barely discussed in relation to human capacity, the division of labour and challenges encountered by the workers.
As Caldwell says, “the ‘rules’ of the new digital realm are being rewritten, not by unionized craft workers but by individual corporations intent on selling their proprietary equipment (and thus the proprietary workflows that go with it)” (296). I argue that this observation also applies to the newsroom’s working environment. As in the entertainment sector, news media have succumbed to the trend of narrowcasting, though presumably less willingly, especially when taking into consideration the old rule of approachability. “The modern press, interactive television, mobile technology and the internet demonstrate the fact that there is not ‘one news journalism’ but many” (Harrison, 81).
In such a diversified environment, where finding, investigating, writing and delivering a story became one of many tasks entrusted in the hands of ordinary journalists, it is hard to deny that the workflow and rules have been profoundly affected.
Nevertheless, not all the described changes can be found the in the newsrooms. The entertainment industry employs a considerably larger amount of people. Also the production process is more complex from the one in news media, taking into account that journalists do not use special effects or CGI. Hence, Caldwell’s work is not fully translatable into this branch of media. Instead, it invites to think, which similar issues could have touched newsrooms. What did the
workflow look like in the past practice-wise? How did the division of responsibilities look like? What are the journalistic practices and routines? Then only can we discuss the technological changes, asking the same sets of questions about contemporaneity.
With the appearance of the content development systems, digital newsrooms, journalist’s personal accounts on social media, delivering materials across the multiple platforms, citizen journalism and official news websites dedicated for such material and mobile news on demand (e.g. Reuters TV), it is rather impossible to handle all above the way it has been done even five years ago. Thus, I find it very important to unveil some of the contemporary news media practices.
CHAPTER 3
BACKGROUND OF SEMI-STRUCTURED INTERVIEWS
For the interviews conducted for this thesis, I have reached out to multiple professional journalists. Some of the respondents belong to my personal network, which made the outreach easier. The rest, I found by use of the snowball sampling method, where the respondents pointed me towards friends and colleagues with a similar profile. Finally, the sample closed on six journalists, actively working for various newsrooms in Poland.
During the sampling process, a few criteria helped me selecting the most suitable respondents. I solely focused on people working independently in the same position for at least a few years. Within this position, the person would most likely deal with reporting news in a 24h news channel. In the beginning, the medium did not play a significant role for my selection process, but in the end, my sample consisted of people working for television only. No other criteria have been considered.
The interviews had a semi-structured nature and were conducted based on the previously created scenario (to be found in Appendix I). This allowed me to uphold a structure, that, nevertheless, did not limit the flow of the interviews. Rather, they had a free, conversational character, which allowed the respondents to freely express their opinions and provide an insight on the most engrossing areas for this thesis. As a consequence, the duration of the interviews varied between one to two hours per person.
All interviews were conducted and recorded via Skype between April and September 2015; the transcription of each interview can be found in Appendix II. I have changed the personal details of each respondent and the names of the television stations to assure anonymity. The entire analysis of this chapter is based on the interviews; conclusions and comments come directly from the testimonies. I have translated part of the interviews, and will quote them accordingly during my analysis, in order to provide the reader with accurate examples.
During the interviews, I touched upon three topics: the respondent’s background; the workflow, routines and practices of the newsroom; the technology and its impact on respondent’s work. The first area helped me to create personal portraits of each respondent. By getting to know my respondents better, I have tried to disarm the ostensible barrier of unreachability of media personas. I was able to map out the professional experience of the respondent by looking at education, motivation, aspirations, and by defining his or her current role within the newsroom. The second topic unveiled the past and current factors responsible for creating certain set ups and rules in the workflow. Here, identification of steps taken to prepare a story, both currently and in the past, played a significant role. At the same time, the topic allowed me to explore the respondent’s personal opinions on the landscape of contemporary journalism, with special attention to citizen journalism, social media and their participatory character, role and importance. The last area was very focused on the technology in the newsroom and its impact on the journalist’s work. At the same time, it allowed respondents to share their success stories, fears, anticipations, and general experience of novelties introduced to them in the past years.
In the end, the interviews reveal that each topic is intertwined with the other, and that their supplementary nature is the key for this thesis.
THE JOURNALISTS
I would like to begin my analysis by describing the profiles of my respondents. By doing so, I shall point out their similarities and differences, as well as certain patterns and tendencies in their backgrounds. These prove that the first conclusions can be drawn already on the early stage of this research.
Name Age Years of
experience Function Broadcaster
Pete 35 15 Reporter+ TV P Mike 46 23 Foreign news
correspondent TV N Alice 33 12 Regional reporter TV R Luke 24 4 Political reporter TV O Barney 31 7 Reporter+ TV P Nicole 25 5 Reporter TV N Table 1. Respondents’ overview
In table 1, the first vertical column states the coded names that will be used throughout the thesis to identify each respondent. The sample consists of six people; four men (Pete, Mike, Luke, Barney) and two women (Alice and Nicole). The second column indicates the age of each respondent, with the youngest being 23 years old and the oldest 46. Column three lists the years of experience as a journalist - internships have not been taken into account. In the fourth column you can see the current function of each respondent. As it can be easily observed, five of them work as (onscreen) reporters, while only one of them is a foreign news correspondent. Two of the respondents are described as “reporter+”, which implicates that their job includes other tasks within the newsroom besides from reporting. The functions and responsibilities of each respondent will be an important part of this thesis and will be analysed further later. Finally, the last vertical column consists of the coded names of the broadcasters/stations, for which each of the respondents currently work. All of the stations are information channels with 24h coverage.
THE BACKGROUND
The first, very important factor that I took into account in my analysis of the background, was the respondents’ education. In the context of citizen journalism and professional journalism, it is interesting to see how many professionals started their journalistic careers from simply studying Journalism, Communication or Media. Surprisingly, no one from my sample came from such studies. Their backgrounds appeared to be more diverse, with educations in Culture, Political Science, Literature and Internal Security - even one respondent who was expelled from the technical high school. The last scenario belongs to Pete, whose IT education was enforced by his parents. Soon, he, and more of my respondents, came to learn that their chosen education did not reflect the actual path they wanted to go. On my follow up question; “Why not Journalism?”, they replied consentaneously: “It is not a subject to study”. Alice: … in high school I thought, ‘hm, maybe journalism…’ So I went to visit a few universities and ask around, listen to people’s opinion. And everyone advised against. You know. I even asked the journalists from my hometown, who I knew at that time. They all said “everything but journalism”. Looking at it now, from some perspective, I have a feeling that it’s an art for art’s sake. There’s so much theory, which you’ll never-ever going to use. (…) When I think about it, the only reasonable areas would be journalistic ethics and press law, to be honest. But you can do it on some post-graduate program or as a minor. Barney holds a similar opinion to that of Pete. Pete finished journalistic studies after he had started his career as an intern in a local newsroom. For Barney, who has a Bachelor’s degree in Literature and a Master’s in Journalism and Social Communication, finishing with Journalism equalled with “doing it just for the
sake of it. So no one can tell me that I haven’t and thanks to that, I’m allowed to have my views. I haven’t learnt much more than on my bachelor and thanks to my interests.” Throughout the interviews, I noticed that personal interests played a
all fairly engrossed by the idea of becoming a journalist, but they continued to study different fields, which in most of the cases turned out to be their specializations in their journalistic future.
For all of them, starting a professional, journalistic career was a matter of good timing and favourable circumstances. Back in early 90s, Mike worked for an academic radio. Coverage of the Gulf War was his debut, dictated by his strong interest in the Middle-East politics.
Mike: It just happened. Someone very much liked my voice and the way of reporting (laugh), the passion. Shortly, I was offered a position in a commercial radio station and yeah, well here I am (…) I was pushing towards travels, fascinated by the foreign affairs and the idea of becoming a correspondent. And that’s how the big story begins.
Alice, Luke and Barney also started from the radio. Local, small broadcasting stations, open for young talents with charismatic voices. It did not cost them too much effort, which all admittedly relate to luck and a bit of talent. Pete, unlike the others, began from press. After his unfortunate expulsion from school, he found out that a new Internet portal was seeking for young talents. Pete: It was an American investor, whose strategy relied on producing niche articles, very original, no reprints. It was filled with young people and paid… paid surprisingly well (…) I found the high school, which didn’t mind the fact that I’m working almost full-time and allowed me to comfortably pass from one class to another. After half-a-year I was spotted by the headhunter from the first TV station that I worked for, and was invited to participate in a recruitment process (…) they were collecting the newsroom team. It was in the early 2000s, the beginning of new media.
For most of my respondents the breaking moment started more or less in the same period of time, 1990s. In their opinions, the industry was open for new talents back then, sought for possibilities to grow and develop. At the same, in the 2000s some newsrooms started their discovery of new, digital realm. Mike,
the most experienced from the sample, describes how the newsrooms grew to extreme sizes in that time; “It was a hype moment for Poland, and from what I can
tell also for Western media… they thought that each segment of news production had to have, say, a few coordinators, a few executives, audit, the whole research team, etc. (…) You know, media always had money, and the industry was quite used to it. So it wasn’t a problem to grow, to employ, but then around 2006, 2007, there was a bump. The crisis came and it ended.”
For the younger generation, the process looked slightly different. Luke and Nicole do not have that many years of experience and started on the professional track quite recently. Luke strongly associates his decision with his former idea of becoming an actor.
Luke: I was never a school type of guy. Very early I’ve started playing professionally in the theatre, in kids performances, and that was my world. I guess I always liked to be an attention point, to put in a nice way. Then, when I barely finished high school, I kind of lost my interest in the theatre and started searching for something new, something that’ll put me in the middle of important events.
As said before, Luke started his career from the radio. It was a big commercial station in the capital of Poland, known from being the home to the most important media companies. Similar to Nicole, he started his career from an internship, which allowed him to build a network. After four months, he turned into full-time position. They both studied part-time, next to their work. Nicole: It’s not that someone recommended me and then snap – I’m in. But it helps a lot. Now everyone wants to either be a journalist, or work in PR, or God knows what else. As longs as it pays and is prestigious (…) of course it’s vain, but in times when every second person has his blog, or writes for a “magazine”, I am really grateful for pushing and bragging to be where I am now.
It seems that lucky circumstances have had the biggest impact on the career path of my respondents. Although all of them were thinking about becoming journalists at some point, they share rather unfavourable opinions about studying Journalism as a degree at the university. Presumably, an academic degree in certain field gives one credentials to work in a certain profession. This simple logic did not lead to affirmative conclusions in this part of my research. In the light of such evidence, an amateur or citizen journalist, discussed in the last part of my analysis, should have at least similar possibility to start working in the industry. As it will appear, all my respondents share rather unflattering opinions on a phenomenon of amateur journalism. At the same time, they seem to be lacking some self-reflexivity on own beginnings, while describing it. Despite the fact that some of them finished journalistic studies later on, undeniably all of them can be classified as professional journalists, based on their working experience in the industry. They all firmly state that it was the right decision for them to become journalists, and cannot imagine themselves anywhere else. THE WORK Practices in two models: all-in-one and clear-cut To begin the discussion on journalistic workflow, I approached the topic with a simple question about noticeable change in everyday practices from the past and nowadays. Interesting enough, none of the respondents identified any changes immediately, what became quite symptomatic throughout all of the interviews. At the beginning, the respondent questioned the substantive correctness of the scenario. The question was then followed up with another, more descriptive, to help the respondent realize what the question was actually about. Only then, all doubts were resolved, as it appeared that the respondents had problems with identifying peak points of changes because of their evolutionary nature. Journalistic practice tends to rather adjust to novelties, instead of inventing such. The change can have a twofold character, steady and dynamic, based on the depicted testimonies.
