Journalism Between Disruption And Resilience

Following recent developments in digital technologies, financial crises, and changes in audience preferences, this book addresses the critical challenges and disruptions facing the profession of journalism: an arguably precarious industry suffering from employment insecurity, individualization, and loss of autonomy. Drawing on research from the Norwegian and Nordic media landscape, Journalism Between Disruption and Resilience elaborates on how boundary struggles between journalism and other forms of content, such as marketing and public relations, have become blurred, while social distinctions within the profession are deepened and exacerbated by downsizing and cutbacks in newsrooms and their journalistic staffs. The impact of these developments on the institutional and democratic role of journalism in society is discussed alongside the tensions between professional autonomy and precarious work. Expanding upon several earlier research studies, grounded in the sociology of professions and freelance work, this book provides a new theoretical framework from which to addressjournalistic precarity and the role of journalism in society. This is an insightful study for advanced students and researchers in the areas of professional journalism, journalism education, and media industries including marketing and public relations.

This edited collection brings together journalism scholars from mainland China, Hong Kong, the UK and Australia to address a variety of pressing issues and challenges facing digital journalism in China today. While China shares certain affinities with the digital disruption of media in other settings, its experience and articulation of change is ultimately unique. This volume explores the implications of digital media technologies for journalists’ professional practice, news users’ consumption and engagement with news, as well as the shifting institutional, organizational and financial structures of news media. Drawing on case studies and quantitative and qualitative approaches, contributors address questions concerning: whether China is witnessing ‘disruptive’ or ‘sustainable’ journalism; if, and in what ways, digital technologies may disrupt journalism; and whether Chinese digital journalism converges with or diverges from Western experiences of digital journalism. Digital Journalism in China is an important addition to the literature on digital journalism, comparative media analysis, the Chinese Communist Party’s social media strategies, tabloidization trends, and the conflict between newsroom and classroom in journalism education, and will be of interest to advanced students, scholars, and practitioners alike.

This book offers a timely insight into how the news media have adapted to the digital transformation of public communication infrastructure. Providing a conceptual roadmap to understanding the disruptive, innovative impact of digital networked journalism in the 21st century, the author critically examines how and to what extent news media around the world have engaged in digital adaptation. Making use of data from news media content production and distribution both off- and online, as well as user and financial data from the U.S. and internationally, the book traces how the news media embraced and reacted to key developments such as the invention of the World Wide Web in 1989 and the launch of Google in 1998, Facebook in 2004, and the Apple iPhone in 2009. The author also highlights innovative organizations that have sought to reimagine news media that are optimized for digital, online, and mobile media of the 21st century, demonstrating how these groups have been able to stay better engaged with the public. Disruption and Digital Journalism is recommended reading for all academics and scholars with an interest in media, digital journalism studies, and technological innovation.

This book provides a critical account of the impact of Twitter on journalism, exploring how the news media has adapted to and normalised the use of the platform in the industry. Offering a comprehensive understanding of Twitter uses for journalistic purposes, this book explores the platform’s use as a ‘global village’, as an ambient news environment, and as a global marketplace. Drawing on two empirical case studies (United Kingdom and Greece), Dagoula examines academic conceptualisations of Twitter, journalists’ self-perceptions, and uses of the platform by a variety of media outlets and journalists. Adopting an evolutionary approach known as punctuated equilibrium, which consists of three stages of disruption, adaption, and normalisation, the author reveals the costs and benefits of Twitter’s impact on both the institutional values and practices of news journalism today. News Journalism and Twitter is an invaluable resource for researchers and students of digital journalism and media studies.

Drawing on his thirty years in newspapers, the former editor-in-chief of The Globe and Mail examines the crisis of serious journalism in the digital era, and searches for ways the invaluable tradition can thrive in a radically changed future. John Stackhouse entered the newspaper business in a golden age: 1980s circulations were huge and wealthy companies lined up for the privilege of advertising in every city's best-read pages. Television and radio could never rival newspapers for hard news, analysis and opinion, and the papers' brand of serious journalism was considered a crucial part of life in a democratic country. Then came the Internet... After decades as a Globe journalist, foreign bureau chief and then editor of its Report on Business (not to mention former Scarborough delivery boy), he assumed one of the biggest jobs in Canadian journalism: The Globe and Mail's editor-in-chief. Beginning in 2009, he faced the unthinkable: the possible end of not just Canada's "national" newspaper, but the steep and steady financial decline of newspapers everywhere. A non-stop torrent of free digital content stole advertisers and devalued advertising space so quickly that newspapers struggled to finance the serious journalism that distinguished them in a world of Buzzfeed, Huffington Post, Yahoo and innumerable bloggers and citizen journalists. Meanwhile, ambitious online media aspired to the credibility of newspapers. The solution was clear, if the path to arriving at it was less so: the new school needed to meet the old school, and the future lay in undiscovered ground between them. Having led the Globe during this period of sudden and radical change, Stackhouse continues to champion the vital role of great reporting and analysis. Filled with stories from his three decades in the business, Mass Disruption tracks decisions good and bad, examines how some of the world's major newspapers--the Guardian, New York Times--are learning to cope, and lays out strategies for the future, of both newspapers and serious journalism, wherever it may live.

Using the Nordic media model as an empirical backdrop, Journalism Between the State and the Market defines and analyzes journalism’s fundamental problem: its shifting location between the state and the market. This book examines how this distance is decreasing as journalism steps closer to both the market (algorithmically monetizing audiences) and the state (lobbying governments for subsidies and attacking public service broadcasting). The book analyzes journalism’s negotiated position between the market and the state in the age of disruptions, offering a theoretical foundation that seeks to account for the structural conditions of journalism in the digital age. For scholars, graduates and students in journalism, news sociology and media and communication studies, Journalism Between the State and the Market provides a theoretical perspective that can be used as a valuable tool when studying and observing the current developments in journalism.

Since 2000, more than 150 journalists have been killed in Mexico. Today the country is one of the most dangerous in the world in which to be a reporter. In Surviving Mexico, Celeste González de Bustamante and Jeannine E. Relly examine the networks of political power, business interests, and organized crime that threaten and attack Mexican journalists, who forge ahead despite the risks. Amid the crackdown on drug cartels, overall violence in Mexico has increased, and journalists covering the conflict have grown more vulnerable. But it is not just criminal groups that want reporters out of the way. Government forces also attack journalists in order to shield corrupt authorities and the very criminals they are supposed to be fighting. Meanwhile some news organizations, enriched by their ties to corrupt government officials and criminal groups, fail to support their employees. In some cases, journalists must wait for a “green light” to publish not from their editors but from organized crime groups. Despite seemingly insurmountable constraints, journalists have turned to one another and to their communities to resist pressures and create their own networks of resilience. Drawing on a decade of rigorous research in Mexico, González de Bustamante and Relly explain how journalists have become their own activists and how they hold those in power accountable.