Beyond Journalism

Mark Deuze, Tamara Witschge

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781509507054
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Journalism
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

In the context of profound transformations in the professional, business, technological and social context of journalism, it is crucial for journalism studies and education to move beyond limited approaches to the discipline. Among the most significant changes affecting journalism worldwide is the emergence of startup culture, as more and more journalists strike out on their own. In Beyond Journalism, Deuze and Witschge combine extensive global and comparative fieldwork. Through rich case studies of journalism startups around the world, they provide deep insight into the promises and pitfalls of media entrepreneurship. Ultimately, they aim to recognize new and emerging voices as legitimate participants in the discourse about what journalism is, can be and should be. A bold manifesto as well as an in-depth empirical study, this book is essential reading for students and scholars of journalism, media, communication, and related disciplines.

1
The Becoming of Journalism

Students and scholars coming from a wide variety of disciplines have researched and theorized journalism, resulting in a more or less coherent conceptualization of what journalism is (Zelizer 2004) and could be (Zelizer 2016). Here, our argument is that in treating journalism predominantly as a stable object, journalism studies cannot deal with the complexity – the continuous change and state of becoming in the field – beyond simply testing whatever is considered to be new against the presupposed core of the profession and industry. Ultimately, focusing our exploration on the ongoing transformation and fragmentation of journalism, we need to view journalism as a moving object, as a process, as something that is continuously constituted as it is practiced. In other words: we need to ask how journalism is becoming, rather than what journalism is. Journalism theory has to be benchmarked by a critical assessment of the role, work, and milieu of individual journalists, while recognizing the object of study – journalism – as dynamic: requiring an ontology of becoming rather than of being (Chia 1995). With Robert Chia, we propose a perspective on journalism that privileges “reality as a processual, heterogeneous and emergent configuration of relations” (ibid.: 594).

To set up our exploration, and to provide the context relevant to understanding both journalism practice and journalism studies, we first discuss the way in which journalism has predominantly been defined. We consider major trends that question the continued adequacy of dominant conceptualizations, and we argue that it is not just a matter of finding a better definition, however inclusive it would be. We ask instead that we apply our creative attention to the way in which we theorize (and thus research and report on) journalism. The criteria that allow us to define journalism are not the only aspect of this that needs change. Shifting practices means we need theories of journalism that are defined by activities and discourses. To define journalism in terms of places, people and products is too reductive, we argue.

The general approach to understanding, studying, teaching, and practicing journalism articulates the profession with a specific occupational ideology as well as specific values and culture. Journalists tend to benchmark their actions and attitudes self-referentially using ideal-typical standards, seeing themselves as providing a public service; being objective, fair, and (therefore) trustworthy; working autonomously; committed to an operational logic of actuality and speed (preeminent in concepts such as reporting on breaking news, getting the story first); and having a social responsibility and ethical sensibility (Deuze 2005). This conceptualization of journalism as an ideology – or what Jay Rosen alternatively labels as “pressthink”¹ – is still strong within the field today, and endures even in the midst of profound changes and challenges to the profession.

Through the occupational ideology of journalism, we can define the field from the inside out, helping us to understand how the profession makes sense of itself. External definitions of journalism tend to be more functional and instrumental, where the profession is considered to provide a particular function for (democratic) society, “informing citizens in a way that enables them to act as citizens” (Costera-Meijer 2001: 13). Seen from such a function-specific perspective, journalism gets identified as distinct from other media professions (such as public relations) “as a societal system providing society with fact-based, relevant and current information” (Görke and Scholl 2007: 651). Democratic theories of the profession attribute seminal status to it, as Michael Schudson, for example, defines journalism as “the business or practice of producing and disseminating information about contemporary affairs of general public interest and importance” (2003: 11). Schudson sees journalism in terms of what it “can do for democracy” (2008: 11): journalism is supposed to inform, investigate, analyze, mobilize, provide multiple perspectives and a public forum, and publicize representative democracy.

From this point of departure, the literature diverges, one strand embracing universalist notions of journalism, showing how it gives meaning to itself in its culture – where culture is seen as the way in which a particular group (say, journalists working at a specific project or within a particular context, such as a newsroom, a medium, a country or region) works and how group members make sense of this. Thomas Hanitzsch (2007) defined this “universal” culture of journalism as constituted by its institutional role in society, its epistemology, and its ethical ideology. Surveys of (and interviews with) journalists, almost always sampled from within legacy news organizations, fuel such claims by asking journalists a set of standardized questions about role perceptions and professional values. They suggest consensus and add coherence to a global journalism that is as aspirational as it is universal among working journalists (Löffelholz and Weaver 2008; Weaver and Willnat 2012).

There is also much critical debate among newsworkers as well as journalism students and scholars about an assumed homogeneity of the profession. The discussion on the elements of journalism (Kovach and Rosenstiel 2014) tends to assume a stable core of news values and professional standards. This is a problematic assumption in the case of journalism, as the reference to a consensual core (of “elements”) excludes marginalized and minority voices, tends to ignore a wide variety of practices and forms of journalism, and generally inserts a particular hierarchy in notions of what journalism is or could be.

Generally lacking formal boundaries and therefore relying on communication about itself to define and validate its privileged position in society, journalism recently has been reconceptualized in terms of its continuous boundary work, consisting of “efforts to establish and enlarge the limits of one domain’s institutional authority relative to outsiders, thus creating social boundaries that yield greater cultural and material resources for insiders” (Lewis 2012: 841). Research among journalists working for organizations, companies, or units within mainstream news media as well as those on the sidelines shows how they engage repeatedly in boundary work, intensely debating what journalism is and who can be considered to be a (“real”) journalist – and that such discussions have always been intrinsic to the profession and its associated practices (Lewis and Carlson 2015).

Even journalism’s assumed significance for the functioning of democracies has come under serious scrutiny. Beate Josephi argues that such a corollary is “too limiting and distorting a lens through which journalism can be viewed in the 21st century” (2013: 445). Barbie Zelizer (2013: 469–70) critiques the type of scholarship that has resulted from incessantly linking journalism and democracy: “many existing discussions of journalism have become insular, static, exclusionary, marginalizing, disconnected, elitist, unrepresentative and historically and geographically myopic.” Regardless of the colorful variety of journalistic forms and functions existing and emerging in the world, much of journalism scholarship has tended to shield its eyes from this blinding light of diversity – instead arguing for unification. The consolidation of journalism studies in the literature mainly serves the modern project of bringing an inherently unruly object under control (Steensen and Ahva 2015: 3). It is crucial to recognize that the supposed core of journalism as well as the assumed consistency of the inner workings of news organizations is anything but consensual, nor is it necessarily the norm. At the same time, it would be a mistake to assume that the types of journalism emerging inside and alongside legacy news organizations are necessarily different or oppositional to the core values, ideals, and practices of the profession.

Beyond definitions?

The developments currently transpiring in journalism are not new, or necessarily solely inspired by contemporary technological advances. In his influential 1996 paper titled “Beyond Journalism” (on which we base the title of our book, with his kind permission), Dutch media policy scholar Jo Bardoel advocated that, mainly because of audience fragmentation, increased technological dependency, empowered users through interactivity, and disintermediation, two types of professional journalism would have to evolve: orientating and instrumental journalism (1996: 296–7). In his view, orientating journalism would provide a general public with general orientation (background, commentary, explanation), whereas instrumental journalism offers functional, specialized information to interested audiences or customers.

In a 2003 update to Bardoel’s work, Mark modeled a potential future for journalism to include two more types of journalism: monitorial journalism and dialogical journalism (Deuze 2003). Monitorial journalism would offer audiences a chance to ask journalists questions and participate in directing reporters’ efforts toward certain topics to be covered. This kind of journalism assumes that while people may not always be engaged with or committed to follow the news, sometimes people can be alerted and mobilized around specific issues in relation to which they can turn to the experts in news organizations (who would need to be attuned to those audiences’ interests). In dialogical journalism, the professional goal would be to promote public debate by including people in all aspects of the production of news stories, up to and including forms of so-called citizen reporting (Deuze 2003: 216–21). In an update to this analysis, Juho Ruotsalainen (2018) found evidence for all four types of journalism, suggesting that the historical trajectory of transformations in journalism tends toward more dialogical and instrumental journalisms.

Although it is safe to say that elements of all these kinds of journalism are indeed found in present-day practices and strategies of news media, these analyses suffer from a major problem that we aim to address in this book: none of the authors were willing to assume at the time that what could be considered to be “professional journalism” could exist anywhere but in the hallways and corridors of legacy news media institutions, as represented by the contours of newsrooms and the reporters and editors working for such institutions. Such an omission is problematic on both theoretical as well as practical grounds. We quite simply cannot explain journalism (anymore) by just looking at established news media companies – or limit our understanding of what goes on within such institutions to the purview of pressthink.

First, digital technologies have affected the field. A myriad of news providers, platforms, aggregators, and distributors both inside and outside of the traditional industrial shell have gained prominent power – most notably new digital intermediaries such as Facebook and Google. Second, the ongoing integration of editorial, marketing, and management at most news organizations today furthermore blurs who counts as a journalist in such work contexts, as job titles and descriptions (like technical support staff, copy editors, ombudsmen and reader representatives, designers, producers, videographers, community managers, social media moderators, curators, engagement editors, content managers, coders, and programmers) proliferate. Third, journalists are finding work in increasingly diverse fields of enterprise, for example by working as a reporter for both commercial and nonprofit entities (including marketing and advertising agencies having companies as clients that demand investigative reporting as part of their communication strategy to stakeholders, and even local governments who hire journalists to cover town hall meetings in the absence of regular news coverage), forming editorial collectives (generally cross-subsidizing revenue streams by combining journalistic work with providing a host of related services such as copy editing, report writing, and content curation), or beginning journalistic startups.

Journalism increasingly takes place and shape elsewhere: at the edges and outside of traditional institutions, in new organizational settings, and also in alternative places inside of legacy media. Beyond such fairly straightforward observations about the complex, fragmented, and diverse nature of what constitutes journalism as a profession, we need to carefully reconsider journalism theoretically as well. A seminal role in providing the collective memory and social cement of societies is generally attributed to journalism by academics and by journalists themselves, guided by “the modernist bias of its official self-presentation” (Zelizer 2004: 112). John Hartley additionally notes how professionally produced news can be seen as “the sense-making practice of modernity” (1996: 32), contributing to a view of journalism as essential to constituting and maintaining social order and democracy itself. Modern journalism has consistently defined and legitimized itself as such, claiming to provide a public service regarding the democratic state. How are we to appropriately understand and classify journalism, however, when it is produced in service to a marketing strategy (as is generally the case with so-called native advertising or branded content), or as part of someone’s weblog or vlog, or by a well-meaning citizen on a hyperlocal news website, or as part of an initiative by an international nongovernmental organization to raise awareness about a particular issue? If we acknowledge that journalism comes in many shapes and sizes and serves many purposes across all media, produced by people in a variety of (semi-) professional contexts, how is democracy and the ideal of an informed citizenry served by all these different journalisms, by this wide variety of actors?

A modernist focus on journalism tends to depart from two key assumptions: first, that journalism as a profession is important, that it has a public function and is correspondingly a significant influence when it comes to politics, the economy, public opinion, and culture. Second, that such a function is best served by established news institutions in society who commit themselves to providing people with truthful and trustworthy news. Given the profound changes to the arrangement and organization of newswork and the subsequent redistribution of journalism as a profession across a widening range of professionals, places, and platforms, a more liquid modern (Bauman 2000) definition of journalism can be added – not as an institution in society but rather as a range of practices, norms, and values that can exist and function beyond such institutions.

In this scenario, what could be seen to demarcate journalism from other activities and professions are the notions of responsibility and craftsmanship. In terms of responsibility, one may assume that a journalist takes responsibility for her work, accepting her privileged role in providing people with news as a product or service that they should be able to rely on to effectively act as citizens in democracy. Journalism is often understood in terms of actions and attitudes that set journalism apart from other professions. Understandi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Prologue: The Beyond Journalism Project
• Introduction: What Is Journalism (Studies)?
• 1 The Becoming of Journalism
• 2 Setting the Scene: Startups
• 3 Stories from the Heart
• 4 Making It Work
• 5 Stories that Matter
• References
• Index
• End User License Agreement