News Work, News Space in the Transforming Digital Newsroom

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News Work, News Space in the Transforming Digital
Newsroom
CONVERGENCE CRISES

• Sue Robinson
• The University of Wisconsin-Madison
• April 2009

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• Reporter 1 I guess were getting laptops. I feel
  like I need one But I also feel like were
  being co-opted into the 24-7 world, man. It
  never ends.
• Reporter 2 I am too old for this shit. I cant
  wait until I retire.

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Research Questions

• Values, considerations, assumptions influencing
  physical virtual transition
• 2) How are digital tools affecting news
  performance?
• 3) How has the newsrooms culture changed?
• 4) What works? Are changes in real world
  creating hoped-for digital transformations?

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Findings

• Newspaper Culture Lingers Even among staffs
  directed to go completely virtual
• Mobile, cyber-newsroom Inhospitable to old-world
  reporters
• Changed Social Patterns According to digital
  skills
• Technology Replacing journalism
• The digital camera makes you feel a little
  more small time, like youre writing for some
  little weekly.

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What Works
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Combining Staffs, Changing Physical Space

• What? Its lets paint the walls and
• move stuff around? Please. How is that going to
  help anyone?
• BUT
• Being able to see online editors had put them in
  the front of my mind, whereas before I never
  really thought about them because I could not see
  them from where I was sitting.

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Connecting Technology to Journalists Values

• Better Stories (multiple drafts of a story)
• More Sources and Scoops
• Larger Audiences
• As reporters began to realize that they now had
  a national and international audience, they
  warmed up to web.
• Hire trainer to guide them from physical
  world to virtual one

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Giving Authority to Online Editors

• Visual Presence (as in meetings)
• Organizational Leadership
• Delegation Authority (assigning stories)
• Im not sure if Online Editor can tell me I
  have to post. Can he? I already have one boss.

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Building in Physical Reminders of Journalism

• Prioritize Stories
• Perpetuate Bylines/Photos/Emails
• Archive, Aggregate News Work
• Create Journalist Sub-Brands
• It was so buried, I felt, what is the point?
  Sometimes it seems that we lose our soul.

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Recognizing Altered News Work

• Journalism as a Process (An Unfinished Story, but
  also Journalistic Opportunities)
• Omnipresent Work, Cross Platform Work
• Management Expectations