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.
Оглавление
Mark Deuze. Beyond Journalism
Contents
Guide
Pages
Beyond Journalism
Copyright page
Prologue: The Beyond Journalism Project
Notes
Introduction: What Is Journalism (Studies)?
Beyond journalism (studies)
Telling new stories
The state of the field
Structure of this book
Note
1 The Becoming of Journalism
Beyond definitions?
Journalism as dynamic and dispersed practice
Post-industrial journalism
Beyond journalism
Note
2 Setting the Scene: Startups
Startup culture around the world
Case studies
Motivations and goals
Startups: Precarious features
Notes
3 Stories from the Heart
Passion for the profession
JOURNALISM AS A PASSION PROJECT. Corner Media Group (United States)
This job is beautiful
JOURNALISM AS A SOCIAL CLUB. Bureau Boven (Netherlands)
Against the grain
JOURNALISM AS AN AUTONOMOUS ENDEAVOR. Mediapart (France)
For the Greater and Personal Good
JOURNALISM DRIVEN BY SOCIETAL AND PERSONAL MOTIVATIONS. Follow The Money (Netherlands)
You want to be creative
4 Making It Work
Creative accounting
NEXT LEVEL JOURNALISM. Zetland (Denmark)
The networked organization of newswork
(Re)visiting the newsroom
Careering journalism?
FUN, FREEDOM, AND CHALLENGING. Freelancer Alaska Dispatch News (United States)
Achieving a workstyle
“IT NEVER STOPS” InkaBinka (United States)
Freedom versus security
Cross-subsidizing work
Coping with stress
Personality matters
5 Stories that Matter
Beyond definition and tradition
MAKING THE IMPOSSIBLE POSSIBLE? Alaska Dispatch (United States)
JOURNALISM IN SPITE OF A BUSINESS MODEL. MMU Radio (Uganda)
Filling the gap
NOT QUITE THE SAME, NOT QUITE DIFFERENT. Common Reader (United States)
Setting the standard
PIONEERING DATA JOURNALISM. C4SA (South Africa)
Pioneering journalism
References
Index
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Отрывок из книги
Mark Deuze and Tamara Witschge
Whereas changes in journalism manifest primarily in the decline (or disappearance) of local news media, with subsequent large numbers of layoffs in news organizations all over the world (and especially in overdeveloped nations), in The Netherlands we were also confronted with a new kind of energy: independent journalistic ventures such as Follow The Money (a financial-economic investigative journalism collective founded by Eric Smit, Mark Koster, and Arne van der Wal in 2009), Blendle (offering an online kiosk that sells articles from a variety of newspapers and magazines on a pay-per-article basis, started in 2012 by Marten Blankesteijn and Alexander Klöpping, and expanding to Germany and the United States in 2016), and De Correspondent (an online in-depth journalism magazine launched as a crowdfunded initiative in 2013 by Rob Wijnberg, Harald Dunnink, Sebastian Kersten, and Ernst-Jan Pfauth, opening an international division in the United States in 2018) were making headlines, both nationally and internationally. Something was brewing in our home country – a development partly inspired by the economic downturn, and greatly enabled by funding agencies such as the Dutch Journalism Fund, a government-sponsored institution offering subsidies for innovation.
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We do so by focusing on a particular group of journalists: journalists who are involved in starting up (or who are in the process of setting up) small news companies outside the legacy media. These startup journalists can be seen as pioneers in the field. Pioneering communities are, in Andreas Hepp’s terms, “experimental groupings related to new forms of media-technology-related change and collectivity formation” (2016: 920). Pioneering communities “have a sense of mission” and have “a sense that they are at the ‘forefront’ of a media-related transformation of society as a whole” (Hepp 2016: 924–5). This is very much the case with the startup journalists and organizational contexts we have visited. These newsworkers are keenly aware of the role that they play, not only in society, but also in defining what journalism is as it charts new territory in the twenty-first century. This reflexivity is also something that Hepp refers to as characteristic of pioneering communities, “since they are engaged in a continual process of interpretation of themselves” (2016: 927). Furthermore, the spaces and places our cases use to facilitate their work are varied, constituting a range of pioneering and innovative practices. Oscar Westlund and Seth Lewis (2014) rightly consider “agents of media innovation” not just the individual professionals and communities involved, but also the role technologies, working environments, and other nonhuman actors play. By focusing on this group of journalists and their working arrangements and environments, we are able to add valuable stories of those in the field who are looking to contribute to the conceptualization of what journalism is. Moreover, in our analysis we are focusing on those stories and narratives that attest to the affective nature of the profession, providing much-needed emotional context for the question how these pioneers make it work on their own.
Our project recognizes an overall historical phase, where journalism worldwide is in a process of becoming a different kind of industry: less reliant on legacy news organizations, producing a great variety of contents and services, published across multiple platforms by practitioners in all kinds of formal and informal ways. This phase roughly coincides with the rise of new technologies (notably internet, smartphones, and various forms of automation), the shift of nation-based politics toward more complex supranational relations (as well as its return under the guise of populism), and a rapid glocalization of social, cultural, and economic affairs. The news industry, in response to such changes and challenges, has generally sought answers in consolidating its core business and streamlining existing operations. This meant laying off employees (including many journalists) and cutting budgets. The budgets for exploratory innovation projects, specialized beats (such as science reporting), and a range of correspondents were all trimmed. Journalism was once mostly organized in formal institutions where contracted laborers would produce content under informal yet highly structured working conditions generally arranged within the physical environment of a newsroom. Today the lived experience of professional journalists is much more precarious, fragmented, and networked.
