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Making Online News: The Ethnography of New Media Production
By analyzing the daily work of online journalists, this book investigates the production of online news: how it differs from traditional media production, and its consequences for the character and quality of online news. It advocates revitalization of the ethnographic methodologies of sociologists who entered newsrooms in the 1970s and 1980s, while simultaneously exploring new theoretical frameworks to better understand the evolution of online journalism and how newsrooms deal with innovation and change. This collection fills a gap in the field by offering ethnographic descriptions from sites of online news production in many countries, and provides insider perspectives on the real practices and values of new media production, documenting how these often differ from the claims of both producers and theorists.
236 pages, Paperback
First published May 28, 2008
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May 18, 2012
Published in 2008, it's already a tad out of date, which is fine as it provides a useful snapshot in time of the early 00s, when many of the barriers to online journalism were technological (although still today in some places the CMS isn't what it could be) and when online journalists were second-class citizens in the newsroom mostly just doing shovelware(still somewhat true in some cases but not to this extent.) Problems/difficulties all typical - no time to do additional duties, no training, no respect, etc.
Jane Singer's chapter very useful in "defending" future studies of newsrooms using ethnography.
Best chapter is Axel Burns on transforming journalism from gatekeeping to gatewatching - essentially one of the rare pieces free of traditional academic assumptions that traditional media is "all that is good and holy" and new media/bloggers/etc. are, at minimum, highly suspect and probably poor quality. He essentially talks about how news is being transformed from static product to process in the networked public sphere, a concept that has since been further developed.
I liked the Lowrey and Latta study of blogging routines although sign me up for the place that will publish you based on six interviews with seemingly randomly chosen bloggers. As bloggers begin to get more readership, they find, their routines look more like traditional journalists; instead of just spouting off opinion, they do a lot more research, fact-checking, and careful reasoning. You can see the subtle biases mentioned above, though. At one point they rather condescendingly talk about how bloggers have little incentive for original reporting because they get most of their basic knowledge from traditional media, but before that they just talked about how bloggers exchange all kinds of info with their readers and how they read multiple sources to research issues - not the same as true shoe-leather reporting, but not exactly regurgitation, either. They also note how bloggers sometimes duck controversial issues because they fear criticism, which is also done by traditional journalists at times.
Jane Singer's chapter very useful in "defending" future studies of newsrooms using ethnography.
Best chapter is Axel Burns on transforming journalism from gatekeeping to gatewatching - essentially one of the rare pieces free of traditional academic assumptions that traditional media is "all that is good and holy" and new media/bloggers/etc. are, at minimum, highly suspect and probably poor quality. He essentially talks about how news is being transformed from static product to process in the networked public sphere, a concept that has since been further developed.
I liked the Lowrey and Latta study of blogging routines although sign me up for the place that will publish you based on six interviews with seemingly randomly chosen bloggers. As bloggers begin to get more readership, they find, their routines look more like traditional journalists; instead of just spouting off opinion, they do a lot more research, fact-checking, and careful reasoning. You can see the subtle biases mentioned above, though. At one point they rather condescendingly talk about how bloggers have little incentive for original reporting because they get most of their basic knowledge from traditional media, but before that they just talked about how bloggers exchange all kinds of info with their readers and how they read multiple sources to research issues - not the same as true shoe-leather reporting, but not exactly regurgitation, either. They also note how bloggers sometimes duck controversial issues because they fear criticism, which is also done by traditional journalists at times.
Displaying 1 of 1 review