WestlundEkstrom2019-NewsOrganizationsandRoutines-1.pdf

followed that focus on routines among journalists in newsrooms. Clearly, however, much has happened in journalism since then, as a profession, with the news media industries, with digital developments and the tools, systems, and digital intermediaries that have emerged and become

They used radically different tools and systems to produce news, as compared to contemporary news reporters. At the same time, reporters both then and now engage in similar routines in their pursuit of information from a diverse set of reliable sources, and in turning this into something deemed credible enough to be published as news. Some routines persist and help journalists to cope with the pace of news work; yet new routines also emerge in digital and increasingly data- driven newsrooms. Digital journalism encompasses many different forms of news journalism, and discussions often focus on what is new rather than what remains essentially the same (e.g., Eldridge, Hess, Tandoc, & Westlund, 2019). Amid growth in perceptions about disinformation becoming more and more widespread in society, many have held that journalists and their pro- fessional and routinized practices play a key role. Shared routines are important for the col- laboration and coordination of activities in the newsroom, for the way in which news journalists

- tion, and so forth.

This chapter presents a literature review focusing on routines in news organizations, and makes two distinct contributions by discussing: (1) the organizational context and routines for coordination in news organizations and (2) routines in relation to the concrete situated practices forming epistemological news production processes. We begin, however, by turning to existing

Organizational researchers Levitt and March have suggested routines “include the forms, rules, procedures, conventions, strategies, and technologies around which organizations are con-

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has stressed the collective and contextual and stressed how organizational factors may shape routines. Journalism studies has also stressed that the systematic routines of doing news work help distinguish journalism from other forms of information production. More generally, the ways in which journalists and the news media work towards distinguishing journalism from other forms of information has been approached through analyses of boundary work. The boundaries of journalism are contested (Carlson & Lewis, 2015), and the journalistic authority is upheld not only by routines of news work but also through different forms of meta- journalistic discourse

- tinized, repeated practices and forms that media workers use to do their jobs” (Shoemaker &

consensus- oriented and implies that routines guide practice. As an alternative, he suggests that practice theory provides a better understanding of how routines are performed and invoked as resources to justify actions. Ryfe (2016, p. 128) writes:

[W]ithin practice theory, routines are properly understood not as expressions of external pressures on journalists (whether understood as organizational, political, or economic pressures), but as cultural resources that bind journalists to a shared community of understanding.

Moreover, he notes that news production is more closely connected to practical knowledge than formal knowledge, what Grant (1996) calls tacit and explicit knowledge, respectively. Although routines are generally associated with patterns of action, conceptualizations differ in emphasizing routines as either structured by organizational contexts, managed, and repro- duced in actions, or to understand routines as organizational features preceding concrete actions, while the second perspective suggests that routines emerge from the day- to- day activities and habitual perfor- mances of journalists (Ryfe, 2016). Accordingly, the review in this chapter will be guided by a synthesis of these two key dimensions of routines: on the one hand and concrete practices on the other. We suggest that these dimensions refer to levels of social organization with distinct explanatory power. Routines both precede and are shaped within social activities.

here refers to the organizational rules, conventions, and procedures, including social, cultural, and structural pressures of different kinds that condition different forms

including but not limited to the ways in which diverse groups of social actors coordinate with each other. The chapter will thus discuss literature on how news organizations develop routines for knowledge coordination among social actors within the organization.

Concrete practices here refer to the routinized practices that function as mechanisms of stability and uncertainty reduction. Routines, to some extent, guide practice; they are invoked as resources, they are negotiated in the accomplishment of concrete tasks, and they can also be used to justify concrete practices (Ryfe, 2016). There is much research focusing on news practices but less on journalistic performance (Ryfe, 2018). News production routines help structure, sta- bilize, and justify the recurrent tasks of reporting about both expected (planned) and unexpected events. News production is closely associated with routinized patterns of news work, often seen as embedded in an organizational and ideological context and performed in concrete settings. These processes of producing news are helpfully viewed as epistemological activities that result in the creation of different forms of knowledge. This chapter will therefore dedicate much atten-

of concrete practices in news production routines.

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The next section offers a bird’s- eye view of routines in news work, outlining the main con- tours of research over the past 70 years. Thereafter we turn to the main rationale of the chapter: the role of routines when it comes to and concrete practices.

This was David White’s seminal work on gatekeeping and how newspaper editors choose what news to publish, when exposed to different wire stories (White, 1950). It was soon followed by

that the news as long as organizational pressures do not prevent the journalists from doing so. Journalists were assumed to select what news events to report on or not, based on what “is out there.”

Since then, numerous articles and chapters have looked into various aspects of routines in journalism and news organizations. Among those pieces reviewing the research in this

Tudor Vlad titled “News Organizations and Routines.” The authors reviewed literature on how journalists and news organizations have developed routines and how news work is a form of construction of reality (as opposed to a mirror of events and reality). An important contribution of their review involves highlighting how previous scholarship has found very little heterogeneity in routines over time and among different news media organizations and journalists. With shifts in journalism in a digital age they anticipated some routines would change, something which was emerging in research and which they argued was important

In his review titled “News Routines, Role Performance, and Change in Journalism,” David Ryfe (2016) applies the practice view and thereby makes a distinctive contribution to the lit- erature. Practices can be translated as routine behaviors, connecting with both explicit and tacit

scholarship on news production:

: Tuchman’s pioneering work based on in- depth research into the American news- room witnessed the importance of routines in everyday news work and the construction of reality based on selection of stories and sources (Tuchman, 1972, 1978). Several classic studies also found that journalists across newsrooms developed similar routines, produc- ing constructs of reality rather than mirroring it. Applying largely similar routines, dif-

2009; Gans, 2004; Tunstall, 1971). Overall, this line of research suggested that there was consensus about routines, so that news production was marked by habitual practices and organizational constraints.

Second wave: Studies in the 1980s and 1990s showed that routines were not as stable and homogenous as previously suggested, that journalists had much more room for interpreta-

- sis on heterogeneity, suggesting that organizational and economic conditions resulted in journalists adapting their routines. At the time, routines were seen as rules that guided and

remained quite uniform (Ryfe, 2016).

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Third wave - rounding journalism and news production, news media and journalists have adapted as well as developed new routines. During the 2010s, there has been a revival of newsroom

- gested the news essentially , unless the journalists are prevented from doing so because of organizational pressures.

Journalists were assumed to act in the capacity of selecting what news events to report on

the studies, Usher’s in- depth ethnography from the in 2010 focuses on values,

on routines mirror those based on newsrooms of varying sizes and from many other countries (Usher, 2014).

Mapping and reviewing patterns in journalism studies literature focusing on routines is important for the bird’s- eye view and so are critical and conceptually oriented approaches like

epistemology of news production and the related issue of knowledge coordination. This brings us to the stages of the news production process (Domingo et al., 2008; Lewis & Westlund, 2015a)

departure for the most recent review of routines in news work, authored by Tandoc and Duffy access and observation

stage, key routines are connected to sourcing as well as using a beat system. Second, they discuss routines for selection and deselection of news material in the . Third comes the editing and processing stage, involving routines for using direct quotes, editing, veri-

pyramid format in text- based news articles. Fourth, the distribution stage, concerns social media -

ics for measuring routines in editorial decisions (Tandoc & Duffy, 2018), which has to do with production and analysis of metrics, something which falls into so- called measurable journalism (Carlson, 2018).

Contemporary research into the epistemologies of digital journalism has typically studied

processes. Relatively little attention has been devoted to how a broader set of social actors get involved in news production processes (Lewis & Westlund, 2015a). Moreover, little is known about how journalists routinely knowledge in their routine acts of producing knowledge. Also, the routines for organizational coordination (Grant, 1996), within and between depart-

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Vlad, 2009), as well as distinct stages of the news production process (Tandoc & Duffy, 2018). Additional patterns of heterogeneity in routines emerge when broadening the approach to include the routines involving other social actors in contemporary news organizations (Westlund, 2011, 2012). Ultimately, the routines for applying and producing knowledge presumably vary across different parts of news organizations.

The basic components of journalistic knowledge, involving knowledge in distinct subject areas and tacit knowledge in producing news (Grant, 1996), are changing. The evolving digital mediascape has resulted in the need for new expertise and skills, in areas such as big data (Lewis & Westlund, 2015b); audience analytics and metrics (Ferrer- Conill &

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also innovate, developing new kinds of routines that involve a more diverse set of social actors (including also different kinds of technologists). Importantly this may also encompass actors

-

for news production routines. The news media develop and maintain an organizational context through which social actors with specialized knowledge can coordinate, developing routines for their concrete news production practices.

Ultimately, this chapter considers literature focusing on the two dimensions discussed in the introduction: vis- à- vis concrete practices. From an organizational stand- point, routines in news organizations cannot be reduced only to the newsroom and journalists. The chapter will therefore devote one section to reviewing routines in the news organization more holistically (Lewis & Westlund, 2015a), discussing how a news organization conditions routines for knowledge coordination among its social actors (Grant, 1996). Thereafter follows a section focusing on routines in concrete practices. This relates to the epistemic news production processes (Ekström, 2002; Carlson, 2017) in different stages of the news production process (Domingo et al., 2008; Tandoc & Duffy, 2018), which journalists as well as other social actors such as technologists and businesspeople in news organizations may engage in. Social actors are all working under certain organizational constraints, and their competencies and professional

This section focuses on news organizations and their , that is, how they establish and maintain rules, conventions, procedures, and ways of coordination that condition different forms of media work and the routines associated with these. Seminal studies of news-

and also that news production has a double market (Picard, 1989). News is produced for paying readers/ audiences, which in turn are “produced” to yield advertising revenue (with the support of increasingly advanced digital footprint data). A distinct feature of news organizations is that

role for an informed citizenry and democracy (Nielsen, 2017). Knowledge is one, if not the, most important resource of any organization. It plays a dual

role: knowledge generation and knowledge application. Coordination in the pursuit of knowl- edge application is often a main goal of organizations (Grant, 1996), but in news organizations, this may extend also to knowledge creation. Journalism and news production, the labor of “mak- ing news” (Tuchman, 1978), clearly represents a knowledge- creating activity (Ekström, 2002). News organizations’ primary resource is de facto the knowledge of its media professionals, not only journalists, but the diverse set of media workers.

The ways in which organizations acquire, apply, and coordinate knowledge are thus important activities. The overall capability and competitive advantage of the organization is the outcome of how knowledge is being used and integrated by its diverse sets of individual specialists (i.e., social actors). Coordination and integration of knowledge is important and thus offers an understanding of the dynamics involved in the creation and application of organiza- tional knowledge (Grant, 1996). Organizations need different kinds of expertise and thus employ different professionals to routinely perform distinct tasks, by themselves or in coordination with

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specialization, the central exercise of organizations is to coordinate the work of different special- ists.” Contemporary news organizations include journalists, technologists, and businesspeople (Lewis & Westlund, 2015a), all of whom possess specialist knowledge. Organizational learning research, for example, has shown how varied forms of experiential and vicarious learning may become part of organizational knowledge (see e.g., March, 1991). “May” because a prerequisite for organizational knowledge involves staff members developing routines for communicating with each other. However, many news organizations have traditionally been structured for sepa- ration rather than collaboration (Drew & Thomas, 2017).

In other words, the has established rules, conventions, and proce- dures in which certain social actors in the news organization have been kept apart. A key reason has been that cross- departmental coordination, particularly between editorial and commercial functions, has been seen to hamper the professional autonomy of journalists, viewed as important for establishing trustworthy journalism. The rationale for separation, rather than coordination, is linked to both journalism and business. It is linked to the professionalization of journalism and its

greater value to journalism in order to achieve greater value for advertisers on the other hand. The organizational context has resulted in more general corporate goals of success in both

journalism and business, while still keeping business and journalism apart. This, in turn, has meant that news organizations have traditionally avoided routines of coordination between jour- nalists and businesspeople (Achtenhagen & Raviola, 2009; Djerf- Pierre & Weibull, 2011). This lack of coordination between functions can be counterproductive to the news organization as a whole, since coordination and integration of specialists’ knowledge can be crucial (Grant, 1996). With the changing economics of the mediascape and increasing pressure to innovate in news organizations, the organizational context has changed, and more and more news organizations have reformulated their routines to encourage cross- departmental coordination. Several studies report how journalists and businesspeople, as well as technologists, coordinate diverse work tasks with each other (Drew & Thomas, 2017; Nielsen, 2012; Westlund, 2011). For example, Nielsen’s (2012) study of how journalists, managers, and technologists at two Danish newspapers

- dinating with each other. Westlund’s longitudinal research into sense- making of mobile media (2011, 2012) indicates how top management has completely changed organizational routines for coordination between departments, requiring representatives from editorial, business, and IT departments to coordinate digital development. While we here focus on intra- organizational coordination, it is important to take into account that social actors inside news organizations develop routines for coordinating and collaborating with social actors outside the news organi-

example, in developing a mobile news application at , the technologists were collaborating with a media tech company developing services for a number of news publishers. Ultimately, they also had to coordinate with Apple to ensure that their mobile application was approved (Westlund, 2012).

Importantly, coordination is not equivalent to collaboration. An organization can strive towards coordinating knowledge among individuals and groups to facilitate organizational learn- ing, which does not necessarily require collaboration. To achieve collaboration, an organization and its members must work towards harmonizing their diverse goals in line with the larger ambi-

and tensions in the goals and interests of diverse and specialized employees (Westlund, 2011). Importantly, though, even when employees share common goals, an organization may struggle

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to coordinate their diverse sets of knowledge. Taking his departure in knowledge- based theory, Grant (1996) discusses four especially important ways in which organizations coordinate special- ized staff, including routines:

• Rules and directives align specialists towards shared organizational goals. • involves coordinating the specialists’ work into a time- patterned progression

(becoming routinized and institutionalized). • Routines are repetitive behavioral patterns that usually persist over time but also may

evolve and change, and which are not enforced by top management. • is marked by much interaction and is often used in times of

uncertainty.

Organizations develop norms, rules, and procedures that enable them to accumulate and store knowledge from their members (March, 1991). Such organizational knowledge comes into the forefront as lessons from past experiences are encoded into organizational routines that guide daily activities, function as mechanisms of stability, and also justify their practices.

The organizational context of separation versus coordination results in substantially differ- ent routines. Imagine that the sports section of a news organization decides to boost their report- ing on the upcoming Olympics. Six months ahead of the Olympics, they contract an external provider of automated sport results reporting, to develop a news- oriented service to report across platforms. Involving the technologists is fundamental to developing digital services, although journalists do not necessarily coordinate with them in a systematic way. A traditional scenario has involved journalists proceeding in a way that does not involve the businesspeople in their coordination but instead informs them once they set their news service in motion. The business- people, trained in business development, would thus not have an opportunity to engage with the journalists’ in- group problem- solving throughout the innovation process. Nor would they be able to plan their marketing campaigns ahead (which would work against sequencing). Many news organizations have struggled in convergence and cross- media news work when trying to integrate news publishing for their existing media alongside emerging digital platforms (van den

Next follows sub- sections that focus on separation and coordination. Each sub-section dis- cusses how divergent organizational contexts have fostered substantially different routines among

in which social actors are expected not to coordinate and can also justify not coordinating whereas the second sub- section outlines a situation marked by the opposite.

rules and direc- tives to align these specialists towards shared organizational goals (Grant, 1996). Traditionally

goals for their editorial and business- facing activities. In parallel to the professionalization of journalism throughout the 20th century, legacy news media (especially newspapers) erected “walls” between the editorial department and the business department. In essence, this means a CEO and the business department take charge of commercial activities, while the editor- in- chief and the editorial department focus on producing journalism. Importantly, some news organiza- tions have appointed publishers that assume charge of both the editorial and business interests. Symbolic as well as practical rules and routines keep these departments separate. They organize

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- ings and elevators. Moreover, they employ routines of separating all activities from each other, including Christmas parties and other social events (Westlund, 2011). Many news organizations have thus applied a form of “duality management” that essentially involves a functional separa- tion of the “money” and the “words” (Achtenhagen & Raviola, 2009; Djerf- Pierre & Weibull, 2011). This has been expressed via several dichotomies that legitimize journalistic work: jour- nalism versus advertising, truth versus publicity, independence versus ownership interests (Raviola, 2010).

News organizations applying duality management have functionally and symbolically sepa- rated journalism from business, but this has taken place at the expense of organizational work-

(Grant, 1996), by coordinating the routine work of their staff specialists into a time- patterned progression. For example, the editorial department can sequence their work in the routines of news production, and the business depart- ment can sequence the planning and execution of a marketing campaign. Clearly, at its most basic level, diverse kinds of news publishers can achieve coordination and sequencing without differ-

with advertisements and then insert news articles and pictures into the remaining gaps. Similarly,

there is no coordination or group problem- solving to develop routines in which they achieve on an organizational level, especially when innovating new services and products.

Throughout the 21st century, more and more news organizations have adapted their rules and directives, reducing the distance between departments. Some have started to enforce organi- zational rules and structures (such as project groups) that facilitate routines in which social actors in diverse departments coordinate everyday news work as well as innovation projects (for instance, through collective problem- solving). Empirical research from Denmark (Nielsen, 2012); Sweden (Westlund, 2011); and Norway (Westlund & Krumsvik, 2014) have yielded insights from Scandinavia on intra- organizational collaboration. For example, research shows how a Swedish newspaper implemented a coordination- oriented approach for all their media innovation projects in 2008. The new organizational context ruled that managers from the edi- torial, business, and technology departments had to establish routines for coordination; hav- ing meetings to decide on their way forward and routinely engaging in group problem- solving (Westlund, 2011, 2012). Moreover, the global news industry association WAN- IFRA has over several years worked towards establishing more coordination and collaboration among newspapers in pursuit of editorial and business goals. Similarly, in 2014, the revealed (in their internal report Innovation were some of their priority areas for development. Other legacy news media in the United States have reoriented towards collaboration among diverse professionals in their organizations (Drew & Thomas, 2017; Gade, 2004). This practice seems to extend itself also to digital start- ups ( Carlson & Usher, 2016).

Recent research has found that successful collaboration between editorial and business func- tions depends on both organizational and individual factors, which are distinct but interrelated. Four organizational factors stand out: culture, proximity, empowerment and buy- in, and the right staff composition. It is important to social actors that their organization communicates clearly that they prioritize collaboration and supports them in making it worthwhile. Individual factors

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include the respect and trust established in interpersonal relationships, as well as open commu- nication. This links to the literal and/ or metaphorical distance between the editorial and business functions that often results in unwanted norms for communication, such as simply not informing

2017). This in turn connects with issues of hierarchies and power, which are beyond the scope of this chapter.

Previously, we discussed three waves of research into the routines of news work. This section will discuss more closely the concrete practices in such routines, drawing upon the sociological approach. Several in-depth ethnographic studies from the 1960s and 1970s focused on news-

studies marked a shift in not only focusing on journalists’ day- to- day routines but also in intro- ducing a sociological approach to news and news making. As Schudson (1989, p. 265) argues, the (then dominant) theory of gatekeeping tended to individualize organizational phenomena and “it leave(s) the ‘information’ (news) sociologically untouched.” Drawing on organizational theo- ries and social constructivism (the sociology of knowledge), the newsroom studies from this time period explained news as organizational products and analyzed news as a form of knowledge. Routines in the categorization of sources, and the processing and framing of news, were linked to organizational factors as well as professional norms of objectivity and impartiality. The roles of routinized practices in making news and justifying knowledge claims were made salient in, for example, Tuchman’s (1978) and Fishman’s (1980) Manufacturing the News.

The classic sociological newsroom studies developed research on knowledge in news journalism in two respects. First, they contributed an understanding of the professional knowledge and skills that news journalists, normatively speaking, were supposed to possess and how they are coordi- nated. Second, the social constructivist approach reframed questions of truth and objectivity in

news work. -

edge related to the performance of news values and news judgement, the selection of sources, and the construction of news stories (Fishman, 1980; Gans, 2004; Tuchman, 1978). This is knowledge applied by reporters coordinated with other reports and news editors. The news was mainly explained as organizational output relatively independent of individual reporters’ skills. Although Tuchman (1978), for example, discussed the professional status of individual reporters based on their relationships with sources, reporters were mainly understood as replaceable and knowledge as essentially embedded in the culture and bureaucratic organization of news produc- tion. The professional reporter was assumed to have developed tacit knowledge about routines

the categorization of sources with respect to entitlement and authority, and the genre conventions

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another line of journalism research, namely what Patterson calls knowledge- based journalism

media that prioritize journalists’ tacit knowledge and their generic practical skills in producing news on almost any topic.

As Stonbely (2015, p. 264) notes, sociological newsroom research perceived professional- ism as “internalizing organizational imperatives in service of established power.” However, this is not to suggest that routines were understood simply as applied and transferred into actions.

in the reporters’ work. The newsroom studies provided in- depth knowledge about the coordi- nating principles of sequencing and routines. Schlesinger (1987), for example, analyzed the

News. The production is sequentially organized in a series of phases and transmission times. Schlesinger introduced the concept of stop- watch culture to emphasize the structuring role of deadlines and the related “need of co- ordination and synchronization of activities” (p. 84). In broadcast news, this involves people with many different roles and expertise journalistic as well as technical.

The second epistemic aspect is analyzed in Gaye Tuchman’s (1972) article “Objectiv-

attention: how can news journalism justify such high claims of truth and objectivity? The answer suggested by Tuchman (1972, p. 662) was that journalists apply routine procedures and working

He (the newsman) must make immediate decisions concerning validity, reliability, and “truth” in order to meet the problems imposed by the nature of his task processing information called

- ive epistemological examination. Nonetheless, the newsmen need some working notions of objectivity to minimize the risk imposed by deadlines, libel suits, and superiors’ reprimand.

Tuchman discusses different procedures in the making of news (forms of quoting, the separa- tion of facts and opinions, etc.), through which objectivity is constructed. How formal objectivity or neutrality is constructed in news discourse (through constructions of out- there- ness, practices of quoting, the formal neutral voice of journalists, etc.) has since been analyzed in a number of studies (Carlson, 2017; Clayman, 1992; Ekström, 2002; Montgomery, 2007).

The sociological approach to the epistemology of journalism was further developed by -

producing practices of daily news reporting with those of investigative reporting. While Tuchman

- cant differences within

- logical newsroom research (Fishman, 1980; Gans, 2004). In daily news reporting, organized

In investigative reporting, presenting controversial disclosures with often far- reaching personal

the individual reporters in their role as responsible authors. Next, we turn to subsequent waves of research into news routines.

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In recent years, the structural and organizational transformations of news journalism have inspired two additional waves of study into news routines. News work, interactions, norms, and routinized practices have been studied with a focus on the spatial reorganization of news work, media con- vergence, the introduction of new technologies, the integration of automated audience feedback,

- ated (Cottle, 2000; Ryfe, 2016; Stonbely, 2015). Four aspects are particularly important to consider.

First, as Cottle (2000) argues, theories of news as organizational and bureaucratic output tended to overemphasize determining routines at the expense of agency. Cottle (2000) suggests a conceptual shift from routine to practice. Ryfe (2016) refers to recent studies on news production, arguing that routines are best understood as practices. The reconceptualization provides impor-

practical and collaborative achievement of routinized news work. Second, also discussed by Cottle, the classical orthodoxy tended to homogenize or even

- edge claims. An important task for contemporary ethnographic research is to explore the diverse and shifting norms and practices within journalism and its different sub- genres and positions on the news market. For example, the emergence of social media platforms as key digital interme-

Westlund, 2019), and a collapse in their revenues. Social media platforms have also lowered the threshold for new actors to publish other means of both information and disinformation, what some call “fake news” (Tandoc, Lim, & Ling, 2018). Transformation of news on social media has

Third, continuing the tradition of studying news work as situated practices, it is crucial to recognize that news work is no longer (if it ever has been) work solely performed by a group of in- house journalists in a centralized and spatially delimited newsroom. News production not only takes place at different locations outside the newsroom, the newsroom as such has also been

- ated competitor- colleagues” when “news organizations retool an enterprising mode of production.” As discussed in the previous section, researchers also need to take into account that contemporary news work may well involve journalists coordinating different tasks with other specialized actors in their organization, including but not limited to technologists (Lewis & Westlund, 2015a).

Finally, the social, technological, and spatial reorganizations of news work shape practices and collaborations between other professions that are far more diverse and unstable than tra- ditional news work. It is thus not the ethnographic method that has been questioned. Quite the contrary, in what several observers call a golden era of ethnographic research, scholars seem to agree that it is more important than ever to develop such in- depth studies in order to provide an understanding of changing practices. How routines are performed, negotiated, and oriented to in the accomplishment of news production is a practical and mainly tacit knowledge hard to articulate in interviews but possible to explore in ethnographic research.

A key merit of ethnographic newsroom research is that it opens up and explores “the black box” of news production (Stonbely, 2015, p. 260). Although this research tradition has tended to focus

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on the newsroom as a relatively bounded space and the center of news production, activities outside have been studied and the complexities of doing ethnography in distributed settings have been recognized (Ekström & Kroon Lundell, 2011). However, the paradigmatic contribution of the tradition of newsroom studies is not that scholars have focused on a particular space (the newsroom), nor that they have stayed in the newsroom doing observations for a long time. Rather, its main contribution is its approach to journalism as organized and situated social practices, performed to achieve certain institutional and professional tasks. Getting close to the realities of situated practices, interactions, and collaborations motivates and legitimates ethnography and related methodologies. A recent analytical review into the practice approach to study news pro- duction synthesizes different theoretical approaches. Relatively few scholars make direct obser- vations of journalistic practice and how it is produced and reproduced in performance but instead gather indirect data through interviews and content analysis (see review in Ryfe, 2016). A real challenge therefore concerns how to develop ethnographic approaches, getting as close as possi- ble to the concrete situated practices in a rapidly changing, diverse, networked, spatially dispersed (Deuze & Witschge, 2017), and even dislocated news journalism (Ekström & Westlund, 2019).

The conceptualizations and objects of inquiry in classical newsroom studies are still in many respects relevant. The acceleration of news production, increased productivity related to tech- nological innovations and the general demand for more news with less staff, raises essential questions about the organized “manufacturing of news” (Fishman, 1980) and the routinized pro-

is no reason to assume that routinization has become less salient in how news production is prac- tically managed (Ryfe, 2009a, 2009b, 2016; Tandoc & Duffy, 2018). However, to understand the

three complementary directions for such research, focusing on (1) sequential coordination of

negotiated routines in situated practices of news production.

Temporal synchronization and the related coordination of knowledge and expertise are central to news production. This has been analyzed in the context of daily news reporting, typically

Nohrstedt, 1996; Schlesinger, 1987). Several such practices of daily news reporting show a high degree of stability. However, in the contemporary news environment, containing forms of super “liveness,” automated processing of news, continuous processing and repackaging of news in response to audience metrics, and recycling of news on headline services and social media, etc., the sequential coordination of knowledge is changing, and this concerns both the temporality and the expertise involved.

As with all social practices, news production is more or less routinized. However, much work remains in clarifying the forms of routinization related to concrete activities of contemporary

goals. Interviewing is an example. A number of specialized activities in interviewing (research interviews, “sync interviews,” live interviews) are applied in the production of broadcast news, involving forms of routinization (Ekström & Kroon Lundell, 2011; Montgomery, 2007). Other

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voices, and editing and processing news stories for different publishing contexts. Such activities are conditioned but not determined by routines. As mentioned earlier, they involve collaboration. In- depth studies of these core activities are one way to increase our understanding of how knowl- edge is coordinated in the changing forms of news production.

Group problem- solving in situated interaction is a central form of coordination of knowledge (Grant, 1996). Journalism scholars have, however, shown scant interest in this level of analysis. Ethnographic newsroom research has been close to concrete practices but has most often focused on the routines as such rather than how they are invoked and negotiated, and more on journal- ists’ interaction with sources than the interaction between actors within the newsroom. There are, however, exceptions that prove the value of such analyses. Risberg (2014) applies an ethnometh- odological and conversation analytical approach to study the collaborative achievement of prac-

study shows how knowledge is distributed and shared and how routines are invoked in collabo- rative news work. The next generation of this research should go beyond the intra- professional approach and study interactions between different professional functions within and outside the newsroom.

This chapter has analyzed and discussed research concerning the application and creation of knowledge in routinized news work. The chapter has reviewed key literature on routines in news work to make two key contributions. First, it has looked at the of routines for coordination in news organizations, involving a discussion of how specialized knowledge and expertise is coordinated among diverse sets of social actors. Second, the chapter has examined the nexus of news work routines and concrete practices and how this relates to literature focus-

coordination activities outlined by Grant (1996): rules and directives, sequencing, routines, and group problem- solving.

First, let us attempt to synthesize our discussion on knowledge coordination among work- ers in contemporary news organizations. Much journalism studies literature has typically treated knowledge- creation processes (news production) as social activities taking place in newsrooms. Journalists in newsrooms increasingly (need to) coordinate knowledge and news production practices with other specialized social actors (technologists, for example). Second, contempo- rary news organizations need to attain more and more specialized knowledge and expertise, such as data journalists and social media editors. Paying homage to Tuchman’s classic, Making the News, in their edited book, Remaking the News journalism research need not only focus on human journalists and the words but should also pay attention to the role that things (such as diverse technologies) play in news work.

Further, as opposed to the “generic” journalistic knowledge possessed and applied by many reporters and editors in news organizations, individuals’ explicit and tacit knowledge becomes salient. Through organizational coordination, different specialists apply and create knowledge and thus engage in social processes rather than erecting boundaries that prevent them from

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coordinating knowledge with each other. The nexus and simultaneous interplay of organiza- tional and individual knowledge deserves closer scrutiny. In future research, scholars should study the routines for applying, creating, and coordinating knowledge among diverse social actors in diverse functions in news organizations. Ultimately, far too little is known about coor- dination in the knowledge- intensive processes taking place inside and beyond news organi- zations. Organizational knowledge coordination focuses on the intra- organizational interplay between different social actors. Knowledge is also coordinated in the situated and sequentially organized activities of news production, in their concrete practices. It will be very important for scholars to study both desired and undesired, as well as intended and unintended, consequences of altered forms of organizing in the news media. A key question concerns whether new, and

knowledge).

innovation (Westlund & Lewis, 2014) or journalism and cross- media news work (Lewis & West- lund, 2015a), it would be worthwhile analyzing how knowledge is coordinated not only among the social actors of the organization but also with audiences and technological actants. Informa- tion and data related to “audiences” (users, customers, etc.) comprise knowledge materials that are often treated as key in so- called open-, user- , or distributed innovation (Gassmann, Enkel, & Chesbrough, 2010). Audiences may pass on information and knowledge to news organizations in several direct (such as participating in journalistic processes or a focus group) and indirect ways (leaving digital footprints through their use). Such forms of knowledge can become useful for the social actors in news organizations. Moreover, many news organizations turn to contemporary advanced technologies to perform their knowledge- oriented work. This includes software (such as content management systems, scripts, audience analytics, and news applications), as well as hardware (computers, mobile devices, etc.). News organizations depend on diverse technolo- gies (Lewis & Westlund, 2016), and their technological resources should be assessed alongside human resources (Wade & Hulland, 2004). Humans pass on knowledge into an algorithm or script in the mere act of inscribing it with rules and directives for how sequences of work should be performed. As long as humans appropriate and “tame” technology, enrolling it into their work processes, they can expect that the technology delivers what it is programmed to do on a rou- tinized basis. Ultimately, from the perspective of managers, being “able to work with various organizational stakeholders, to see different perspectives and speak their language, is a key fac- tor in successfully integrating into, and performing well in, creative organizations” (Saintilan & Schreiber, 2017, p. 9).

In terms of concrete situated practices, scholars must study the increasingly complex rou- tine practices, collaboration between social actors and coordination with technological actants, inside and beyond what has traditionally been known as the newsroom. Understanding routines as performed in situated practices is not to question that routines also exist as organizational

to understand the routinization of news work. What is more, it is a question for empirical research

production.

We are thankful to Andrew Duffy and Edson Tandoc Jr. for their thoughtful and constructive comments on an earlier version of this chapter.

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