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Broader and deeper

A study of newsroom culture in a time of change

University of Nevada, USA, dryfe{at}unr.edu

This essay offers an ethnographic analysis of The Daily Times,¹ a mid-sized American corporately owned newsroom. During the period under study, a new editor changed the way that reporters produced the news. In particular, he asked his reporters to attend less closely to the public agencies that composed their beats. Over time, his reporters alternately expressed confusion and indignation about the new rules. I explain their reaction in terms of conclusions drawn from the original ethnographic studies of newsrooms conducted in the 1970s. These studies showed that journalistic practices like routine visits to public agencies serve important functional and symbolic needs for journalists. The changes introduced by this editor threatened several of these needs, and this ultimately led the reporters to reject the new rules. This case study shows that journalists rely on a deeply embedded culture of professionalism to respond to the experiments taking place in their newsrooms.

Key Words: American journalism • ethnography of news • innovation in news • sociology of news

Journalism, Vol. 10, No. 2, 197-216 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/1464884908100601


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