Ainara Larrondo

News production in the ‘post-broadcasting’ era: BBC Scotland’s move towards convergence

In the current media landscape, convergence represents a key analytical concept for understanding the rapid developments and the reshaping of news organizations into multimedia providers. Such redefinition entails changes in the rationale of media corporations and has turned out to be central for public service broadcasting (PSB). Yet relatively little work has focused on the implications of convergence for these particular broadcasting organizations at the newsroom level. As a contribution to filling this gap, this article reports on case study research conducted inside the main Scottish public broadcaster, BBC Scotland. Based upon in-house documents and semi-structured interviews, the research findings describe what is happening inside this major news centre and in what way convergence is shaped and embedded within this organization, in terms of news production and journalistic practices. These findings are put into perspective with regard to previous studies, as well as with contextual issues, such as the reinvention of the PSB model in the 21st century, with special mention made of the BBC, and the specific Scottish politico-communicative scenario.

THE CONVERGENCE PROCESS IN PUBLIC AUDIOVISUAL GROUPS

The digitization and diversification prompted by the development of Web divisions has situated media groups at a decisive point, requiring strategies of adaptation that necessarily involve multimedia convergence. This key term for understanding communication today alludes to a gradual process which has the integration of newsrooms as its goal and is making itself felt in different interrelated fields. In Europe, public audiovisual corporations such as the BBC (United Kingdom), SVT (Sweden), NRK (Norway), DR (Denmark) or YLE (Finland) have provided some relevant cases of convergence to date. In Spain, such adaptation is still moderate and it is the regional media that are showing a particular predisposition to change. In this context, this essay analyses the experience of one of the pioneering public groups in the Spanish state, the public radio television of the Basque Autonomous Community, Euskal Irrati Telebista (EITB). In line with other studies with similar characteristics, it employs a mixed methodology incorporating quantitative and qualitative procedures. The results make it possible to argue that EITB is slowly advancing towards convergence, setting out from strategies typical of the initial phases of this process, such as grouping newsrooms together in the same physical space, cross-media promotion, taking advantage of synergies of multiplatform distribution or basic editorial coordination, which places this group midway between digitization and convergence.

Opportunities for a New Type of Dialogue with the Organisation’s Publics: A Case Study on How Political Parties Are Adapting in the Basque Country

The organisational websites and second-generation web-based technologies like social media have led organisations to alter their activities and strategies both internally and externally. This marriage between Internet and organisations is especially relevant in the case of political organisations like parties. Politics in our society is basically media politics, based on socialised communication and the capacity to influence people’s opinions. Online communication has had a direct influence on the parties’ publics and the relations with them: on one side, the citizens, and on the other, the mass media and journalists. While top-down adaptations by organisations generally prove more costly or are even non-existent, what we are witnessing is a horizontal type of adaptation [2]. This gives the political class and press offices the opportunity to descend to ‘street level’ using the tools provided by the web, as well as to become direct communicators that replace the media’s traditional work of interpretation. In this context, this chapter offers results from a study (EHUA13/10) centred on understanding how political parties have adapted their communication strategies to meet the challenges of the multimedia paradigm. For that purpose, it focuses on a concrete case and on political parties with representation in the Basque autonomous parliament.

Much more than airtime: radio strategies to foster an inclusive Latino identity in the Basque country

ABSTRACT New opportunities for launching media projects targeting minority migrant audiences have emerged in the wake of international migration [Georgiou, Myria. 2001. “Mapping Diasporic Minorities and their Media in Europe. Studying the Media.” A working paper for the EMTEL project “Diasporic Minorities and Their Media: A Mapping.” http://www.lse.ac.uk/media@lse/research/EMTEL/minorities/papers/]. However, most start-up enterprises in this category fail to develop effective strategies for establishing a dialogue between the minority audiences they serve and the native-born local populations. This paper, which examines the role radio plays in the integration of newcomers to the Basque Country, analyses the successful programming and outreach initiatives of Candela Radio in Bilbao, Spain, as well as the barriers to multiculturalism that must be overcome in complex societies like the Basque Country, in which deeply rooted traditions and values [Shafir, Gershon. 1995. Immigrants and Nationalists: Ethnic Conflict and Accommodation in Catalonia, the Basque Country, Latvia and Estonia. New York: State University of New York Press] are inextricably bound to language. The results of this qualitative study indicate that publically funded Radio Candela has not only managed to construct an audience that bridges the traditional gap between local migrant and native communities but is also actively fostering the development of a hybrid Latino-Basque identity.

A case study on the incorporation of gender-awareness into the university journalism curriculum in Spain

ABSTRACT As in other disciplines, ‘gender mainstreaming’ is becoming an increasingly important principle in Journalism. This implies bringing gender equality into the mainstream of the media industry, by means of an adjustment of the educational issues and the practice related to this profession, which is influential in society. In light of the gap existing in this line of research committed to re-education for change [North, L. 2010. “The Gender Problem in Australian Journalism Education.” Australian Journalism Review 32 (2): 103–115; Adhikary, N. M., and L. D. Pant 2011. “Journalism Education in Nepal: Gender Perspective.” Shweta Shardul 8: 119–123], this paper analyses the curricular integration of gender-related issues into journalism studies, taking as a casestudy the undergraduate programmes of the Spanish public and private universities. The study employs content analysis and qualitative questionnaires to the academic staff. The results prevent from understanding equality as one of the main teaching and learning strategies in journalism studies in Spain, even if the invigorating curriculum reform carried out by these universities leads to posit some positive outcome in terms of a more gender-aware higher education. As discussed in the conclusions, the inclusion of the gender perspective depends on the academic staff’s own initiative, in contrast with the involvement showed by university institutions in promoting parity in many other aspects.

Newsworkers. A comparative European perspective

While constant and accelerated technological evolution contributes to spreading the ideas of complexity and lack of definition in journalism, the intrinsic ability of this field to assimilate changes and adaptations is in fact one of its distinctive features. Professor Henrik Örnebring (Karlstad University, Sweden) reminds us of this on the first page of his book Newsworkers. A Comparative European Perspective, when he paraphrases the British journalists of the thirties decade, Carr and Stevens The need to work towards a precise and close-fitting characterization of journalism today is one of the main assertions and motivations of this book, which is an outstanding research contribution due to its usefulness for updating, with empirical data, the existing knowledge on the influence that institutional change in journalism has on the work and routines of newsrooms. Örnebring opts for a cross-national comparison of contemporary newswork in six European countries and media contexts—Britain, Estonia, Germany, Italy, Poland and Sweden. This book is the result of a multi-year research project developed at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism of the University of Oxford. It is presented with great soundness and clarity, organized into eight chapters that perfectly fit the empirical approach employed. The first chapter, which has an introductory character, provides numerous indications and reflections that acquaint the reader with the book’s intentions, while the second chapter provides the theoretical and contextual framework of the research. The third chapter offers a methodological discussion, and presents the structural and thematic axis of the work. Here, Örnebring details an analytical proposal he has proven valid for such studies, and which can be adapted to other case studies with similar aims. This is one of the main contributions of Örnebring’s work. This chapter also proves interesting for obtaining an up-to-date overview of the media landscape of each of the countries considered in the study, which is another of the book’s main contributions. The basic procedural information contained in this chapter is broadened with the inclusion of a methodological appendix where the author provides sampling and other significant analytical information. The following four chapters contain the abundant empirical evidence that Örnebring obtained on the basis of more than 2000 surveys with journalists and 63 qualitative interviews. These chapters are organized according to four interrelated dimensions that represent the main comparative axes of the study: Technology, Skill, Autonomy and Professionalism. This contributes to presenting the main content of the book in a clear and readable way. The inclusion of tables and graphs is also clarifying, bearing in mind the book’s comparative purpose. The first dimension considered by Örnebring, Technology, is without doubt one of the most significant, due to the influence that the introduction of new technologies has exerted on journalism as work and as an institution in a state of permanent adjustment and revision.

Crowdfunding and journalism The ins and outs of audience financing

In an uncertain environment for media companies, we believe that one of the key elements for their future is to develop strategies to fully-engage the audience, gain their trust and their participation in journalistic goods. Along with this, it seems desirable to set up transgressors models in which journalism is conceived not as a business but as a service to the community. The phenomenon of the crowdfunding can be highlighted here, in which citizens fund media formulas through micro donations at the time they claim a type of journalism that will act as an organic public service, free of economic and political interests. Very likely it is the critical audience who can better capture and release a new public journalistic culture. The fans that enable the publication of new media through donations also represent their own subcultures, habits and practices based on the relationship they built with the media and their texts. Once identified some of these most successful approaches in Spain (although it is still quite a minor trend) and the United Kingdom, in the present paper we have analyzed the experiences of this media when fragmenting the roles of professional and non-professional profiles involved in the journalistic creation process, conducting in-depth interviews with their creators and managers. The data have been completed by an analysis of the quality of the content posted by such this media financed by citizens. Through the integration of quantitative and qualitative methodology a greater scientific verification was achieved in the study. The results show that in the short to medium term donations are not the salvation of the media, but these initiatives can reflect that the final role of the media transcends the business concept, as they gain in quality in terms of proximity to the subject that interests their audience. Keywords—Crowdfunding, citizens, audience, media