Maarit Jaakkola

From aesthetes to reporters: The paradigm shift in arts journalism in Finland

The crisis of cultural journalism has recently been a topical issue in many countries. In Finland, too, it has been claimed that arts pages, previously dominated by aesthetically oriented critics, have been shrinking and become more news oriented and entertaining. In this article, we explore the change of structures, values and ideals of arts reporting as friction between two opposing paradigms, the aesthetic and the journalistic, and analyse how the changes are reflected in the contents of the cultural pages and in the self-image of arts journalists. The research data of this case study consist of the arts pages of the biggest national newspaper, Helsingin Sanomat, and of various internal planning documents related to its management. In addition to a longitudinal content analysis, we also employed theme interviews with and observation of cultural journalists. The results show a change of paradigm in arts journalism, with the consequence that the previously autonomous department has become an inseparable part of the news organization, increasingly adapted to meet the challenges of news journalism.

PROMOTING AESTHETIC TOURISM

Cultural departments in newspapers are reported to be encountering increasing pressures towards the production of news and more “journalistic” expression. However, journalistic values do not fit unproblematically into the dualistic professionalism of cultural journalism. The article elaborates an insight into the practice of arts journalism as an act of framing between the epistemic paradigms of journalistic and aesthetic tradition. The traditions are inspected as Bourdieusian fields, and the boundary-crossing between the fields is clarified by close-reading texts with deviations from the typical framings, accompanied by social tensions and indignation among the actors of the artistic field. By investigating the reconciliation between the two epistemic frames of cultural journalism, the journalistic and the aesthetic paradigm, certain restrictions between the generalist and specialist role-shifts can be found. This distinctive boundary between the fields leads into the question about how the newsworthiness of culture could be defined without losing the sensitivity to the characteristics of arts and culture, operated by their own logic.

Witnesses of a cultural crisis: Representations of media-related metaprocesses as professional metacriticism of arts and cultural journalism

Arts and cultural journalism have been found in numerous debates during recent decades to struggle in the midst of a crisis. This article traces the recorded discourse of professionalism that considers cultural journalism to be in a state of decline. A literature review on academic research and contributions in public debates provides an insight into the ‘crisis talk’ of the last two decades and unveils general controversies in the development of the professional culture of cultural journalism. By mapping the discourse in terms of the unfavourable directions that the development of cultural journalism has moved in, the analysis constructs a model for the future research of this specialized branch of journalism.

School-context videos in Janus-faced online publicity : Learner-generated digital video production going online

This article reports a case study on sChOOLtv, an online television for primary and secondary schools that aims to bridge the media gap between in-school and out-of-school learning environments. Contrary to its creators’ expectations, the number of published videos has not increased since its establishment. Furthermore, the videos were mostly produced by primary-level students, with few videos released by secondary-level students. The article describes online publishing of learner-generated videos by exploring the views of the students, parents, teachers, and principals. Sixty-seven informants were interviewed, and video production activities and discussions in classrooms were observed. The article discusses the factors hindering adolescents from making and publishing videos. It suggests media encouragement practices to enhance publishing-oriented digital video production in schools.

Outsourcing Views, Developing News

Reviewers, as specialist writers legitimized as arbiters of taste by the artistic fields, form a distinct subculture within cultural journalism. The change in their status in the journalistic hierarchy is due to changes in the in-house policies of newsrooms. This paper outlines some key developments of reviews in Finnish dailies comparing changes in criticism with other journalistic genres. A quantitative analysis of the culture departments of five quality dailies (N = 5795) from 1978 to 2008 indicates the following trends. While staff workers in culture departments have increasingly taken responsibility for news production, the production of reviews has increasingly been outsourced. While cultural journalism in general undergoes a process of masculinization, criticism has been subjected to very little change. The average length of reviews has been cut by more than half, and the diminution of the high cultural canon is accompanied by the popularization of content. However, the number of unique reviewers has increased, potentially testifying to a more multi-voiced criticism.

Liquid Modern Journalism with a Difference: The changing professional ethos of cultural journalism

Reflecting a change from high to liquid modern culture, journalism is said to be encountering a transformation from high towards liquid modernity. Cultural journalism, however, has been found to be “journalism with a difference”. Due to this distinctive character, the principles of general journalism do not directly apply to cultural journalism. Consequently, the manifestations and consequences of the high and liquid modern ethos appear differently in cultural journalism. Proposing a theoretical framework of the core aspects of journalism—(1) knowledge, (2) audience, (3) power, (4) time, and (5) ethics—this article argues that cultural journalists differ from other journalists in their responses to the recent transformations in the professional values, working practices and the status of journalists.

Teacher Heutagogy in the Network Society: A Framework for Critical Reflection

This chapter suggests a framework aimed at examining roles and competencies of teachers in the network society and offers a tentative operationalization of these competencies for the purpose of professional development. Grounded in the tradition of critical theory, it approaches the concept of self-determined lifelong networked learning through the relationships between teachers and technologies. On that basis, it discusses consequences of changing epistemes and pedagogical approaches pertaining to networked learning and maps the key areas of individual expertise that require attention in theory and practice. Contemporary teachers are constant lifelong learners, and heutagogical approaches insisting on teacher and learner autonomy require deep critical reflection. Following decentralized structure of the network, critical reflection requires horizontal and vertical interaction within various online and off-line communities, such as fellow practitioners, students, and professional bodies, which represent valuable resources for professional development through networked learning. This chapter does not aim to represent a definitive or exhaustive model of networked teacher heutagogy. However, it does pinpoint some pivotal questions related to teacher development in the context of networked learning, thus creating opportunities for further research in the area.

S(t)imulating Journalism in the Classroom: A Structured Comparison of the Design of Pedagogical Newsrooms in Nordic Academic Journalism Training.

This article presents a comparison of technical, organizational, and pedagogical structures of six curriculum-related newsrooms in journalism education in the Nordic countries. The newsrooms were selected for comparison on the basis that they had permanent physical facilities and technical channels for publication, and they presented an integral part of the curriculum. To structure this comparison, the concept of the pedagogical newsroom (PN) is introduced, described, and analyzed. It is suggested that a PN is not a direct adoption of a professional newsroom but an attempt to create a critical surplus with regard to the professional newsrooms, more generally reflecting the relationship between journalism education and the professional field of journalism.