Matt Carlson

BLOGS AND JOURNALISTIC AUTHORITY

This paper asserts that the role of blogs cannot be adequately understood without examining the established media context in which they appear. Blogs operate along side, in conjunction with, and in opposition to established vehicles for political information, which creates tension among journalists seeking to preserve their authority. As a site to observe the blog-traditional journalism relationship, this article examines the reaction by journalists and others to blogs’ role in US Election Day 2004 coverage. Much of the attention by journalists focuses on assessing the well-publicized decision by some blogs to release incomplete exit polls erroneously predicting a victory for Democratic candidate John Kerry. This discourse works to make sense of the status and credibility of blogs while simultaneously allowing journalists to negotiate their role as authoritative providers of political news. Ultimately, the discourse underlines the dynamism of news in a contemporary media environment marked by new forms of complexity and competitiveness.

The Robotic Reporter

Among the emergent data-centric practices of journalism, none appear to be as potentially disruptive as “automated journalism.” The term denotes algorithmic processes that convert data into narrative news texts with limited to no human intervention beyond the initial programming choices. The growing ability of machine-written news texts portends new possibilities for an expansive terrain of news content far exceeding the production capabilities of human journalists. A case study analysis of the pioneering automated journalism provider Narrative Science and journalists’ published reactions to its services reveals intense competition both to imagine an emergent journalism landscape in which most news content is automated and to define how this situation creates new challenges for journalists. What emerges is a technological drama over the potentials of this emerging news technology concerning issues of the future of journalistic labor, the rigid conformity of news compositional forms, and the normative foundation of journalistic authority. In these ways, this study contends with the emergent practice of automated news content creation both in how it alters the working practices of journalists and how it affects larger understandings of what journalism is and how it ought to operate.

Tapping into TiVo: Digital video recorders and the transition from schedules to surveillance in television

This article explores the early stages of the Digital Video Recorder (DVR) market, with particular attention paid to brand leader TiVo. The television industry, which relies on schedules to organize the audience commodity, faces threats from DVR technology. Initially, broadcasters and advertisers reacted with fear, but also came to realize the potential of using the technology for data collection and target marketing. These firms employed a mix of investment and litigation to shape the developing industry. Simultaneously, TiVo characterized its relationship to broadcasters and advertisers as advantageous rather than contentious. As a result, the emerging DVR model offers users greater control through time-shifting and increased functionality with content playback, while presenting existing television firms with a platform for audience surveillance.

When news sites go native: Redefining the advertising–editorial divide in response to native advertising

Professional journalism’s normative commitment to autonomy has long dictated the separation of editorial functions from advertising. However, the emergent practice of online native advertising complicates this division, resulting in conflicting visions of how journalistic authority should be established for digital news. This study examines reactions to a controversial Church of Scientology native advertisement on the Atlantic web site to assess how competing processes of norm-making and boundary work shape normative understandings of online journalism. Emergent understandings of content comprising both editorial and advertising components require new models for critical inquiry sufficiently sensitive to the online news environment.

News Startups as Agents of Innovation

For-profit digital news startups backed by large investors, venture capital, and technology entrepreneurs have taken on an increasingly significant role in the journalism industry. This article examines 10 startups by focusing on the manifestos these new organizations offer when they introduce themselves to the public. These manifestos are an example of metajournalistic discourse, or interpretive discourse about journalism, that publicly define how journalism is changing—or is not. In identifying and touting the superiority of their technological innovations, the manifestos simultaneously affirm and critique existing journalistic practices while rethinking longstanding boundaries between journalism and technology.

Boundaries of journalism : professionalism, practices and participation

Introduction: The Many Boundaries of Journalism Matt Carlson Part I: Professionalism, Norms and Boundaries 1. Out of Bounds: Professional Norms as Boundary Markers Jane B. Singer 2. Nothing But The Truth: Redrafting the Journalistic Boundary of Verification Alfred Hermida 3. Divided we stand: Blurred Boundaries in Argentine Journalism Adriana Amado and Silvio Waisbord 4. The Wall Becomes a Curtain: Revisiting Journalisms News-Advertising Boundary Mark Coddington 5. Creating Proper Distance through Networked Infrastructure: Examining Google Glass for Evidence of Moral, Journalistic Witnessing Mike Ananny 6. Hard News/Soft News: The Hierarchy of Genres and the Boundaries of the Profession Helle Sjovaag 7. Internal Boundaries: The Stratification of the Journalistic Collective Jenny Wiik Part II: Encountering Non-Journalistic Actors in Newsmaking 8. Journalism Beyond the Boundaries: the Collective Construction of News Narratives David Domingo and Florence Le Cam 9. Redrawing Borders from Within: Commenting on News Stories as Boundary Work Sue Robinson 10. Resisting Epistemologies of User-Generated Content? Cooptation, Segregation and the Boundaries of Journalism Karin Wahl-Jorgensen 11. NGOs as Journalistic Entities: The Possibilities, Problems and Limits of Boundary Crossing Matthew Powers 12. Drawing Boundary Lines Between Journalism and Sociology, 1895-1999 C.W. Anderson Epilogue: Studying Boundaries of Journalism: Where Do We Go From Here? Seth C. Lewis

‘Where once stood titans’: Second-order paradigm repair and the vanishing US newspaper

The demise of Rocky Mountain News and printed Seattle Post-Intelligencer only weeks apart in 2009 met with an outpouring of mediated concern among the journalistic community. In the shadow of the two failed newspapers, journalists defended the medium while warning of the growth of online news forms. In analyzing this response, this essay reappraises literature on ‘paradigm repair’ in which public repudiations of supposedly individual deviance aim to protect journalistic values and practices from scrutiny. It argues for the need to extend paradigm repair to account for an interpretive shift from individualizing and ostracizing incidents to holding them to be generalizable indicators of widespread paradigmatic challenges. Dubbed ‘second-order paradigm repair’, this concept aims to improve understanding of journalism in a time of change.

Gone, But Not Forgotten

Much has been written about how the journalistic community relies on the collective memory of past accomplishments to bolster its cultural authority. Similarly, researchers have analyzed how journalists react to accusations of professional deviancy within their ranks to mitigate the damage to their overall standing. This study fills a gap where these two areas of research intersect by analyzing how journalists reinvigorate memories of past misconduct through engaging new occurrences. By examining metajournalistic discourse surrounding offenders, this study examines how incidents of deviance become embedded as particular symbols in the collective understanding of journalism. The analysis tracks the memory of six prominent cases of journalistic misconduct in the United States to demonstrate how the journalistic community turns to past episodes of professional deviancy to make sense of itself in the face of emerging tensions. These findings suggest the need to broaden an understanding of collective memory to include negative memories.

Facebook in the News

In May 2016, two stories on Facebook’s Trending Topics news feature appeared on the site Gizmodo, the first exposing the human curators working surreptitiously to select news and the second containing accusations that certain curators censored conservative voices. These revelations led to public outcry, mostly from conservatives upset at possible bias and journalists critical of Facebook for its largely secretive and haphazard approach to news. This study examines the response to the controversy as metajournalistic discourse—talk about news that seeks to define appropriate practices and legitimate news forms. It identifies a fundamental divergence in the public articulation of Facebook’s role in the larger news ecosystem. Facebook reacted to the controversy by formulating an approach to news as a form of content that, like other content on the site, should be personalized, organized according to popularity in the form of user engagement, and free of editorial control from the social media site. By contrast, journalists positioned news as purposively selected and shared while placing Facebook as an active participant within the news ecosystem and therefore beholden to an enhanced institutional commitment to public responsibility.

Automating judgment? Algorithmic judgment, news knowledge, and journalistic professionalism:

Journalistic judgment is both a central and fraught function of journalism. The privileging of objectivity norms and the externalization of newsworthiness in discourses about journalism leave little room for the legitimation of journalists’ subjective judgment. This tension has become more apparent in the digital news era due to the growing use of algorithms in automated news distribution and production. This article argues that algorithmic judgment should be considered distinct from journalists’ professional judgment. Algorithmic judgment presents a fundamental challenge to news judgment based on the twin beliefs that human subjectivity is inherently suspect and in need of replacement, while algorithms are inherently objective and in need of implementation. The supplanting of human judgment with algorithmic judgment has significant consequences for both the shape of news and its legitimating discourses.