Two Distinctive Features of Making the News
A Distinctive and Rounded ‘Multi-Level’ Approach
Framed around a multi-level approach to the factors shaping news culture and journalism practices in the early 21st century, Making the News provides a rounded perspective. It aims to bridge the frequently-encountered divide between journalism studies on the one hand, and media or political communication studies, on the other hand.
In particular, Making the News seeks to revisit and renew a multi-dimensional approach to understanding current journalism trends and the major influences on news making practices. The book is framed around a multi-layered approach in order to address the individual, meso-level and macro-level factors deemed essential to a rounded understanding of what or who influences the news. To this end, core chapters are focused on five major, if often overlapping, categories of influences (layers of analysis): individual, institutional, organizational, political economic and cultural.
Paschal Preston has framed the core of the book around five major explanatory perspectives on journalism and news making, each offering complementary views on the shaping and making of news cultures. Yet, he recognizes that such an approach is not new. Indeed, it was pioneered by some of the early researchers on journalism in Europe and the USA around the turn of the twentieth century -- the period when print media first became truly mass media. For example, pioneers in the study of mediated communication and the training of journalists such as Carl Bücher recognised that a subject ‘so complex as journalism’ should be ‘treated from very different standpoints’ (1901: 215). In the USA, early researchers such as Robert Park advocated and used a variety of methods to study news media at micro and macro as well as individual levels of analysis. In Germany, Max Weber proposed an ambitious multi-layered research programme to address ‘the magnitude’ and ‘the overall importance of the press’ as a new force in all modern societies whilst also being attentive to ‘local differences’ (1910/1976: 97-98). This included attention to ‘the relations of the newspaper to political parties ... to the business world and to the numerous groups and interests who influence and who are influenced by the public’ or public opinion, the role of news agencies and sources of news as well as questions concerning ‘the professional demands upon the modern journalist’, and the position, policy or ‘stylistic approach’ of particular newspapers (Weber, 1910/1976: 98-100).Ironically, as journalism and media studies grew and became institutionalized from the 1950s, academic studies of journalism and newsmaking tended to neglect the multi-layered approach favored by the earlier pioneers in the field. Institutional pressures and the academic division of labour have tended to privilege highly fragmented and discrete studies of journalism and news influences, especially those centred on individual and meso level processes. More recent decades have seen several prior efforts to advance more rounded, multi-level perspectives. These help inform the approach and framework adopted in this book.
But as the trends and evidence reported in Making the News makes clear, journalism is facing enormous array of new techno-economic and political changes in the opening decade of 21st century. In many respects, these may be deemed equal the challenges faced by journalists during the first ‘multi-media wave’ at the turn of the last century when the modern, professional ‘news paradigm’ was first established. In this context, the multi-layered perspective -- addressing individual, meso-level and macro-level factors—becomes ever more essential for a rounded understanding of what or who influences journalism and newsmaking processes in the early decades of the 21st century.
In this light, Making the News addresses the growing role of online journalism, the internet and other digital media developments within a coherent framework. Whilst interrogating naive techno-centric perspectives, the book explores the interplay of professional, technical, organizational and other factors in shaping innovation and changes in newsmaking across ‘new’ and ‘old’ news media sectors.
Informed by Original and Multi-Country Empirical Studies
Making the News is informed by a relatively rare, cross-national study involving primary and secondary research in 11 countries. This empirical research seeks to address the growing interest in trans-national or cross-national studies of journalism and media cultures as it is based on a structured multi-country study that is relatively rare.
The recent international research and teaching literature indicates that cross-national and comparative studies of journalism and media cultures are becoming increasingly important. Many recent reviews of the relevant literature have argued that cross-national and comparative research on media and journalism, especially that which is systematic, theoretically informed and tailor-made, is now an urgent priority (e.g. Hanitzsch, 2005; Josephi, 2005; Livingstone, 2003). Yet, cross-national and comparative studies are much easier to prescribe than they are to perform or realise in practice. In part, this is because such studies pose many major practical, epistemological, and value-laden challenges for the researcher, resulting in a continuing paucity of texts based on purpose-built, multi-country research. Secondly, many of the recent cross-national or comparative studies of journalistic ethics and editorial cultures often comprise surveys of the declared principles of ethical codes, with little attention to their actual implementation or operational contexts. In this light, Making the News helps to address the growing interest in cross-national or comparative studies involving systematic research on journalists charged with interpreting and implementing the professional norms and codes in specific organisational, media sectors and national contexts. It also seeks to combine the primary research data with focused reviews of the specialised research literature produced in different national settings.
More specifically, Making the News is informed by a carefully structured, cross-national study comprising two main aspects. One involves the findings from primary research, including in-depth interviews with 95 senior journalists in 11 countries in the West, Central and East European regions as well as subsequent workshop discussions with other interest groups. Co-ordinated by the present author, the primary research covered the following ‘new’ and ‘old’ EU member states: Britain, France, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Serbia, Slovenia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Our interviewees comprised experienced journalists or editors working in print and electronic media in these 11 countries. The semi-structured interviews also sought to address differences between different media, such as TV and press or private and public sector news organisations. The key questions framing our in-depth interviews, fieldwork and secondary research are indicated in Box 1.1.
| Box 1.1 Key questions framing the interviews and secondary research | |
|---|---|
| 1 | What are the main features of journalism, its professional values, newsmaking practices and editorial cultures in contemporary Europe? |
| 2 | What have been the main trends of change in journalism and its news cultures over the past 15-20 years, including the key institutional, organisational and technological factors shaping these changes? |
| 3 | What are the key trends of change in journalists’ relationship with their audiences and what are the key factors influencing such changes? |
| 4 | To what extent is there any singular European journalism culture or how can be best map a number of competing models (typologies or regionalisations) of journalism in EU countries? |
| 5 | To what extent is there an emergent (or growing) common European ‘public sphere’, especially when it comes to the news and the agenda of political issues related to the European Union area? |
In addition, this primary research was complemented by secondary research embracing a number of additional countries. This includes systematic reviews of the relevant international research on journalism trends and news influences, including the national literature in the countries covered by the primary research. The book’s substantive chapters engage with the prevailing international research literature as well as drawing on key findings from primary research. In addition, some chapters are also informed by the proceedings of a series of seminar and roundtable discussions with media professionals, politicians and a range of key media user-organisations [representing social interests and non-governmental organisations] centred on discussions of the preliminary results of the research.
Finally, we may note that Making the News also seeks to engage with questions concerning the trans-nationalisation or ‘globalization’ of news cultures today. In our cross-national study we sought to examine the forms (or extent) of any convergences in news making practices and journalistic cultures across national cultural boundaries in Europe. Here the EU area may be taken as a ‘leading-edge’ site or test case for deepening trans-national economic and political integration at the world-region level. We examine whether and how these developments are being matched by a shared media culture or an emergent post-national public sphere across the EU region.
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