Chapter one provides a brief introduction to the book. It introduces the scope, concerns and features of Making the News. It describes the distinctive multi-level framework informing the substantive chapters and the original, primary research, including in-depth interviews with 95 senior journalists and editors and inputs from other actors and sources based in 11 countries.

Chapter two provides a brief overview of the evolution of organised news making and journalism. It also sets out the conceptual framework for understanding the strategic implications of new digital technologies and the changing role of information and knowledge services in the contemporary period.

Chapters 3 through 7 draw on our primary research findings to examine the key trends and issues in journalism and news making, focusing on each of the five explanatory approaches and clusters of potential influences on newsmaking in turn. These chapters will be directly informed by the unique research resource described earlier. In each case, the chapter’s theme and key sub-topics will be examined and discussed in light of:  .i) examples of classic or seminal studies in international research literature related to each explanatory perspective and its core concepts;  .ii) reviews of the more recent research literature addressing the trends and forms of unfolding changes, including those related to digital technologies and knowledge economy developments, as well as reviews of relevant literature from the eleven countries studied; and   .iii) our primary research findings, especially those arising from our in-depth interview with working journalists in those countries. Where relevant, we will also consider issues that emerged from subsequent discussions at workshops with non-media professionals and consultations with other key actors.

Chapter three of Making the News commences the substantive inquiry by considering those explanations of journalism and news which emphasise the values, characteristics and orientations of individual journalists and editors. In essence, research on individual level influences tends to address the personal backgrounds or characteristics (e.g. values, attitudes, gender, ethnicity, political or ideological orientations) of individual journalists and editors in an effort to explain the patterns or continuities in news content. Here then, we are primarily concerned with the concepts, trends and research perspectives focused on the characteristics and backgrounds, values and beliefs of journalists as potential influences on making the news.

Chapter four focuses on the role and influence of media industry ‘routines’ or institutionally patterned roles, processes and practices involved in making the news on a daily or hourly basis. It draws from the diverse sets of ‘institutional studies’ of the production of news and of media culture more generally. Much of the swarm of such studies from the 1970s was strongly influenced by developments in institutional or organizational sociology (Hirsch, 2000). However, some key ideas about media routines and patterned processes of newsmaking had been signalled in much earlier studies of the growing industrialisation of news, such as those of Wilcox (1900), Bücher (1901) and progressive era studies in the USA invoking the idea of newsmaking as ‘a standardized routine’ (Lippmann, 1922: 183). Indeed, Hirsch later acknowledged that his (1972) study involved a ‘depoliticized exploration’ of what the Frankfurt School had earlier characterized as the ‘culture industry’ or the industrialization of culture (Hirsch, 2000: 356). Whilst noting a relatively long tradition of such research, chapter four applies such concepts to explore the more recent trends in journalism and newsmaking. It also pays particular attention to the implications of the Internet drawing on our own original research and other recent studies to track the key contours of innovation and change in newrooms across an expanding media landscape.

Although the news organisation for which the journalist works comprises the ‘most powerful context’, this factor ‘is surprisingly often neglected’ as one practicising journalist recently observed (Lloyd, 2004: 81). This chapter is focused on organisational settings as key factors shaping journalism and news culture. It draws on our original multi-country studies as well as other recent research findings on news organisations as influences on journalists and their daily working practices and news cultures. It also considers more recent work addressing technological and managerial innovations in news organisations. Chapter five also briefly considers findings from our primary research concerning the influence of ownership structures and market forces in news organisations.

This chapter addresses the role and influence of broader political-economy and social factors in shaping journalists’ work and news making practices. A short introduction contextualises the role of political economy perspectives in the field of media and journalism studies, before moving on to a review of the relevant research literature. This seeks to pursue three main objectives: first, to assess the interest of researchers in political economic issues when dealing with editorial cultures; secondly, to point out the differences between former communists countries and European democracies; thirdly to emphasize the main trends in recent investigations. This chapter moves on to address the relevant research findings, assessing how journalists perceive the role of those broader political-economy and social factors in shaping their work and news making practices. Two key research questions are considered here: first, the influence of the structures of ownership and market forces, and second, the way journalists deal with controversial issues.

Chapter seven considers the final, and broadest, of our five layers of influences or explanatory perspectives on the factors shaping news and journalism: ‘the cultural air we breathe’. Borrowed from British cultural studies school, this term refers to those influences on newsmaking related to ‘the whole ideological atmosphere of our society’ which in turn tells us how ‘some things can be said and others had best not be said...’. Here, we take the image of ‘the cultural air we breathe’ to embrace the atmosphere of prevailing ideas, ideologies and discourses which permeate news content, its evolving language, forms, styles and ‘feel’ in a given societal setting or era. Furthermore, it engages with matters that are both spoken (expressed) in the everyday discourses as well as others that remain unspoken and subject to forms of self-censorship or other discursive silences in a particular cultural setting. This perspective also connects with the concept of ‘structure of feeling’ which Raymond Williams viewed as ‘the culture of a period, ... the particular living result of all the elements in the general organization’, including a period’s arts and their characteristic approaches and ‘tones in argument’. Yet, the structure of feeling is not usually shared in the same way by the all individuals or groups in any community, as it is shaped by special interests, including those of class and the distribution of power.

Chapter eight considers key aspects of the changing character and role of the audience and its relation to news making practices, including its increasingly multicultural composition. It should be noted, however, that throughout this book, audiences are understood as a crucial consideration or factor for most if not all layers of influences on journalism practices and news cultures. For as noted earlier, the audience -- at least in the sense of the public -- is nothing less than ‘the god term of journalism ... the term without which nothing counts’ (Carey, 2007: 12).

Chapter eight opens with a discussion of different conceptualisations of audiences and sources of audience change. It then moves on to outline understandings of audiences as active participants in the mediated communication process. The middle sections of the chapter discuss the impact of new consumer cultures as well as technological changes on the relationship between journalists and their audiences. Similarly, trans-national migration and the increased importance of multiculturalism have played an important role in the changing nature of audiences and media practices and these are discussed in the final part of the chapter. The chapter presents empirical findings from our interviews with European journalists and is further informed by roundtable discussions with media professionals, politicians and media users/consumers (including non-governmental organisations) about the preliminary results of the research.

Chapter nine examines the forms and extent to which we are witnessing a common European news culture and the patterns of coverage of common topics and issues. For more than five decades, the member states of what we now know as the European Union (EU) have been engaged in a process of deepening economic and political (and more recently, military) integration. But has this process of increasing political and economic integration been accompanied by a converging or common news culture and journalism within the 27 member countries that now comprise the EU area? This chapter examines whether or how there are any traces of an emergent or common ‘European’ journalism culture today. It explores whether there are any patterns to the way in which ‘European’ topics or issues are covered by the news media. In addressing these questions, the chapter draws on our original multi-country research, including in-depth interviews with 95 journalists and reviews of national research literature in 11 countries. It is further informed by a series of seminar and roundtable discussions with media professionals, politicians and non-governmental organisations centred on the preliminary results of the research.

The final chapter seeks to summarise the discussion and key findings so far. It moves on to identify the key issues and trends whilst also discussing some of the implications for the role and renewal of journalism orientated towards the public.

Chapter ten provides a summary recap of key findings concerning the contours of change in mediated news making in the contemporary ‘network society’ or ‘knowledge economy’ setting. It provide an overall summary of major shifts and the ensuing challenges for the journalism profession and the prevailing news paradigm. It explores whether or how the predominant ‘modern’ model of professional journalism and newsmaking, which emerged in the early decades of the twentieth century, is now facing significant challenges and changes. It explores how the prevailing model of professional journalism, together with the associated conceptions of the relative autonomy of journalists, is being challenged by an emerging new ‘news paradigm’ in the context of the contemporary ‘knowledge based’ or ‘information’ society. It also considers some of the requisite innovations and changes if journalism is to renew itself in keeping with the profession’s own definition or self-understanding of its distinctive professional role, its values and norms and its orientation to the public.