The mainstream online news media face accusations of being slow to respond to so-called 'grassroots' or 'citizen' journalism, which uses the World Wide Web, and in particular blogs and wikis, to publish and promote independent news-related content. This article argues that the adaptation of established news websites to the increasing demand from readers for space to express their views is driven as much by local organisational and technical conditions as it is by any attachment to traditional editorial practices. The article uses qualitative research interviews with the editors and managing editors of nine major British news websites to reveal the debates journalists are having about their changing roles, the challenges of meeting commercial expectations and legal obligations and the innovations taking place in online newsrooms. It provides journalism and interactive media scholars with case studies on the changes taking place in journalism's relationship with its consumers.

This is the unspecified version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. This study examines how national UK newspaper websites are integrating user-generated content (UGC). A survey quantifying the adoption of UGC by mainstream news organizations showed a dramatic increase in the opportunities for contributions from readers. In-depth interviews with senior news executives revealed this expansion is taking place despite residual doubts about the editorial and commercial value of material from the public. The study identified a shift towards the use of moderation due to editors' persistent concerns about reputation, trust, and legal liabilities; indicating that UK newspaper websites are adopting a traditional gate-keeping role towards UGC. The findings suggest a gate-keeping approach may offer a model for the integration of UGC, with professional news organisations providing editorial structures to bring different voices into their news reporting, filtering and aggregating UGC in ways they believe to be useful and valuable to their audience. While this research looked at UGC initiatives in the context of the UK newspaper industry, it has broad relevance as professional journalists tend to share a similar set of norms. The British experience offers valuable lessons for news executives making their first forays into this area and for academics studying the field of participatory journalism. Permanent repository link

This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Permanent repository link IntroductionAlthough, in the US, the internet has now overtaken newspapers as a source of news (Purcell et al, 2010), the traditional newspaper-and broadcast-providers remain responsible for the bulk of news consumed online. Nearly all of the top 25 most-viewed news websites in the US are either established news brands or aggregator sites that take most of their content from existing news providers (Pew, 2011). The hopes and fears of the early analysts (for example: Negroponte, 1995;and Sunstein, 2002) that the internet's potential to democratize publishing would lead to the eclipse of traditional mass media news organizations have not been realized. Although there has been a huge increase in blogs and other forms of independent online publishing, very few are viewed by a mass audience (Hindman, 2008), and they are almost exclusively dependent on newspaper and broadcast networks for the stories they discuss (Pew, 2010a).However, the established media face a number of challenges in relation to their internet sites; and personalization, the subject of this paper, is both a cause and a response. The challenges arise, in large part, from the consumption patterns of the online audience, and from the economics of advertising, which provides the primary means of support for online news publications. Because the online audience is relatively promiscuous (Pew, 2010b), and only stays on individual websites a short time, building loyalty has been difficult for news websites. In addition, the ability to track users as they move around the web means that advertisers can identify and target their desired upmarket audience without necessarily having to advertise on premium news websites. As a result, premium publishers have been losing advertising sales 1 ; furthermore, as online advertising becomes more sophisticated, 2 the publishers' margins are being squeezed by the companies that collect user and This is a preprint of an article whose final and definitive form has been published in Journalism Studies © 2012 Taylor & Francis; Journalism Studies is available online at informaworld TM : http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10. 1080/1461670X.2012.664341 2/18 behavioural data to target advertising, and by those that host online advertising delivery platforms.Personalization has emerged as an increasingly popular strategy for news publishers, who hope that it can increase their sites' 'stickiness', and allow them to capture data about users, thus reducing their dependence on the external suppliers of such information.3 Recent examples include The Washington Post's Trove, a site that "aggregates news and enables users to personalize their news stream based on their interests" (Lavrusik, 2011) and The New York Times-backed News.me, which "uses artificial intelligence to…learn what [people] like to read… [and] provides articles and links…of interest" (Wortham, 2011). This paper addres...

This is the unspecified version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Permanent repository link Making 'The Daily Me':Technology, economics and habit in the mainstream assimilation of personalized news Abstract:The mechanisms of personalization deployed by news websites are resulting in an increasing number of editorial decisions being taken by computer algorithms-many of which are under the control of external companies-and by end users. Despite its prevalence, personalization has yet to be addressed fully by the journalism studies literature (Zelizer, 2009). This study defines personalization as a distinct form of interactivity and classifies its explicit and implicit forms. Using this taxonomy, it surveys the use of personalization at eleven national news websites in the UK and US. Research interviews bring a qualitative dimension to the analysis, acknowledging the influence that institutional contexts and journalists' attitudes have on the adoption of technology. The study shows how: personalization informs debates on news consumption, content diversity, and the economic context for journalism; and challenges the continuing relevance of established theories of journalistic gate-keeping.

Prompted by the ongoing development of content personalization by social networks and mainstream news brands, and recent debates about balancing algorithmic and editorial selection, this study explores what audiences think about news selection mechanisms and why. Analysing data from a 26-country survey (N ¼ 53,314), we report the extent to which audiences believe story selection by editors and story selection by algorithms are good ways to get news online and, using multi-level models, explore the relationships that exist between individuals' characteristics and those beliefs. The results show that, collectively, audiences believe algorithmic selection guided by a user's past consumption behaviour is a better way to get news than editorial curation. There are, however, significant variations in these beliefs at the individual level. Age, trust in news, concerns about privacy, mobile news access, paying for news, and six other variables had effects. Our results are partly in line with current general theory on algorithmic appreciation, but diverge in our findings on the relative appreciation of algorithms and experts, and in how the appreciation of algorithms can differ according to the data that drive them. We believe this divergence is partly due to our study's focus on news, showing algorithmic appreciation has context-specific characteristics.