Making News, Making the Economy: Technological Changes and Financial Pressures in Brazil

Abstract

Media convergence and growing financial pressure on the journalistic field have triggered significant changes in newsmaking cultures across the world. This article examines the challenges of media convergence in the newsroom of Valor Econômico, the main economic newspaper in Brazil. In particular, it explores how the introduction in 2013 of Valor Pro, a real time news service oriented to the financial market, changed newsmaking practices at Valor Econômico. The introduction of Valor Pro meant that journalists from the whole newsroom had to report news simultaneously for three platforms: the real time service, the online website and the printed paper. This shift not only intensified journalists' workloads and altered the manufacture of news, but also increased financial pressure on the paper's agenda. I argue that this shift -from producing news for the public towards producing news for the market -cannot be explained solely with reference to traditional political economic factors such as ideological decisions at editorial level and the structural properties of the Brazilian media sphere. Instead, drawing on resources from cultural sociology and from science and technology studies, I provide a richer explanation that acknowledges the impact of technological innovation, the shifting nature of news values, and the agency of journalists themselves. This article elaborates on seven months of ethnographic fieldwork in Valor Econômico's newsroom in São Paulo between 2013 and 2015 and contributes to the literature on cultural sociology, media studies and science and technology studies.

Newsroom 3.0: Managing Technological and Media Convergence in Contemporary Newsrooms

“…The visits had the objective to collect the functional and nonfunctional requirements of the proposed model. Formal conversations during the visits were complemented with informal meetings outside the newsrooms, giving greater insight into journalists' professional culture and identity [36].…”

“…The ethnography of O Globo, La Nación and BBC showed that traditional approaches to the political economy of the media [19], tend to privilege the power of structural forces (e.g. media ownership, professional conventions) [36]. Newsroom features are mainly composed of main actors, information sources, news audience, the content, the working methods, the tools used in the newsroom and the way technology is used in the newsroom.…”

Knowledge-production in journalism: Translation, mediation and authorship in Brazil

“…Many blame their hectic work pace. The increasing focus on real-time reporting forces a trade off between immediacy and quality in reporting (Undurraga, 2016). Reporters are progressively chained to their desks, gradually becoming sedentary ‘office-based screen workers’ (Boyer, 2013), limiting the time they need to report from the street.…”

“…Since knowledge in journalism is associated with, among other things, the effect provoked (Muniesa, 2014) by journalists, his or her reputation is crucial. Those with greater reputation are not only more influential in the field but also operate as strategic mediators, sending cutting edge information between private actors and government authorities, articulating messages in both directions (Undurraga, 2016). While reporters are conscious of suspending their agency, so to create ‘even’ debate around sources’ opinions, renowned columnists tend to emphasize their power to access privileged information and hold authorities to account.…”

Editorial Statement: Tracing, Making and Locating Cultural Sociology

“…The flow of submissions to the journal can, in part, be understood in connection with the dreaded 'pressure to publish'. As for news-making (Undurraga, 2017), technologies thus inscribe the market pressures at the heart of the 'work of Cultural Sociology making' -and the 'editorial practices' also include 'the tricks of the (business) trade'. Should this 'work', then, be re-articulated to a renewed political economy of academic production?…”