The News Factory

Abstract

Based on team observational analysis of a television newsroom, we argue that an analogue for the local television news organization is a factory To illustrate a routinized news organization, we propose a factory model with five steps story ideation, task assignment, gathering and structuring materials, assembly, and newscast presentation The model reflects an assembly line approach to news that limits newsworkers' involvement in the organ ization and its product The specialization, routinization and mechanization of television newswork has four observable consequences inflexibility, lack of personal investment in the product, and evaluation of newswork in productivity terms, and a mismatch between newsworkers' expectations and the reality of the news factory

Work roles and news selection in local TV: Examining the business‐journalism dialectic

“…Observational studies, for example, have looked at the newswork process itself and have contended that work in local TV is often based on strategic routines for successfully accomplishing work in a profit-making organization (Bantz et al,1980;Berkowitz, 1990Berkowitz, , 1992Tuchman, 1978). Likely, journalists in this study-whether oriented toward journalism or business-presented somewhat idealized or salient views of their work in their responses, rather than pondering on what actually takes place.…”

“…A connection between news selection and a newsworker's place in the selection process thus seems possible, particularly because local television news work roles are clearly delineated by the production process (Bantz, McCorkle, & Baade, 1980). Assignment editors, producers, and news directors have thus been cast as news managers, those people who decide which stories will be packaged into a newscast (Smith & Becker, 1989).…”

Performance Journalism: A Three-Template Model of Television News

“…3 Local television newsrooms became "factories" with an assembly-line approach to news work, making it more inflexible, evaluating output in productivity terms, and restricting the personal investment of news workers in the product (Bantz et al 1980). In this way marketing and management accounting were yoked in tandem to equate the public interest with corporate self-interest and to curtail editorial autonomy.…”

La crisis de credibilidad de las organizaciones periodísticas:

“…redacciones, el reflejo de los mensajes o las situaciones laborales de los periodistas, han subrayado la supremacía de lo empresarial frente a lo profesional o lo humano (Altheide y Rasmussen, 1976;Bantz, McCorkle y Baade, 1980;Tuchman, 2002;Sierra, 2006;Chomsky y Herman, 2009;García Galindo, 2010;Boczkoswki, 2010;Díaz Nosty, 2005. Sucede que muchos de los periodistas de las organizaciones comerciales tienden a reemplazar los valores ciudadanos por esos otros valores que imperan en las empresas.…”