ABSTRACT
With the rise of innovation and entrepreneurship as avenues for journalists to take in their search for journalistic work, we need to critically interrogate how these terms are understood. Various journalism institutions are pushing a particular understanding of journalism, and of what constitutes meaningful and innovative journalism. In this paper, we review the literature on these themes and draw on experimental research done by one of the authors to argue for a more process-oriented approach to journalistic innovation and entrepreneurship. As a researcher-maker, one of the authors created an innovative journalistic project and tried to develop a business model for this project. She participated in an accelerator process organised by one of the main funds aimed at journalism innovation in the Netherlands. We show that one existing, and prevalent, understanding of innovation in journalism is one that is linear, rational and outcome-oriented. We challenge this understanding and draw on process-oriented theories of innovation to introduce the concepts of effectuation, improvisation and becoming as new lenses to reconsider these phenomena. These concepts provide clearer insight into the passionate and improvisational nature of doing innovative journalistic work.
ABSTRACT
Journalism has enjoyed a rich and relatively stable history of professionalization. Scholars coming from a variety of disciplines have theorized this history, forming a consistent body of knowledge codified in national and international handbooks and canonical readers. However, recent work and analysis suggest that the supposed core of journalism and the assumed consistency of the inner workings of news organizations are problematic starting points for journalism studies. In this article, we challenge the consensual (self-)presentation of journalism - in terms of its occupational ideology, its professional culture, and its sedimentation in routines and organizational structures (cf. the newsroom) in the context of its reconfiguration as a post-industrial, entrepreneurial, and atypical way of working and of being at work. We outline a way beyond individualist or institutional approaches to do justice to the current complex transformation of the profession. We propose a framework to bring together these approaches in a dialectic attempt to move through and beyond journalism as it has traditionally been conceptualized and practiced, allowing for a broader definition and understanding of the myriad of practices that make up journalism.