Print hegemony or just a(nother) platform ? : digital first production at daily newspapers
| Directeur de la thèse |
Nathalie Pignard Cheynel, Annik Dubied |
| Résumé |
The present thesis is a study of digital first newspapers and their
underlying production systems. Digital first represents a neglected
research topic within (digital) journalism studies. This research
broadly asks the question: How are digital and print versions of
newspapers produced? Thanks to an in-depth ethnography at
French-language Swiss legacy newspaper Le Temps in 2018 as well as
interviews with newsworkers from La Côte, 20 Minutes and Le
Temps in 2021, I provide descriptions of how web and print stories
are produced at all three newsrooms (including at Le Temps at two
different moments in time). I analyze the struggles between digital
and analog, many of which play out on the battlefields of space and
time. Successfully implementing idealized versions of digital
stories (in terms of temporality, content and digital affordances)
is subject to being able to untether digital from print, the former
often being subjugated to the latter. Achieving this comes at a
cost, since it requires what I call a print capacity surplus:
having resources to produce and edit stories beyond those required
to fill the pages of the print newspaper. I discuss the varying
print capacity surpluses of the three newspapers studied and its
impact on their digital firstness. Finally, I offer a definition of digital first, which integrates five dimensions: workflow, temporality, mindset, text-level features, and strategy. For heuristic purposes, these are arranged into a digital first matrix, creating bridges for understanding digital and print news production at other newspapers. In terms of method, I mainly borrow from classic inductive ethnography, actor-network theory and newsmaking reconstruction. |
| Mots-clés |
journalisme, numérique, innovation, newsroom, format, stratégie éditoriale |
| Type de projet | Recherche de thèse |
| Domaine de recherche | journalism studies, journalisme |
| Etat | Terminé |
| Début de projet | 1-9-2015 |
| Fin du projet | 31-11-2021 |
| Contact | Andrew Robotham |