You Said Digital First! A Five-Dimensional Definition According to Journalists from Three Swiss Newspapers

The term digital first is frequently used by newspapers to describe how they go about making digital and print news. Yet the literature does not define the term precisely and has not described implications in terms of making news. Furthermore, we know almost nothing about how journalists themselves understand this jargon and how they view what it entails in terms of the (changes to) underlying practices. This research analyzed the production systems of three different types of French-language Swiss newspapers that label their production systems digital first: a local paper, a legacy paper and a metro-style paper. It interviewed 17 of their newsworkers, 15 of which described the way their newspaper makes news as digital first without being prompted. The full range of properties attributed to digital first emerging from the data reflected five dimensions: temporality, content format, workflow, production mindset and business strategy. These five dimensions were conceptualized by building a digital first matrix, thereby contributing to definitional clarity, while also serving as a useful tool to analyze newspaper production. In practice, production and editing resources seem to determine a newspaper's success in fully implementing more ambitious visions of digital first. Digital first, we argue, constitutes an emerging newsmaking paradigm.