The social newsroom: Social media and the evolution of journalists' routines.

The social newsroom: Social media and the evolution of journalists’ routines 1

The social newsroom:

Social media and the evolution of journalists’ routines

Brian MoritzDoctoral Student

S.I. Newhouse School of Public CommunicationsSyracuse University

Syracuse, N.Y. 13244.

Submitted toNewspaper and Online News Division

AEJMC Chicago 2012


Abstract

With social media platforms growing in popularity, it’s important to look at how they are being

used by journalists. This qualitative study examines how social media is becoming a part of jour-

nalists’ work routines. Seventeen reporters working at newspapers were during the winter of

2010-2011. This data suggest that reporters are using social media to break news, keep tabs on

their beats, share links to their stories and communicate with sources and readers.

Key words: Journalism; newspapers; online news; social media


The social newsroom: Social media and the evolution of journalists’ routines

When I began my journalism career in 1999, my professional life was relatively

simple. As a reporter for a daily newspaper, my job was to attend an event – be it a school board

meeting, a charity function or a basketball game – and write a story about it for the next day’s

paper.

By the time I left the business 10 years later, I was still a reporter for a daily newspaper,

but my job had grown more complex. In addition to blogging and writing real-time articles for

the paper’s online edition, I would be posting my stories to the paper’s Facebook page and up-

dating a Twitter feed with brief news items and other anecdotes from my beat ... all while attend-

ing an event and write a story about it for the next day’s paper.

The newspaper business has undergone revolutionary changes over the past 10 years due

in large part to the growth of the internet. Along with the marco-level changes to the business

model of news organizations, the way reporters do their jobs on a day-to-day basis is evolving.

The growth of popular social-media platforms - especially Facebook and Twitter - is beginning

to effect how reporters do their jobs.

The purpose of this study is examine how newspaper journalists are integrating social

media platforms into their work routines. At this stage in the research, newspaper journalists’

routines will be conceptualized as the day-to-day behaviors used by employees at news organiza-

tions to identify, gather and report the news.

There is a rich history of research into journalists’ routines. Routines have been defined

as the day-to-day practices and processes that reporters use to do their jobs (Shoemaker & Reese,

1996). Studies have detailed what routines exist in journalism (Becker & Vlad, 2009; Fishman,

1980), how they developed (Soloski, 1996; Tuchman, 1972; Tuchman, 1973) and why they are


important both to journalists themselves and to scholars who study the news (Shoemaker &

Reese, 1996). However, the study of journalistic routines has languished in recent years (Becker

& Vlad, 2009). As Hansen and Weaver (1994) noted, the classics of journalists’ routine study

were based on studies conducted in the 1960s and 1970s. The data in these studies were collected

long before the internet began reshaping the newspaper industry, and well before social media.

This study will help bridge that gap, showing how journalists professionally use social media.

Keeping the changes within the newspaper industry and the growth of social media in

mind, it is time for a re- examination of journalists’ routines. In light of that, this study will be

guided by the following research question:

RQ: How are newspaper journalists incorporating social media platforms into their work

routines.

This study will be performed by conducting in-depth interviews with reporters through a

grounded-theory methodology. A grounded-theory methodology constructs theories that are

grounded in data and a research process in which the collection and interpretation of data are

concurrent and inform each other (Charmaz, 2006; Schwandt, 2007). Since this study seeks to

update previous theories of journalists’ routines and is being conducted through in-depth inter-

views, a grounded-theory approach is the ideal method through which to approach the research

question.

Theory


This paper will use two theoretical areas as its base. It will look at how journalists’ rou-

tines have been conceptualized and studied in the past, as well as the emerging body of research

into social media and news

Journalists’ routines

Journalists’ routines have been defined as “Those patterned, routinized, repeated prac-

tices and forms that media workers use to do their jobs” (Shoemaker & Reese, 1996, p. 105).

They can be conceptualized as the day-to-day, sometimes seemingly mundane decisions a re-

porter makes in doing his or her work. What constitutes news? Where do reporters get their story

ideas? Who should the reporter interview and when? When does a reporter have to have his story

filed by? Routines are the way reporters construct news (Tuchman, 1978). Reese (2001) defined

journalists’ routines as a natural structure within which the creative work of journalism is done.

Shoemaker and Reese (1996) found that journalists’ routines actually consist of three areas of

routines – media workers, audience members and sources – and that the three are interconnected

in how news is produced.

One reason routines emerged in journalism lies in what Tuchman (1973, 1978) called

news typification. Tuchman wrote that journalists classify events into one of five categories –

soft news, hard news, spot news, developing news and continuing news. This is done, Tuchman

found, because most news events are unscheduled. Reporters and editors are bombarded with po-

tential news items on a daily basis. Reporters established different routines for each type of

news, Tuchman wrote, so that when they are presented with it, they are able to quickly make de-

cisions and cover the event accordingly. In this case, routines are structural in nature. Reporters

also use routines when deciding what constitutes a news story and deciding what to write about


in the course of their job. In this regard, they act as the first level in the gatekeeping process

(Shoemaker & Vos, 2009).

Another explanation for journalists’ routines is a basic fact of newspaper publishing, one

that is easy to overlook. It’s the simple fact that there is a newspaper to be published every day.

Editors and reporters are responsible for filling a news hole every day, regardless of whether it is

a busy news day or a slow one. Routines were developed in part to help economize, simplify and

organize this process (Sigal, 1973; Tuchman, 1978).

Journalists use a number of different routines as a part of their job. One of the primary

routines is the beat system. A beat is where a reporter is assigned to cover the same group, orga-

nization or geographic area on a regular basis (Hallman, 2005; Meyers, 1992; Sanchez, 2007).

In his observational study of journalists, Fishman (1980) found that the beat system is in-

grained within the newspaper industry – to the point that a newspaper that does not have a beat

structure lies far outside the norm. Fishman wrote that beats have an organizational history that

outlive any one reporter; that reporters are assigned beats by their superiors but that they do not

own their beats; and the beat is an “‘object of reporting” (p. 28) of activities outside the news-

room. Reporters on a beat are also obliged to produce news every day, and they rely heavily on a

few sources on their beat for their information.

The notion of sources – where a reporter gets news and story ideas from and who they in-

terview for their stories – is another important routine for journalists. Reporters have been shown

to rely on official sources within their stories, including government officials and business lead-

ers (Fishman, 1980, Gans, 1979; McManus, 1997; Sigal, 1973; Tuchman, 1978). Sigal (1973)

found that reporters for The New York Times and the Washington Post both relied heav-


ily on official sources in their coverage of the U.S. government, whether that took the form of in-

terviews with government workers, official press conferences or press releases.

The use of sources is also an important routine in terms of maintaining objectivity. Ob-

jectivity emerged as one of the most important concepts in journalism in the 20th century, with

newspapers striving to present fair and balanced news stories rather than ones slanted to one side

of a debate (Berkman & Shumway, 2003; Schudson, 1978).Tuchman (1972) referred to objectiv-

ity as a strategic ritual for reporters, while Soloski (1989) called objectivity journalism’s most

important professional norm. The use of sources maintains this objectivity. If a reporter quotes a

source on one side of an issue, he or she will seek out a source on the other side of an issue.

In addition to the beat system and sources, the deadline is also one of the most important

routines for a journalist. The deadline can refer to the time when a newspaper reporter has to

have his or her story filed to his editors, or the time the editors have to send their pages off the

floor and to the printing press. In many ways, the deadline drives every aspect of newspaper

journalism (Tuchman, 1972). Manning (2001) found that the increased number of deadlines due

to a 24/7 news cycle has led to an increase in media’s reliance on official sources that have the

means to fill the constant appetite for news. In addition, Hansen, Ward, Conners and Neuzil

(2000) found that the use of new technologies did not widen the news net for reporters’ sources.

Journalism and social media

Like many industries, the newspaper business jumped on the online bandwagon in the

mid-1990s. The New York Times, for instance, began publishing an online edition in 1996

(Stovall, 2004). By 2002, most newspapers were publishing at least some form of online edition


as a complement to their print editions (Weaver, et al, 2007). Online news grew in popularity

throughout the 2000s. A Pew study (2010) found that 60 percent of adults in the United States

get at least some of their news every day from an online source. In 2010, 46 percent of American

adults got news from an online source three times a week, compared with 40 percent who did so

from a print newspaper. That’s the first time online surpassed newspapers (Pew, 2011).

It’s impossible to discuss the online world in 2012 without discussing social media.

While often used as a catch-all word in the popular press, social media can be defined as media

that is centered around open, interactive and fluid communication between members of a com-

munity (Lester, 2012). Most often, social media is operationalized by the websites Facebook and

Twitter. They are two of the fastest-growing, most popular websites in the world. More than half

of all Americans who are online are on Facebook (about 133 million users), and there are nearly

24 million Twitter users in the United States, a number that continues rising every year (Pew,

2012). There is an emerging body of research into how social media like Facebook and Twitter

can be used as a journalistic tool by both reporters and audience members.

One of the main influences of social media is the breakdown of the traditional gate be-

tween journalist and audience. News organizations are using social media as a way to create con-

versations within their communities (Gleason, 2010). Rather than the traditional unidirectional

model, where the newspaper acts as the gatekeeper that selects which stories the public reads

(Shoemaker & Vos, 2009), social media turns news into a fluid, two-way process between pro-

ducers and consumers (Gleason, 2010; Hermdia, 2010). Social media is also growing in impor-

tance for community newspapers, who are beginning to adapt new media technology at a fast

pace and using it to connect with local audiences (Gregg & Yan, 2010).


Social media is also beginning to influence how reporters do their jobs. Reporters are of-

ten expected to break news on their beats via Twitter or Facebook posts, as well as short blurbs

on the papers’ website. This is done in addition to doing the traditional stories for the print paper,

all within the same work day (Moritz, 2011; Jones, 2010). Lasorsa, Lewis and Holton (2012)

found that journalists are adapting Twitter to fit traditional journalism norms and practices, but

are also creating new practices such as including opinions in Tweets that would never appear in

news stories, as well as including links to other online content. Hermida (2010) wrote that Twit-

ter created a sort of ambient journalism, which he defined as a way for reporters to identify

trends or issues on the edges of the issues.

There are concerns about social media and journalism. The speed at which reporters are

able to file updates - especially since social media posts are rarely seen by an editor before being

published - raises concerns about accuracy in reporting (Lasorsa, Lewis & Holton, 2012). Since

Facebook and Twitter are independent companies not affiliated with news organizations, there

are questions as to how social media can help newspapers solve their financial problems (Ah-

mad, 2007). Plus, despite the growing perception of social media as a news hub, Pew (2012)

found that just about 10 percent of all digital news consumers frequently follow news recommen-

dations found on Facebook and Twitter.

Methods

The author used in- depth interviews with journalists to study the research question. The in-depth

interview is a method used to gain information from participants on a specific topic (Hesse-Biber

& Leavy, 2006). According to Kvale (1996), “the qualitative research interview attempts to un-

derstand the world from the subjects’ points of view, to unfold the meaning of their experiences”


(p. 1). As stated earlier, this study utilized a grounded-theory methodology, in which theory

emerges from constant, continual analysis of the data (Charmaz, 2006; Creswell, 2007).

Participants were news reporters working for newspapers in the United States. Rather

than focusing on one newspaper or two newspapers as previous research did (e.g., Fishman,

1980; Hatcher, 2009; Sigal, 1973), this study included reporters from many newspapers. While

the earlier studies have shown that routines are often influenced by organizational norms, study-

ing only one media outlet may put the focus on the norms and routines of that particular outlet

and not the profession itself.

Reporters were drawn from newspapers whose daily circulation range from 30,000-

400,000. From the authors’ professional and research experience, those sized newspapers often

have significant online presences, unlike many smaller newspapers which can lack the financial

or personnel resources to put together considerable online editions. A total of 17 interviews were

conducted, allowing the researcher to reach theoretical saturation (Hesse-Biber & Leavy, 2006).

As an incentive to take part in the interview, all 17 names were entered in a lottery, with the win-

ner receiving a $200 Visa gift card.

Interviews took place from December 2010 to March 2011. Participants were assured of

anonymity. They are not being identified by name, beat or affiliation. This was being done to en-

courage candor among the participants. Since this study involved human participants, approval

was received from the Institutional Review Board of the Syracuse University Office of Research

Integrity and Protections. Participants of in-person interviews were asked to read and sign con-

sent forms prior to the start of the interview. Subjects of interviews done via the internet or the

phone were be asked to give oral consent prior to the start of the interview.


The interviews were semi-structured in nature, which allowed for more flexibility and

freedom to explore topics while relying on a set of predetermined questions (Hesse- Biber &

Leavy, 2006). The interviews lasted between 45 minutes and one hour.

Interview transcripts were analyzed using a “grounded, a posteriori, inductive, context

sensitive coding scheme” (Schwandt, 2007, p. 32). Through the use of field notes and reflexive

memos throughout the interview process, the researcher culled themes after each transcription.

Data analysis was an inductive process (Creswell, 2009; Schwandt, 2007), as the transcripts and

the emergent themes will continually inform each other throughout the project. These steps are

consistent with grounded-theory methodology (Charmaz, 2006).

Results

The interviews for this study were conducted as part of a larger study into how journal-

ists’ work routines are evolving as the newspaper industry itself evolves from print to a print-on-

line mix. Of the 17 reporters interviewed, 16 discussed how either they or their newspapers used

social media platforms. Only Phil, a 25-year veteran reporter who does mainly investigative and

enterprise stories, didn’t discuss social media at all.

The interview data suggest that there is no industry-wide standard routine for journalists’

use of social media. How reporters use it depends on a number of variables, including their beat;

the structure of the newsroom; their own attitudes toward social media (and, just as importantly,

their editors’ attitudes) and well as the needs and demands of their daily work. A beat reporter

who has a heavy day-to-day coverage load will tend to use Twitter and Facebook more than in-

vestigative reporters who work on longer, more in-depth pieces.

The data suggest that the culture of the newspaper plays an important role in how much

reporters use social media. Jim, for example, is a public-affairs reporter at a paper that is progres-


sive in terms of its attitude toward online news, particularly social media. Because of this, he

uses social media (especially Twitter) constantly as a part of his work routine. On the other hand,

Tony is an education reporter at smaller papers that is more print-oriented and is not, at the time

of the interviews, heavily engaged in social media.

Basic uses

There are several basic ways the reporters interviewed are using social media in their

jobs. One of the primary uses is to break news. Rather than hold news until the next day’s paper,

or even post it to the newspaper’s website, reporters are sending out bits of information they

learn throughout the day. In a sense, they are breaking news and writing stories bit by bit. Refer-

ring to news items he learns during the day, Jim described his process like this. “You Tweet

them, you get them on the web, you discuss with the editor whether or not they’re worth a story

or folding into something.” Cindy said that one of her jobs as her paper’s night online reporter

(which she described as the new version of the old night cops’ job) is to post news updates to her

paper’s social media platforms. “If there’s any (story) large enough, I’ll post it on Facebook.”

Several reporters said that social media gives newspapers a chance to compete with TV

and radio stations on the kind of ultra-local, ultra-timely stories like traffic jams and storms. “It

gives me a tool to get the breaking-news edge back,” Jim said. “When I have the knowledge that

‘Hey, west side, your power’s going off momentarily, I can tell you that right away.”

Several reporters described their use of social media as a sort of surveillance tool. Put

more plainly, it’s a way for them to keep up with what’s happening on their beats and in their

communities. Bob, a technology culture reporter, described the first half hour of his day like this

(the ellipses indicate the removal of information specific to the Bob’s city and was removed to

preserve anonymity):


I’m gonna check a lot of national news websites. I’m going to check Twitter and

go through my lists on Twitter ... I kind go through those and sort information, see what

people are talking about, see what new things are, you know, being mentioned. ... So

Twitter, I’ll check out Facebook, you know, to see what people are taking about. But

that’s mainly for references to news stories. I’m not looking to see what my friends are

up to, it’s more “Are there news stories I should know about?” I’m gonna go through my,

Google reader. I follow a bunch of news organizations, technology websites, so I’m

gonna go through those (to see) what’s coming in there. I’ll kind of scan through maybe

the first 30-40 of them to see what’s coming out. Some of it’s just my own natural curios-

ity but some of it is very much work-related, technology-related stuff. I go through my e-

mail, obviously. I try to respond to readers within a day or two, and particularly if they

have question or concern they raise in a story, you try to get back to them. I think it’s the

least we can do. Then there’s some blogs that I try to stay on top of, just see what they’re

talking about.

Along with catching up with the news, social media allows reporters to stay on top of

breaking news developments. For example, it’s not uncommon for a cops reporter to stay in the

office, follow stories on the scanner and write an update on Twitter, then make a phone call to

the police station and write a brief. Twitter is an especially useful tool for reporters’ whose beats

are widely defined, or who are covering more than one beat due to layoffs, furloughs and other

job-losses within newsrooms. Jason, who covers state government for his paper, described it like

this:

Twitter is essentially nothing but little bits of information constantly flowing, and so it’s

a nice tool for reporters. In the old days, when we had a political columnist who could


just write about politics and basically not have any other day job, they could go to county

GOP meetings and touch base with those activists and then really get the pulse. Twitter is

a way for me to do that while I’m sitting in a budget hearing because, you know, I’ve got

to be responsible for both of those things.

Social media as disseminator

At the basic level, newspapers use their online editions to both repackage the stories from

print and to break news with live updates. Almost every participant said his or her newspaper

posts breaking news to their online edition. The key aspect of these posts is their timeliness.

Speed is the most important thing, reflecting the findings of Weiss & Joyce (2009) that constant

updates have compressed a reporters’ workday. “My deadline is all the time. I’m writing all the

time,” said Stephanie, who works on her paper’s breaking-news desk. Jim added, “With the web

and uh Twitterland, deadlines never stop.”

Sometimes, reporters are able to post news directly online from the scene, either to the

papers’ website or a Twitter account. Several reporters said that during meetings or press confer-

ences, they will send out Tweets of interesting quotes or news notes from their phones or laptops.

Other times, that information is collected back at the office by an editor and posted online – us-

ing the old rewrite model with an online twist. Lucy said of a large meeting in her area: “We had

a bunch of reporters there and we were all on Twitter and (the editor) was back at the office tak-

ing our Tweets and putting it into a web story.”

That acceleration in both reporting and publishing is one of the primary ways participants

have said their job has changed over the past decade. Jim remembered working on the morning

of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, when he said he was likely the first reporter in his area to

know about the hijacking of United Flight 93 through a conversation with an official at his area’s


airport. “If I can Tweet that, that’s a holy shit moment,” he said. “But what I was able to do was

bury it in a story I wrote a couple hours later, cause by then everybody knew it.”

This use of social media as dissemination has led to an increased recognition among the

participants of the importance of personal and organizational brand. Using social media to share

their stories is a way of increasing both their own profile but also that of their newspapers. “I use

(social media) to drive traffic to my stories and to the blog,” Max said. “I kind of use them to just

promote the newspaper.” Jim, who used Twitter in the reporting of an ongoing breaking news

event, was called by national cable networks to do brief interviews. On one hand, the time it took

to conduct those interviews was time he couldn’t spend tracking down news. On the other hand,

he understood that it was important for the paper. “It really did help us increase audience,” he

said.

Jason views his work as a political writer, particularly in his use of Twitter, as a way to

build his brand as a journalist. He doesn’t view this as any kind of corruption of his journalistic

ideals:

Because in my mind your stories are what, you know, build your brand. But I’ve realized

that that’s not enough, so reluctantly I think you have to embrace it, and if you want to

expand the number of people who are reading you and you therefore kind of influence,

you need to embrace some of that stuff.

But Eric, who covers primarily breaking news and police, said that he doesn’t have a per-

sonal Twitter account at the paper because of sensitive and embarrassing nature of much of the

news he reports. “I just believe really strongly in that ... I don’t want to act like I’m trying to

pump up my own personal brand by exploiting tragedy or misfortune.” This demonstrates Berk-

man & Shumway’s (2003) notion of using online news within traditional journalistic norms.


Walter, who had been promoted to columnist a few weeks before being interviewed, said

that if he thinks a story or column he’s written is particularly good or about a hot-button issue,

he’ll post it to Facebook and Twitter and e- mail a link to the online version of the column to lo-

cal bloggers. “Now, you’re really fighting for eyeballs,” he said. But Walter added that he’s not

choosing his topics based on what he thinks will generate clicks. “That’s not a way to go about it

at this moment,” he said.

Social media and sources

One of the great promises of social media is to allow reporters to connect with people, be

it sources or readers. The interview data suggest that reporters are using social media to find

sources for their stories. In many instances, it’s not a way to find new sources but instead a new

way to connect with existing ones. “Some of the sources I have on Facebook, that’s actually the

best way to reach them,” said Stephanie, who works on her paper’s breaking-news desk. “They’ll

answer that message quicker than they will trying to get them through their secretary.” It can also

be used as a way to quickly verify information. Jason said that if he forgets to ask someone’s

age, he can just pop over the Facebook and look it up instead of trying to get that source back on

the phone. This reflects Mendoza’s (2008) writing on the topic.

Even more than Twitter, Facebook serves as a starting point for many reporter working

on stories. “That’s kind of your standard practice now,” said Jude, a county government reporter.

“When somebody is killed, you know, like a murder or something like that, the first thing you do

is go to their Facebook page.” Bob added, “If it’s a DWI, and you want to find out more about

this person, the first place that we look is Facebook, MySpace, sites like that.”

This is especially true for reporters working in markets with a military base. “Oh God,

Facebook!” Diane said. “We’re a military community up here, and when soldiers get killed, that


is number one source of information about that solider through friends and through comments

and pictures on his page,” Diane said. Cindy said that in working on a story about a serviceman

killed in Afghanistan, she conducted an interview with the soldiers’ brother via Facebook. “He

wasn’t willing to talk - he wasn’t ready, he had just found out, but he wanted to talk about his

brother, so that was just a comfortable way for him to talk with me,” she said. Jason, laughingly

called Facebook a way to stalk people. “Some guy who works as an underling at some campaign

does something newsworthy, well, I can find out more about that guy ... because oh, he added me

as a friend on Facebook,” he said. “What I use it for mostly is to find biographical info on people

really quickly.”

Using social media allows the reporters to quickly and efficiently find sources for stories.

Interestingly, the interview data suggest that the news net cast by reporters to find information

(Tuchman, 1978) has not changed dramatically. Some reporters said that they have started

crowdsourcing stories – using social media to find sources. Ron remembered working on a story

about a boom in enrollment at a local community college due to the economy, and put out a call

via his Facebook status looking for potential interview sources. “Within three hours, I had half a

dozen names and phone numbers,” he said. But for the most part, reporters continue to use the

traditional realm of official sources for their stories, reflecting the findings of Manning (2001),

McManus (1990) and Sigal (1973).

Contact with sources is not a one-way street with social media. The nature of Facebook

and Twitter make it easier for readers to be in contact with reporters. “It allows readers to di-

rectly interact with you and (ask you to) clarify something,” Jason said. Cindy, who posts to

Facebook often as a part of her shift, said that posting to Facebook gives her a chance to start

conversations with community members about local and national news events. She recalled post-


ing the final score of the Super Bowl to the paper’s Facebook page, a seemingly simple, innocu-

ous act that sparked a conversation among readers.

We’ve found that quite a few people are engaging the newspaper (via Facebook) whereas

they were probably people that wouldn’t have bothered with calling us or e-mailing us or

sending us a letter to the editor. So it’s just a quick, simple format that people might be

more comfortable in communicating with us about our coverage or what we need to be

covering.

Concerns

While many of them see the journalistic potential in these platforms, they do have con-

cerns about its impact on their professional roles on the potential implications for the field.

One of the primary concerns surrounding social media is the ability to verify information.

“Twitter is a vehicle that allows misinformation - any information, including misinformation - to

spread very, very quickly,” Bob said while referring to an erroneous NRP report on Twitter that

then-Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords had been shot and killed in 2011. “You’ve got

to be careful. You’ve got to make sure you have the information, that you have it verified.”

Another concern shared by some reporters is the constant demands that social media

yields. At times, social media can be demanding and time consuming. With no set deadline, the

news never stops. There are always more Tweets that can be sent, always more notes that can be

posted, always more readers that can be engaged. The participants said that their ability to easily

connect with people and find information online comes with a price. Jim called Twitter a poten-

tial distraction, comparing it to trying to study with the television on.


If you’re making sure you’ve got everything that’s being Tweeted and Re-Tweeting it or

independently verifying it it’s pretty tough to keep working on your searchable data base

about public payrolls ... Everything in Twitter comes out at the same volume, whether it’s

an important breaking news Tweet, or you and me direct messaging each other, joking

about something.

Several of the reporters also raised concerns using social media to find sources. Walter

said that he didn’t see Twitter and Facebook as a platform on which he could build the types of

relationships with sources that he could offline. Jude acknowledged the potential troubles that re-

porters can run into using Facebook to find sources:

I remember calling somebody about a kid that was murdered, and I was calling Facebook

friends and I got a hold of somebody who knew him in high school. I say to them “I’m

sure you’ve heard about such-and-such, who was just killed today,” and they’re like “Oh

my god, I haven’t talked to them in six years!” So, it’s like anything it’s it’s limited in

what it can provide.

The reporters acknowledged that being able to connect with readers via social media, as

well as the demands to post news updates to Twitter and Facebook, makes it easy to sit in front

of their computer all day rather than circulate on their beat and meet with sources, which is how

they traditionally find stories (Fishman, 1980; Hallman, 2005; Sanchez, 2007). Ron said:

(Social media’s) fascinating to read, but it’s no substitute for going to the scene and see-

ing for yourself and talking to people who are still moved by whatever they just saw and

can tell you things that the cops aren’t gonna tell you. You’re not going to get much more

than the official story from sitting in front of a screen.


The inability to get out of the office, or to get off the breaking-news train long enough to

visit with sources or walk their beat, frustrates many reporters – both from the ability to connect

with sources and in terms of story ideation. Max said:

There’s .... no better way to generate story ideas than actually walking around and, and

seeing things, you know? You can get story ideas off of Facebook and Twitter, but

they’re probably not gonna be the same – well, they might be, but then, you know, they’re

not necessarily gonna be the same story ideas that you get from talking to real people. And

also, the whole demographic thing. I mean, if there’s an issue that’s, really affecting people

who are elderly or poor, or people who are probably less likely to be online, you’re obvi-

ously much more likely to learn about those issues if you’re actually out there talking to

real people, rather than just surfing the net.

The demographic concerns that Max raises reflect the findings of Muthukumaraswamy

(2010) that for crowdsourcing to be effective, the crowds have to be able to access technology –

which means certain socioeconomic groups may be cut out.

Ron, who works with college interns at his paper, noted that the younger reporters seem

more comfortable in front of their computers than dealing with people. While these reporters are

often skilled in social media, he felt their interpersonal skills to be weaker than previous genera-

tions of reporters. “I guess there’s this erosion of the human-relation skills that come with actu-

ally seeing somebody face-to-face (and) actually having a live conversation and not a chat,” he

said.

Discussion

It’s impossible to discuss journalists’ routines in 2012 without discussing the internet.

Reporting has become, in many ways, an online process. “I would consider it more important

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Brian Moritz Jan 11, '12, 8:37 PM


than the telephone,” Eric said. “If they told me we were going to take away either your phone or

your internet, I would say take away the phone.” Jude agreed, saying: “It’s changed my life ... it

makes reporting easier.” That process, more and more, includes the use of social media.

The interview data suggests that journalists’ social media continues to evolve. For the

most part, the reporters interviewed are using social media like a traditional reporting tool and

using it within traditional journalism norms, as Lasorsa, Lewis and Horton (2009) suggest. Re-

porters are finding ways that social media can be best used on their individual beats. Some re-

porters use it to keep tabs on their beat or their community, as Hermidia (2010) suggests. Others

are using it to create conversations with readers, to open the gates of communications (Gleason

2010). Still others find it’s a key way to contact sources, especially ones who may not be other-

wise available or willing to talk (Mendoza 2008). The data also suggests that reporters are re-

ceiving little to no guidance from editors about how to best use social media on the job, that they

are learning as they go on their own.

One of the most profound changes the internet has brought to journalists’ routines is the

increased speed at which news judgments must be made. Reporters are making news decisions

faster and faster - often at the scene of an accident or while a meeting is taking place - and mak-

ing publication decisions on the fly by posting facts, notes and quotes to social media sites.

These decisions can be conceptualized an updated version of the story typification outlined by

Tuchman (1978). In Tuchman’s original model, reporters broke potential stories down into five

categories: soft news, hard news, spot news, developing news and continuing news. The inter-

views suggest that journalists engage in a new level of typification. In addition to determining

which story type an event fits into, a reporter must decide whether a piece of information is note-

worthy enough to warrant an online post – and within that, what kind of online post (Just a sen-


tence? A few paragraphs? Handle it via Twitter?). Then, after determining if it is worthy of an

online update, the reporter must determine whether or not it is then worthy of the print edition.

There’s no quantifiable method for this process. The decision to go online with a piece of

news is made first, and then a separate decision-making process happens to determine whether or

not it is worthy of making the print edition. What is considered news online (especially for social

media) may not be considered news for print. The reporters indicated that there is a higher stan-

dard for print. It has to be more serious, more important, to be considered worthy of print.

Social media is another task reporters must do during a work day. That’s no small thing.

With the consolidation of beats, layoffs and furloughs in news rooms, and juggling the compet-

ing demands of print and online, a reporters’ job is simply more busy than ever. Adding social

media to that can be challenging for reporters. But the reporters who do use social media say

they find it useful and helpful to do their jobs.

As a qualitative study, it’s important to remember that no generalizable conclusions can

be made based on the data presented. The interviews provided a wonderful cross-section of re-

porters’ attitudes and experiences, but it is just the attitudes and experiences of 17 reporters. One

way to expand the research in this area would be to use the interview data gathered in this study

and use it to inform a survey that could be distributed to reporters. This would permit researchers

to make generalizable conclusions about reporters’ routines.

Also, because the method involved in-depth interviews, the researcher is completely at

the mercy of the subjects to accurate describe their work routines and practices. While the re-

searcher has no reason to believe that the reporters lied about their work processes and practices,

there is also no way of independently verifying them, either. There’s no way for the researcher to

see how closely a reporter’s description of his or her workday match his or her actions. One way


of expanding the study, would be to observe reporters during their workdays, giving the re-

searcher the opportunity to see how a journalist does his or her job. It would also be possible to

do an ethnographic study (similar to Hatcher, 2009), combining interview data with observation

to get a more well-rounded view of a reporter’s routines. Another way to extend this research

would be to do content analyses and textual analyses on reporters’ social-media platforms to get

a better understanding of how reporters are using Twitter and Facebook

This is an area that will be deeply analyzed within the next decade. As social media ma-

tures, digital news grows and print declines, it is inevitable that journalists’ work routines will

continue to evolve. Continued research in this area is necessary. As reporters’ jobs and work rou-

tines continue to evolve in this new-media landscape and as social media continues to grow in

popularity and influence, it will be important for scholars to continue studying this topic.


Appendix 1: Interview subjects

Interview sources

Reporter (pseudonym) Experience Beat(s)

Lucy 4 years Watchdog

Jim 22 years Public safety, data

Ted 4 years Local government

Stephanie 23 years Breaking news

Bob 12 years Technology culture

Harry 13 years County government

Ron 17 years General assignment, data

Jason 10 years State government

Max 10 years Business, real estate

Jude 7 years County government

Phil 25 years Investigative, enterprise

Cindy 11 years Night cops (online)

Diane 1 year Local governments

Tony 12 years Education, environment

Amy 25 years Education

Eric 4 years Breaking news

Walter 11 years Politics

Note: To protect the confidentiality promised to reporters, the circulation size of their respective newspapers is not listed.


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