A manifesto of failure for digital journalism

Remaking Digital Journalism ConferenceNorthwestern University, April 11, 2015

Karin Wahl-JorgensenCardiff University(@KarinWahlJ)

Studying up: Tracing elite practices

Focus on innovation in digital journalism

• Infatuation with the possibilities of technological change and innovation.

• E.g. influential work on Twitter and other emerging technologies – Live-blogging, mobile news, videojournalism, social media)

• Most widely cited articles in main journalism studies journals:

• Journalists’ use Twitter as reporting tool (Vis, 2013)• Normalization of Twitter (Lasorsa et al., 2012)• Twitter as ambient journalism (Hermida, 2010).

Work on new technologies: Making failure invisible?

• Interest in the cutting-edge• Normative optimism about the future of journalism• New technologies (e.g. Twitter) are interesting in and

of themselves• Whig interpretation of journalism: History as

invariable progression towards a brighter future• Difficult for us to see failure

Sexing up scholarship? The political economy of the academy

• Researchers more likely to gain institutional approval and prestige, grant money, publications and promotions from a study of elite and innovative organizations and practices.

• Methodological and epistemological necessity for studying marginalized practices: It “no longer seems plausible to presume a generalized view of ‘journalism’ as an undifferentiated culture or shared professional canon” (Cottle 2000: 24).

Picking up on failure: Journalistic texts

• Studies of journalistic texts: – Journalists’ shortcomings in terms of providing

detailed and accurate coverage of particular events or story types

• 9/11 terror attacks (Carey, 2002)• Crisis and environmental journalism (Chase, 1973)• Justifications for the 2003 Iraq War (Kristensen and

Ørsten, 2007; Bruns, 2008)• Glasgow Media Group

Picking up on failure: The business model of journalism

• “Survival is Success” (e.g. Bruno and Kleis Nielsen, 2012; Lee-Wright, Philips and Witschge, 2012)

• Challenge to turn a profit: e.g. declining circulations, audience figures and advertising revenue.

• Central concern with project of “rebuilding the news” (Anderson, 2013) and adaptation

• Importance of Schumpeter’s “creative destruction” paradigm

Picking up on failure: The lived experience of failing journalists and news organizations

• Priority: Journalists and organizations that fail to adapt to change

• Significant body of work (Boczkowski, 2005; Usher, 2010; Anderson, 2011; 2013; Domingo, 2011; Domingo and Paterson, 2011; Paterson and Domingo, 2008; Ryfe, 2012; Ekdale et al. 2014)

• Methodological implications: Ethnographic approaches

Theorizing failure

• Complex forms of failure in news organizations:– Failure to thrive financially, attract audiences, implement technological

innovation, provide “quality” journalism and follow ethical standards. – Need for new conceptual and methodological tools– “Seeing” failure” and viewing it as a viable and important object of

study– Complexity theory: recognizes that “dynamic, non-linear systems,

change, instability and disequilibrium are the norm, not the stability and equilibrium assumed in traditional mechanistic models’ (Sanderson, 2009, p.705)