Conference PaperPDF Available

"IT'S LIKE A FAMILY!" – THE UNITY AND COMMUNITY OF JOURNALISTS

Authors:

Abstract

To journalists at traditional broadcast media these are times of insecurity and opportunity, rapid change and ever-growing competition. In the face of growing pressure, the unity and community of journalists employed at traditional broadcast media is increasingly strengthened. This paper explores the strong practice-community bonds existing between journalists employed at competing traditional broadcast media. Drawing on a two-year period of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the newsrooms of BBC News, ITV News, TV Avisen and TV2 Nyhederne, the paper presents an anthropological approach to studying journalists at work. During fieldwork, the study found journalists at competing newscasters to be working in very similar ways, while expressing a strong relational bond. In order to explore this bond, it is examined what is core and what is periphery to the journalists within the newsroom. One of the key findings is that each newsroom is very much connected to competing newsrooms by way of everyday practice-communities, both real and imagined.
IT’S LIKE A FAMILY! – THE UNITY AND COMMUNITY OF JOURNALISTS
1
‘It’s like a family!’ - The Unity and Community of Journalists
On connections between newsrooms and how
journalists share a community of practice.
PAPER PRESENTED AT ECREA 2014, LISBON, THE JOURNALISM SECTION.
FRIDAY THE 14
TH
OF NOVEMBER 2014. 14.30.
Line Hassall Thomsen,
Aarhus University, Denmark.
LHT@dac.au.dk
IT’S LIKE A FAMILY! – THE UNITY AND COMMUNITY OF JOURNALISTS
2
Abstract
To journalists at traditional broadcast media these are times of insecurity and opportunity, rapid
change and ever-growing competition. In the face of growing pressure, the unity and community of
journalists employed at traditional broadcast media is increasingly strengthened. This paper
explores the strong practice-community bonds existing between journalists employed at competing
traditional broadcast media.
Drawing on a two-year period of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the newsrooms of BBC
News, ITV News, TV Avisen and TV2 Nyhederne, the paper presents an anthropological approach
to studying journalists at work. During fieldwork, the study found journalists at competing
newscasters to be working in very similar ways, while expressing a strong relational bond. In order
to explore this bond, it is examined what is core and what is periphery to the journalists within the
newsroom. One of the key findings is that each newsroom is very much connected to competing
newsrooms by way of everyday practice-communities, both real and imagined.
Keywords: Journalism, practice communities, competition, professionalism, shared ideals,
newsroom studies, ethnography.
IT’S LIKE A FAMILY! – THE UNITY AND COMMUNITY OF JOURNALISTS
3
‘It’s like a family!’ - The Unity and Community of Journalists
On connections between newsrooms and how
journalists share a community of practice.
This September, after over thirty years working for Danish public service broadcaster DR, a well-
known journalist and presenter was fired. He was one of over 650 staff members from DR who was
made redundant due to economic problems at the broadcaster. However, this particular journalist,
whose name is Niels Lindvig, decided he did not want to leave. Instead, he chose to keep doing his
presenter and journalism jobs for the broadcaster. “As long as I don’t get thrown out of the building
I will stay working here, because I like my work,” says Lindvig (Lindvig in Journalisten,
6.10.2014). Lindvig is not alone in his denial of management decisions. Outpours of support have
come from journalist colleagues from competing news organisations across Denmark. As this paper
is being written, journalists from competing news organisations are supporting a nationwide petition
for Lindvig to stay working at DR, stating that: “Niels Lindvig is an extremely good journalist, who
makes an incredibly thorough, in-depth job” (according to the petition text, Skrivunder.net,
10.10.2014). This week (13.10.2014), Lindvig was told by his superior to leave the building. This
instantly caused his colleagues at DR’s program Orientering, and number of other DR programme
staff to go on a day-long strike. After this strike, they have called the Executive Director of DR for
a meeting in which she should explain the values behind making a good journalist redundant.
Further, a competing radio station, Radio 24 syv, have used Lindvig as a guest- commentator.
Lindvig’s case highlights some of the key findings I made during my recent study of journalism
culture: journalists share a bond, stronger than any bonds created by management rules and
organizational competition. One of the key values within the practice community of journalists is
that of being a Good Journalist. When the practice community sees their core value as being
threatened, journalists unite in order to protect their practice community and their profession.
A Study of Four Newsrooms
In January 2013, I finished a long-term ethnographic study of four newsrooms at Public service
television broadcasters in Denmark and the UK. The study began in 2007. For a period of 18
months, from May 2007 to October 2008, I worked alongside TV news journalists at ITV News and
BBC News - and in Denmark at TV2 Nyhederne and DR’s TV Avisen. After the initial fieldwork, I
IT’S LIKE A FAMILY! – THE UNITY AND COMMUNITY OF JOURNALISTS
4
returned to each newsroom for day-long visits and interviews, and throughout 2013 and still today
in 2014, I keep in contact via email or phone with journalists inside the different newsrooms.
It was the aim with my study to research and capture the everyday working life of TV news
journalists at national news broadcasters in Denmark and Britain today. More specifically, I was
keen to find out what values guide the choices, selections, judgement and everyday work of TV
journalists today.
Coming from a tradition of anthropology, I approached the reflection on professional
values from various angles: Observations, participation and interviews with journalists at work.
When analysing fieldwork, I focus on journalism as a profession, as this approach suits the shared
ideals I encountered during fieldwork.
TV news workers in public service broadcasters and at the two largest commercial
broadcasters in Britain and Denmark are the focus of this research. In this sense, the setting for my
research was not a pre-given place. Geographically, this took me as a participant observer to TV
newsrooms in two different countries, a multitude of sites, events and journeys where news workers
go in order to bring news back to the newsroom and to places where they go in their time off work –
such as the smoking room, the canteen or the pub.
On the first day of fieldwork, in each newsroom I was given a pass so I could enter all
the doors that other news staff could, I was given my own login to their computer system so I could
enter the shared virtual network, and then I was told to find a desk. But as none of the staff inside
the newsroom have their own personal desk, neither did I. Rather, every day I arranged to work
alongside a different person in the room and follow his/her daily work, either while working on a
screen or out of the newsroom to cover stories. When it seemed there was less interest in being
observed, or when the journalists I was observing was primarily waiting for news to happen, I
would find my own desk in the newsroom. I made some arrangements with reporters to follow them
on set days, but generally I did not pre-arrange who I would be working along with on a given day,
as the unpredictable nature of news work meant that staff did not feel able to pre-arrange a time or
place they would be in beforehand.
Seeking out Collegial Recognition
While studying everyday work inside the four newsrooms, I found journalists at all levels being
constantly corrected, controlled and watched over by editors. At first thought, this observation suits
the findings presented by Breed in 1955, in which he concluded that:
IT’S LIKE A FAMILY! – THE UNITY AND COMMUNITY OF JOURNALISTS
5
The newsman’s source of rewards is located not among the readers, who are
manifestly his clients, but among his colleagues and superiors. Instead of
adhering to societal and professional ideals, he redefines his values to the more
pragmatic level of the newsroom group.
(Breed, 1955:335)
While I found news workers to be aware of their employer’s policy, I did not find this awareness to
be the primary factor guiding their everyday work. Rather than working towards getting rewards
from both colleagues and superiors, as suggested by Breed above, I have found that news workers
first and foremost aspire to get rewards from journalism colleagues. Though mission statements and
the broadcaster’s policy were important to how news workers expressed their difference in working
styles across news divisions, I found what Breed refers to as the ‘ethical journalism norms’ (1955:
326) to be most important in the everyday work. In the following, I explore the notion of
professional norms emerging from practice communities across news divisions, broadcasters and
broadcast policies.
Following Connections between the Newsrooms
During fieldwork, I noticed how management staff within each newsroom often visit each other in
order to get inspiration and learn about the latest newsroom trends. These trips were one of the first
connections between newsrooms and newscasters that I took note of. Having found this connection
between the four broadcasters, I decided to look out for any other connections, follow them, enquire
about them and concentrate my research on the similarities that had at first so surprised me.
Following the different relations between newscasters, I thought it helpful to map out
the boundaries between those inside the practice of news work and those outside it. In doing so I
was particularly inspired by the idea of mapping relations in complex societies introduced by Wolf
(1966) and the onus of focusing on boundaries put forward by Etienne Wenger (1998a: 253-5). In
Wolf’s discussion of friendship relations, he notes that the formal structure of large institutions or a
state ‘exists alongside or intermingled with various other kinds of informal structure which are
interstitial, supplementary, parallel to it’ (Wolf, 1966:2). I find Wolf’s use of the term ‘interstitial’
interesting in relation to the ties of friendship particularly. Apt for describing the important, yet
mostly unseen connections, which the different broadcasters gain through friendship links, is this
IT’S LIKE A FAMILY! – THE UNITY AND COMMUNITY OF JOURNALISTS
6
medical term referring to that which is not seen with the naked eye but exists within or in relation to
parts of an organ or between groups or cells.
From this perspective, the mapping of relations existing across different media and
different broadcasters is crucial when wanting to view the full structure of each broadcaster’s news
division. As I found that friendships construct a boundary between those inside the community of
news workers and those outside of it, I began to explore these friendships across broadcasters. In
time, I came to view journalists’ friendships as community builders as well as border makers for
those outside of the profession. As I will illustrate in the following, looking out for connections
between the broadcasters meant that I came to see many more ways of reaching across the different
newsrooms and broadcasters than merely management going on inspiration trips to see each other’s
newsroom designs.
‘It’s Like a Family!’
It was during lunch hour in the early summer of 2007, as I was walking through the Danish
parliament with one of DR’s reporters, that I first took notice of the warm friendships existing
between journalists from rival networks. At every corridor we passed, another politician or reporter
would greet us, some politicians shared a joke, and some reporters shared a story or gave a tip to a
political story of the day. Then, as we reached Snapsetinget, which was introduced to me as the
canteen where DR staff had lunch, I noticed that all political journalists as well as politicians on all
levels were using this as their canteen too. As we had our lunch, different DR journalists, editors
and cameramen came to eat with us and have a chat, as did journalists from both print and TV
news. When I asked a DR reporter the reason why there did not seem to be a very strong boundary
neither between journalists from rival networks nor between the different politicians, he told me:
We are a little family here. We know each other so well. And then of course,
when journalists go on holidays with politicians, that relationship is
strengthened. (…) Those at TV2 are all friends of ours. The only fight we have
with each other is about being first with the questions and pictures.
DR Christiansborg reporter in conversation.
At the Danish Parliament, Christiansborg
after lunch in Snapsetinget, 21.06.2007
1
1
DR notebook, page 117.
IT’S LIKE A FAMILY! – THE UNITY AND COMMUNITY OF JOURNALISTS
7
At Christiansborg, I met another reporter from DR, who had worked both at TV2 and the Danish
broadsheet newspaper Berlingske Tidende, who expressed a similar opinion when I asked him
about “DR’s culture”:
There is no DR culture. We are all the same, journalists, who I have worked
with in many different newsrooms in Denmark.
DR Reporter in interview.
Christiansborg, Copenhagen
6.6.2007
2
The time I spent at Christiansborg, DR’s political bureau was my host, but the people I met and
talked to were journalists, reporters, camera men and editors from across all the different news
media in Denmark. The friendly and intimate relationship among journalists and politicians, much
akin to the descriptions given by Krause-Kjær (2003), was new to me. What was also new to me
was to see so many different journalists across different media platforms working together in such a
friendly, collaborative and united way. Though the friendships with politicians did appear genuine,
with journalists telling me that they often met with politicians socially, the community feeling
between all the different journalists seemed even warmer and more collegial. During fieldwork, I
waited hours outside meeting rooms in the large, long corridors of Christiansborg for the Prime
Minister and his spin-doctor to exit a room. On such occasions, which could take hours, a group of
about 15 news workers from both radio news, the news agency Ritzau, TV2, TV2 News, DR and
sometimes all the print news journalists too were gathered, and there did not appear to be any limit
to the camaraderie, and the sharing of both journalistic advice and ideas but also technical
equipment such as leads between all journalists present.
3
During these moments of waiting, there would be general banter between all news
workers, only broken by a reporter from TV2 News making a ‘live update’ from outside the closed
door. This TV2 News reporter would, as soon as she had a break from live broadcasting, often get
friendly, internal jokes and encouraging comments from journalists employed at rival broadcasters
such as: “you’re getting better and better at talking about what might be happening behind this
closed door!”, or sharing tips to what else the reporters could include in reports from Christiansborg
2
DR Field book 1, page 10.
3
At times, print journalists would be allowed to attend meetings where broadcast journalists were not allowed, as talk
during the meetings were allowed to be quoted in tomorrow’s papers but not broadcast on the day.
IT’S LIKE A FAMILY! – THE UNITY AND COMMUNITY OF JOURNALISTS
8
today. It was occasions such as these that made me first notice the connections, friendships and
collaborations between news workers in their everyday work.
4
When Colleagues feel like Siblings
The notion that a community of journalists is akin to a family unit was one that I heard not only
among the political journalists at Christiansborg, but from many different groups of journalists. The
crime reporters of BBC told me that they saw the group of crime journalists from different media as
a small family in which members often meet and of course help each other on the job. Likewise, I
met correspondents and war-reporters from ITV and DR who spoke of their friendship with other
correspondents whom they meet when out on a job in ways that one would describe family or
kinship relations such as another correspondent being ‘like a brother to me’ or describing very
private relations of sharing hotel room, dinners, stories, translators or camera equipment when in a
warzone with correspondents from other broadcast networks.
Through sharing practices, obstacles, threats and dangers of working in a war zone,
these journalists appeared to form particularly close bonds, which far outweighed the fact that they
were employed by rival networks. Adhering to the metaphor of a family, through listening to the
stories of shared experiences from correspondents covering shared subjects such as war, crime,
sport or politics, news workers define themselves as connected across networks through a blood
relation, which is stronger than the allegiance demanded by the individual employer.
Communities of Practice and the Imagined Colleagues
At all broadcasters I visited during this study, news workers had their own shared language, a
shared history and certain shared definitions of what good practice is. When I asked journalists, I
was told that working at the same broadcaster, is much like ‘sharing a nationality’. In time,
experiencing friendships and community between staff from rival broadcasters, such as the ones
described at Christiansborg, I came to wonder whether there was another relation that made news
staff across broadcasters perceive there to be a bond much stronger than that of sharing nationality.
Thus I came to reconsider the idea, expressed by one of TV2’s anchormen among others, that staff
perceive there to be a shared nationality feeling by employees working within the same broadcaster:
4
DR Field book 1, page 113.
IT’S LIKE A FAMILY! – THE UNITY AND COMMUNITY OF JOURNALISTS
9
It is a bit like a nationality feeling, you know? You see, if you live in Denmark,
you are Danish, and then you can begin to decipher what it means to be Danish.
If you are employed at TV2 then you are a ‘TV2-national’ one way or another.
TV2 anchor man
Interviewed in news studio just after presenting the news
9.6.2008
During fieldwork, I found each news worker I worked alongside to have a sense of belonging to the
rest of the colleagues in the newsroom akin to what the TV2 anchor man above describes as a
‘nationality feeling’. Though reporters, cameramen and programme editors may spend long hours
working alone, outside of the newsroom or inside a small, dark editing room they do not consider
themselves to be working alone, but as an important part of a wider community. This community,
as I see it, consists first and foremost of the perceived community of all people working in
journalism. On a more physical and practical level, however, news workers’ sense of belonging is
connected to all news workers employed at the same broadcaster, then with news workers outside of
the broadcaster. Within this entire community, much like a nationality, members of staff have their
own shared language, have a shared history and share definitions of what good practice is. This type
of belonging is not dissimilar to Etienne Wenger’s definition of communities of practice (1998a),
which has at its core the mutual engagement and ‘shared repertoire of communal resources
(routines, sensibilities, artifacts, vocabulary, styles, etc)’ (Wenger, 1998b:2), which only a shared
practice can bring about.
A map of perceived communities of practice
A community of practice in Wenger’s definition, comes into being when a group of people share
learning practices, such as the practice of editing, the practice of working for the news, the practice
of eating lunch together or sharing a certain hobby together common to all these practices is that
they matter to the people doing them, and from this starting point, a group sharing practice is
produced (ibid.). Some communities have a name; others do not. But most importantly, according
to Wenger, the community of practice creates bonds that are stronger than those of the broader
organisation or group of other people with whom one has not physically shared the practice. At the
strongest level of connection, Wenger’s definitions of a community of practice resemble the
description of friendships across broadcasters, which journalists have described in terms of strong
family relations.
IT’S LIKE A FAMILY! – THE UNITY AND COMMUNITY OF JOURNALISTS
10
Thus, using Wenger’s theory, I find it worthwhile to consider what he terms a
‘community of practice’ to be a practice community that has the ability to generate a close, family-
like relation. Consider each individual news worker in a newsroom: One could view the news
workers from one newsroom as sharing practice, and thus being in a community of practice with the
fellow news workers in the room. This general sense of belonging can be said to create a home for
identities and making the people within the group experience a nationality feeling akin to the
description provided by TV2’s anchorman above. These local identities, however, like the practice
of work, are closely linked to the global identity of one’s practice, in a constant ‘local-global’
interplay (Wenger, 1998a:161-163) – such as the interplay of being a news reporter working inside
a particular BBC newsroom and that of working as a journalist. According to Wenger, the local-
global interplay is an important aspect of the work of any community, as it connects a local practice
to a broader context in which practice is located.
In this sense, from Wenger’s perspective, the local, i.e. the newsroom, is equally
important to that of the global, i.e. belonging to the journalism profession. Thus, I find Wenger’s
theories interesting in order to explore how the community feeling among journalists goes much
further than the newsroom they are working in. Among journalists, I have found the Global to be at
times more important than the Local. That is to say, I have found news workers to primarily identify
themselves with their Global identity, of being ‘A Journalist’, or ‘working in news’. Thus, I have
found the interplay of the two categories, which Wenger terms the Local and the Global, to be led
by the least tangible and less physical of the two.
I find particularly fruitful the idea of connecting the local and the global in defining
the work of journalists, as I see journalists as never only engaged in creating media but also always
engaged in producing themselves as social persons in relation to others. Peterson (2003) has aptly
described the many layers of connection a journalist has: ‘Media production always and everywhere
involves epistemologies, heuristics, competences, and aesthetics, as well as social organizations,
hierarchies, rituals, and technologies, and all of these together constitute the worlds in which these
producers live and work’ (Peterson, 2003: 162).
In Wenger’s definition of communities of practice, the imagined communities, such as
those of other workers doing a similar job, in a similar profession are important. This connectedness
with a greater mission, a greater role in society, a shared ideal of the journalism profession I have
found to be present among news workers at all levels in the four newsrooms. News workers within
one newsroom thus feel a connection with news workers at other broadcasters with whom they may
IT’S LIKE A FAMILY! – THE UNITY AND COMMUNITY OF JOURNALISTS
11
never have worked. This connection can be viewed as a community of practice shared with
imagined colleagues. Adding the importance of imagined communities to news workers’ identity
feeling, the sense of belonging to a nationality, is just one of many multi-communities of practice to
which news workers have a sense of belonging.
In order to attempt an illustration of the communities of practice in which I have found news
workers participate, ranging from the Local to the Global, at least seven different layers of
communities of practice should be highlighted. These seven different layers consist of groups, such
as ‘Co-workers in the newsroom’, ‘All staff in the newsroom’ and those in the ‘Same role, at
another broadcaster’, and above all, ‘all working in journalism’ all groups that news staff talk
about as important parts of their community. In exploring the way members of staff talk about their
community in the everyday, I have found there to be seven such groups working in a constant
closely knit interplay among all news staff. In the seven layers illustrated below, level 1 and 2
encompass the Local, level 3-6 consist of the global on a physical level and the seventh level
encompasses a less tangible factor, namely the entire journalism profession comprising shared
crafts of journalism:
IT’S LIKE A FAMILY! – THE UNITY AND COMMUNITY OF JOURNALISTS
12
Mapping of the primary layers of communities that each news worker perceives a belonging to.
IT’S LIKE A FAMILY! – THE UNITY AND COMMUNITY OF JOURNALISTS
13
It is of course not possible to map the entire group of people that news workers may experience a
sense of community with, as a sense of community feeling is a personal matter, which is different to
different people. Female journalists, for instance, may feel a sense of community with other female
journalists, just as news workers from a particular journalism school may experience a sense of
community with those who have graduated from the same school. The above figure should only
serve as an illustration of some of the primary connections that I have heard news workers express
in their everyday work – connections which, when perceived as being particularly strong, were
described as akin to family bonds.
Studying the above attempt at mapping the levels of belonging, it is interesting to note
how many of the levels are imagined (i.e. not physical or tangible). It is also interesting to see the
extent to which each individual news worker connects to global others, such as news workers at
different broadcasters (level 5), and those employed at different types of media, such as print and
radio (level 7). From this illustration, it is only the first four levels of staff that the TV2 anchorman
describes as a nationality. Staying with his metaphor, the next two levels (5 and 6) can be referred
to as the world, and the last (level 7) can be viewed as the entire universe, in which news workers
see themselves and their shared larger community of belonging. I do not see all of the levels as
connecting staff in family-like ties, but have found that across each of these perceived communities
talked of as family-like, ties may develop which are much stronger than those of any of the
individual first 1-6 categories of practice-communities.
As illustrated in my figure of perceived levels of practice communities above, the one
overarching practice community within which all define themselves is that of ‘working in
journalism’. During my time within the newsrooms and within editorial meetings, I have found this
shared category to be used in arguments of how to behave, act and work in the everyday. Spending
time with journalists and news workers it was not uncommon to hear members of staff explain their
behaviour with the fact that they belong to the profession of journalism: ‘I had to do it, I am a
journalist’, a news worker would say to explain why she had to interrogate her boyfriend upon
returning home late at night. Similarly, a reporter at DR told me that the way she talked to her
friends was mostly with a lack of patience as she was preoccupied with the ideas of a news story in
her mind, for as she said: ‘I am a journalist!’
IT’S LIKE A FAMILY! – THE UNITY AND COMMUNITY OF JOURNALISTS
14
As the illustration above conveys, I have experienced staff to feel a sense of belonging in multiple
layers, which links the individual workers to many more people than those they meet in the
everyday, thus having what Wenger would term ‘multiple modes of belonging’. Being with news
workers I have found all the different layers to be important for the everyday work, but one over-
arching layer, that of ‘working in journalism’ (level 7), is talked about in the everyday much more
than all the other layers together. As ‘working in journalism’ is a description which all the news
workers I have studied use to categorise their work, this is a practice definition that they all share.
Often, I have found this shared category to be used in arguments of how to behave, act and work in
the everyday. I shall return to this issue shortly. First, I would like to illustrate the above figure
through a case study.
Case study: a BBC Crime Reporter’s communities of practice
In order to describe further the above figure of layers of community, I will illustrate the connections
perceived by a reporter at BBC News, who specialises in crime stories. First, the reporter
experiences a sense of belonging to those in the newsroom whom he works with and shares practice
with on an everyday basis, much like Wenger’s definition of communities of practice. These
colleagues may be producers, editors, runners, cameramen and other reporters. Together they share
a vocabulary, e.g. related to the BBC News Division’s mission statements, and at the end of the day
it is their collaborative practice, which creates the news bulletin. As some members of this
community repeatedly share working practice and history of practice, this bond may begin to be
perceived as forming ties that are referred to in metaphors of family relations.
Additionally, a BBC crime reporter experiences a sense of belonging to the group of
reporters with another specialism, such as health, sport, politics or entertainment. These fellow
reporters do not work together physically, but they have the same challenges in their everyday,
sometimes they meet after work to discuss work, they share practices, vocabulary and everyday
traditions.
Apart from the sense of belonging he feels with those employed by the same
broadcaster, the BBC crime reporter experiences a sense of belonging to a specific group of crime
reporters from other broadcasters and from the newspapers that he often meets near crime scenes
that he reports on around the UK. These reporters share vocabulary, they help each other and
discuss their practical work, again much like Wenger’s definition of communities of practice.
Though these reporters come from different media platforms and different newsrooms, during
IT’S LIKE A FAMILY! – THE UNITY AND COMMUNITY OF JOURNALISTS
15
repeated sharing of practice they may form strong bonds of friendship, which they perceive as being
as close as they believe family bonds to be.
However, this BBC crime reporter feels a sense of belonging to at least two other
groups that he never or rarely meets in the everyday, namely the entire group of people working for
BBC and the entire group of people who work as reporters and journalists, not only in the UK but
worldwide. Being employed at BBC, the reporter feels a sense of belonging with staff from the
entire broadcaster. Therefore, should he meet a person employed at BBC’s drama department, the
two may connect in sharing what it feels like to work ‘for the beeb’; thus sharing a community of
practice between them, which is imagined as it is not experienced in the everyday. Similarly to the
other communities, the communities of all staff working for the BBC to a certain extent help each
other and share a language and history.
Another group of people that this BBC reporter feels an imagined sense of belonging
to is even less tangible, namely the entire community of people who work in the same profession of
journalism, worldwide. This group of people consists literally of any person, who works as a
journalist, and the reporter feels a strong sense of belonging to this group and he defines himself
according to this group at all times. When this BBC crime reporter goes on holiday and happens to
meet a person who works as a journalist, he will instantly sense a feeling of belonging to a shared
community. Particularly if the journalist he meets is a TV journalist working for an established
national broadcaster, our BBC crime reporter will feel a bond of practice and identity. Though he
has never before met this journalist, he will find that they share a vocabulary using the same British
words in the everyday such as ‘OB’, ‘VO’, ‘ATTACK’ and ‘SYNC’. Also, these two journalists
have similar operational values such as the importance of making a ‘Good News Story’, and the
BBC crime reporter expects to be helped and feels happy to help this person as they are in a shared
professional community. If interested, the BBC reporter will be invited to visit newsrooms and
broadcasters that he meets on holiday. Indeed, during fieldwork, I found many journalists to return
from holidays saying that they had met other journalists on their holidays and therefore had gone to
visit another newsroom on vacation.
As illustrated in the example above, the practice of work, working together or working in relating
fields all foster a community between the journalists and news workers across different
broadcasters. From this perspective, I find Wenger’s definitions of communities of practice apt for
illustrating some of the core connections and boundaries that I have observed among news workers.
According to Wenger’s definitions, shared practice works as an exclusive and excluding
IT’S LIKE A FAMILY! – THE UNITY AND COMMUNITY OF JOURNALISTS
16
connection, as ‘Participants form close relationships and develop idiosyncratic ways of engaging
with one another, which outsiders cannot easily enter’ (1998: 113) . I have discussed this particular
type of boundary making elsewhere in descriptions of the challenges in getting access to study news
workers (see Thomsen, 2013 and Thomsen, 2014). Just as I have experienced that the shared
working practices act as a boundary keeping others, such as academic researchers, out, I have seen
the shared working practice working as a boundary for keeping staff in. It is this strengthened
practice community that journalists describe using metaphors of family relations. Keeping those
sharing the practice in and others out is a key element in Wenger’s notion of communities of
practice. According to Wenger, the mechanism that keeps participants inside the community is
constantly reinforced – as the repeatedly shared practice reinforces the shared language, strengthens
practice-based relationships and further deepens communities of practice (ibid, 114: 253-254).
The feeling of always being at work
As illustrated in the figure of perceived levels of practice communities above, the one overarching
practice community within which all define themselves is that of all staff ‘working in journalism’. I
have found the shared role of ‘working in journalism ’to be an identity, which all the news workers
I have studied see as central to their life both in and out of work hours. Thus, the role of ‘journalist’
is one that staff members appear to take on at all times. As a journalist who had presented the news
at TV2 for the last ten years told me:
The problem for a journalist is that you never hang up your brain on a hook [as
you leave work], and say ‘I am non-existing to the world’. One is always a little at
work.
Anchorman at TV2
interviewed at his desk in the studio right after the news bulletin
9.6.2008
The idea that staff should always consider themselves at work was often talked about among
journalists. They shared these stories of never being out of the role of a journalist both among each
other in the everyday and with me in recorded interviews. It appeared that most of the news workers
I studied had stories of how they give high priority to their role as a journalist in their everyday
lives. They told me how they would be on holiday and come across a news story, or how an
experience they had had outside of work was made into a news story. The staff members who told
these stories appeared proud of how they used their time off work to do journalism. As such, the
IT’S LIKE A FAMILY! – THE UNITY AND COMMUNITY OF JOURNALISTS
17
stories appeared to work to share the ideal of being in a closely knit community with all others
working in journalism; a community in which all share the idea that once one works in journalism
then one is always a journalist.
These stories were encouraged, laughed about and appeared to be prestigious to share
among colleagues. For instance, during a lunch break, one DR reporter told me and a few of her
colleagues of how she had had to cut short this year’s New Year’s party as a story had emerged near
the venue for her New Year’s party. During the festive dinner at her friend’s house, she had heard
noise from the street. The noise came from a group of youths throwing bricks they had collected
from the pavement. Soon the police arrived and the youth hurled bricks at them. Resolutely, the DR
reporter had left the party, called her newsroom and within minutes she was reporting live from the
clash between youth and police to all DR’s media platforms. Thus, the story of the DR reporter’s
off-duty live reporting was suggestive of her giving high priority to the role of being a journalist
rather than that of being a private individual and friend celebrating New Year’s Eve.
In the vein of the story from the DR reporter, staff at all four broadcasters likened their duty to be
always at work to a doctor’s oath, in that they felt obliged to work on a news story at any time they
saw a ‘good news story’. When I asked staff what their partners thought of this priority, some told
me that if friends or partners did not understand this obligation to journalism they would have to
leave. Others, suggested that if their partners did not understand how much journalism meant to
them, then they did not understand each other thus hinting that the profession of journalism had
become a part of their very identity. During fieldwork, I did meet a couple of reporters who had
recently started a family, who expressed frustration with the fact that working in news made for
such unstable working hours thus contradicting the ideal of thinking oneself always a journalist
and always potentially at work. The staff members who told me of their frustrations with the idea of
constantly being at work told me so always in privacy and never in the newsroom with other
colleagues able to hear.
Management often encouraged staff to collect news stories when outside the work
place. At ITV, a news editor told me that it would be ideal if all staff would go to their local pub
and collect stories from the people, and listen out for what stories people cared about. At DR, the
head of news encouraged his staff to look for stories when on holiday (according to news staff). The
head of news at TV2 told me in a recorded interview that for a journalist it is crucial to ‘open up
one’s ears when at confirmations, silver weddings and weddings and funerals and whatever one
attends.’ To him, being curious at all times is the journalist’s ‘damned duty and privilege’. To him,
IT’S LIKE A FAMILY! – THE UNITY AND COMMUNITY OF JOURNALISTS
18
this duty to always be at work is not just one that he expects the TV2 news staff to take on, as the
duty is one which all working in journalism have.
When I visited the private homes of some of the news journalists I studied, I found the
decoration of their homes to revolve around TV sets. Some had TV sets in the bathroom, the living
room and the kitchen. Most journalists I visited subscribed to international news channels at home.
When I asked why there was so many TV sets in their home, journalists would tell me that they felt
they ‘had to be updated’, and ‘didn’t want to miss a story’. The tendency to decorate ones home
with TV-sets is closely linked to the journalist trait which I have termed The News Junkie (see
Thomsen, 2013). Furthermore, staff told me that it was important for them to be constantly updated,
as they were always preparing to go to work the following day. In this sense, the fact that TV sets
take up so much private space in the homes of news workers illustrates how these members of staff
consider their role of a journalist to be constant; they are at work even when at home. Though staff
did not talk of their many TV sets in their private homes as work-related, the presence of TV sets
illustrates how staff perceived their role as a journalist to require that they be always at work, and
always preparing for the next news story.
As social outings were common at most of the newsrooms I spent time in, during
fieldwork I was soon invited to join staff for a drink after work. Though other more personal topics
of conversation would arise during a night in the pub with journalist colleagues, and though
journalists would share drinks with other pub goers who were not journalists, there was always a
sense that the journalists were at work, planning and scouting for good stories to be worked on the
following day. Thus, if a fellow pub-goer mentioned something that the journalists present
considered a good story, however drunk the journalists might appear, they would swiftly begin
taking notes on notepads brought along for that purpose, or take phone numbers for leads for a
story. I witnessed a few news stories emerge through this practice, and many more stories were
inspired from such conversations in the pub. In this sense, when journalists went out after work, it
appeared they were still journalists at work, together in the search for new stories and new insights
to topics that engaged the public. In this way, I noticed that news workers defined themselves, their
private homes and their actions by their profession, whether at work or outside of work. Such
practices made me regard the journalists as always perceiving themselves to be at work, and sharing
an identity feeling, which goes beyond the newsroom and the broadcaster and is made up of ideals
of what it means to be a journalist.
IT’S LIKE A FAMILY! – THE UNITY AND COMMUNITY OF JOURNALISTS
19
Effects of family-like bonds across broadcasters
As illustrated in my description of the communities of practice, which a BBC crime reporter may
experience, I see the networks of community of news workers to be much stronger and more
extensive; the network extends further than just to the colleagues they meet every day. To illustrate
the closeness among news workers, who are not employed at the same broadcaster, I find the
metaphor of a family interesting. At first sight, the community feeling may appear to only comprise
those in the near vicinity, such as the journalist’s colleague’s, and the broadcaster for which s/he
works, particularly considering the fact that the members of staff who I have worked alongside
appear to be so proud of the specific broadcaster they work for. However, when a specific group of
cameramen from TV2 regularly meet a specific group of cameramen from DR when out filming,
these cameramen soon form a friendship shaped around their shared work and shared practices of
work. Similarly, when the same war correspondents from different broadcasters find each other
doing similar reporting jobs in warzones around the world, these correspondents soon develop a
bond, which often grows to be close friendship and a shared community of practice, which extends
beyond their being employed at rival broadcasters.
I have found these different connections, made across broadcasters and across media
platforms, to be very important in the everyday life of news staff in many ways. Among those
employed within the news division as journalists, with whom I have spent most of my fieldwork, I
have experienced the contact and connections with journalists of other media to be crucial to the
work produced. First, the many friendships established across newsrooms mean that journalists in
one newsroom are very aware of what stories journalists at other newsrooms are working on or take
an interest in at any time. If one broadcaster has a journalistic scoop one day, journalists at the rival
broadcaster will find out about it before the story is broadcast. Such information would often arrive
at one newsroom through a journalist receiving a text message or call from a friend working at
another broadcaster. Attaining this knowledge of the other broadcaster’s work influences the
journalists’ judgment of what stories should be considered important. Other studies of news making
have focused on such connections and mutual inspiration among newsmakers from different news
divisions as a ‘striking routine reliance on other media’, with strong tendencies toward ‘pack’ or
‘copycat journalism’ (Preston, 2009:57). Introduced by Timothy Crouch in 1973, ‘pack journalism’
is seen as synonymous with all that the journalism profession aspires not to be: Homogeneous,
unoriginal and non-exclusive. Studies of ‘pack’ journalism have pointed toward consistency as a
‘distinct and unspoken industrial routine and norm whereby copycat news making minimises risk
IT’S LIKE A FAMILY! – THE UNITY AND COMMUNITY OF JOURNALISTS
20
and uncertainty in defining what is newsworthy’ (Preston, 2009:57, see also Shoemaker and Reese,
1996:123-125).
In her study of terrestrial TV news culture and content, Harrison (2000) describes how
the similarity in planning processes and a similar everyday working routine makes for a
homogenous product. However, among journalists, the very notion that the similar ways of working
generate similar content is seen as ‘toxic’ (Porter, 2005). The close connection between journalists
and the apparent agreement with the ideals of the journalism profession, which I encountered during
my research, stands in stark contrast to the occupational myth of originality and exclusivity. As
American newspaper journalist Tim Porter writes: ‘Pack journalism is toxic. It is an addiction to
faux news and lazy reporting. But it is also easily corrected because it requires no additional
resources, news hole or time – the Holy Trinity of rationalizations for why newspapers don’t
change. To kick the pack, all that’s needed is the will to do it’ (Porter, 2005, emphasis also in text).
The argument that journalists should stay critical and open-minded in order to constantly combat
the critical effects of journalists being and working in similar ways is one that I frequently
encountered when discussing the everyday work of journalists.
Apart from the risk of pack journalism, I have observed a second impact that
friendships and contacts between broadcasters can have on individual journalists, namely that
friendships across broadcasters can become a closed forum for sharing, testing and confirming
whether a news story is good. This sharing may inform their work and help define what is
newsworthy, while also strengthening the shared notion of professionalism among journalists. In his
study on professionalism, Freidson (2001) describes the sharing of knowledge among practitioners
as crucial to strengthening the profession. The alternative, according to Freidson, is destructive. As
he states:
It is even more destructive when knowledge or technique is withheld as a legally
defined and protected trade secret rather than becoming part of the common
body of knowledge held by all practitioners. Secrecy is the anathema to the
growth of knowledge and technique (…).
(Freidson, 2001: 219)
IT’S LIKE A FAMILY! – THE UNITY AND COMMUNITY OF JOURNALISTS
21
The trouble with family-like practice communities
(…) journalists are in an underdog position compared to editors, owners, and
sources. This underdog position, coupled with a firm belief amongst journalists
that they are (and should be) free and autonomous agents, cause tensions within
the organisation.
(Melin, 2008: 24)
Above, Melin describes how the idea of being an ’underdog’ compared to editors, owners and
sources conflicts with a shared ideal among journalists of being free and autonomous. Among the
news journalists I have worked alongside, I have found a similar tension between being asked to do
tasks by an editor they do not consider good and their own ideal of being a good journalist. Due to
some editors or producers not being considered good among their practice sharing colleagues, I
have thus experienced journalists to intentionally neglect to do what an editor has told them to do.
In this way, journalists negotiate the type of tensions described by Melin above.
As I have experienced the different communities of practice among journalists, it is
when a practice community is perceived to be particularly strong that staff members of begin to
describe relations to be as strong as family relations. I have found this depth in relations to be
gained by repeated sharing of practice by the same group of people – a definition akin to Wenger’s
notion of deep relations within practice communities.
That staff members care about practices is no doubt in the interest of the broadcasters
and news divisions at large. When the interest in practice makes staff become closely connected
across broadcasters, this may also be in the interest of the broadcasters, who can learn from the deep
connections with other staff and other news stories from other media. However, when in time these
connections become strong practice communities, which may be perceived to share bonds as strong
as those of a family, this may not be in the individual broadcaster’s interest. Indeed, the close
family-like bonds may become stronger than the bonds perceived to exist between individual staff
and the broadcaster, and what these communities define as good practice may not necessarily be the
same as what the broadcaster defines as good practice. Similarly, it is likely that not all practice
communities will agree with the editors employed to manage news staff.
The trouble with communities of practice becoming so closely united that they may
describe their connection like that of a family, is that the practice community may begin to exclude
or distance itself from those outside of the group. This fragmentation within a news division or
IT’S LIKE A FAMILY! – THE UNITY AND COMMUNITY OF JOURNALISTS
22
across a larger group of news workers is what Wenger has discussed as the coupling of an
‘organisational asset and organisational liabilities, but in complementary ways’ (Wenger,
1998a:256). To Wenger, the organisation will benefit from the created boundaries between different
practice communities, as boundaries become learning opportunities. Wenger’s research of practice
communities is centred on fieldwork he has done among medical claims processors operated by a
large US insurance company. Among these professionals, the idea of boundaries being a useful
learning tool may be relevant. However, regarding journalists, I have found boundaries and ideas of
certain individuals not accepted as ‘good’ among specific communities of practice to be
problematic and at times obstructive to the shared work.
Though the boundaries defined by a specific group of people may function as a
fruitful tool for learning about what is defined as ‘good’ and what is seen as ‘bad’ news work, I
have at times seen the boundaries of a group as compromising the everyday work and create
unproductive fragments and divisions within the newsroom. When one group of reporters does not
accept a specific editor as part of their community, or when an anchorman does not like the work of
a certain scriptwriter, this is not advantageous to the everyday work. For Wenger’s more positive
idea of boundaries between practice communities to be considered, it would be worthwhile for
journalists from the different communities to openly share what they define as good work and what
they define as bad – thus openly discussing the internal disagreements with certain news staff,
rather than keeping them secret within the closely knit groups of news staff.
Conclusions
Throughout this paper I have illustrated some of the many connections and relations existing across
media platforms and broadcasters. As has been illustrated, at all levels within the newsroom a close
contact and connection is constantly at work with other colleagues in the news business. I have
explored some of the specific connections between newsrooms and introduced the idea that when
news workers across different broadcasters are connected and constantly in touch with one another,
it influences the way they work. Returning to the notion of a nationality feeling among staff
employed at the same broadcaster, I have introduced a bond stronger than that of a nationality,
which is shared among news workers across broadcasters, namely that of being in a shared family. I
introduced this unity as connected to a shared pride in working as a journalist, a pride that both
unites all staff and distances them from those outside of the journalism profession.
IT’S LIKE A FAMILY! – THE UNITY AND COMMUNITY OF JOURNALISTS
23
Across different newsrooms, journalists and news workers in general meet when out
covering stories, and at these meetings staff form friendships that they describe through metaphors
of family relations. I have argued that these imagined bonds of blood relation are perceived to be
much stronger than the bonds established between employees of the same broadcaster. Using
Wenger’s definitions of communities of practice I have illustrated how news workers from one
broadcaster recognize a relation to many different groups of news staff across broadcasters and
media platforms. It is when these communities of practice are perceived to be particularly strong
that staff may consider the relations to be as strong as they imagine family relations to be.
I have described the friendship relations across broadcasters as affecting the way staff
work, and the way the community of journalists may stand together against pressure from those
outside of the profession. Additionally, I have highlighted some of the problematic consequences of
strong bonds perceived to be family-like within practice communities for the news divisions. I have
identified the central challenge for the news management to be the potential that bonds between
news workers can become stronger than those between employee and his/her broadcaster and
management. The current controversy surrounding DR journalist Niels Lindvig being made
redundant have made public the many practice-community bonds existing between broadcasters.
The case is particularly interesting as it has made news journalists openly declare that they see a
mismatch between management ideals and the ideals of their profession.
References
Breed, Warren (1955): ‘Social Control in the Newsroom: A Functional Analysis’ in Social Forces,
33 (4): 326-35.
Freidson, Eliot (2001): Professionalism, the Third Logic: On the Practice of Knowledge. Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press, in association with Blackwell Publishers Ltd.
Harrison, Jackie (2000): Terrestial TV news in Britain: The Culture of Production. Manchester:
Manchester University Press.
Journalisten (16.10.2014): ’Fyret Nils Lindvig nægter at blive væk fra DR” by Kerstin Bruun-
Hansen in Journalisten.dk. See: http://journalisten.dk/fyret-niels-lindvig-naegter-blive-vaek-
fra-dr
Krause-Kjær, Niels (2003): Den politiske landsby - om Christiansborg, journalisterne og
politikerne. Aarhus: Forlaget Ajour.
Melin, Margareta (2008): Gendered Journalism Cultures: Strategies and Tactics in the Fields of
Journalism in Britain and Sweden. Malmö: JMG, University of Göteborg.
http://dspace.mah.se/dspace/bitstream/handle/2043/12450/Inlaga%20final;jsessionid=35319A
9C0A02348C7CE7ADF67D101EA2?sequence=2 [accessed 5.5.2012].
Peterson, Mark A. (2010): ‘Getting the News in New Delhi’ in Bird, Elizabeth S. (ed.): The
Anthropology of News & Journalism: Global Perspectives. Bloomington: Indiana University
Press.
Peterson, Mark A. (2003): Anthropology & Mass Communication: Media and Myth in the New
Millenium. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books.
Porter, Tim (2005): ‘Kicking the Pack Journalism habit’ in First Draft by Tim Porter:
Newspapering, Readership & Relevance in a Digital Age. April 06, 2005.
http://www.timporter.com/firstdraft/archives/000433.html [accessed 5.12.2012].
Preston, Paschal (2009): Making the News: Journalism and News Cultures in Europe. Abingdon,
Oxon: Routledge.
Shoemaker, Pamela J. and Reese, Stephen (1996): Mediating the Message: Theories of Influences
on Mass Media Content. New York: Longman.
Skrivunder.net (10.10.2014): http://www.skrivunder.net/niels_lindvig
Thomsen, Line Hassall (2014): 'Ethnographic Fieldwork: Studying Journalists at Work' In SAGE
Research Methods Cases. London, United Kingdom: SAGE Publications, Ltd. doi:
http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/978144627305014539108. Link to abstract here.
Thomsen, Line Hassall (2013): New Struggles, Old Ideals : The Everyday struggle towards being a
'Good Journalist' inside public service TV newsrooms in the UK and Denmark. Aarhus:
Aarhus University. Institut for Æstetik og Kommunikation, 2013. 350 p.Ph.D.thesis
Wenger, Etienne (1998a): Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity. Cambridge:
University Press.
Wenger, Etienne (1998b): ‘Communities of Practice Learning as a Social System’ in Systems
Thinker, June, 1998. http://www.co-i-l.com/coil/knowledge-garden/cop/lss.shtml [accessed
20.10.2011].
Wolf, Eric, R. (1966): ‘Kinship, Friendship, and Patron-Client Relations in Complex Societies’ in
Banton, Michael (ed.): The Social Anthropology of Complex Societies, 1-22. Association of
Social Anthropologists Monograph, London: Routledge.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any citations for this publication.
Chapter
The anthropologist's study of complex societies receives its major justification from the fact that such societies are not as well organized and tightly knit. There are political resources that are essential to the operation of the system. This chapter explores in detail the dialectical interplay between formal structures and the different kinds of informal associations among persons operating within the structures of structural-functionalist titleholders. The formal framework of economic and political power exists alongside or intermingled with various other kinds of informal structures that are interstitial, supplementary, or parallel to it. This study presents a great deal of information about the hidden mechanisms of complex societies. Tracing the origin and circulation of the models of etiquette structuring these sets would also reveal much of the social dynamic, of the changing distribution of forces in the social body.
Article
Making the News provides a cross-national perspective on key features of journalism and news-making cultures and the changing media landscape in contemporary Europe. Focusing on the key trends, practices and issues in contemporary journalism and news cultures, Paschal Preston maps the major contours of change as well as the broader industrial, organizational, institutional and cultural factors shaping journalism practices over the past two decades. Moving beyond the tendency to focus on journalism trends and newsmaking practices within a single country, Making the News draws on unique, cross-national research examining current journalism practices and related newsmaking cultures in eleven West, Central and East European countries, including in-depth interviews with almost 100 senior journalists and subsequent workshop discussions with other interest groups. Making the News links reviews and discussions of the existing literature to original research engaging with the views and experiences of journalists working at the 'coal face' of contemporary newsmaking practices, to provide an original study and useful student text.
Article
The abstract for this document is available on CSA Illumina.To view the Abstract, click the Abstract button above the document title.
Article
This essay argues that the success of organizations depends on their ability to design themselves as social learning systems and also to participate in broader learning systems such as an industry, a region, or a consortium. It explores the structure of these social learning systems. It proposes a social definition of learning and distinguishes between three `modes of belonging' by which we participate in social learning systems. Then it uses this framework to look at three constitutive elements of these systems: communities of practice, boundary processes among these communities, and identities as shaped by our participation in these systems.
Article
This new work explores the meaning and implications of professionalism as a form of social organization. Eliot Freidson formalizes professionalism by treating it as an ideal type grounded in the political economy; he presents the concept as a third logic, or a more viable alternative to consumerism and bureaucracy. He asks us to imagine a world where workers with specialized knowledge and the ability to provide society with especially important services can organize and control their own work, without directives from management or the influence of free markets. Freidson then appraises the present status of professionalism, exploring how traditional and national variations in state policy and organization are influencing the power and practice of such professions as medicine and law. Widespread attacks by neoclassical economists and populists, he contends, are obscuring the social value of credentialism and monopolies. The institutions that sustain professionalism in our world are simply too useful to both capital and state to dismiss.
Book
Anthropological interest in mass communication and media has exploded in the last two decades, engaging and challenging the work on the media in mass communications, cultural studies, sociology and other disciplines. This is the first book to offer a systematic overview of the themes, topics and methodologies in the emerging dialogue between anthropologists studying mass communication and media analysts turning to ethnography and cultural analysis. Drawing on dozens of semiotic, ethnographic and cross-cultural studies of mass media, it offers new insights into the analysis of media texts, offers models for the ethnographic study of media production and consumption, and suggests approaches for understanding media in the modern world system. Placing the anthropological study of mass media into historical and interdisciplinary perspectives, this book examines how work in cultural studies, sociology, mass communication and other disciplines has helped shape the re-emerging interest in media by anthropologists.