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Making business news in the digital age
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Making business news in the digital age
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Content
MAKING BUSINESS NEWS IN THE DIGITAL AGE
by
Nikki Usher
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(COMMUNICATION)
May 2011
Copyright 2011 Nikki Usher
ii
DEDICATION
To my amazing and wonderful wife, Shelly Layser. You bring joy to every day we spend
together.
iii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This project would have been impossible without the tremendous support that I have
received at the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism. I extend my deepest
gratitude to my advisor, Larry Gross. He has been steadfast in his support and his subtle
encouragement. Larry has an uncanny sense of what makes a good project and what questions
will enable quality research. He understood the dissertation I wanted to do from the moment I
mentioned Herbert Gans‘ Deciding What’s News (1979) during my first year. He helped make my
own attempt to revisit this classic a reality. I tried to count our email exchanges, and it was nearly
impossible.
Larry has been constantly accessible for every moment of panic, every new idea, and
every twist and turn in this project, and, in fact, for all projects during my time in graduate school.
He has given me so much attention and devoted so much time to reading my work and to
providing feedback. Throughout, he has encouraged me to focus on the work and not the
emotions that come along with the work, and I have been better for his counsel. He uses his
many, many years in the field to wield his considerable influence judiciously, and Larry knew
exactly when to step in to make sure that this project would remain a reality. From everything
from the support to send me to New York to the time he has spent as a reader to his amazing
advice, I cannot thank him enough.
I am also privileged to have the support of a tremendous committee at USC. Patricia
Riley has encouraged me to go into the field, and has given me the chance to spend time working
in newsrooms. Together, we have explored change in places far from USC, such as at NPR and
The Christian Science Monitor. She has shown me how to be a professional field researcher and
taught me to navigate the vagaries of dealing with real human subjects. Patti also helped pick out
my wedding dress, and has served as a second mom here at USC.
iv
When Geneva Overholser came to USC in Fall 2008 as the Director of the School of
Journalism, I felt so tremendously lucky. She is directly responsible for bringing me out of the
―death of journalism‖ mentality to the ―rebirth of journalism‖ perspective, and for this, I am
forever grateful. She is a practitioner who understands the value of research and is a visionary
leader taking the school in a terrific direction. Furthermore, Geneva recognizes the importance of
creating a conversation between journalists and academics, and has encouraged me to do so. Her
wise advice about how to approach my research and how to recharge my thinking has been
invaluable.
Henry Jenkins‘ arrival at USC was also a fortuitous turn of events for me. Henry did not
mind joining this committee without really knowing me, and he immediately began giving
tremendous feedback as if I had been his student for many years. His precise approach to
understanding the audience has been so important in challenging me to broaden my own
horizons. Henry makes the difficult seem manageable and has shared his newest ideas with me.
These ideas, in turn, have shaped how I think about journalism in the digital age.
I would be remiss not to thank Annenberg professors who have also been endless
cheerleaders for my work. Geoff Cowan took the time to serve on my qualifying exam
committee. But more than that, Geoff has encouraged me in my research, both when he was dean
and now in his position as an endowed chair. He is a tremendous role model for any academic or
any successful professional. I am also convinced he knows absolutely everyone. Sarah Banet-
Weiser has also been a source of great support, both for my exams, but also as a sounding board
for new ideas. She has been the person I have turned to when I have failed to understand theory,
which has been often. I also have to acknowledge others who have helped me along the way.
Sandra Ball-Rokeach, Peggy McLaughlin, Tom Goodnight, Sheila Murphy, David Westphal, and
Jonathan Aronson have been terrific sources of advice and support. The staff at Annenberg,
v
especially Christine Lloreda and Carol Kretzer, have made all my travel possible and made sure I
had money to eat.
Outside Annenberg, I have been lucky enough to be taken under the wing of tremendous
scholars. Both Pablo Boczkowski and Michael Schudson could have ignored me when I chose not
to go to their schools for my graduate studies. Instead, they have become invaluable contacts for
advice. They have given me feedback on more than just my dissertation, but on other projects and
assisted with professional development. I am so lucky to have had their kind help. Professor
Herbert Gans, as he would like to be called, has also been so helpful. He was the reason I started
this project. While I am not sure he will like anything he reads in this dissertation, I have enjoyed
his endless challenges. He has given me time and attention and tremendous feedback. I am lucky
to have met him in New York. Harvard professors Jim Hankins, Jim Kloppenberg, and my senior
thesis advisor, Mark Molesky, started me on this journey as an undergraduate and have been with
me ever since.
I also, of course, owe the staff of The New York Times my enduring thanks. In particular,
I want to recognize Kevin McKenna for making this dissertation a reality. Thanks to Pablo‘s
earlier work at The Times in the late ‘90s, McKenna understood that a research in the newsroom
wouldn‘t be a disruption. He was my Sherpa, as Bill Schmidt assigned him to be, and McKenna
answered every question I asked. He was also charged with vetting this manuscript, which was
stipulated as a condition when The Times agreed to let me in the newsroom. Larry Ingrassia,
business desk editor, agreed to let his staff become ―lab rats‖ and was kind enough to facilitate
my research. He agreed to take a researcher into the newsroom, and was more than welcoming to
my many questions. I also have to thank Bill Schmidt for letting me in the newsroom despite his
suspicions, and he has in turn been a tremendous help. Martin Nisenholtz was the link that
brought this all together, so I thank him as well. The business desk staff was tremendous, but I
vi
have to extend special thanks to a coterie of staffers who let me bug them whenever I was
wandering around the newsroom. Mark Getzfred, Tanzina Vega, Brian Stelter, Stephanie
Rosenbloom, Michael de la Merced, Kelly Couturier, Javier Hernandez, and Eric Dash were
tremendous in facilitating my comfort in the newsroom. Thank you also to Liz Alderman for her
help with The International Herald Tribune and for the best week in Paris I could ever imagine.
I should also thank my younger colleagues in the journalism studies world. In particular,
Chris W. Anderson, who could have been my biggest competitor, has emerged as a close
colleague and cheerleader. Victor Pickard, Seth Lewis, Matt Powers, and Matt Carlson have been
people to complain to and to ask random questions to, and I am lucky to be able to reach them
over email and have their ready reply.
This work would also not be possible without my amazing support network of friends.
Suzy Khimm has been a source of much needed distraction, and I am lucky to have her as my
best friend. Eleanor Morrison, Dan Wagner, and Dan Poston have been cheerleaders and reality
checks. Thanks to all my terrific friends in L.A. for providing a release. Santa Monica Rugby has
been great. In particular, thanks to: Mjr. Audrey Rampone, Carrie Gibian, Andrea Staid, Eileen
Zorc, Emily Birdwhistle, Valerie Hunt, Cortney Crego and Carly Shea. Kevin Steele, Chris
Cianci, Matt Schuman, Patrick Keilty, Drew Lehman, John Kephart, Christy Fresas, Zev
Schectman, Anna Kurtz, Carmen Gonzalez, Dennys Hernandez, and Evelyn Moreno have been
endless fun (and good breaks). More to come with Tara Moore and Matt Moore. Travers Scott,
Carrie Ann Platt, Jade Miller, Omri Ceren, Steven Rafferty, Allie Noyes, Laurel Felt, Russ
Newman, Katya Ognyanova, Matt Weber, Janel Schuh, Ray Vichot, and Amy Granados, among
others, have been terrific colleagues. A special thanks to Torie Bosch, the best copy editor ever.
The Layser family has been amazing throughout, and I am thankful to Margie and Joe for
their continued support as Shelly and I have attended grad school in more than one city (sorry).
vii
Your visits, Thanksgivings, and Christmases have been welcome breaks, even if Shelly and I
always seemed to be doing work. The Usher family still has no clue about what I do, but I love
you all very much, and thank you. Special thanks to my grandfather, Harold Bernstein, for being
the only family member to read my work.
Shelly, you are the best. I couldn‘t ask for anything more in a life partner. I treasure our
time together. You challenge me to do my best, you are my best editor, and you are my best
friend. I love you and I am so happy we share a life together. Our time goes by so quickly, and I
am so proud of your success. You are so talented in everything you do. We drive each other to
achieve and to grow, and I love you for making me a better person. Thank you for everything.
viii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
DEDICATION ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii
LIST OF FIGURES xi
ABSTRACT xii
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1
The Digital Age? 8
Why Business News? 12
How Is Business News Made in the Digital Age? 19
What New Opportunities for News Exist in the Digital Age? 36
Method 39
Overview of the Chapters 42
CHAPTER 2: A DAY IN THE LIFE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 47
Mark Getzfred, Online News Editor: January 12, 2010 52
Graham Bowley, Financial News Reporter: January 21, 2010 58
Dan Niemi, Assigning Editor: April 13, 2010 66
Nick Bilton, Lead Technology Blogger for the Bits Blog: January 27, 2010 74
Andrew Martin, Financial News Reporter: February 11, 2010 81
Looking at ―A Day in the Life‖ 87
CHAPTER 3: WHAT IS BUSINESS NEWS? 92
The History of Business News 94
How Does a Story Become Part of the Business Section? 101
Breaking Down the Models 112
How Journalists Talk About Business News 114
The Audience and Business News 119
Perceptions of the Business News Audience 123
CHAPTER 4: DECIDING WHAT’S BUSINESS NEWS—AN
EXAMINATION OF BUSINESS NEWS VALUES 137
Understanding News Values 138
The Economy is the Cornerstone of Social Life 145
Consumers Deserve a Fair Shake 151
Wall Street vs. Main Street 156
Suspicion of Capitalist Excess 163
Belief in the Global Economy 167
Innovation Is To Be Celebrated, With Caution 174
Government Should Play a Role in Business 181
The Values, Combined 183
ix
CHAPTER 5: PRINT RHYTHMS AT THE TIMES 188
Starting at Page One 191
Enterprise Stories and Print Rhythms 198
Print Production on the Business Desk 200
Planned News at The Times 218
Weekend News 221
Print News Routines 223
CHAPTER 6: UNDERSTANDING ONLINE RHYTHMS 226
A Brief History of NYTimes.com 228
Is There Still a Web Newsroom? 234
Breaking News Stories in an Online World: Rhythms and Coordination 236
―The Scoop‖ 244
Life on Producing the Business Page 247
Life Behind the Home Page 259
Looking at Online Rhythms Overall 270
CHAPTER 7: STAYING THE SAME AND SEEING WHAT’S
DIFFERENT—PRINT AND ONLINE PRODUCTION 275
Typifying the News 276
Print News and Online News: Different Concerns 283
Duking It Out 290
Journalists‘ Experience of the Print and Online Worlds 296
Does Page One Still Matter? 302
Is Integration a Reality? 305
CHAPTER 8: MULTIMEDIA—OPPORTUNITIES AND INNOVATIONS 310
Structuring New Structures in Multimedia 315
The Creation of TimesCast 326
Multimedia in the Newsroom: Trying To Bring the Process Under Control 329
Decentralized Creation of Multimedia 335
The Making of the Multimedia Reporter 341
Multimedia: A Round-Up 353
CHAPTER 9: BUSINESS NEWS IN AN ONLINE+ WORLD—SOCIAL
MEDIA AND THE “NEW” AUDIENCE 356
Online +: A New Framework 357
The ―New‖ Audience? 360
Online + and The Times‘ External Strategy 362
Online +: Inside the Newsroom 365
Creating Conversation on NYTimes.com 367
Online + in Action: Baking Social Media into the Reporting Process 370
Online + and Conversation: How Journalists Engage (or Not) with
Audience 2.0 374
Social Media Standards 389
Online +: Thinking About the Future 392
x
CHAPTER 10: CONCLUSION—MAKING NEWS IN A TIME OF CHANGE 395
Is News a Factory? 400
Defining Business News and Business Values 400
The Online and the Print Newsroom 408
Multimedia and Social Media: A Recapitulation 412
Audiences 415
Routines and Non-Routines 416
Continuing Change 421
Looking Ahead 424
BIBLIOGRAPHY 427
APPENDICES:
APPENDIX A 441
APPENDIX B 451
xi
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1: New York Times Business Day Dress Page, December 22, 2010 206
Figure 2: New York Times Business Day Dress Page, December 16, 2010 207
Figure 3: National Print Edition Distribution Map by Deadline 215
Figure 4: City Print Distribution Map by Deadline 216
Figure 5: NYTimes.com, Business Day Web Page, May 20, 2010, 6:57 A.M. 250
Figure 6: NYTimes.com Business Day Web Page, May 20, 2010, 10:41 A.M. 251
Figure 7: NYTimes.com Business Day Web Page, May 20, 2010,11:11 P.M. 252
Figure 8: NYTimes.com Home Page, April 2, 2010, 7:59 A.M. 262
Figure 9: NYTimes.com Home Page, April 2, 2010, Noon 266
Figure 10: New Business Day Web Page, December 29, 2010, 1:02 P.M. 294
Figure 11: Multimedia Organization Chart Graphic as Made by The Times 316
xii
ABSTRACT
This study is the first in-depth ethnography of business news in the digital age. It is also
the first in-depth study of a national newspaper after online journalism has truly become part of
the everyday life cycle of the newsroom. Though The New York Times is going through constant
changes in order to adapt to the demands of the 24-7 newsroom, this study extracts one particular
moment in the newspaper‘s evolution. This moment is a snapshot of a news organization at an
especially significant time in the history of news. Not only is the traditional business model of
news failing, but this period is also a moment of incredible transformation in the industry in the
way that stories are told and in the way that traditional journalists relate to their audiences.
Furthermore, this work has a specific relevance to the study of business news. Situated
immediately after the financial collapse of 2008 and during the ―Great Recession,‖ the analysis
details how The New York Times business desk approached business news coverage. A discussion
of business news values argues that journalists are situated in a larger social reality, and share
with their audience views about how the nation and society ought to be. These values shape news
coverage.
Furthermore, this study attempts to define what, precisely, is business news. Beginning
with an analysis of business news throughout history, I examine the expansion of the idea of
business news as a specific form of coverage throughout The Times’ history. The focus then shifts
to the present, when business news has a specific section in the newspaper and online. However,
business news can be told in a variety of ways, and the negotiations between the various sections
of the newsroom, from the foreign section to the national section, reveal how the institution itself
creates a definition of business news. Narratives, too, help shape stories that appear in the
business section from those that do not.
xiii
Most ethnographies that have preceded this work focus on the importance of routine in
creating the news. Time and technology are two factors that influence the way that news is
produced. These ethnographies are a crucial starting place to assess what remains the same in a
digital age and what is different about news production. However, most of these earlier works fail
to discuss what happens when there is no routine for creating the news—or establish how new
routines emerge when technology interrupts existing production processes. Here, I introduce the
idea of improvisation in the news as a way to demonstrate both the flexibility of individual actors
in the newsroom and to respond to gaps in the literature that fail to account for the dynamics of
news decision-making that is all but ignored in previous work.
The digital age requires reconsidering crucial questions, such as the relationship between
journalists and their audience, the distinctions between print and online, the role of multimedia,
and the place of social media in the newsroom. This study attempts to investigate these important
areas of change. For instance, findings suggest the audience is crucial to how news is produced,
but the online audience is often poorly understood by many in the newsroom. The relationship
between print and online appear to be a closed chapter in the evolution of The Times, with
journalists more than willing to write for the Web. But the relationship between the two mediums
is far more complicated. Multimedia is a burgeoning area of experimentation in the newsroom.
And social media remains uncharted territory as journalists are still trying to understand the most
strategic ways to use it in order to take advantage of a more instantly accessible and present
audience.
1
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
Pulitzer Day at The New York Times is generally a day for celebration. The Pulitzer Prize
is the most important and prestigious award in journalism. And The New York Times often wins at
least one of these prizes each year; this accomplishment serves as a symbol that The Times is
indeed one of the best newspapers in the country, if not the best.
In a newsroom where everyone is always working on something all the time, almost
everyone stops what they are doing at 3 p.m. on Pulitzer Day to hear the announcements.
Journalists crowd the stairwells and gather on the third floor of the newsroom. Old carts used for
pushing around coffee pots are repurposed as trays for champagne, a sure sign that there is
something to celebrate.
Executive Editor Bill Keller serves as master of ceremonies. He also holds a Pulitzer for
his own work as a foreign correspondent covering the Soviet Union. The announcements are
good-humored, celebratory, and, at the same time, respectful. The ritual is a moment for those in
the newsroom to pause and contemplate their aspirations for public service at a time when the
resources for doing this kind of journalism are dwindling elsewhere.
Publisher Arthur Sulzberger comes down from his office on the 16
th
floor to hear Keller
and the rest of the afternoon‘s speeches. In 2010, he was repeatedly thanked for his commitment
to supporting journalism that was rarely profitable.
Bill Keller began speeches on April 12, 2010, with these words, ―We are here to take
note that the death of journalism has been greatly exaggerated. We do this not for prizes, but for
readers. . . . We don‘t pretend to scorn prizes, and to not acknowledge them would be arrogant, so
it‘s a call for a little celebration.‖
2
The death of American journalism was, of course, on the minds of many journalists,
academics, and commentators. The message hadn‘t been missed even by people like Comedy
Central‘s Stephen Colbert. The New York Times itself had just gone through unprecedented staff
reductions of 100 people in December 2009. The reason for reductions at The Times and
elsewhere is a business model that doesn‘t work in the Internet age. Fewer people are buying
print newspapers, and fewer advertisers rely on print—especially for classified advertising.
Newspapers put up content for free without solid online advertising profits. A deep recession
from 2008-2010 hasn‘t helped matters much, either.
Newspapers across the country have been scaling back their investigative reporting
efforts, journalists are being removed from posts in foreign bureaus, and state house reporters are
getting pulled from their positions. Two major newspapers closed in 2009: the Rocky Mountain
News in Denver, and Seattle‘s Post-Intelligencer. On the other hand, this is also a bright time for
reinvention for newspapers, especially as newsrooms turn to new technology to change the ways
that they tell stories, recalibrate the experiences for their readers, and rethink how to survive.
But on Pulitzer Day at The Times, dark thoughts were pushed aside for celebration. The
Times was a formidable bulwark that continued to pursue journalism in line with the industry‘s
aim to serve the public good, despite the industry‘s troubles.
First to celebrate in 2010 was the business section. Keller announced the 13 Society of
American Business Editors and Writers awards. ―This is double the nearest competitors. This is
for covering the global economic crisis, but also for all of the great innovation we have done
online.‖
But the real show-stealer was the Pulitzers. The Times won three in 2010, one for national
reporting, one for investigative reporting, and another for explanatory reporting.
3
Keller noted that the national reporting prize, awarded to the business staff and reporter
Matt Richtel, was ―just another sign that The New York Times leads the way in American business
coverage,‖ and said ―Thank you to those that . . . finish and make it dance online and to a family
that knows that it is more than just a business.‖
He handed over the spotlight to business editor Larry Ingrassia. The business desk had
won the Pulitzer for national reporting, an interesting definitional point, given that The Times has
a separate team tasked with national reporting.
This Pulitzer Prize was for a series called ―Driven to Distraction.‖ In it, technology
reporter Matt Richtel, based in San Francisco, outlined the danger of using cell phones and
driving. Was this a business story? It had originated from the business desk.
Ingrassia began with the question himself: ―I was talking about this with a friend, and he
said he wasn‘t sure it was a business story. But I, of course, disagreed. And my friend said that it
pretty much saved his life.‖
Richtel gave a speech as well. He said he would take ten minutes—a long speech, but he
said he had a lot of people to thank. After all, he had risen from the lowly depths of a freelance
reporter at The Times‘ earliest foray into original online journalism: CyberTimes, a technology
section that lived for about two years.
He thanked his editors for letting him take the time to do this kind of journalism during
the ―worst global economic crisis of our time.‖ And he had this to say about the newspaper‘s
priorities:
I said to [Arthur Sulzberger], we are going to do a [story on] ―what the cell phone
industry knew when it knew it‖ . . . and Arthur said ―You are going to cost of tens of
thousands of dollars in cell phone ads,‖ and Arthur had this twinkle in his eye, and I had
no idea if I had screwed up. But we do journalism. That‘s what we do.
And, we have video game making skills. Old-world journalism is the essence of new-
world journalism. The series was long form [journalism] with video, audio, and, yes,
video games.
4
Richtel was acknowledging the newest parts of the newsroom: the Web producers, the people
who make graphics you can interact with online, the people responsible for multimedia—the
people changing the way stories are told at The Times on the Web. And he was giving them equal
billing with the traditional journalism that The Times was known for. Together, the entire
package, print and online, was submitted to the Pulitzer Board.
After the announcement downstairs, I heard a Web producer say that a friend had just
texted her, ―I heard you just won a Pulitzer.‖ She said, ―It says to staff. . . . We are staff!‖
This moment from Pulitzer Day illustrates the core issues that are fundamental to this
study. The newspaper industry is in the midst of a profound moment of change to its business
model and distribution method, and in the very way that it tells stories. Here, we take a close look
at the inner workings of The Times to learn more about how storytelling takes place in a digital
age. The fact that The Times gave equal footing to the possibilities of online and print
collaboration on Pulitzer Day symbolizes how the newsroom wants to advance in the digital age,
and we will investigate just how that unfolds on a daily basis.
But another question emerges. Richtel‘s reporting was about the dangers of cell phones.
He went to accident scenes. He talked to scientists. Was he doing business journalism? Certainly,
he investigated the failures of the cell phone industry, but what about everything else? Was the
―video game‖ that simulated how difficult it is to text while driving part of a business story?
1
Here, we investigate what makes a business story—from the perspective of how business news is
defined internally within the newsroom and how journalists see their audiences. And at a time
when a global economic crisis was in fact unfolding, this study takes a look at the values that
drive business news coverage.
1
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/07/19/technology/20090719-driving-game.html
5
This study is the first detailed, empirical study of the production of business news. It
specifically focuses on The Times and its business desk. The scaffolding for this research is built
on a platform of five months of immersive ethnographic research. The everyday life of the
newsroom is presented to the reader. The result is a work that contributes to our understanding of
how business news is made in the digital age at the nation‘s foremost news institution. The
organization itself is rapidly changing as it attempts to find a way to survive in the digital age,
and as such, we have a snapshot at one particular historical moment in the evolution of this great
newspaper. Yet this is a powerful moment, for it takes place at a most uncertain time for legacy
news organizations, when budgets and personnel are being cut, newspaper circulations and
network news audiences are diminished, and there is no clear alternative profit model for news
online. The New York Times that is captured by this text in 2010, was steering its way through
both a global economic crisis affecting everyone and an industry-wide crisis. The intention is to
provide an interpretive account of newswork at this juncture.
This work therefore poses three central questions that begin with The New York Times’
business desk. The first, enabled by the first in-depth ethnographic study of business news, asks:
What, precisely, is business news? The second question follows from this and asks: How is
business news created in a digital age? Inherent to this question are sub-questions about
journalistic and professional values, as well as questions regarding organizational strategy, both
at The Times and in journalism writ large. The third question is: What new opportunities exist
for journalism in the digital age? This probes at the flexibility of labor, the creation of stories,
and the relationship with audiences.
The Times is a key place to turn to for a study of how news gets made in the digital age
because it is perhaps the preeminent news organization online. It is consistently the fifth-largest
news Web site in the world and the most-visited newspaper Web site (―Top 15 Most Popular
6
News Web sites: December 2010, 2010). It gets approximately between 38 million unique
visitors per month, according to Alexa, the Web traffic resource, and it is overall the 93rd most
popular Web site in the world. Print competitors The Wall Street Journal and USA Today are
ranked in the 200s and the 400s, respectively.
The Times can be looked at a leader of change and innovation. With more than 1,000
newsroom employees, the newspaper has the resources to experiment with new kinds of
storytelling techniques that other newsrooms might not yet have the capacity to try. Its interactive
graphics, online video, online photography, and online audio garner it awards from inside the
news industry, including the Pulitzer Prizes, that recognize the newsroom‘s online achievements.
The Times has design and programming specialists who have turned down high-paying jobs in
Silicon Valley, because, as one put it, ―I just really love journalism‖ (field notes, April 14, 2010).
Instead, these individuals turn their attention to both the user experience and the development of
The Times‘ Web site itself, and in turn their work has made The Times structurally one of the
most agile and flexible news Web sites.
The New York Times is an interesting site for study simply because, well, it is The New
York Times. As an institution, The Times is routinely called the most influential news
organization in the country—if not the English-speaking world. The Times is read by an audience
of decision-makers and by an audience of the educated elite. It is considered crucial in setting and
shaping the news agenda for other news organizations, and its deep reporting consistently offers
investigations into politics, economics, and even sports. From a circulation perspective, it is the
third most highly read newspaper in the country, after The Wall Street Journal (which counts both
its online and print readers) and USA Today, both newspapers that reach different kinds of
audiences. The newspapers‘ finances, scandals, successes, and failures receive wide coverage in
7
other news outlets. Lately, its survival as a newspaper has been linked to the vitality of
democratic discourse.
Furthermore, The Times may be one of the most enigmatic newspaper institutions written
about. It is chronicled in books by former journalists, critics, historians, and scholars. Consider
Max Frankel‘s Times of My Life and My Life with The Times (2000), Arthur Gelb‘s City Room
(2003), or the epic tome by Gay Talese, The Kingdom and the Power (1969). Dozens of other
Times journalists have written books that include commentary on their days at The Times.
In addition, the newspaper has attracted tremendous criticism, perhaps most recently
from two major scandals. The first is the Jayson Blair scandal, in which a Times reporter
plagiarized and fabricated dozens of stories; when his deception was uncovered, it created major
upheaval at the newspaper. The scandal reverberated through the news industry and dominated
memoirs by former Executive Editor Howell Raines (2006) and former Managing Editor Gerald
Boyd (2010), and a chronicle of the period by Vanity Fair journalist Seth Mnookin (2004). Other
texts attack the newspaper for the Judith Miller scandal (see McGowan, 2010). Her erroneous
reporting on weapons of mass destruction may have led some decision-makers and the public to
make faulty assessments about the need for war in Iraq.
From a historical and scholarly perspective, The Times has also inspired much attention.
Some of the best texts include Diamond‘s Behind The Times (1995), which takes the reader from
the 1950s and 1960s to the 1990s. Tifft and Jones‘ (2000) chronicle, The Trust: The Private and
Powerful Family Behind The New York Times, talks about the influence of the various Times
publishers and how their interpretations of what constitutes quality journalism have affected the
newspaper.
To my knowledge, only two scholars have been able to spend as much time as I have
inside The Times. Argyis (1974) wrote an account of The Times as a study in organizational
8
behavior, but had to mask that his work was at The Times. Boczkowski (2005) examined The
Times‘ early efforts and innovation online in with its CyberTimes technology section during the
late 1990s. As such, my opportunity to go inside The Times to look at it from a scholarly
perspective after it has risen to online prominence is a vivid way to examine the challenges and
opportunities facing the newspaper as it continues to adapt to the ever-changing demands of the
digital age.
The Digital Age?
This study is premised on the idea that there may be something qualitatively different
about news that is being created and disseminated in the age of the Internet. By ―digital age,‖ I
am specifically referring to the idea that we are living in an era that is fundamentally shaped by
digital technology, most specifically the Web, and, to a lesser extent, mobile platforms and other
information and communication technologies. To some extent, this grants considerable latitude to
the argument that I am being overly technodeterminist—that I am letting technology shape and
speak for itself: e.g., the Internet and associated digital media themselves give us a new reason to
study what happens inside the newsroom. In talking about the digital age, I acknowledge that it‘s
important to think about how the past and the present can inform our understanding.
The digital age assumes certain fundamental changes in the properties of distribution and
consumption on the part of audiences and content producers. What is different, as Benkler (2006)
and others attest, is that we are living in a networked society—one in which everyone who has
access to the Web can theoretically share and create content in ways they never could before. Yet
people have always been able to share information socially and with their friends; the change is
that the speed is accelerated and the reach is much wider. According to Benkler, the age of the
―institutional information economy‖ has shifted and made way for the networked public: Mass
9
media no longer exclusively occupy the central role in distributing information. Whether or not
this is a utopian vision, it still speaks to the idea of a fundamental shift in the way that
information is exchanged: Information moves more rapidly, and there has been a fundamental
shift in the architecture of information thanks to the Web.
Similarly, the idea of a ―digital age‖ or an ―information age‖ suggests that information
moves at a fundamentally faster rate than it ever did before, and that we are more connected than
we ever were previously. This sets the stage for what Castells described as ―global flows‖ or the
―space of flows,‖ which refer to the global information environment. We are all connected,
thanks to the rise of the Web and the forces of globalization, to a new form of economic relations,
social relations, and cultural influences—and, in his view, new opportunities for social power.
As many of my data will show, journalists perceive that there is something new and
different about doing journalism online. The Web is like Janus: one side representing opportunity,
and the other side challenge. Online journalism means distribution to a wider audience, new ways
to tell stories, and the chance to engage with audiences in ways that were not possible before. On
the other hand, the Web represents a challenge: Online journalism changes tried-and-true routines
of news production, and the plethora of new storytelling options and the active audience is
confusing—even, at times, scary. Adding to this mix is journalists‘ sense that the Web increases
competition and demands that they do something even more unique to distinguish their work
from the rest.
Some of these forces facing journalists today have been described by Starkman (2010) in
his essay on the ―Hamster Wheel.‖ According to Starkman, Boczkowski (2010), and other news
critics, the Web is the enemy of the thoughtful journalist. The ever-hungry Web demands more
and more content for an audience that is constantly obsessed with the new. As a result, journalists
need to constantly update the Web with fresh news, which may be incremental developments
10
and/or news that can be found on everyone else‘s Web sites. Content, according to Boczkowski‘s
(2010) study of Argentinean newsrooms, is increasingly homogenized. Journalists are hyper-
competitive, more now than ever, because they can increasingly monitor what other news sources
have and try to match content.
Many scholars have argued that journalists face a distracted and disloyal audience, which
creates increased pressure for newsrooms. Readers get their news from their own specially
curated lists (Sunstein, 2007); they have endless opportunities for media consumption (Gitlin,
2001); readers find their news from search engines (Lardinois, 2009); and they rely on their
friends for suggestions about the news through social networks (Bilton, 2010a).
To these critics, this disloyal audience means that journalists need to do something,
anything to keep up, especially because the survival of their news organization depends on
attracting this audience. With a failing print business model, the Web is the only place to turn for
new revenue. Increasingly, news organizations are relying on tactics that use audience data and
search engine optimization to guide newsroom decision-making (Peters, 2010). But the result can
mean that stories of civic importance, the stories journalists may think are most important, get
cycled out in favor of stories that the audience will be more attracted to, such as celebrity gossip
or crime news (Boczkowski and Peer, in press). News organizations are doing all they can to
remain on the top of the Google News rankings, hoping that people searching for information
about a particular event will stumble on their site.
Furthermore, the audience that was once presumed to be passive is now understood by
journalists as active (Gillmor, 2006). This means not only that ordinary people are contributing
news content, but that there is a perception among journalists that they are also expected to
engage in conversation with their audience. Similarly, the opportunities presented by a digital
media world—such as video, audio, interactive graphics, and advances in photography—are seen
11
as changing the way that journalists are expected to tell stories. In Convergence Culture, Jenkins
(2006) talks about the way that old and new media are remixed in new ways: for instance, with
movies being reconstituted by fans and redistributed on YouTube to millions of viewers. The
underlying message in convergence culture is that journalists need to make their stories more than
just text. They need to tell not just one story, but multiple and related stories that feature content
on multiple platforms.
Whether the audience has in fact changed with the advent of the Web is an interesting
question; audiences, as Jenkins (2006) acknowledges, have always been sharing, remixing, and
spreading media. But they can now do so more actively and with more people. Furthermore,
audiences have always been actively talking about the news with one another, as Katz and
Lazarsfeld (1955) demonstrated when they first described the two-step flow of information. And
as Boczkowski (2010) demonstrates in his qualitative research, audiences don‘t want
homogenized content.
With all this in mind, we can think of news right now as facing different challenges than
it did before. Thus we can talk about news in the digital age because newsrooms are transforming
to adapt to all of the felt pressures I just articulated. Most of these changes are framed as
innovation because they represent substantially new conditions for the production of news. A
number of scholars have studied what these changes mean. Boczkowski (2005) looked at how
newsrooms were creating new content online and how newsrooms were reorganizing to create the
jobs and the structures to make this content. Singer (2004a, 2004b) considered how journalists
understood their professional identity in the online news environment.
News in the digital era is different for two simple reasons, as Harper (2004) points out:
time and space—time because content can be constantly updated, and space because there can be
infinite room for more news online. Time, in particular, is extremely important to news in the
12
digital age. We can think about newswork unfolding as a ―stomping ground for the forces of
increasingly differentiated production and innovation processes‖ (Deuze, 2008, p. 74). As such,
investigating this ―Digital Age‖—and what is new and what is old—is an important heuristic.
Why Business News?
Business is the most general phase of human endeavor from the truck driver to the
millionaire industrialist. Upon business depends the livelihood of us all, directly or
indirectly. As to newspaper policy, the presumption is justifiable that the broad field of
business, industry and finance is the greatest topic of interest among men. Certainly it is
what men talk about most. . . .
Journalist Howard Carswell (1938) penned these words and articulated the importance of
business news in understanding the general ecology of current events. According to Carswell‘s
broad definition of business, we don‘t have a clear understanding of what business news might
be—or how it is understood within the responsibilities of the general newsroom. If it is so
general, then maybe business news is present in all sections of the newsroom. On the other hand,
maybe it is so important as to merit its own unique place in the newsroom. If business news is so
important to the general audience, then how should journalists write about it? More than 80 years
after Carswell reflected on business news, the subject is still hard to define. Part of the goal of this
study is to define business news. Part of this task also includes understanding the professional
values that guide business news decision-making as they operate at The New York Times.
This study began as part of a larger project on business news in the U.S. in the wake of
the 2008 financial collapse, and draws from extensive field research at other sites, specifically at
Marketplace public radio and TheStreet.com, the online-only site founded by Jim Cramer. There
are two primary reasons I looked at business news: The first was that a study of business news
seemed particularly interesting during a global financial crisis. The second reason is that there
simply isn‘t much in journalism scholarship about business news. As such, the study stands to
13
document business journalism at a unique moment in U.S. history. In addition, a specialized
examination of business news is a departure from topics popular to journalism studies,
particularly political news.
When I began my queries about conducting field research in 2008, Bear Stearns had just
collapsed. Then Lehman Brothers fell apart, and Merrill Lynch quickly followed. The Dow Jones
industrial average was consistently below 10,000 for the first time since 1987. The markets were
a mess, and it was clear that the housing bubble had just burst. What wasn‘t completely clear was
just how bad the financial collapse was going to be. The wave of foreclosures had not yet hit, and
instead, the government was concerned about restoring banks to make sure credit markets and
lenders could stay alive. AIG, the insurance company, received a giant bailout after it nearly
tanked the market. The government had just launched a plan to buy back toxic assets from banks,
and it was on its way to injecting $787 billion into the economy to weaken some of the trickle-
down effects of Wall Street gone sour.
Thus, the economy was big news—perhaps the biggest news of the decade. Between
2008 and 2010, what had begun as a market failure and bank collapse had evolved into what
many economists were calling the Great Recession. Unemployment continues to hover around 10
percent. Economic news is consistently the biggest news on front pages of print local and national
papers, headlining public radio, and featured prominently on local news and cable news networks.
CNN and Fox News added Dow Jones tickers to their scrolling headlines so it actually became
possible to watch, for instance, a press conference given by President Barack Obama and
simultaneously see how the markets were ―responding.‖
While conducting my research at Marketplace from January to June 2009, I learned how
journalists were making news decisions as they covered the effects of new bailouts for companies
and the impact of the financial stimulus bill—as well as the government‘s plan to buy toxic
14
assets. Marketplace was not a place that was undergoing significant change to make way for the
Web (though it was making small changes) (Usher, forthcoming); but it was struggling each day
just to keep abreast of daily news coverage in the economy and to make sense of it for everyday
people listening to public radio.
By the time I entered the field at The Times, where I spent January through the end of
May 2010, and then later that summer at TheStreet.com, the financial crisis had spread to Europe.
Greece was unable to contain its debt, and the international markets were concerned that other
countries with heavy debt loads, specifically Ireland, Spain, and Portugal, might also default on
their obligations, thus hindering the European Union and causing a new financial crisis. Though
the National Bureau of Economic Research
2
announced in September 2010 that the recession was
over—and in fact had been since June 2009—the high unemployment rate and fiscal crisis in
many states certainly felt like we remained in the midst of a recession. Global economic woes
made the ―recovery‖ seem even more tenuous, and there were often discussions in the newsroom
about how to map out just how much the nation had actually recovered.
I found further justification for investigating business news from theoretical literature
about globalization, communication, and technology. As Castells noted, in an information
society, we are increasingly linked because of the global flows of economic capital. The financial
collapse seemed to underscore his point. As he noted, the collapse of one bank is not isolated, and
the news of this one bank is crucially important to informing other actors in the global network.
Instead, in a globalizing world, the demand for news and information, and particularly financial
news, is greater than ever and facilitated through new technology. Castells‘ link between the idea
2
This non-partisan think-tank is the ―official‖ organization that declares whether the country is in or out of a recession.
A recession is defined by negative GDP growth for two or more quarters, whereas a recovery is defined as when the
GDP then rises for two or more quarters.
15
of interconnected financial markets and the importance of information provides just one
theoretical reason to take a closer look at business news.
Further, other theorists of globalization have added to this notion of the increasing
interdependence of both global flows of capital and the increasing speed of our new information
environment. Appadurai (1996) proposed that global cultural flows exist in five different
formations: ethoscapes, mediascapes, technoscapes, financescapes, and ideoscapes. Most relevant
here is his discussion of the financescape, where global capital is in a ―deeply disjunctive
relationship among human movement, technological flow, and financial transfer‖ (p. 34). Money
moves at amazing speed, with small differences in numbers potentially having huge implications,
and the economies of different countries are linked by complex fiscal and investment flows across
a ―global grid of currency speculation‖ (p. 34). In addition to the financescape, we are also in an
information flow that Appadurai calls the mediascape, which is the increased capacity to produce
and disseminate information to a wider and wider number of people. Significantly, these
mediascapes help shape the world we live in. As he points out:
What is most important about these mediascapes is that they provide . . . large and
complex repertoires of images, narratives, and technoscapes for viewers through the
world, in which the world of commodities and the world of news and politics are
profoundly mixed. (p. 35)
Notably, part of what shapes and creates the imagination of people in this world of global
capital and information is the media. And the media in turn create a narrative that helps us
understand our economic relations. Studying business news from the inside-out helps us to
understand how, as Lippmann (1922) put it, news acts as a window on the world.
An investigation of business news is also warranted by the general lack of scholarship on
business news. There are sufficient articles and books devoted to the history and evolution of
business news. For instance, Forsyth‘s (1964) book on the business press in America traces the
specialized business press from the pre-colonial era to just before the U.S. Civil War. Smith
16
(1984) discusses the rise of Amsterdam in the 17
th
century, for instance, as a financial news
center. Quirt (1993) offers an account of the rise of business news in the U.S., and provides good
details about the founding of The Times‘ business section. Roush (2006) argues that muckraking
can be looked at as the beginnings of business journalism in the U.S., and Feldstein (2006)
supports the idea that economic conditions influence investigative reporting.
There are a number of good books, some academic, others non-academic, which
chronicle the history of business news publications. Neilson & Nielson (1973) and Wendt (1982)
offer accounts of The Wall Street Journal. Rosenberg‘s (1982) efforts to detail the inner workings
of The Wall Street Journal combine qualitative research with historical research. Nonetheless,
this is primarily a historical work. Augspurger (2004) chronicles the history of Fortune magazine
and Depression-era America. Reed (1999) details the history of Reuters, and Mooney and
Simpson (2003) detail its failures in the Internet age.
Some scholarship has also focused on the relationship between business news and
economic forecasting. Atkins and Sundali (1997) examined the accuracy of The Wall Street
Journal‘s Dartboard column. Brooks & Gray (2004) looked at the history of economic forecasters
in the news. Ferreira & Smith (2003) examined Wall Street Week, the television show, to
determine whether it actually helped investors make better business decisions.
But the primary source of business news scholarship has been a superficial look about
how much business news there is and whether it happens to be any good. As early as the 1960s,
scholars began chronicling the rise of business journalism in general news—even though this was
before most newspapers had separate sections for business news (Hubbard, 1966). Wells (1973)
disagreed that business news was any good, arguing that financial journalism was a ―bleak
wasteland‖ (aside from The Times). He contended that most newspapers in the early 1970s
devoted more space to sports than business, including The Washington Post. The business
17
magazines fawned over the investing class. In a critique against The Times, Wells noted it was
―probably better than any other general circulation paper in the world,‖ but nonetheless ―merely
regurgitate[d] handouts and spot news events against the investigative efforts and thoughtful
analysis in other parts of the paper‖ (p. 41). Others compared the relative merits of business
journalism on television, gauging what it covered and how much time was devoted to these issues
(Dominick, 1981; Reese 1987).
In fact, most of the scholarship is devoted to assessing business journalism performance
in limited detail. For example, one article in a survey of a dozen or so West Coast newspaper
editors detailed how business editors found new journalism grads unprepared to cover business
journalism (Pardue, 2004). Other studies remarked on the new rise in the late 1970s and early
1980s of the prevalence of business news in local areas (Rippey, 1978; Vanden Bergh, Fletcher &
Adrian, 1984). Then there are some studies that seem either obvious or obsolete by now, such as
the study that business news Web sites in 2003 were different from newspapers in business
content (Jung, 2003). Chernomas and Hudson (2010) detail 60 years of The New York Times
economic coverage, dismissing much of it for being too close to corporate executives because
they argue that the company is just barely publicly held.
There is an entire genre dedicated to the exploration of CEOs, crashes, and corporate
scandals, mostly in the public relations literature. Little comes from the journalism and
journalism scholarship world as specifically, sharply critical about business news coverage,
though Madick (2003) and Overholser (2005) take on the missteps of the press in the wake of the
Enron scandal. Kurtz (2000) detailed the cheerleading potential of business journalists on TV
who rallied around bubble economy of the late 1990s. But unlike political news, calls for
transparency in business news have only started recently to emerge in full force, especially after
the financial crisis. For instance, Tambini (2010) does speak to journalists about the financial
18
crisis (in the UK), and concludes there is wide variation among their ethical stance about whether
they see their roles as watchdogs.
This scholarship chronicles some important moments in business news, but there is little
to respond to with regard to my research questions because much of it is so sparse, anecdotal, or
narrow in its focus. Raviola (2010) conducted an ethnography of a business newsroom in Italy,
but she was not granted the same kind of access I was. The newsroom was all male, and much of
her dissertation focuses on how she was excluded from watching the conversations that took
place. As a result, her work relied on neo-institutional theory to explain the relationship between
print and online; while she was in the newsroom, she nonetheless had very little access to people.
Similarly, this was a specialized business press in Italy, and therefore difficult to engage with for
this study.
As such, there is little scholarship that tells us about the development and construction of
business news—or what business news really means. Business news, especially general business
news, has only grown in importance (Saporito, 1999). But we know little about how people
actually do business journalism, and even less about the combined question of doing business
journalism at a time when information moves faster than ever. The general audience for business
news is understood by academics to be everyone who reads the paper or watches the news. As my
research will reveal, this idea of the audience is more complicated.
Additionally, the existing scholarship does not offer us a good definition of business
news. Saporito offers a wide range of topics, and Cresswell (1938) suggests that business news is
the lens through which we understand every other happening in our lives and current events. As
such, one of the tasks will be to identify how we talk about business news.
In the aftermath of the 2008-2010 financial crisis, there have been many critiques that
have considered how the press failed in the lead-up to the crisis. Scheer (2010) specifically claims
19
The New York Times celebrated the big private equity deals before the crisis. The Audit blog of
The Columbia Journalism Review (2009) critically examined how the business press handled
financial coverage before and after the financial collapse. After examining 727 articles, the blog‘s
authors argue that the business press did not do enough to stop the crisis. My work does not enter
into the debate about whether the business press did or did not fulfill its public duty to investigate
the financial situations in the lead up to the crisis. However, a study of post-crisis news
production is fruitful at a time when the economy occupies a central place in both the news and as
top concern of Americans.
How Is Business News Made in the Digital Age?
This study is a re-entry of sorts into a literature that until recently has lain dormant in
journalism scholarship: the newsroom ethnography. We are only starting to understand what it
means for journalists to create and to shape news under conditions that did not exist until the
digital age. As such, it is significant to take a step back to look at how others have understood
news prior to the advent of the Web. It is also important to review the current state of the field to
assess how researchers currently understand the question of how the Web has influenced news
production.
Most of what we do know about newsroom production comes from research conducted in
the pre-Web world of the 1960s and 1970s. These older ethnographies set the tone for what we
know about newsroom practices because they provide a thorough accounting of how news is
made. But as my research reveals, their work left out important characteristics of life inside the
newsroom, such as the role of individual actors in shaping the news and the non-routine aspects
of newswork. Certainly, the picture we get of Mr. Gates selecting stories for inclusion into the
newspaper (White, 1950) and subsequent studies do speak to individual action, but these studies
20
still emphasize the predictable. Since the ethnographers I focus on were writing at a time when
there were few dramatic changes in news production technology, they also weren‘t challenged to
think about what happens when the conditions for making news itself changes.
Nonetheless, these ethnographies are crucial for understanding this study because they
are a starting point for any research into newsrooms that are undergoing changes as part of the
digital age. Breed‘s (1955) work may be the first newsroom ethnography. He looks at the
socialization of journalists within the newsroom and how this plays into the creation of news.
Breed talks about newsroom ―policy,‖ which is learned by journalists through ―osmosis,‖ and
evaluates a stark hierarchy between staff and management. His analysis is premised on the fact
that newswork is a social phenomenon that is created and manufactured by organizational
imperatives. Breed argues that individuals lose their ability to make independent choices about
news judgment (Berkowitz, 1997).
Gans (1979) conducted what is perhaps the seminal sociological analysis into news
production with his study of CBS, NBC, Newsweek, and Time during the 1960s and 1970s. Gans‘
primary contribution was to look at what makes something newsworthy; he assesses the
influences of audience and sources upon the construction of news. He also acknowledged the
importance of external forces, such as the social setting of journalists themselves, and the
institutional pressures within the newsroom, as features that guide newsroom decision-making.
He studied general, national news organizations in the U.S., and was the only ethnographer at the
time to go inside such large institutions. In his preface to the second edition, Gans puts out a
challenge to researchers and notes: ―I doubt that a restudy of the four news organizations would
require significant changes in the conclusions. . . ‖ (p. xix). This work attempts to re-evaluate his
conclusions: that source power, audience power, and the need for efficiency are the fundamental
forces behind the construction of news.
21
Gans‘ (1979) analysis is functionalist: He is concerned with how and why people do the
things they do. He believes that the most important factor is the newsroom routine. Routines exist
because of the need to make news each and every day in a cost-efficient way, one that balances
the competing interests of the organization, the sources, and the audience, and these routines
result in a ready-made pattern of events that influence story selection. To him, people respond to
and make decisions about news in the same way each day, except they adjust for new facts and
new situations presented before them. There is little room for improvisation in these routines; the
expected patterns and typifications of stories can be predicted based on the established value
system of editors and the institutional and external constraints upon them.
This value system, or what Gans called the ―paraideology‖ of news, is less about
ideology than it is about what Gans identified as the sotto voce of news (p. 41); journalists do not,
as he notes, deliberately insert values into news, but he nonetheless attempted to draw out values
based on preference statements about nation and society. He sets up a challenge, therefore, to use
fieldwork to reconstruct what a paraideology might be for journalists working now—and whether
what he has observed has changed. What Gans does not do is take us into the beating heart of
how a newsroom works on a day-to-day basis to show us how he reaches his conclusions.
Tuchman (1972, 1973, 1978, 1980) is often mentioned as the second most important
news ethnographer of this era of scholarship. Her work included intense observation of print and
television journalists in local TV and newspapers. To her, journalism could also be described as
the product of routines. Time is a central organizing principle, and news organizations have
rhythms and deadlines for their work. What journalists do as professionals serves organizational
needs. Objectivity, for example, is a strategic routine that structures newsgathering to please
sources and to meet deadlines (Tuchman, 1972). Tuchman (1973) shows how journalists typify
news to manage the unexpected by controlling newsgathering behaviors.
22
In her analysis, there is some room for reportorial flexibility, but only insofar as
unsupervised reporters negotiate the ―sharing and hoarding of both information and sources‖
(Tuchman, 1980, p. 73). On the whole, Tuchman‘s work can also be given the functionalist label;
in explaining how and why things work, her answer is that newsrooms are structured in a way
that manages and controls the input and output of news. Routine is the driving function of
newswork. The story types are the same, the processes to collect the data the same, and
predictability manages the need to fill the paper or the newscast. Tuchman does not enter into a
discussion of professional values, but acknowledges that journalism routines reinforce the status
quo.
Other news ethnographies talk about how the socialization of journalists creates
predictable news. Darnton (1975) and Golding and Eliot (1979) explored how journalists learn to
anticipate the news needs of the organization and structure their work routines around filling
those needs. Epstein (1973) wrote about the preeminence of commercialism, as enforced by top-
level executives on establishing routines and rendering predictable content. British scholar
Schlesinger (1978) argued that ―stop watch journalism‖ pervaded television news production,
creating routines that created predictable news work. Bantz, McCorkle and Baade (1980) titled
their work ―The News Factory‖ and made the argument that the only major difference between
journalists and workers in an assembly line is that the news factory divides the tasks into larger
pieces related to the skill of the worker rather than the amount of time needed to perform the task.
Fishman (1980) provided perhaps the best micro-level account of days spent following a
beat journalist. He argues that beat journalists‘ day-by-day accounts are routinized so as to make
sure that there is sufficient news for the paper. Sources were especially important; without the
regular conversation with reliable sources, the journalist would have nothing to write. Eliasoph
(1988) tried to get outside traditional newsrooms to look at the newsmaking process and instead
23
analyzed an alternative radio station. She found, however, that even alternative radio followed the
same predictable patterns and organizational expectations. These studies slowed to a trickle in the
late 1980s. Bantz (1985) wrote an organizational account of news production. Soloski (1989)
gave further support to Tuchman‘s work, arguing that professional identity is one more way to
routinize news production. The dominant explanation among all of these ethnographies is that
routine determines news production, and the role of the individual in shaping this routine is
diminished at the expense of organizational imperative.
Only recently has there been a resurrection of interest in news ethnographies in the digital
age. These recent ethnographies give us a peek into the innovation facing newsrooms as they
attempt to adapt to the Internet. Boczkowski‘s (2005) may be the most seminal ethnography of
this period; he looked at the Houston Chronicle, The New York Times, and the joint Web site of
three New Jersey newspapers and one television station. This analysis, conducted in the late
1990s, looks at how the Web changed work routines and organizational patterns—and what
innovations were occurring within newsrooms to account for new technology. He took great pains
to show us that technology is not the driving force for innovation, but it is how people use
technology that makes the difference in how innovation emerges. This is an important theme for
this study: Technology does not dictate use; people dictate how technology will, in fact, be used.
The Internet is, of course, not the only disruptive technology to hit the newsrooms, but it
may be the most disruptive to routines and possibly news values. As such, most of these
ethnographies have focused on what the Internet means for these routines and the destabilization
of identity; or conversely, what they have meant for organizational innovation (Paterson &
Domingo, 2008). Some have provided a dark view that the Internet has so disrupted routines so
that newswork has changed for the worse, in an age of homogenization to keep readers and be
competitive with other outlets (Boczkowski, 2010).
24
Convergence—or the idea that journalists were working across multiple mediums or that
organizations themselves were working as both TV stations and, say, newspapers—was a prime
area for investigation. Klinenberg (2005), for example, studied how journalists worked against
the constraints of time, space, and market pressure in an age of convergence while trying to keep
up with what he called the ―news cyclone‖ of the 24-7 news world. Singer (2003,2004a, 2004b)
also examined convergence as she explored the relationship between print and online newsrooms.
Born‘s (2005) ethnography of the BBC also looked at how managers crafted strategy to reshape
the organization in order to adjust to the perceived new demands of the audience. Robinson (in
press) continued this analysis of convergence between print and online as she explored the
organizational and professional changes when a Midwest newspaper when from print daily to
online only.
In more recent work, scholars have been concerned with professionalization and change.
Ryfe (2009a, 2000b) pondered how news routines would change when a new in-depth reporting
initiative was announced. Royal (2010) conducted a week-long case study with the interactive
graphics team at The Times assessing whether their backgrounds as computer programmers made
a difference in how they identified as journalists. Others, however, have combined organizational
theory of newsroom change with an analysis of professionalism to assess the impact of routines
on journalists (Brown, 2008). Tsui (2010) took a slightly different approach, looking at an online
news organization—Global Voices—and examined the production of news conducted by
dispersed bloggers rather than professional journalists. These journalists who were brought
together by the unified goal to shed light on forgotten corners of the globe, but again, Tsui‘s
focus, like most of these ethnographies, was a focus on what routines have changed in this news
environment.
25
Though not an ethnographer, Deuze has contributed a wide array of work to
understanding newswork in the digital age. He sees routines as an expression of the professional
identities and cultures of journalists and notes that technology influences these norms of
production (Deuze, 2011). He has looked at the dimensions of the evolving profession in the
Netherlands (Deuze 2002) and in alternative journalism (Platon & Deuze, 2003), among others.
Deuze has also theorized ―up‖ how journalism as a profession and as a form is changing in terms
of its interactivity, hypertextuality, and multimedia potential—considering what it means for
journalists and the public (Deuze, 2004; 2006; 2007). In Deuze (2005, 2009), he provided a good
setting for inquiry into the fundamental questions of what it means to be a journalist today, such
as what professionalism means. This work is particularly useful when considering how journalists
at The Times face the need to be flexible in terms of their capacities for understanding multimedia
and social media.
Anderson (2009, forthcoming) has provided the most comprehensive look at online news
production in the digital age with his examination of The Philadelphia Daily News, The
Philadelphia Inquirer, and the local ecology of citizen journalism networks in the city of
Philadelphia. He argues that the definition of journalism is itself an unstable one, and that doing
newswork at present means renegotiating professional values and journalistic authority. He also
observed that journalists were becoming highly conscious of the audience—but as numbers, not
voices, with each click leading to the hope for more readers, and thus more dollars. His work is
set in a news organization that was going through bankruptcy and facing steep decline, yet he
chronicles the difficult but lively attempt of news organizations to work with local citizen media
and blogs. His work is a valuable contribution and goes outside the language of routine to talk
more about the identity of professional journalism at a time when traditional journalism is itself
unstable.
26
Departures: Toward Improvisation
All of these ethnographies are united by the desire to understand how journalists make
news. Each ethnography has a slightly different focus. Some care more about professional
identity. Others care more about the systems and structures of news organizations. Still others are
centered on the routines that make news. This study attempts to combine the strengths of each of
these three ideas into a discussion about the implications of people making use of new
technology.
Like most of the existing ethnographies, I too agree that routines are absolutely essential
to the creation of newswork. A routine, for all practical purposes, is the relied-upon process,
practice, or procedure for accomplishing a task. But all too often, these studies of newsrooms
forget about the dynamism of the newsroom and the role of individuals in the newsroom in
making news. This study seeks to make the case that journalists are not overpowered by
organizational imperatives of production or the pressure of sources. Instead, journalists do have
the space to make active decisions about newswork. Decisions behind news judgment are more
complicated—they involve careful deliberation that relies on journalists weighing questions of
news value and news judgment while negotiating with the reality of production in a 24-7 news
world. In this text, we shed some light on the complexity of newstalk.
As Cottle (2000) noted, there is a need to depart from prior ethnographies and view
journalists as arguably doing ―what they do for the most part knowingly and purposefully‖ (p. 5).
This view suggests that journalists are ―more consciously and knowingly involved with, and
purposely productive of, news texts and output than they are theoretically given credit for‖ (p. 5).
Especially now, as Cottle (2007) argued, we need to look to new news ethnographies to help shed
27
light on the way that journalists are experiencing as actors the changing technological
environment through their work practices, and how that in turn affects the content they produce.
3
My argument is centered around the idea that news is made through routines. But I depart
from existing ethnographies because I demonstrate how these routines leave room for journalists
to improvise around new ideas and new situations that emerge through the process of newswork.
Furthermore, new technology serves as a disruption to existing routines, and as a result, the lack
of routine creates the space for uncertainty as well as experimentation. Eventually, however, new
routines will eventually emerge. Making business news on a daily basis appears to be a routine
process, but some parts of this process still require considerable negotiation, such as defining
business news.
To address the departure from existing theory, I introduce the idea of improvisation,
which is taken as a metaphor from jazz. I use improvisation to talk about the intersection of
routine and non-routine in newswork. Departing further from existing work, improvisation
provides a window into what is non-routine, the places where there is no set pattern for
accomplishing the goals of newswork. What results from detailing routines, non-routines,
improvisation, and ambiguities is twofold: first, the importance of the journalist as a purposeful
actor within the newsroom, and second, the crucial role of flexible labor within the newsroom,
particularly with respect to new technology.
In addition, previous literature has displaced the role of people and looked at the
organization as a system; I provide a focus that looks at the importance of individual actors in
shaping and to creating the news. As such, this study also focuses on the way that journalists and
3
As noted, one alternative approach would be to focus on professional identity and norms. Yet at The Times, I did not
find journalists to be questioning their position or their profile as journalists, though they were curious about what new
technology meant for them.
28
The Times change—be it over the course of a daily conversation or over a broader strategic plan
that reshapes how people envision and understand their work practices.
Improvisation
By the word improvisation I am specifically referring to how past practices inform new
ideas. The general idea is such that fresh melodies in jazz are created over tunes that have been
repeated in the past—harmonies, chords, etc. A misconception of improvisation, as many authors
point out, is that it is indeed created on the fly. The truth is that improvisation has its roots in a
history of music and of musical theory; it is only that particular moment when the chance to
perform happens that new opportunities unfold. Improvisation, therefore, is premised on existing
routines, but implies the ability to create new and fresh sounds in music. As Wynton Marsalis
noted, ―In Jazz, improvisation isn't a matter of just making any ol' thing up. Jazz, like any
language, has its own grammar and vocabulary. There's no right or wrong, just some choices that
are better than others.‖
4
As Berliner (1994) notes, improvisation requires working on what is preplanned and
precomposed and combining it with ―unanticipated ideas shaped and transformed under the
special conditions of performance‖ (p. 241). But as Faulkner (2006) notes about the performing
arts, ―Almost all works of art and performances of them and readings of them are some
combinations of routine and unusual choices made among available possibilities‖ (p. 99). In this
regard, improvisation is a mixture of the routine and the non-routine, a process and a product of
musicians that is also heard by audiences.
4
Quotation courtesy of the site ―Jazz Improvisation: What is It‖ (n.d.), retrieved from
http://www.apassion4jazz.net/improvisation.html
29
Improvisation also requires the ability to work within expectations to create something
that is different. sas Faulkner (2006) noted, or before improvising; they learn the repertoire, the
songs; the music gets played over and over. There are the knowns; the harmonies, the rhythms;
the chord structures. But these knowns change with each performance—negotiating, as Berliner
(1994) says, between ―a mixture of fixed elements, which derive from their storehouses, and
fresh, variable elements, which present unique challenges and surprises‖ (p. 211).
The premise is that improvisation is not so different that it fundamentally detracts from
the original tenets and expectations of the various stakeholders in the jazz performance. The band,
for example, has a stake in being able to respond to the improvised content so as to be able to
react; improvisation cannot depart too far from what the other band members know, or the entire
performance will fall flat. The audience, too, has a stake in the performance: If the improvisation
is too far from what they understand, they will get lost, and the music will be incomprehensible to
them. The musician improvising (Ellington playing the piano, Marsalis on the trumpet, etc.) is the
most important and crucial person in the equation; the vocabulary, the grammar of jazz itself must
be reinterpreted and re-created in a way that sheds new light onto previously existing music. The
musician, as Berliner (1994) notes, is focused on the degree to which old models are changing as
new ideas are created, and on the processes that make this possible: What elements had to come
together to make this particular moment of improvisation possible?
Notably, Berliner (1994) outlines different stages of improvisation. The first stage is
interpretation, or elementalism, or playing something close to the original composition.
5
Embellishment, or ornamentation, is the second stage of improvisation, a more ―aggressive
interpretation.‖ The differences from the original song may be clearer. The third is variation,
where the clear links to the original composition are no longer present; the standard ―head‖ of the
5
Moorman and Miner (1998) have given an excellent breakdown of Berliner and Konitz‘s four stages of improvisation,
which I rely on heavily here.
30
song still exists, but there is a melody that lacks relationship to the original harmonic structure.
The fourth stage is improvisation writ large, the point of ―maximal innovation‖ (Zack, 2000)
where harmonies, tones, and premises are reconstructed. There are still remnants of the existing
structure somewhere within—the existing harmony still gives a starting point, but it is
reconstituted and the form itself is challenged. To play on the outside, means to play to the
maximum limits of improvisation—but a musician still needs to be working with his or her band,
thinking about melodies the band has not, thinking about tonal substitutions, thinking about
sequences of notes—but it won‘t sound good unless it can relate to something that came before or
works in concert with what is being played.
How do we get from improvisation in jazz, as a metaphor, to journalism? There is
something qualitatively different about a jazz ensemble and performance and a newsroom.
Journalists will never be called ―creatives‖ by scholars (with some exception),
6
though some
journalists might like to think of what they do as creative. But they lack the latitude to go out and
write poetry instead of a crime brief and have it published in the day‘s paper or on the Web. What
jazz and journalism share most is that journalism, like jazz, has its own grammar and vocabulary.
And the spaces of improvisation for journalists are likewise places where journalists can come up
with new renditions of their expected output and professional identity.
Journalists do not depart too far from the norm, but they can ask new questions and come
up with new ways of doing things. But all of this is premised on some past history. The
improvisation is that something new is being created out of something old—and it comes as a
break from routine, only to reinforce again the power of that routine as an underlying grammar
for the structure of news creation. Improvisation in news comes out when journalists, for
instance, are forced to react to breaking news. The routine is the same old breaking news routine,
6
See work on news and the creative industry by Deuze (2007) and Hartley (2005).
31
but the new event requires coming up with a different way to respond based on the different
elements of the situation.
To some degree, journalists are always improvising as part of organizational duties—as
part of what they do on a routine basis. They have to figure out new ways to engage with their
material to make things new for the audience, and they must react to new changes. All of this
takes place within the context of existing routines. So in this case, improvisation is not so much
the breaking of routines, but movement, or elementalism, within existing newswork. Still, this
movement—these daily improvisations—have not been well documented. This study attempts to
do so.
On a larger scale, improvisation can also speak to the changes that occur within an
organization. Improvisation implies flexibility. As Berliner (1994) points out, at its most extreme,
the fourth level of jazz improvisation, there is actually a restructuring that fundamentally alters
the chord structure itself. Journalism may be at that point where news organizations are
fundamentally reconfiguring their underlying logic and grammar. Organizations, too, can make
changes that depart from their existing structures to try new things. Improvisation is a particularly
useful concept when we think of organizations going through innovation. A future plan may
exist—or it may not—but improvisation allows for organizations to be flexible with changing the
routine and the expectations for shaping these goals. Through improvisation, people can come up
with new ways of meeting expectations and new ways of learning to adapt to change, while still
building on the organization‘s overarching goals. Thus the levels of improvisation speak to the
different kinds of change taking place, whether working within existing routines or a dramatic
departure. The non-routine work that happens, such as in the case, for example, of making
multimedia, inspires improvisation because people look back to pre-existing routines to begin to
think about forming new ones. But we should not get overly romantic about the notion of
32
improvisation, as ultimately, improvisation relies on routines, and journalists are indeed
constrained by professional expectations about what it means to produce newswork.
―Innovation‖ has frequently been the term that scholars have used to describe how
newsrooms adapt to new technology. Innovation, too, is a useful way to think about the ideas of
bringing new concepts to existing forms and taking these forms into new dimensions. But
improvisation is a better term because it implies greater flexibility on the part of individual actors.
Improvisation allows us to think about the daily work practice on a micro-level; to think not only
about forward progress but also about the day-to-day moments of change in news production.
Innovation is caught in a functionalist notion that displaces the agency of particular actors to
influence change, while improvisation narrows in on the influence and flexibility that different
actors can bring each day. Similarly, innovation suggests a set goal of forward motion with a
destination in mind. Improvisation better suits the needs of newsrooms in part because the
forward motion is not always known; despite master plans toward change, changes and
adjustments are required. Journalists are improvising in a world where the future is uncertain and
no one can map out what a business model will be, what the best mode of news production is, and
how work patterns can be streamlined to produce maximized efficiency. Furthermore,
improvisation differs from innovation because improvisation leaves basic structures intact.
As a result, improvisation provides a way to look at the places where the grammar and
fundamental vocabulary of newsrooms remains the same. In a changing newsroom, improvisation
means that new grammar and vocabulary emerge after repeated patterns of improvisation. This is
again represented in the metaphor with jazz when one thinks about the evolution of jazz styles.
As such, we can look at where are the routines, the practices, and the goals of newswork are
being reinforced. Similarly, we can examine how improvisation creates new routines and new
forms of grammar.
33
Contained within the idea of improvisation is faith in the capacity of individuals to act as
agents, who are in a continuing state of deliberation and decision-making. As Giddens (1979)
notes, agency does not constitute discrete acts but a ―continuous flow of conduct . . . as involving
a stream of actual or contemplated causal interventions of corporeal beings in the ongoing process
of events-in-the world‖ (p. 55). To Giddens, the idea of agency rests on the principle idea that the
agent, at any point in time, could have acted otherwise. To Becker (1982), writing in Art Worlds,
people are empowered at every moment to make choices. In his example, the key moment for a
photographer is the crucial point of weeding out exposures, which then influences the rest of his
or her decisions. But the photographer is in control of a ―continuing set of choices‖ (p. 37).
Agents do not operate absent from other forces. Instead, as Giddens‘ theory of
structuration poses, agents create structures that, in turn, enable agents to act. Becker‘s
photographer was working within the boundaries of the exposures that he had. So to break this
down a bit more, journalists at The Times help create and reinforce The Times as an institution; in
turn, The Times has structures and routines that reinforce what journalists do. However, the
relationship between agency and structure is dynamic. Agents are always capable of new actions,
and as such, there are constantly new structures being created. With regard to routine, then,
agents may take new actions to create new routines, improvising, and these routines will then, in
turn, structure their actions.
Giddens‘ idea of agency also includes the concept of reflexivity. Agents are constantly
considering their actions. This reflexivity, in turn, helps shape future actions. In the late modern
era (or in post-modernity), individuals have to keep pace with how quickly things change. As a
result, we are increasingly self-reflexive because we have to take in more information than ever
(Kasperson, 2000). As such, actions are based less on the structures that came before, or
traditions, and instead are new actions that are responsive to changing social conditions. To apply
34
this to The Times, journalists are increasingly aware of how much is changing in their
newsrooms. As a result, journalists think critically about their own positions in relation to this
evolving environment, and try to change their routines to adapt to the new conditions of
newsgathering in the digital age.
Improvisation in Organizations
There is a subset of organizational communication scholarship that actually talks about
the relationship between organizations and jazz, and as such it is worth noting here.
Organizational scholars have noted the importance of improvisation in fields such as arts,
teaching, therapy, and sports. Barrett and Peplowski (1998) echo what I have articulated, noting
that improvisation is a rule-bound activity that has constraints, but at the same time, no note is
ever a bad note—suggesting that organizational structure, as I similarly do, is a great deal more
improvised that normally considered.
Moorman and Miner (1998a; 1998b) and Moorman, Basoff and Miner (1998) address the
idea that improvisation requires deviation from prior routines, but their focus is on improving
organization outcomes. They talk about, for instance, how to use improvisation to build product
developments, or how to take advantage of improvisational thinking to make adjustments to a
more rigid organizational structure.
Weick (1998) also brings improvisation to organizations through the jazz metaphor. But
for him, the importance of the metaphor is through his theory of sensemaking (1995). According
to Weick, people assign value to improvisation based on what came before; what we can learn
from improvisation in organizations is to look at organizational memory to see how new forms
arise from pre-existing ones. Pasmore (1998) and Bernicker (1998) attempt to articulate how
managers can use improvisation to make their organizations better.
35
Hatch (1998) adds simply that improvisation, and jazz generally, are useful for thinking
about workers and organizations that are flexible and adaptable and that have loose boundaries
and minimal hierarchies in the 21
st
century. Not all of these traits describe newsrooms, but the
flexibility and adaptability of the newsroom to change will become evident.
What I take from this organizational communication literature is that there is indeed some
precedent to drawing a relationship between organizations and improvisation. Where I depart is
that the tenor of many of these pieces is ―How can we get organizations to be more
improvisational?‖—in other words, the scholarship is using the metaphor as a way to
instrumentalize success. I see some lineage with this work, but do not wish to provide advice to
managers, for instance, about how to make their organization more improvisational.
Rounding Out Improvisation
Where I stand with improvisation is this: It is a potent metaphor for describing news.
News operates according to routines—regular, predictable routines—but the differences of these
routines change each day, based on the varying conditions that are set forth in the newsroom.
Many decisions that each journalist makes are ones of improvisation. This is elemental
improvisation that is taking place within an organization, and it is a good deal more improvised
than has previously been considered. In this way, improvisation has always existed in newsrooms
and is part of the dynamism that makes newsrooms a place that is often home to anger, glee,
horror, and a variety of other emotions that happen through the day-to-day experience of news.
Both the organizational literature and the literature about jazz assume that improvisation
is an ―in the moment‖ activity, and the remains of the work are left in the memories of those
involved, or those present at the performance. I do see improvisation as happening at specific
moments in time, but I also see improvisation as a broader and more enduring concept. To me,
36
improvisation is a way to explain shifts in change and form in the newsroom as it makes its
transformation into a more integrated print and online newsroom. Improvising is a continual
process, not a spur of the moment activity that is premised on specific conditions for its
occurrence.
Furthermore, improvisation has lasting effects. In my view, this is more than just seeing
improvisation as a memory. Improvisation in the newsroom fundamentally alters the way that
news gets produced—but of course not all degrees of improvisation are created equal. A new
story results. Or more globally, improvisation may result in the creation of a new routine for
social media. Improvisation is a way to create new structures that are the product of agents
making decisions.
On a broader scale, improvisation is an excellent metaphor to use for news in a time of
change because improvisers in jazz do not know what they are necessarily going to play next. It
resembles something like they played before, but it is uncertain. At this point, news organizations
are in that state where they are creating new routines, many of which have not yet sunk in. They
are working off what is known to make something new. Something without routine in the
newsroom requires improvisation because people look for existing chord structures to make sense
of the new, and soon enough a new routine emerges. Improvisation, then, existed in newsrooms
in the ‘60s as it does today, but it is more powerful now thanks to all the changes taking place in
the newsroom. Now, improvisation helps us understand the flexibility and uncertainty in the new
routines and new roles that have yet to truly take shape in the newsroom.
What New Opportunities for News Exist in the Digital Age?
In the bright and shiny world of journalism in the digital age, traditional journalism has
tremendous opportunities for creating content and shaping news production that never existed
37
before. Consider, for instance, that online news enables the presentation of news in ways that
were never before possible because the technology simply didn‘t exist. There are features such as
interactive graphics; comments and feedback from readers; the combination of print, video,
sound, and photography all in one place—online—on demand. Similarly, the opportunities for
conversation on social media platforms are new; journalists now have different venues for talking
about their stories and even their personal lives in a public space that they didn‘t have before.
Part of what this dissertation will examine is the idea of transmedia storytelling
(Jenkins, 2006). This is the idea that stories can be told and retold through different media, with
each medium providing something additive and that adds new dimensions to a particular story.
So, for example, a story might have video, audio, text, graphics, and social media components.
The question is whether there is something new about the way each medium tells the story, or
whether there is simply a repurposing of the story. Of course, transmedia storytelling has always
existed, but it becomes a lot easier to see the links between stories as they evolve through digital
media. The opportunity for journalists to use the advantages of new media to tell stories in new
ways is an opportunity to look at news production and assess whether it has changed.
However, the types of storytelling also demand a reconsideration of the ideas of
professionalism in a new-media workplace. I will argue that one of the characteristics of the
current newsroom is that it is caught between Fordist and post-Fordist modes of production. As
outlined first by Gramsci (1971), Fordism was initially thought of as a model of production that
creates mechanized, predictable, well-paid workers who produce a regular product. In a Fordist
world, according to Harvey (1991), jobs are stable, and the expectations on capital are predictable
and centered around mass production, in contrast with post-modernity‘s flexible processes of
labor, labor markets, products, and patterns of consumption (p. 147). What Harvey calls ―flexible
accumulation,‖ and others call post-Fordism, is characterized by ―entirely new sectors of
38
production, new ways of providing financial services, new markets, and above all, greatly
intensified rates of commercial, technological and organizational innovation‖ (p. 147). Sennett
(2007) breaks down post-Fordism for the individual worker, arguing that one‘s job is increasingly
more than 9-to-5 but extends into what was previously leisure time. More significantly, the post-
modern corporation is increasingly unstable, and people don‘t have definable jobs. While Sennett
views these as negative aspects of what he calls the ―new capitalism,‖ this actually spells new
opportunities for journalism.
Traditional journalism in many ways resembles the very obvious model of Fordist
production. A predictable product—the newspaper (or the TV or radio broadcast)—is rolled out
each day. Workers write predictable stories. Up until recently, the basic economics of newspapers
had not changed much, with advertising revenue providing the bulk of a news organization‘s
finances. Now, however, the newsroom is going through a post-Fordist transformation—and part
of this dissertation looks at the ways in which post-Fordism provides opportunities (and
limitations) for journalists and the news organization. Most obviously, jobs in newsrooms are not
stable, and news organizations no longer produce the steady stream of income that they used to.
Significantly, labor is increasingly flexible. As this dissertation will show, the demands
and felt expectations of individuals in the newsroom are not predicated on past experiences. New
opportunities arise for shaping and creating what it means to produce and to create journalism.
But the relentless need for content all the time (or at least this perception) creates a workplace
that places new demands on workers that didn‘t exist for newspaper journalists before. Similarly,
the lack of a clear future for the organization in terms of its survival makes organizational
strategy appear innovative and flexible as the organizational form itself is challenged. Similarly,
the new roles and new opportunities for news means that the organization itself is uncertain about
39
how to deal with channeling all of this production—which has, as we will see, mixed implications
in the newsroom.
In addition, I develop the idea of Online +. This is a framework meant to conceptualize
the relationship between news organizations and social media. In the past, news organizations
were concerned solely with their own content on their own Web site, newspaper, or broadcast, but
now, news organizations are concerned with their output in a social media world. Online + details
the relationship between social media and news organizations whereby a third-party platform
enables the distribution, curation, branding and identity, conversation around content, reporting,
and possible funding in a new-media world.
Transmedia storytelling and post-Fordism orient this dissertation with how we might
look at some of the transformations taking place within the newsroom. Online + is one way to
look at social media. Both transmedia and post-Fordism are enduring theories are not specific to
new media. Transmedia storytelling itself is linked to a past history of telling stories in different
ways, but the goal is to see whether the new possibilities for telling stories alters the means of
production in newsrooms. Similarly, as newsrooms hinge between Fordism and post-Fordism
(modeling the difference between routine and non-routine), we can start to see how past models
of journalism influence organizational strategy and professional identity. Online +, however,
describes the next step in how news organizations think about their business and editorial strategy
in an increasingly complex media world.
Method
The principle method for this dissertation was in-depth newsroom ethnography.
7
Based
on the consent of potential research participants, I was invited to attend news meetings, shadow
7
See Appendix A for more details.
40
participants over the course of their days, and conduct interviews. I spent five months doing this
research. I also spent almost three weeks observing the International Herald Tribune in Paris and
Hong Kong to understand the 24-7 business news cycle. Generally, I was at The Times five days a
week. My hours varied, but I was typically in the newsroom at least three days a week between 8
a.m. and 6 to 7 p.m. On some rare occasions, I spent more than 18 hours in the newsroom,
starting the day at 8 a.m. and ending it the next morning close to 2 a.m. Some mornings I was in
as early as 6 a.m. In total, I spent approximately 700+ hours in the newsroom.
I generally observed three meetings a day: the morning business news meeting and two
afternoon business news meetings. I also attended three weeks‘ worth of Page One meetings,
which decide the front page and are held in the morning and afternoon. At least once a week, I
would spend time shadowing the business desk Web editor and Web producers. This included
attending the morning Web meeting. I was able to shadow 32 individuals, most on the business
desk but two on the general Web news production operation. (I was told to keep the majority of
my research participants specifically geared to business news.) By shadowing, I mean actually
sitting behind a person‘s computer as he worked, or following her through her day as she
reported, went to meetings, etc. I watched Web producers, reporters, editors, copy editors, and the
photo editor.
Shadowing was generally an all-day experience. A journalist would pick a day in advance
that suited his or her schedule. On some days, however, I specifically asked to spend time with a
particular journalist because I wanted to observe a particular aspect of his or her work, such as
covering a breaking story or changes in the Web site, for instance. Shadowing meant I was privy
to every email, every phone conversation, and every Web site a journalist visited—and I was
frequently invited to source meetings or planning meetings. Not all journalists were up for the
experience. Most shadowing involved journalists explaining to me what they were doing over the
41
course of the day on their own prompting (I did not ask questions), but other journalists did not
speak to me during this period and would then, at the end of the day, explain to me what they
thought they did all day.
In addition, I also conducted in-depth interviews, which, when combined with the
shadowing experiences, led to 81 interviews. I began these interviews approximately one month
into my observation and relied on semi-structured interviews. The questions changed slightly
depending on a person‘s specific role in the news organization.
8
Further, I collected a wide array of documents, both online and in print. I have 600 pages
of documents, which include internal memos as well as daily newsroom schedules for stories. I
also kept a daily Web archive three days a week, and each night would save the home page and
business page of The New York Times between 10 p.m. and midnight.
Most individuals agreed to be identified by name. However, in the case where a person‘s
comments might possibly result in retribution, all identifying data were stripped from that
comment, including dates. An earlier version of this study has these dates, which anchor the
veracity of these contributions in my field data. I did not strip dates from negative comments that
were uttered out loud in the newsroom that could have been heard by anyone, however. During
interviews and observations, journalists agreed to a system for attribution that they used in
practice and I understood from my days as a journalist. ―On the record‖ meant I could use their
names and any material they offered. ―On background‖ meant I could use the material they
shared, just not their name. ―Off the record‖ meant that I could use their material only as a way to
enhance my own understanding of the topic at hand. I could, however, take off-the-record
information into consideration while planning future questions.
8
See Appendix B.
42
To conduct my data analysis, I regularly read my field notes and interview transcripts. I
began coding for key terms during my research. I looked through the notes and kept track of
recurring patterns or observations, which I designated as codes. In all, I had approximately 50
codes. These codes were then grouped into seven themes: defining business news; the audience;
business news values; online journalism; print journalism; social media; and multimedia. These
form the general arc of the study. I relied on inductive and deductive analysis, using a
combination of the grounded theory method and the extended case study method to integrate
theory into my results. This data analysis relies on field notes, the documents, and the interview
data. The field notes supply both conversation and observations about the newsroom. As part of
my agreement for entry into the field, The Times had the right to review the final manuscript for
factual errors and for material that could restrict future newsgathering activities, such as sensitive
information about sources. This review did not impact my findings or my analysis, though at
points I have chosen to include The Times‘ perspectives on my work, a feature that I believe
enhances the reader‘s understanding of life inside the newsroom.
Overview of the Chapters
Chapter 2: A Day in the Life of The New York Times
This chapter is intended to bring the reader into what it is like to be inside The New York
Times. It is intended as a visual description of what someone watching journalists work might
actually see—and what I saw when I observed these journalists work. This chapter is not intended
to be analytical; instead, its goal is to give readers a chance to see what it might be like to work
inside one of the nation‘s most formidable press institutions. In this chapter, you will see
instances of newsroom humor as well as how intense the newsroom can be. I take you through a
day in the live of five different people on the business desk: the online news editor; the assigning
43
editor; the lead technology blogger; an on-deadline financial beat reporter; and a financial beat
reporter who is not staring down a daily deadline. Some themes do emerge, such as the
relationship and rhythms between the print and online cycles of the newsroom, the use of social
media, and the emergence of multimedia within the newsroom.
Chapter 3: What Is Business News?
Before we understand how business news is made, it is important to understand what
constitutes business news. This chapter offers a history of business news at The Times, showing
the evolution of business news at The Times. To a large degree, business news at The Times is
defined by institutional structures and narrative decisions. But the perceptions of the audience are
also key to the way that journalists understand business news. As such, this chapter examines the
way that the reader is imagined by journalists; however, this reader is not the online, active
audience member, but a passive recipient of the news.
Chapter 4: Deciding What’s Business News—An Examination of Business News Values
This chapter provides a deeper look into what constitutes business news values. This
section is unique among existing news ethnographies, as it is the first to extensively rely on field
data to provide a rich look at how journalists talk about news decision-making and, in turn, assess
the underlying values driving these decisions. From conversations about stories, we can draw out
what business news values are at this particular historical moment. As a result of this news-
making process, we can begin to see some of the characteristics of agency in the newsroom, with
journalists acting as purposeful decision-makers about the news. However, we also see the
routines that shape these conversations.
44
Chapter 5: Print Rhythms at The Times
This chapter provides a close examination of the print coordination at The Times. It
details the daily production routines, from the Page One meetings to the daily meetings for the
business desk to the night production process. This section discusses the significance of having
planned news, particularly with weekend coverage. However, the chapter argues that planned
news is not news that relies just on sources but is actually an attempt to make news distinct and
provide different insight to ongoing trends or to provide a new outlook on issues facing society.
Using discussion from the Page One and business meetings, the section also underscores how
important journalists find conversation as a way to develop stories. Furthermore, the chapter
details how focused these journalists are on finding the proper placement for news stories on Page
One and the front of the business section.
Chapter 6: Understanding Online Rhythms
This chapter is a detailed look at the online rhythms of The New York Times‘ home page
and business desk. It is also a story about organizational flexibility and organizational strategy
that tells how The Times has adopted to the Web as an organization. News becomes a 24-7 cycle
of constant motion, and we gain insight into how this happens. At the same time, we get a closer
look at how new routines are re-created to manage what could otherwise be impossible, such as
constant updating. At the same time, we look to spaces of improvisation to see where journalists
may have opportunities to try new things based upon what they have done in the past. This
chapter looks at the new and asks what has stayed the same and what has changed from the past.
45
Chapter 7: Staying the Same and Seeing What’s Different—Print and Online Production
This chapter focuses on the integration of print and online in the newsroom. It examines
the different and at times competing values of print journalism and online journalism. Through an
examination of print news production values, the section brings to light what may have changed
in the digital age and what may have remained the same. The section also talks about the
imperatives of online news production. The intention is to show how print and online can be both
complementary and competing goals within the newsroom. However, print still is most important
at The Times. And many journalists have not figured out how to deal with the new routines of
producing news for both online and print.
Chapter 8: Multimedia: Opportunities and Innovation
This chapter focuses on the new potential for storytelling online. Here, I discuss how
business news is made—in the form of multimedia. First, I discuss the decentralization of the
multimedia production experience. Second, I examine the post-Fordist flexibility of the
newsroom to adapt to new roles that never previously existed. This chapter also explores the
tensions and opportunities that exist as relationships develop between these new types of
journalists and traditional journalists. Similarly, the in-depth look at multimedia production
reveals the improvisation at hand when routines are not clearly established. Furthermore, the idea
of transmedia storytelling begins to take shape as this chapter questions how and whether
journalists understand the new potential of multimedia to tell their stories in new ways.
Chapter 9: Business News in an Online + World—Social Media and the “New” Audience
This chapter picks up on earlier themes about trying to understand the audience, but this
time examines how journalists understand their online audience. Online + is developed as a
46
framework for understanding the relationship between newsrooms and social media. Social media
is a non-routine opportunity in the newsroom that encourages some journalists to act as
independent agents with new voices on a different platform. The section also considers the
integration of community conversation and content into The Times. Again, the chapter showcases
a flexible organization adapting to an uncertain new dimension of the news production
experience.
Chapter 10: Conclusion—Making News in a Time of Change
The conclusion revisits the major themes of the study: defining business news; the
perceptions of the audience and their role in shaping news; business news values; the differences
between print and online; multimedia and social media. The chapter explores some of the
limitations at hand, such as the inability to discuss the idea of sources. The conclusion makes the
case for the historical relevancy of this work, arguing that there are important themes about the
nature of new routines and technology that can be abstracted from this study, even if conditions
surrounding news-gathering change. Furthermore, I make the case that this ethnography provides
the first deep look into conversations about how news is shaped and created, and, as such,
provides a valuable contribution to our understanding of news judgment. The conclusion ends
with questions for future researchers.
47
CHAPTER 2: A DAY IN THE LIFE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES
The new New York Times building stands blocks away from its namesake Times Square
in a 52-story Renzo Piano-designed office tower between 40
th
and 41
st
Streets on Eighth Avenue.
The ground floor of the building is dedicated to a New York Times auditorium, rented out for
events and used by The Times for ―Times Talks,‖ where New Yorkers have the chance to meet
their favorite Times critic or other public intellectual. The building itself is, as the leasing office
proclaims, the first ―high rise curtain wall with ceramic sunscreen to be built in the United States‖
(CB Richard Ellis, n.d.). Practically, what this means is that the building is glass and has light-
sensitive blinds that shut and open of their own accord based on passing clouds or bright
afternoon sunlight. The magic of this system wore off quickly for many staffers inside, who look
up when the loud flaps move and promptly reconfigure the blinds to their liking.
At each of the three entrances to the building, you are greeted by a large ―The New York
Times‖ sign. There are usually tourists taking pictures in front of these signs. Glass doors empty
into a lobby with shiny wood floors and a stable of security desks, where one can call to be let up
into The Times‘ offices. Times staffers use their badges like subway cards to go through the
Plexiglas entrance to the elevator bank. The high-tech elevators don't actually have buttons inside.
Instead, you push a button outside the elevators and then are directed to a lettered elevator that
takes you to your desired floor. Technically, The Times occupies floors 2-28, but the division
between editorial and business works out that editorial stops around floor 14, and the Times
corporate offices continue after that. Practically speaking, this division works well: The two
blocks of elevators meet on the 14
th
-floor cafeteria, or middle real estate. One block of elevators
serves only the upper floors, and the other serves the newsroom. Publisher Arthur Sulzberger's
48
office is on the 16
th
floor. When I was first given a tour, I was told that this breakdown between
business and editorial was unintentional.
The hub of the Times editorial production takes place on the second through fourth floors.
These areas are divided into what people call the ―tower‖ and the ―podium‖—the ―tower‖
referring to the part of the building that has upper floors beyond the fourth floor. The third floor is
home to the national, foreign, metro, and media desks, among others. Flanking the walls of the
building are glass offices for prominent editors. The third floor is home to the Page One meetings,
and the room has a little newspaper photo placard on it. It's a huge conference room with round
tables that can fit close to 40 people comfortably and has a pull-down projection screen used for
showing the Page One meeting attendees what the home page looks like. The Page One meetings
are used to decide what will go on the front page of the print newspaper and are held once in the
morning and once in the afternoon. The top editors make the final calls, but editors from each
section of the newsroom have a chance to offer their stories for the front.
Also on the third floor are the cubicles and offices of the top brass: Executive Editor Bill
Keller, Managing Editor Jill Abramson, and Managing Editor John Geddes. But they are more
often in their cubicles than their offices, and it is not unusual to see Bill Keller pacing through the
newsroom or typing furiously on his computer in his cube. Most prominent editors have both
cubicles and glass-paneled offices. Significantly, next to ―Bill and Jill,‖ as they are so often called
in the newsroom, sit the two most prominent members of the online staff of The Times: Jim
Roberts, associate managing editor for digital news, and his deputy, Fiona Spruill, editor of the
Web newsroom. The cubes, a medium wood, are low enough that it is easy for editors to look
across at one another and have conversations. Toward the front of this room is the hub of the
49
Web, the center of production for the home page—where the continuous news desk editor
9
, the
domestic and global home page editors, and the Web photo editors are all located. The Web, then,
is at the center of the newsroom, but also close to the most powerful people in the editorial
newsroom, who at the end of the day determine the front page of the print paper and, in a larger
sense, are responsible for the editorial strategy of the newsroom.
The setup of the third floor makes it possible to see both the second and fourth floors,
which are connected by stairs in the center of the newsroom. The fourth floor is home to members
of the digital team, Times video, Culture, Sunday Styles, and other sections. The open layout,
along with the glass walls, was designed to reflect the Times‘ ―commitment to transparency,‖
both as a metaphor and in practice, according to Kevin McKenna, deputy business editor
(personal communication, September 28, 2009). Geography at The Times is more than just how
the building is structured and people‘s seat assignments. Where people sit speaks to the
relationships and the values placed upon communication as well as the requirements of news
routines. The adaptations of the space brings together multiple departments, as seen with the
integration of different departments with the business section (or desk, as sections are called at
The Times), and this integration facilitates the production of news.
The business desk is on the second floor, which it shares with the Sports desk, Science,
Environment, Graphics, News Surveys, Week in Review, and Special Sections. The business
desk has one of the largest staffs at the paper, with close to 100 people in New York working for
it. There are also staffers in Washington, D.C.; Chicago; Detroit; Houston; Los Angeles; San
Francisco; London; Hong Kong; Shanghai; and Mumbai, as well as regular contributors from
Moscow and Tokyo. The San Francisco bureau has the most business reporters outside of New
9
The continuous news desk is a group of editors and reporters at The Times dedicated to writing breaking news for the
Web. A desk at the Times refers to a cluster of journalists grouped according to a common theme or section of the
newspaper, e.g., the business desk or the national desk.
50
York, and it primarily covers technology. As we will see, the business desk is not just a collection
of reporters, editors, and the business copy desk, but a synergy between Web producers, graphics,
and the photo desk. The business desk is also close to the interactive news desk, which, for
example, helped create the award-winning series for the business desk on water quality that
allowed the ordinary Times reader to look up the water quality in her hometown (―What‘s in your
water?,‖ 2010). The business desk also shares the floor with the computer-assisted reporting desk,
which helped business reporters by designing a database that listed every Madoff victim.
10
At one
point, this database was receiving 50 hits per minute. This desk is also responsible for other
collaborative projects.
The business desk is geographically structured so that the majority of editors are sitting in
a central hub with low-walled cubicles. These editors are directly next to the Web producers,
photo, art design, and graphics staff assigned to work with the business desk. A big-screen TV
attached to a wall column faces the editors; in the morning, it is tuned (volume off) to CNBC and
in the afternoon, to Fox Business News or CNN. During the Olympics, or March Madness,
editors sometimes sneak peeks of game highlights. Many editors have TVs also tuned to CNBC at
their desks, and there are Bloomberg terminals set up at certain editors‘ desks, mainly those who
pay the most attention to the markets, and two terminals at other stations in the business area.
Business news is routine in that the work of journalists has regular rituals that make it
possible for the daily—and, increasingly, hourly or minute-by-minute—output of journalistic
production to take place. There are systematic processes and rhythms behind newsroom coverage
of and approaches to everything from breaking news to more planned stories that are not linked to
specific events. However, improvisation is occurring on a regular basis. Journalists are engaging
10
American investment manager Bernard Madoff pleaded guilty to a $50 billion dollar Ponzi scheme in March 2009
(Henriques, 2009). The swindle was called the worst in history, according to federal regulators (Zambito and Smith,
2008), and he was imprisoned for 150 years.
51
with new ideas as they attempt to fit new information into these existing work processes, and
during these times of change, they improvise in order to adapt to the new aspects of their work,
such as multimedia expectations, with some lesser and greater degrees of improvisation as part of
their workflow. Journalists are purposeful agents making decisions about how they will do their
work, and each day is a different day requiring new considerations, decisions, and improvisation
on routine. Further, The Times is a place in constant motion as routines go through adaptation and
adoption as people incorporate technological change into the fabric of their workflow. But before
getting further into the way that these decisions, changes, and serendipitous experiences unfold, it
is important to look at the variety of people who make up The Times newsroom.
To give a sense of life inside The Times, I introduce you to five people who had very
different job assignments on the day I spent with them: Web editor Mark Getzfred, financial
reporter Graham Bowley, assigning editor Dan Niemi, tech blogger Nick Bilton, and financial
reporter Andrew Martin. The days I outline are just snapshots of the different kinds of
experiences people have working at The Times. Each snapshot is intended is an introduction to
the specific demands that each individual had to meet to make The Times function, both in print
and on the Web. During the course of my research, I shadowed and interviewed a variety of
staffers: male and female; the middle-aged and twenty- and thirty-somethings; Web producers,
photo editors, an art designer, reporters, copy editors, and editors.
The selection of these five individuals gives some sense of the different moving parts that
make the business desk more than just a daily, predictable routine. Of course, because of the
serendipity I suggest, no one day can be a stand-in given the variation that these individuals
experience in their daily work, week in and week out, at The Times. My intention is to highlight a
few important experiences: the online coordination and pressure through Getzfred, the breaking
news experience of Bowley, the daily story coordination Niemi conducts, a particularly crazy day
52
in the life of blogger Bilton (the introduction of the iPad), and the off-deadline day of reporter
Martin.
Mark Getzfred, Online News Editor: January 12, 2010
Mark Getzfred, a middle-aged man whose quiet demeanor masks his quick wit, settles
into his desk by 7 a.m. He is coordinating between The International Herald Tribune’s Hong
Kong newsroom, which is shutting down for the night, and its Paris main office, which is in the
middle of its day and in the midst of crafting its print edition.
11
On this day, Getzfred is waiting for a story on Japan Airline‘s (JAL) bankruptcy from a
reporter in Tokyo and for Paris to finish editing stories about Airbus. Getzfred is also checking
competitor Web sites and scans the wires for other breaking news. He begins editing various
stories, picking up news about Chinese banks and credit for the site. He then edits an AP story on
Alcoa European shares.
He is also working on a markets story, which at this point reflects the close of Asian
markets and final movement on the European indexes. The markets story will be continuously
updated throughout the day with the U.S. markets, and even though people can get instant
snapshots of the market on their phones, Getzfred says to me, ―Sometimes this is one of the most
highly trafficked articles on the site.‖ Notably, Getzfred‘s work, including the markets stories,
will go live on the Web site though his have been the only eyes on the story. However, a copy
editor will then circle back to edit more closely and correct for Times style.
To aid with the markets story, Getzfred has the help of a continuous news reporter, Javier
Hernandez, who that day arrived around 8:30. Hernandez then begins writing the markets story
11
The International Herald Tribune is owned and operated by The Times. Its reporters provide additional foreign
content to The Times, and The International Herald Tribune functionally exists as The Times‘ global print edition. The
global home page and, on the business Web section, the global page, serve as the Web outlet.
53
from scratch, fleshing out the movement of the market throughout the day with more complete
quotes from economists and analysts. Hernandez will also write many of the economic indicator
reports, most of which are released in the morning. His job is to handle any breaking news that
doesn‘t fall under the auspices of the beat reporters, which he will often begin writing himself.
In the early part of the morning, Getzfred‘s conversation with Web producer Kelly
Couturier follows a pattern common to many other mornings. On this day he says, ―I think you
can move JAL over Markets, maybe above Airbus because it‘s just a small development and start
taking some of yesterday and putting it into headlines.‖ By this conversation, Getzfred and
Couturier are determining order, or the ―rank,‖ the stories on the business Web page will have.
This literally means the order in which the stories appear on the Web site. They also discuss
graphics and pictures for the site, but Couturier will routinely post pictures. Couturier will usually
ask Getzfred whether he wants her to crop or ―cut‖ a picture, rendering it the correct size for the
Web, or offer some graphic that might have been pre-prepared. Getzfred is coordinating both the
global business page (ideally geared for the international reader) and the domestic business
section front.
Getzfred is constantly scanning the wires, checking Bloomberg, the Wall Street Journal,
the Financial Times, the Washington Post, the blogs Huffington Post and Gawker, and other sites
for any breaking business news The Times should be aware of. In his words, this is to ―just to
know what‘s going on.‖ He also looks through the news budget
12
for stories that are on the
schedule—either planned events that will happen or potential enterprise
13
stories slated for
publication—and attempts to pin down rough estimates for when these will be available for the
12
The news budget, or budget, is a list of stories that are scheduled to appear that day or are prospective candidates for
the front page. There is usually a ―sked line‖ to accompany each story, which is a brief description of the story, and as
the story develops, this ―sked line‖ may turn into the story‘s lead or first few paragraphs.
13
An enterprise story is one that comes from reporting that is not tied to a specific, scheduled event. These stories often
include investigative stories or more general feature stories that do not necessarily need to be linked to a specific day in
the news cycle. These stories reflect creative, original reporting in the newsroom.
54
Web. ―The home page, particularly in the morning, is always looking for news. They want
something fresh they can put up there,‖ Getzfred explained to me later (personal communication,
May 5, 2010).
At 9:45, Getzfred heads up to the third floor for a meeting with the continuous news desk
editor, Pat Lyons. Also at this meeting are representatives from all the major desks who will have
material ready for the Web. In essence, this is an opportunity for the Web editors and home page
producers to learn what is coming for the day. Editors are given the chance to make a pitch
14
for
just how important a story might be in order to get it play on the home page, where 50 to 60
percent of The Times Web traffic comes from. A representative from the D.C. bureau is piped
into the meeting through a conference phone. A clerk prepares a printed-out continuous news
budget that has schedule lines for the stories that each desk is pitching, though the representatives
rarely read off this list.
The meeting is near the desks of the home page producer, the global home page producer,
the photo editor, and Pat Lyons, the continuous news editor. In front of their desks are a number
of monitors. The number of monitors grew to five during my time in the newsroom. At first there
were just two, one for The Times global home page and the second for The Times domestic home
page. Then another was added to show the Times mobile readout for both home pages. A fourth
was added to show what The Times looks like on the iPad, then a fifth was added to show The
Times‘ Twitter feeds.
At this January 12 meeting, the foreign desk begins with an update about 10 civilians
who were attacked in Afghanistan, as well as a number of other foreign stories. The national
editor chimes in that the Supreme Court could rule on campaign finance and also expresses
interest in getting up a story about the trial of the man accused of murdering Wichita abortion
14
A pitch is a short summary of a story that is usually voiced as an argument for a story‘s significance.
55
doctor George Tiller. Also present at this meeting are representatives from the section of The
Times‘ Web site called ―Room for Debate,‖ which is produced by the editorial pages. ―Room for
Debate‖ uses the meeting to try to decide on a suitable topic for expert commentary related to a
newsworthy subject: On this day, those present at the meeting suggest campaign finance as a
possible topic.
When it is Getzfred‘s turn to present stories to the group, he offers what he calls ―AIR.‖
AIR is shorthand for the JAL story. In using the term ―AIR,‖ Getzfred is using a ―slug,‖ or
journalistic shorthand for the name that the story will go by when it is talked about in the
newsroom. Getzfred also mentions that the economic reports on the American trade balance
might be a dress page story. A ―dress page story‖ for the business section is lingo at The Times
that refers to the front of the print business page, which contains the most important business
stories of the day that do not make it to the newspaper‘s front page. The dress page is composed
of five to six stories, including a column. In asserting that the trade balance story might make the
dress page, Getzfred is suggesting that the story carries a certain newsworthiness that might
qualify it for placement on the home page.
Other people at the meeting make their offerings. Culture talks about the debut of their
American Idol blogger. Then, the visual staff gets their chance to offer their contributions for the
Web. The Web photo editor shows some pictures of Afghanistan, Iraq, and bombings in Iran. The
representative from the video section explains what they have for the day, a video on the auto
show and another video about Cambodia.
The meeting lasts for about 15 minutes, and there is little discussion of when the stories
are slated to be completed. The home page editor and Lyons give no indication of what will make
it to the home page. Getzfred has only a vague sense of timing for the business stories, explaining
to me, ―These are the stories I expect to arrive by 4 or 5 p.m.‖
56
After the meeting, Getzfred begins to ask Couturier to start moving the headlines down
on the page. On a busier day, Getzfred would be tied to his computer, editing copy coming in
from reporters to be posted quickly to the Web. On a less busy day with news that does not
require frequent Web updates, Getzfred will go to the 11:15 meeting for all of the business
editors.
As the day unfolds, Getzfred is occupied with keeping the Web site looking fresh. He is
also charged with editing a few blogs before they are posted to the Web site; a copy editor will
then provide another set of eyes to review the blog after it is posted. So Getzfred moves between
searching for wire stories, editing the markets story, monitoring the order of stories on the Web,
and editing blog posts, such as those coming from Floyd Norris‘ blog (Norris is a columnist) or
the Economix blog, which purports to ―explain the science of everyday life.‖
At 2:45 there is another meeting. Some of the stories that Getzfred has worked on during
the day, ―staff‖ or ―agency‖ stories as marked on the paper budget, are now considered less
important and will go ―inside‖ the paper.
15
By this point in the afternoon, it is not unusual for the
business page to have a few dress page stories posted on the Web. Though length doesn‘t matter
on the Web, Getzfred takes his cue for how long to keep these stories based on how important
they are in the print paper, a determination he makes based on conversations in the business news
meetings held throughout the day. Generally, placement of stories toward the front of the print
section means that a story is more important than others. Getzfred does, however, consider the
different Web and print audiences as he swaps out Web stories for the freshest content during the
day, assuming the Web reader wants to know what is new.
Based on what is done at 4 p.m., Getzfred prepares for the ―scrape‖: The Times‘
automated feed of what is going to be delivered to people‘s inboxes as the ―Afternoon Update‖
15
A staff story is written by a staffer; an agency story is compiled from one of the wire services, such as AP or
Bloomberg.
57
email. The first five stories listed on the business section‘s Web site will be the first five under
the business section of the email. That is, unless the story is on the home page, in which case the
―scrape‖ moves down the business Web page to pick up the sixth-ranked story. In ranking the
stories for the 4 p.m. scrape, Getzfred looks for ―a good mix between what is important and what
people want to be reading. If there‘s really something breaking, it will be on the home page.
Sometimes, during the financial crisis, we were 10 for 10,‖ he says to me (personal
communication, March 9, 2010), referring to the first 10 slots on the email.
Around 5 p.m., The Times‘ media writer Bill Carter gets a scoop that Conan O‘Brien will
refuse to be The Tonight Show host if Leno is moved back to his old 11:35 p.m. slot. The scoop is
broken first on a blog. Getzfred reorients the business page and alerts the home page to the scoop;
later, a story develops and O‘Brien makes his official announcement. At the time, this was big
news: The Times was the first news organization to have news about O‘Brien‘s decision. The
Times was expecting something to happen because of contract negotiation problems, but The
Times media editor was hoping to be the first with the story. The relevance of a scoop at a time
when another news site can instantly post this news will be discussed later, but it is significant to
note that scoops are widely considered within the news organization as a sign of quality reporting
and receive recognition from top editors. Scoops are considered a demonstration of The Times‘
ability to lead the news agenda.
Though January 12, 2010, was the day that the Haiti earthquake struck around 5 p.m.,
Eastern Standard Time, no mention of this is made around the business desk. Instead, the news
that has Getzfred and the rest of the business desk in breaking-news mode is Google‘s
announcement that it is—for now—pulling out of China because of security breaches.
The news is broken on the tech blog, Bits. Getzfred then alerts the home page to the
news. The home page doesn‘t like the wording and, after briefly posting the Bits blog, takes it
58
down and puts up an AP story. Getzfred quickly writes a roughly three-paragraph staff-written
story on the statement to give a ―staff presence on the page‖ (personal communication, January
13, 2010) and also to give the reporters a running start. Bits then reposts a new version the home
page liked. The full article then follows, updating Getzfred‘s headline version.
In total, Getzfred‘s 11- to 12-hour day included two breaking business news stories: the
Conan O‘Brien story, which at first seemed like big news to the desk, and then the even bigger
Google news story. Getzfred was constantly working throughout the day, from his morning
commute on the train to 7 p.m., when he handed off the Google story to night editors. That
evening, the front page in print was entirely remade to reflect both the Haiti earthquake and the
news about Google. After reading this account, Getzfred thought this particular day made him
appear like he was waiting for news to happen, when in fact, he feels that he is actively preparing
for scheduled events he knows will generate news, working with reporters to generate prepared
matter to respond to these news events, and making sure that stories are available as soon as
possible on the Web.
Graham Bowley, Financial News Reporter: January 21, 2010
Graham Bowley is a sandy-haired, middle-aged Brit who has spent years on the foreign
desk after working for The International Herald Tribune and The Financial Times in Europe. In
his spare time, he is writing a book about K2, the mountain. On the Sunday before I spent time
with him, he had a big story in the travel section as well as a large profile in the Sunday Business
section about Morgan Stanley‘s new chief executive. The day I spent with Bowley was on the
day of Goldman Sachs earnings—or on one of the four days during the year when the bank
announces how much it has earned in the previous quarter. The fourth-quarter earnings, released
in a period between December and February, are of the most interest in the newsroom and,
59
theoretically, to readers, because they reflect the previous year‘s total gains and losses and
employee compensation.
In 2010, journalists at The Times speculated that many Americans were frustrated with
Goldman Sachs, the bank that had seemed to be the big winner in the financial crisis. To many
observers, Goldman, with its massive role on Wall Street, was now the symbolic representative of
Wall Street vs. Main Street in American political discourse. Goldman, along with JPMorgan,
Wells Fargo, and the other surviving banks after the financial collapse, had been guilty of
mistakes that may have led to the financial collapse, as diligent work from journalists,
government commissions, filmmakers, and non-profits has revealed. To many politicians and
many in the public,
16
Goldman represented the banks that had created the complicated derivatives
and collateralized debt obligations
17
that inflated and then popped the housing bubble, leading the
American markets, and then the economy, to its worst recession since the Great Depression.
Any story about Goldman, Bowley told me, typically went on the most emailed list, got
―boatloads‖ of comments, and had a good shot at making the front page. Though the story was
big news because it had to do with Goldman, and news about Goldman bonuses would likely
stoke populist furor when compared with the high unemployment rate, the process of writing the
story itself would be rather routine, Bowley told me the day prior. Bowley came in about 7:30 for
the 8 a.m release of the precise numbers. But he already had a story ready to go for the Web
(minus the actual numbers). At The Times, this sort of pre-story is called B matter: It is the
canned, ready-to-use material and is prewritten, sometimes weeks before, sometimes days before.
The day, Bowley explained, would be pretty evenly split: the earnings announcement at 8 a.m., a
16
This larger public discourse can be traced through TV, print and online coverage. Goldman stories got an outpouring
of comments from the public on The Times’ site and on other news sites.
17
Derivatives are securities whose values are determined based on one or more underlying assets and are traded
according to expectations of future prices. Collateralized debt obligations are an investment-grade security backed by a
pool of bonds, loans, and other assets.
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call with the CFO to journalists at 9 a.m., an 11 a.m. investors and analysts call, and then,
wrapping it up, a story for the paper. All along, he would be updating the story for the Web.
By 8 a.m., all Bowley had to do was to wait for the numbers to be released online from
Goldman and then put them into a story that looked like the one below, a story that had already
been edited by Getzfred. The B matter looked like this:
Goldman Sachs said Thursday it earned $TK [to come] profit in the fourth quarter,
rounding out a year for the Wall Street bank in 2009.
The bank said its profit for the whole of 2009 was $TK billion, and in a move that is
likely to incense its critics, disclosed that it had set aside a record $TK billion for bonuses
for its employees.
The results show how much Goldman has rebounded from the financial crisis and its
single quarterly loss in the final three months of 2008. Its disclosure on bonuses
underlines the extent to which compensation will again eat up much of Wall Street's
revenue this year.
The bonus numbers are likely to provoke more outcry over the level of executive pay on
Wall Street, a year after the government rescued the financial system with billions of
taxpayers' dollars.
Many banks are bracing for more scrutiny of pay from Washington, as well as from
officials like Andrew M. Cuomo, the attorney general of New York, who last year
demanded that banks disclose details about their bonus payments. Some bankers worry
that the United States, like Britain, might create an extra tax on bank bonuses.
\
But these concerns aside, few banks are taking immediate steps to cut their bonuses
substantially. Because of the potential criticism, some big banks are changing their pay
practices, paring or even eliminating some cash bonuses in favor of stock awards and
reducing the portion of their revenue earmarked for pay.
In December, Goldman announced that its top 30 executives would be paid only in stock,
with no cash component. Now, nearly everyone on Wall Street is waiting to see how
much stock will be awarded to Lloyd C. Blankfein, Goldman's chairman and chief
executive, who has become a focus for criticism over executive pay. In 2007, Mr.
Blankfein was paid $68 million, a Wall Street record. He did not receive a bonus in 2008.
At 8 a.m., Bowley checks the wires for results. He sees the Journal post the earnings and
gets his numbers from Business Wire, another wire service that distributes company press
releases. ―It's on the Journal!‖ he shouts, and yells out the number to Getzfred. After looking at
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the numbers again, Bowley shouts, ―The Journal got it wrong.‖ He says this in a rushed, almost
competitive tone.
The two confer about whether they are going to make net revenue or net earnings the
main focus of the story
18
; Bowley at this point has an income statement printed out with the
quarterly earnings. Dan Niemi, assigning editor, says they should go with the net earnings
number of $4.95 billion, reasoning, ―It's more applicable to common shareholders. And say it's
above Wall Street expectations.‖
19
Getzfred and Bowley look at the hot-button compensation
number, and Getzfred says, ―This the lowest [compensation number] ever as a public company.‖
Bowley stands over Getzfred as they put the earnings number into Bowley‘s B matter and
upload the first version of story to the content management system and on to the Web. Bowley
goes back to his desk and refreshes the home page. It takes a few minutes for the Goldman story
to come up on the business page and then on the lead spot on the home page, though the story is
already live on the Financial Times, Reuters, and the Journal. Bowley tweaks the wording with
Getzfred in the lead and the two go back and forth with small changes.
The posted story is only the first version of the piece, and Bowley will continue to work
on it throughout the day. After posting the basic earnings, Bowley begins reading up on the bonus
pool from years prior, trying to determine what the per-person bonus will be. In 2007, before the
crash, he discovers the bonus pool was $20.2 billion, or $661,490 per person. Bowley explains
how he calculates the bonus numbers: He looks for the number of employees on the earnings
sheet and divides the total bonus pool to get about $500,000 per employee in loans and
18
Net revenue is the amount of income a company collects. Net earnings are revenue minus expenses, or the money
earned after costs are removed.
19
This reference suggests a potential audience, not of big-time investors, but of people who are small-time investors in
the stock market. The reference, then, suggests an audience who would be investing in Goldman Sachs.
62
compensation, though at this point it is unclear whether Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein's take-
home will be included in the number.
He stops tinkering with the early version of the story (with each change reflected in
updates to the Web posted by Getzfred). Bowley arranges for me to call in with him to the
journalist‘s conference call with Lucas van Praag, the chief public relations officer for Goldman,
and the CFO of Goldman, David A. Viniar. The CFO begins by introducing all of the highlights
from Goldman's earnings. Then the conversation turns to questions from both the British and
American press on issues from Obama‘s bank tax to the compensation issue to whether Goldman
is ―too big to fail.‖
Bowley observes that he is starting to get reader email about Goldman and sends a note to
Getzfred saying that he'd like to have comments turned on for the story. Since The Times
moderates comments before they are posted, it can have only a few stories with comments live on
the site each day. Bowley can't answer every reader email as it comes in, but on that day he is
aware of the regular stream of email as a result of the story. ―As soon as you mention Goldman,
they just start coming in.‖
Bowley is trying to do many things at once: to make sure that he is constantly updating
the Web and to continue reporting the story. The room he has to make the story take on a
particular and unique angle is more difficult at this point because of time pressure and the
obligations of feeding the Web. Nevertheless, he is able to get input from colleagues as he
prepares for each step of the major Web updates, and there are pauses in the online rhythm to
think of new angles.
For example, as Bowley waits for his individual call from the CFO, he gets some
suggestions from the Sunday business editor about possible questions, such as asking about credit
default swaps. Bowley says he's interested in asking about the Volcker rule, a reform suggested
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by former Fed Chair Paul Volcker, which would split Goldman's extremely profitable proprietary
trading desk (which means banks trade their own funds instead of their clients‘) from its
investment efforts on behalf of clients. The reform would also prohibit banks from owning and
investing in a hedge fund or private-equity fund. At the core of this question is whether
investment banks could also be commercial bank-holding companies. Notably, Bowley still has
some time during the constant Web-updating process to think of more interesting questions than
just simply updating the minute-by-minute facts of the story.
Bowley gets the call from the CFO and questions the nature of the compensation package
and the bank-holding activities of Goldman. Bowley is then instructed by his editor, David
Gillen, to consider how proposed Obama financial regulations might affect Goldman‘s role as a
bank-holding company, since it has a large proprietary trading desk. Gillen plans other stories,
with one reporter looking out at the legal implications of the Volcker rule for Goldman and
another looking at the policy implications. Gillen gives the order: ―Let's frame it . . . did Goldman
blink? It's still up 50 percent?‖
Bowley responds: ―Is there pain and suffering?‖ he asks, referring to the way people feel
inside Goldman. Bowley says he will try to get the pulse of what‘s happening inside the bank.
Plans are made to get reactions from the trading floor.
Editor Liz Alderman and Gillen ask Graham, ―What's the A1 [thought]?‖ Bowley pauses
for a second and replies, ―Washington and Wall Street.‖ Gillen instructs, ―The lead will be the
analytical on the bank.‖ The A1 thought, or A1 story, refers to the story that will be presented to
the Page One meeting for consideration for the front page of the print paper. The ―analytical‖ idea
of the lead refers to the step-back approach The Times will take after it is done updating the story
for online and readies it for the print paper.
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Then, Bowley reads an analysis from Credit Suisse about the earnings. He asks one of the
DealBook reporters (whose role it is to get breaking news about Wall Street up on this specific
Times blog quickly) about the implications of the bonus cut inside Goldman. The reporter notes,
―It all depends on what Lloyd [Blankfein] gets.‖
At 11 a.m., as planned, Bowley sits in on the call between Goldman and financial
analysts following the company. The call is mainly conducted in complicated financial jargon
terms, with analysts asking for clarification on particular points on the income statements and
other questions to help them make predictions about the company going forward. I don‘t
understand much of the call, which is heavy in financial language. After, Bowley says to me after,
―Let's turn gobbledygook into English.‖ Bowley‘s job, then, is one of translation, taking financial
terms and making them understandable for what he sees as the typical Times reader: someone
who can‘t understand the jargon. As we will later learn, The Times reader is often imagined by
Times reporters to be an educated, interested reader who may not know about business. Many
journalists, however, also see their work reaching major decision-makers.
After the analyst call, Bowley makes a few additional changes to the story. When
satisfied, he notes, ―I think we're done updating for the Web, but there will be more later.‖ At this
point, I leave him alone to write the story for the print paper. He puts on his headphones for a bit,
then takes them off to make calls, including a few people on Capitol Hill. But mainly, at this
point, his focus is on writing.
At about 2 p.m., Jane Bornemeier, head of NYT radio and a key mover in The Times‘
video efforts, comes by with a camera crew. They explain to Graham that they want him and
another editor, Winnie O‘Kelley, to talk about the Goldman earnings for the camera. Graham
takes a second and removes a blazer from the back of his chair, asking, ―Can I put this on?‖ The
video is designed to be ―90 seconds to two minutes . . . it‘s not a … recap, it's about your line of
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reporting,‖ Bornemeier explains. Her colleague says to Bowley, ―Give us a sneak peak, but not
the golden egg,‖ referring to the fact that she doesn‘t want Bowley to give away the story.
At this point, the video shoot is just a pilot for TimesCast, the noon show that gives
Times readers online an inside look at what the big stories for the day will be in The Times. In its
early days, the five-minute video offered viewers an inside look at Page One meetings. With big
breaking news stories likely to make Page One, it is increasingly common for the writing process
to be interrupted by multimedia demands.
Bowley and O‘Kelley prepare for the camera, slightly bemused. ―This is funny,‖
O‘Kelley notes. ―We don't even work together.‖ Bornemeier prompts them some more: ―It's as if
we were doing inside eavesdropping on a conversation you were already having.‖ Bowley‘s
editor mocks him for being British. ―He has a great voice,‖ Gillen says.
O‘Kelley asks Bowley a few questions about the Volcker rule and the idea to separate
commercial banks. She asks whether there are deeper questions than just the bonus pay. The
whole taping lasts about 20 minutes. Bowley returns to writing with his headphones on, and by
4:30 he passes a draft for the print version of the paper to Gillen. ―He's a heavy edit,‖ Bowley
notes, anticipating significant changes to his style.
He fields a call from a Goldman employee‘s wife. ―Goldman Housewife,‖ he scribbles on
a pad, looking excited. She has called to complain that her husband isn't getting the half-million
bonus that Bowley has published. Bowley promises not to quote her, but gets her number to call
her back in case he has a story for which she might be relevant. A few minutes later, a source
calls with a possible story on delays of bonuses by JPMorgan. ―That would be a great story,‖ he
tells the source. He turns to me and notes, ―I love what I do,‖ quite seriously and sincerely, with a
big grin on his face.
66
By the end of the day, the story looks quite different from the B matter. He has written
five versions of the story, and according to a print-out I got from Getzfred about the story‘s
history back and forth from the Web page, the story has been tinkered with in some small form no
fewer than 26 times. The story has shifted down into the headlines of the home page and never
got comments turned on; instead, a policy story about Obama and banks takes the second most
prominent place on the home page after news about campaign spending. Bowley‘s story, instead
of running on the front as Bowley had hoped and editors had indicated, runs on the front page of
the business section. The headline, changed from the numbers of the earnings, has turned to
―Strong Year for Goldman After It Trims Its Bonus Pool‖ (Bowley, 2010), and the lead reads like
this:
No one was crowing about their big paychecks at Goldman Sachs headquarters in New
York on Thursday. Despite a record 2009, the bank announced that it had set aside only
$16.2 billion to reward its employees.
Only?
If you have never worked on Wall Street, it is hard to grasp how 11 figures could be
anything less than an enormous payday. But for Goldman, the financial and political
calculations used to tally that number also added up to an uncharacteristic show of
restraint.
In a surprising concession to the public outcry over big Wall Street bonuses, Goldman
broke with the longtime industry practice of earmarking roughly half of its annual
revenue for compensation.
Dan Niemi, Assigning Editor: April 13, 2010
Dan Niemi is an assistant business editor. He is a Jayhawk and still has a Midwestern
accent even after being in New York for a dozen years. He has a shock of white hair and seems to
be always standing up, watching CNBC or generally directing daily news production by
physically maneuvering people to meetings. He gets to the newsroom between 7:30 and 8 a.m.
and often doesn't leave until 7 or 8 p.m. His desk is in the middle of the hub of what the Times
calls backfielders, or content editors. He sits behind a deputy business editor and diagonal from
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Larry Ingrassia, the head of the business desk (who sits mostly in his cube but has an office he
uses mainly for meetings). Niemi is also across from the Web-producing cubes, graphics, and art
design, giving him the ability to also direct Web traffic and design quickly. And he happens to be
the closest to the TV. The most helpful element of this proximity to the TV is that he can keep an
eye on CNBC‘s live market indicators and flashing headlines for news.
On the morning I spend with Niemi, he gets into the office about 8 a.m. He tells me his
job is like ―air-traffic control,‖ and it is his primary responsibility to stay on top of anything
breaking. His job is also to filter the news for the business desk. ―There is tons of information
coming through, and we discard nearly all of it. It's like drinking from a fire hose,‖ he explains.
The first part of his day is spent doing two things: monitoring the e-wires and monitoring
the competition. He notes that making sure The Times is on top of any breaking news ensures the
relevancy of Times online content. The Times doesn‘t aim to be comprehensive, catching every
business story, as I was told, but it cannot afford to miss any major developments. As such,
monitoring the competition makes sure The Times is ready for action if anything slips through a
reporter‘s or an editor‘s attention. As we will see, later in the day Niemi hopes to ignore a story
from the Journal on a Lexus recall, but the news then becomes a dress page story for The Times
business section.
He spends part of his morning trying to make sure that any breaking news in Asia is
covered. New York has only a short window (between 6 and 8 a.m.) to call reporters in Asia in
time for them to contact sources before it is too late in their day. But, as Niemi contends, ―There's
a lot less waking reporters up since the Web.‖ The Asian edition of the International Herald
Tribune will often be on top of the news first from this region of the world, but any support or
coordination from New York has to come in the morning. Niemi then turns his attention to any
breaking news in Europe and makes sure The Times is aware of any stories coming from the
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International Herald Tribune Europe edition that could be helpful to The Times or that could be
followed up by Times reporters. This task of monitoring European coverage is especially
significant in the spring of 2010.
By April 2010, the Greek debt crisis has come to dominate the financial news, with the
country‘s European partners and global investors having lost faith in its finances after the
government admits it has been vastly understating its losses for years. Its credit rating is cut to
―junk,‖ and yields on its sovereign debt soar. As David Jolly of the International Herald Tribune
reported in his coverage, because Greece is a euro member, it can't simply seek to devalue its
currency as a means of restoring its competitiveness, and the government is forced to agree to a
painful ―internal devaluation‖—drastic cuts in public spending as well as higher taxes—to bring
its finances back into balance and avoid default. But the Greek crisis turns the world‘s attention to
similar, if not quite as serious, problems within some of its euro zone neighbors, including Italy,
Ireland, Spain, and Portugal, and fears grow that the European Union could be undone by the
stresses, because no one is certain that Western Europeans will be willing to accept the austerity
measures proposed. For a time, it appears the euro zone could collapse and spread a financial and
credit crisis across the globe.
Niemi is also in charge of what he refers to as ―scheduled news‖: earnings, hearings,
expected testimony, or anything coming out of Washington that could be handled by the business
desk. As he puts it: ―Basically any daily news we know about way in advance.‖
One of the top priorities is to make sure the paper has enough stories for the dress page.
He is concerned with making sure that there is a mix of feature and/or enterprise stories as well as
breaking news. Niemi sees the news breaking into a few cycles tied to routine events: news that
breaks before the market opens, news that breaks after the European markets close, and news that
breaks after the markets close in the United States. The majority of Web views, Niemi notes,
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come in the morning, but he hopes that people will tune in after lunch to see further
developments.
Niemi finds out that there is a development on the Northern Rock bank situation in
Britain. Northern Rock was the first major bank to fail in the global financial crisis. Two senior
executives were charged by British regulators for their role in cooking the books on its mortgage
assets in the lead up to the bank's failure (―Two Penalized After British Bank Bailout,‖ 2010).
Niemi first calls a Times reporter in London, Julia Werdigier, to see if he can get her to do a story
on the bank, but she‘s on a more significant, longer story. He decides the development is worthy
enough for the Times to cover and tells Kelly Couturier, the morning Web producer, to get
something ready on Northern Rock from the AP. The distinction between wire vs. staff stories is
an important one and depends on resources, Niemi tells me. ―It's whether we can do something
that has added value. If it‘s in the wires, everyone is going to have it.‖ The theme of added value
is a heuristic that helps people think about how Times stories can be distinctive. At the end of the
day, the goal for breaking news online covered by a staffer is for a new, second-day story to
emerge with new content, as we saw with Bowley‘s work.
Niemi dutifully fills in the Northern Rock story into the daily budget into a content
management system called ―TUBS‖—for Times Universal Budgeting System—with the story
slug ―Rock,‖ under a section titled international news. He pastes in a few paragraphs from the AP
story and estimates a length of about 400 words for it.
Niemi spends the morning putting stories into the TUBS system under different headings
on what is called the BIZNOON list: Page One Offerings, Dress Page Candidates, Other News
Stories, International, Technology, Media, Daily Theme section, and Markets. This is the
―budget.‖ Kevin McKenna, a deputy business editor, oversees the Web for business and is
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responsible for filling the rest of the schedule with the various blog budget lines
20
with help from
their associated editors. The backfield editors send parts of the working story and any information
about the kinds of graphics, photography, or multimedia that will be featured, and whether they
think the story should be a Page One offering. So the budget is a collaborative process, but Niemi
filters the breaking bits of smaller news and has a significant role in determining what scheduled
news will receive staff attention, wire attention, or no attention at all.
Niemi also spends his time trying to figure out what the site already has up in some form.
Many breaking news stories are up and aggregated on the DealBook blog, the Wall Street blog,
but Niemi needs to determine what might need to be covered in more substantive form than the
short briefs on DealBook. He notices a short brief about a billionaire trying to buy the rest of the
St. Louis Rams and notices a New York Jets photo attached to it. ―That's what happens when you
have football handled out of Europe‖ (―Billionaire will try to buy rest of Rams,‖ 2010), he says,
referring to the fact that DealBook‘s 24-7 operation involves contributors from Paris and London.
Niemi confers with David Gillen, the financial editor, to see if there is any news out of
Greece. They comment that the markets are not being particularly responsive to a Greek bond
offering. Throughout this time, Niemi is checking headlines and the wires, monitoring the
Journal, the Financial Times, and the Washington Post. He also notices that the Consumer
Reports ―Don't Buy‖ rating for the 2010 Lexus GX460, a blog post from the night before, is
receiving a lot of play on The Times‘ home page. By the end of the day, despite jokes about
Consumer Reports judging the size of car trunks based on how many Depends boxes can fit in it,
the Lexus story ends up being a full story on the dress page.
Editor Winnie O‘Kelley has gone to the Page One meeting and comes back with news for
Niemi about stories he's placed in the Page One section of the news budget. This placement of
20
Budget lines are another term to reflect the short summaries after the slug on the news budget.
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potential Page One stories in the budget is a collaboration among editors. Two stories, one about
eviction and plans to prevent it (Goodman, 2010a), and another story about ―oversharing‖
personal information on the Internet (Stone, 2010a), have received positive feedback from editors
at the Page One meeting.
At 11, Niemi prints out what he has of the budget and runs of about 20 copies on the
copier machine. There are clerks to do this, but Niemi just does it himself. He also runs around
the newsroom, gathering up editors by saying, ―We‘re going to meet.‖ ―We‘re going to meet
now.‖ This is a daily ritual that often requires multiple rounds of pestering people around the
newsroom until a critical mass heads off to the conference room.
Niemi leads the 11:15 meeting, running through the stories that are on the budget, but
editors break through the listing of stories to offer commentary on how they could be developed.
Niemi will comment on the stories that are exclusive to The Times—meaning that only The Times
has the story or this particular information—and makes sure those in the group are aware of these
stories. The meetings, as I will detail later, are an exercise in how journalists are purposeful actors
in creating the news and how they improvise on regular routines, as journalists in the room probe
the story at hand for new angles that could possibly be covered, or raise doubts about particular
elements in the story from what they see on the budget lines. The meetings, then, reveal both
what the business desk decides to include in its news stories as well as what it excludes, and
suggests some of the major value assignments these journalists place on how they will cover
business news.
Niemi‘s role is to run these meetings, but the tenor of the meetings is one dominated by
discussion. After the meeting—or sometimes during the meeting—a top editor at the paper will
send out a ―best bets‖ list that Keller, Abramson, and various top editors have decided are most
likely to make the front page. Niemi corrects the list to put in the Page One slot the ―best bet‖ for
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business, which is a story on diabetes. The business budget list will be updated for what is called
the ―turnaround meeting‖ at 2:45, when the editors will make their first decisions about which
five stories will make the dress page.
He notices that the Lexus SUV story is blowing up across media organizations. For
context, it is important to note that prior to this, Toyota had been forced to issue major recalls for
sticky accelerator pedals, and executives appeared on the Hill to testify about the problem after
numerous accidents were reported. The Journal now had the Lexus story on its home page, and it
was also on the Los Angeles Times. But, as Niemi points out, ―The Journal isn't necessarily
ranking things by news value, just by what is the latest.‖
By 2:45, Niemi has learned of another story from Washington given the slug ―Regulate‖
about Republicans. The story is about Mitch McConnell taking aim at Democrats on their
financial regulation bill, calling it overly partisan (Herszenhorn and Chan, 2010). Though the
story is political, it will run in the business section because news about the financial regulatory
overhaul falls under its jurisdiction. With Washington stories, placement can be a matter of
negotiation and sometimes depends on available space in competing sections.
Niemi spends most of his day monitoring and filtering wire news and deciding which
stories deserve staff attention and which do not. For instance, he chooses not pursue a story on
China slashing import duties for steel even after he sees it in The Journal. Instead, he picks up a
broader story from the International Herald Tribune on Asia‘s interest rates and the financial
crisis (Wassener, 2010a).
At 5 p.m., Niemi calls everyone over to discuss the dress page. The group of backfield
editors, including McKenna, Getzfred, and Larry Ingrassia, the business desk editor in charge of
the department, agree to the following line-up: a story about Washington lawmakers who work on
financial regulation who then become lobbyists for the financial industry; a story about diabetes;
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a story on mortgages; and a story about the resurrection of the personal computer. The columnist
for the day always gets placed on the front of the business section. There is a business columnist
every day. Ingrassia gets final say, but it is a collaborative discussion.
After everyone has contributed again to this meeting, which I will discuss later, and tried
to respond to the front-page needs, Niemi turns to his next set of responsibilities. This is to decide
where the rest of the stories go for the print placement in the business section. Page designers,
night editors, the photo editor, and the chief copy editor stand ready for another meeting
immediately following the 5 p.m. meeting. They all have a piece of paper that has small
rectangles representing each page of the print paper, with small portions blocked out on particular
pages for ads. Niemi makes the final call about the inside story placement at this meeting. He also
chooses all the photos from a selection of photos provided by the photo editors. The group around
him helps him decide, for instance, whether to use for the latest Greek story a photo of the
―protest of the day‖ with vegetable farmers or a picture of Greek banks. They choose the
vegetable farmers, which will be the same photo for the Web (Ewing and Jolly, 2010).
Niemi‘s duties for the day are almost done after this page breakdown. His final task of
the day is to have a ―day-ahead meeting,‖ which is to inform editors of what the coming news day
holds. This meeting also alerts editors to what might be ready for the next morning‘s home page.
He runs through what the anticipated news is and what is still left from enterprise and features
with just three editors present. Sometimes more editors are in attendance. These editors plan to
make sure a reporter is ready for the camera (such as wearing a blazer or perhaps a tie), just in
case he will be doing a video for the TimesCast. The editors talk about how to rearticulate their
pitches for the morning Page One meeting and plan for the JPMorgan earnings to be handled by a
financial reporter. Niemi mentions possible ―displays,‖ or the story with the dominant art on the
front of the page.
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There is little conversation about the stories for the next day, but there is some reflection
about the previous day. O‘Kelley is surprised by the lack of interest in the national desk playing
up a change in SEIU leadership, which, as Dean Murphy, another editor notes, ―could have been
a frontable thought‖ (or a possible Page One story). And with this, Niemi‘s responsibilities for the
day are over. At about 7 p.m., he heads out of the building.
Nick Bilton, Lead Technology Blogger for the Bits Blog: January 27, 2010
Nick Bilton is the chief tech blogger for The Times Bits, a blog dedicated to technology.
Bits stands for ―business, innovation, technology, society‖ and is described on the Times site as
the following:
Bits offers a steady stream of news and analysis on the technology industry throughout
the day from New York Times writers and freelancers. We cover start-ups, tech leaders
like Google and Apple, enterprise technology, government policies and the way the
Internet is changing how we live and work. (Bits, n.d.)
As the lead Bits blogger, Nick is charged with posting breaking news, news that is not
quite big enough to warrant a full story, quirky news, and anything that might attract the attention
of a true tech geek. Bits is not intended to compete with the ―candy‖ blogs, as some in the tech
world call them, such as Gizmodo or Endgadget. Instead, Bits is intended to provide original
news content and offer analysis about tech issues. Other contributors to the blog are the tech
writers on the business staff, who are charged with writing two to three blogs per week.
Bilton's background is different from most in the newsroom. He began his days at The
Times as a designer and art director, and then moved to The Times‘ Research and Development
lab, an actual R&D lab where programmers and designers create and test products that may be the
future of the Times—or may not. These projects range from everything from iPad applications to
other ―secret‖ Times developments. As a result, he has design and programming skills that enable
him to manipulate images, text, and graphics—and connections with the R&D lab that help him
75
add to his content. Bilton is also interested in the changes in media consumption at large and,
when I met him, was in the process of hawking his new book on news as a social experience and
the distractibility and multitasking nature of media consumption. The book, called I Live in the
Future & Here’s How It Works (2010a), described someone like himself, who is ―totally ADD
and can do a million things at once. I have to.‖
The technology pod in the New York office has its own set of cubicles, though it has just
a small walkway in between where most of the financial reporters and editors sit. Toward the
back windows sit the deputy technology editors, Vindu Goel and David Gallagher. In the pod of
cubicles sit the New York tech writers—Jenna Wortham, Steve Lohr, and Nick Bilton—as well
as the agriculture beat writer, Willie Neuman. Across from this technology pod is where the
technology Web producers sit. Toward the back of the window sits Sam Grobart,
21
the personal
technology editor. The technology section of the business desk has its own Web producer because
technology and personal technology are among the most clicked-upon ―verticals‖
22
on the
business desk, and these articles are have their own Web pages.
In addition, the technology Web producers are often devoted to special projects
specifically for the tech writers. There are also a number of tech reporters and the head
technology editor based in San Francisco. Everyone communicates via AOL Instant Messenger;
there is one list just for the editors, and another group for the whole technology staff. Stories and
blog posts get vetted, reporters work out who might write what blog post, and ideas and
coordination are exchanged over instant message. This coordination is also coupled by a weekly
meeting with New York and San Francisco that takes place via to a conference call. This meeting
21
During my tenure at The Times, Grobart and other staffers took on new positions. Grobart moved to the home
section, and Goel became the enterprise editor.
22
A vertical at The Times refers to a particular area of coverage that is oriented around a particular niche audience.
Some of these verticals include energy & environment, technology, DealBook, personal technology, small business,
Your Money (personal finance), and media. These also have their own associated blogs.
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is held in conjunction with the media desk to plan coverage for the Monday paper, which has the
theme of tech and media news. Proximity, aided electronically as well as physically, helps this
desk coordinate its work, as a particular busy day in Bilton‘s blogging life at the Times will
indicate.
The day I‘m shadowing Bilton is the day of the iPad release. This is a seminal occasion
that the technology editor Damon Darlin just a week before had referred to as ―the day that will
change the world‖ in a planning meeting. The Times was planning to go all out to cover the
device that many in the media industry had said might be a salvo for the news industry's woes
(Chmielewski and Pamm, 2010; Carr, 2010a). The Technology pod of the business desk had five
people in San Francisco to cover the unveiling of the new device, whose name was unknown at
the time. The Times planned a liveblog
23
with a Twitter feed, Bilton on the blog tweeting,
multiple articles, a column from the tech columnist David Pogue, a video interview with someone
in New York and at the unveiling, and a steady stream of photos to be fed into the liveblog.
Bilton starts this day around 10:15 looking for a way to write a Bits piece on ―What's Not
Apple‖ to get some news out other than news on the new Apple device. He begins by looking at
the other blogs in the tech world and pauses to read the blog Ars Technica. He has two monitors
on his desk, plus a laptop set up. One of the monitors set up is just his Twitter feed from Tweety
for Mac, a Twitter platform. He's also IM-ing constantly with people in San Francisco and other
people on the tech pod, even though he is just sitting next to them and could talk to them. He
helps pitch in to the effort to find some Apple photos and notes, ―I'm one of the only bloggers that
posts their [sic] own images.‖ He puts an Apple icon into the live-blogging software for the
Apple event.
23
A liveblog is a blog that is intended to provide instant updates with Times analysis as an event is happening.
77
After I attend the morning meeting, Bilton takes me and his fellow tech writer, Jenna
Wortham, up to his old haunts at the R&D lab. It's on the 28
th
floor, and everyone looks under 35.
At the R&D lab, they have taken it on their own initiative to build a model using existing code to
monitor Twitter word counts for the Apple announcement. They consult with Bilton on which
words they should be tracking; they are monitoring everything from iPod to Apple to iSlate (the
rumored name) to iPhone to iTunes to Apple tablet. R&D is seeing about 600 tweets a minute
from these searches.
Bilton gets lunch and eats at his desk as he gears up for the announcement. He notices
that every tech blog is doing one of the live-stream blogs that The Times is doing. Amusingly, the
wireless at the San Francisco convention center where Jobs is making his announcement goes
dark for a few moments. Bilton finds an audio stream for the tech team, but the sound can barely
be heard. He gets set up to tweet for the Times liveblog when the event begins at 1 p.m. Apple
does not webcast its product launches, creating the need for these liveblogs to update those
hungry for instant tech news.
Bilton sees the name on a competing blog—―iPad, they just said it!‖—and immediately
tweets the name. The Times home page puts up a link to the liveblog with the headline ―Jobs
announces new tablet will be called the iPad.‖ Bilton comments that it looks like a big phone, and
they note that one of the first things they are showing is The New York Times. Jobs says, ―I can
browse The New York Times site so easily.‖ Bilton also notes that the email on the iPad looks
gorgeous. He is looking at Gizmodo, a rival blog, for the pictures rather than The Times‘ liveblog.
He notes from his Twitter that Jobs just dropped the F-bomb. Jobs mentions a multi-touch LPS
liquid crystal screen. Bilton checks Wikipedia and is amazed that it already has the term updated
for the iPad. At about 1:33, Bilton starts writing. Senior Vice President of Digital Operations
Martin Nisenholtz demos The New York Times app and talks about the ―essence of reading a
78
newspaper.‖ Bilton notes that an Adobe Flash graphic doesn‘t look that great. Bilton also
comments that they are getting 1,600-1,700 tweets per minute on the Twitter tracker.
Bilton tweets: ―Wow Apple is launching iBook store to compete with Kindle‖ to the
Twitter list on the liveblog. The next announcement is the price for the different models: Bilton
tweets them out. At 2:37, after the announcement is over, Apple puts up a press release about the
iPad. The tech team then gets together to talk about future coverage. Bilton will write a ―what's
missing‖ post and a ―what people were expecting‖ post. Larry Ingrassia, the business editor,
wants outtakes for the paper with some of the comments from Twitter. He particularly likes one
from the San Francisco based tech/science writer John Markoff, who tweeted, ―You ain't going to
strap this to your running shorts.‖ The main story for Page One for the day is planned: why
people might want this and whether it can be successful.
Bilton tells Goel that he'd like to do a roundup on what Twitter is saying, noting, ‖There's
a lot going on in Twitter.‖ Goel suggests instead, ―Why don't you do a blogosphere post?‖ This
may signal that, for now, the blogosphere conversation at The Times is more important than the
Twitter conversation.
Bilton notices on Twitter again that there are people chatting about the word iPad and the
perceived association with a women's sanitary product. Goel also starts to see a lot of these,
suggesting he is paying attention to what‘s being said on Twitter, but he doesn‘t think the
conversation is ripe for a post. Bilton suggests writing a blog post on this, but that idea is ignored,
for now. Bilton begins writing something based on The Times‘ R&D lab‘s data.
Finally, around 5 p.m. the tech editors are convinced that the iPad name is enough to
merit a blog and ask Bilton to do it. Bilton says that that a woman should do it, and Goel tracks
down Claire Cain Miller, a female tech writer. The tech writers have noticed that The Journal
already has a story up about the name and the allusion to women‘s products. Even though Bilton
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doesn‘t write the post, he still tweets that the iPad is not winning over women. Bilton writes
another blog post unrelated to Apple: about search being more social via Google.
Then, Bilton and Brad Stone, a Times reporter in San Francisco, begin talking on IM
about whether Apple will or won't kill the Kindle. They decide to turn their discussion into a
series of dueling posts for the Bits blog. Stone (2010b) begins with: Why Apple _Won't_Kill the
Kindle. The first post is as follows:
The Kindle is for book lovers, and the iPad is not.
Amazon will continue to improve on the Kindle.
The Kindle store will continue to thrive.
Before Bilton begins his post, he tweets, ―Can't wait to get mugged on the subway.‖ He
then begins countering Stone's post by noting, ―Kindle needs a reboot.‖ When he sends it to Goel,
the editor notes that Bilton's post feels a little ―review-y‖ and the ―opinion police will come down
on them.‖ Bilton turns to me and says, ―Reporters are not supposed to have an opinion, even on
blogs.‖ The question of just how much voice a reporter should have, especially on social media
and on blogs, is still in a state of transition at The Times, as we will see later.
Bilton's (2010b) response to Stone about why ―Apple Won't Kill the Kindle‖ is ultimately
edited to look like this:
Content is changing, but the Kindle is not.
The Kindle‘s technology isn‘t evolving fast enough.
The Kindle is too expensive for a single-purpose device.
Despite Goel‘s warning about the ―opinion police,‖ Bilton‘s blog still includes this kind
of language at the end:
Kindle‘s store and its reading application for the iPhone are both excellent, simple
experiences for purchasing and consuming books. Amazon understands this market better
than anyone and could easily sell more books on the iPad than Apple could through its
new iTunes bookstore. Amazon also offers an excellent recommendation system, and I
can envision some users opting for the Kindle application on their fancy new iPads.
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Bilton then turns to finish his post with the live R&D counts for the iPad tracking of
tweets for the day. He starts using the graphic software on his computer, making a graphic from
Excel and Adobe Illustrator.
By the end of the day, around 8:30 p.m., when the final blog posts are finished and the
Page One stories are edited, the tech team goes out for drinks to celebrate the busy day. At this
point, Bilton has tweeted 13 times on his own account. He has written five posts: ―Get Your Non-
Apple News‖ (2010c), 10:29 a.m.; ―The Blogosphere Reacts to Apple's iPad‖ (2010d), 4:07 p.m.;
‖Three Reasons Why Apple WILL Kill Amazon's Kindle‖ (2010b), 7:05 p.m.; ―Google Adds
More Social to Search‖ (2010e), 7:41 p.m.; and ―Monitoring Twitter's iPad commentary‖ (2010f),
7:56 p.m.
Bilton has also actively tracked the dialogue on Twitter to alert the tech pod of new
developments, though some of his observations are ignored while others are turned into stories.
The iPad-as-women‘s-product, for instance, gets more attention once The Journal flips out a
quick story on the name. But Bilton had noticed the trend long before on Twitter.
Bilton multitasks constantly and is involved in multiple kinds of conversations. He was at
any one point tweeting on his own Twitter stream, tweeting on The Times liveblog, IM-ing with
people in San Francisco and even people sitting behind him, and talking to other staffers. He is
also simultaneously tracking Twitter, checking the blogosphere for competing tech blogs, and
thinking about new blog posts to write. With these blogs, he isn't just posting text, but actively
using Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Excel, and a number of other programs to enhance the visual
aspects of his blogging. Bilton jokes about being ADD—if he is—but he is exactly the
multitasking information seeker and user of social news he writes about in his book.
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Andrew Martin, Financial News Reporter: February 11, 2010
To give a sense of a reporter working on a day that is a non-deadline day, Andrew Martin
allowed me to spend time with him as he pursued a variety of non-deadline projects. Martin had
just completed a series of stories with some colleagues on the egregious ways that debit and credit
card companies cheat everyday consumers. At the time, the multimedia was still prominently
featured on the Web site (―The Card Game: The Deal With Overdrafts,‖ 2009). Martin's main
beat is to cover the financial industry from a consumer angle. He views his role as translating
what banks and financial firms mean for ordinary consumers. This audience is generally imagined
by people at The Times as middle to upper-middle class, educated people. Martin also sees his
coverage as also reaching anyone who may be influenced by Times coverage, either decision-
makers or people who learn from other media outlets about concepts The Times originally covers
in. On occasion, Martin will write breaking news, such as a story on Bank of America earnings.
On this particular day, Martin is working on three long-term stories: one on credit card
fraud with a San Francisco based-reporter John Markoff; one on why overdraft legislation has
stalled; and a third story with news columnist Gretchen Morgenson on the Office of the
Comptroller of Currency. Martin told me that his hypothesis was that this arm of the government
might be ―where consumer complaints about banks go to die.‖ He explained to me that the head
of the OCC, a man named John Dugan, was an opponent of financial regulation. The Times
wanted to do his profile before the vote on financial regulation. Martin was interested in the part
of the financial regulation legislation regarding who would regulate consumer protection.
According to Martin, during the lead-up to the crisis Dugan had a reputation for being friendly to
banks. Martin also was going to spend the day vetting two potential stories and thinking about
multimedia potential for another set of stories that he had on his enterprise list.
82
This day in Martin‘s life indicates that a non-deadline day can be filled with busily
pursing multiple stories, tracking down sources, and purposefully thinking about new ways to
bring information to their readers. In fact, Martin's day is frenetic and hard to follow: He switches
rapidly from one project to the next. Similarly, watching him work reveals that he thoughtfully
considers whether a story is worthy of Times coverage. His day reveals that he has his own
personal routines for non-deadline days.
Martin begins in the morning by working on his story about credit card fraud. Martin is
interested in learning about why the European Union has switched to the chip-and-PIN credit
cards (where credit cards have a microchip embedded in the plastic). He is concerned about
potential implications for the United States, especially for travelers abroad. The U.S. hasn't
embraced changes to credit cards, even though chip-and-PIN technology is more secure. Martin is
working on the story because a particular council in Europe is going to make the suggestion that
all EU countries switch to chip-and-PIN. He makes a call on background only to get more
information and then sends the press contact an email for more on-the-record information.
Then, Martin makes fun of his rolodex, which is one of the few I've actually seen
anywhere in the newsroom (most people keep their sources in Microsoft Outlook or saved on
Gmail). He then moves on to working on his next story, trying to figure out when the consumer
finance protection agency will come up for a vote. He talks to a source who says they are waiting
to hear more from Sen. Chris Dodd, one of the leaders of the financial regulation bill. Martin then
calls the Senate Banking Committee.
After he makes this call to the Senate Banking Committee, he moves on to another task.
He starts googling the names of banks he has on a spreadsheet that tells him which banks earn the
most money on their overdraft fees. Some of these appear to be small regional banks. Overdraft
fees were a heated issue in the fall, he explains, and community banks lobbied against major
83
changes. His goal is to find small banks to talk about overdraft fees. His data are from a
consultant who has analyzed bank earnings. Martin begins calling some of these small banks,
looking for people willing to talk to him. When he calls and requests to speak to bank presidents,
Martin doesn‘t reveal he‘s from the New York Times. Instead, he waits to reveal his identity until
he actually speaks to the person he needs to get to. The weather is particularly bad on this
February day, so most of the East Coast banks are closed; Martin has trouble reaching some of
these banks. (In fact, this day is one of the ―Snowpocalypse‖
24
days of winter 2010, as dubbed by
people on Twitter. The Times actually had booked a suite of hotel rooms for people who would
have trouble getting back and forth from work.)
Then he realizes, after talking to a number of banks, that his data are actually flawed.
Martin learns that the ways the numbers have been compiled don‘t accurately show banks‘ take-
home on overdraft fees but instead indicate a different amount that banks make from consumers.
Then Martin starts looking for people who have given testimony on the consumer finance
protection bill and begins giving the bill a close read.
I give Martin some time to read over the bill and go to the 11:15 morning meeting. When
I return to his desk, he is speaking to Rep. Carolyn Maloney's office about overdraft legislation.
He puts a note about ―questions to answer later‖ into a working draft of the story. He gets some
history on one of Maloney's challengers for office, a woman whose background is working at
JPMorgan and will most likely oppose the financial regulation Maloney has helped propose.
Then Martin moves on to his next task for the day: vetting a story about Bling Nation.
Martin lets me sit in on the call, which he puts on speakerphone, identifying me. Martin listens as
a company tries to convince him to write a story about mobile phones that have a secured chip
attached to them, which can be read by credit card machines. The mechanics were a little too
24
The Snowpocalypse was one of two major snowstorms to hit the Northeast in 2010. This first storm dumped more
than two feet of snow in parts of the Washington, D.C., metro area.
84
complicated for me to understand, but Martin is interested because merchants don‘t have to pay
an interchange fee.
25
This fee has been featured in a number of his stories on credit cards.
However, Martin is skeptical because the Bling company has only been able to convince small
towns such as Saratoga Springs to try the concept.
Martin has some down time and starts prepping for his meeting with his contact on the
video team, Brent McDonald. Martin notes that McDonald doesn't just do business videos; in
fact, McDonald has just come back from the Congo. But Martin wants to run some stories past
McDonald before he begins reporting. ―It‘s good to know if you are using video because it
changes your reporting a little bit. If it‘s just me, I can wing it. But if you interview people, you
have to ask if you can use a camera.‖ Martin says he knows he has to think about photos, but
that‘s different, because he‘s accustomed to thinking about photos. Martin says he‘s more likely
to try to get in-person interviews than use the phone if there‘s multimedia potential. ―It‘s a little
harder with banks with guys in suits. You have to be a little more creative because you get
business centers and boardrooms, and they do not make exciting videos and photos.‖
Martin goes over his list of 13 potential stories, many of which are not on the enterprise
list maintained by enterprise editor Marcus Mabry. (This is a key detail, because when the list is
missing stories, it is more difficult for Web producers to plan for multimedia.) This is just his
own list, which he shares at a certain point with his editors once the stories have been further
developed through additional reporting.
He then calls the OCC again and tries to figure out whether they will be in charge of
consumer protection. He would like to go to Houston, the home of the OCC‘s complaint center,
and he gets permission from OCC to visit. Martin gets excited and starts looking at price fares but
then admits, ―I should probably tell someone before I book a flight.‖ He then gets an alert that
25
An interchange fee is the fee that credit card companies charge merchants for using credit cards to accept payment.
Often, these fees are passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices.
85
Sen. Christopher Dodd and Sen. Bob Corker are again negotiating the financial regulation bill.
This development is good news because he can check on the progress of consumer protection in
the bill.
Martin then gets more news from Rep. Maloney‘s office. He finds out that her competitor
had a fundraising event hosted by JPMorgan. Martin thinks he‘d like to pursue the story and tells
his editor Liz Alderman, ―I don‘t think it‘s going to be a blockbuster [e.g., Page One], but it‘d be
a good section front.‖
Martin vets another story, this time on a company that is trying to do something new with
accounts receivable. He again allows me to sit in on the call. It‘s apparently a new exchange for
financing—a ―receivable exchange‖—and Martin doesn't exactly buy the concept. ―You have to
be very careful when you take a story from a small company. Sometimes they are great, but if we
give our stamp to them, then it really means that they are getting our endorsement, and then they
can use it.‖ For a short time, around 3 p.m., Martin begins calling some consumer finance groups
that are in favor of overdraft legislation. His goal is to find someone who has had terrible
overdraft fees to humanize the story. He‘s hoping that one of these groups will connect him to an
individual that can speak to this experience.
Then, around 4 p.m., Martin meets McDonald from video in the 14
th
-floor cafeteria. We
all grab a cup of coffee from the Times coffee bar. Martin gives him a list of 13 stories. He
explains to McDonald that his early thoughts were that the OCC was ―the banker's best friend,‖
and this complaint place in Houston was, as he had told me might be, ―where bank complaints go
to die.‖ There are about 100,000 such complaints each year, and Martin has been given
permission for a tour. McDonald vets the story from the perspective of a video producer, looking
for potential visual representations for the story: ―What would [the OCC] show us?‖
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Martin reconsiders. ―I guess it would not be that interesting. There‘d be someone with a
phone, a guy telling us what they would do. But we could get Elizabeth Warren and, like, two-
thirds of the state attorneys general to rip the shit out of them, because the OCC has said that the
states have no authority over national bank branches.‖
McDonald says that the energy from the attorneys general sounds like good video—
especially if they could get one to two attorneys general who have been thwarted. McDonald
notes that what would truly make the video come alive would be if they could get some real
victims with real complaints.
Martin is concerned because a fair amount has been written about the conflict between
state attorneys general and the OCC; he worries that the story has run its course. But McDonald
reminds him that the video needs strong characters, and without them, there can‘t be a good video
for this particular piece. In other words, the characters could be anyone, but people pushing files
around in Houston will make less compelling images than would images of angry attorneys
general. As such, the priorities for video are different than Martin‘s goals for his print story.
Martin suggests two other stories, but McDonald rejects them as being too close to the
video stories he has just completed for another series about credit cards. Then, Martin pitches
another story that he has tentatively slugged ―predict,‖ about how FICO is using credit scores to
―drum up business‖ to determine the kinds of risks people are taking ―elsewhere in life.‖ Best
Buy is one of the first to bite with this new FICO analysis and is using it to determine whether to
give people credit to buy items like TVs. Best Buy will let The Times have access in Marin
County, California. McDonald says that this will make a good video and that he may have to be
out in Marin County for other stories for the business desk.
The meeting closes with McDonald and Martin going over the list of possible stories.
McDonald is looking for characters and people. Much of the meeting is dedicated to Martin
87
helping McDonald determine how the scene will be set to tell the story visually. McDonald
pushes Martin for other information Martin has to make the story compelling on video.
On the way down to the business desk on the second floor, Martin explains to me that he
doesn‘t always tell his editor if he is pursuing something multimedia. He'll first work it out with
McDonald ,and if it sounds good, he‘ll fill his editors in. As we will see, multimedia production
can often emerge from this bottom-up process.
I leave Martin for the day around 5 p.m., but he is still making calls, looking at old
articles on Lexis-Nexis to research Dugan of the OCC, and reading the details of the consumer
protection finance bill. Martin has worked on three stories for the day, gone through a list of 13
potential stories for multimedia with a video producer, vetted two stories he has decided not to
produce, and pitched another story for a possible business front. The day has certainly been one
that did not have a steady rhythm, with Martin jumping from story to story. He called people
appropriate to a story when he happened to be working on that story, and shifted back and forth
between stories without actually looking at how much time he was spending on each story. The
determining factor seemed to be whether he could reach people as well as whether he had the data
necessary to pursue the story.
Looking at “A Day in the Life”
These narratives illustrate a day in the life of five New York Times journalists, but no one
day is representative of how each journalist spends his time. The time I spent with Getzfred, the
Web editor, was more uneven than usual because so much news broke late in the afternoon, and
he did not have reporters filing regular Web updates to him during the day. The day I spent with
Bowley, the financial reporter, was different from some of his regular days because most of the
time, he is instructed to pursue deeper, more analytical non-daily stories about financial
88
institutions and such as the big banks. Still, this was a good day to follow Bowley because it
highlights what updating a story for the Web is like. Niemi, the assignment editor, has a day that
is relatively predictable because he has a routine meeting schedule to keep for the newsroom
editors. However, since news can break at any time, Niemi must remain flexible enough to
redirect and to reorient these meetings. An event like the Apple iPad product reveal may have
been a historical moment in personal technology, and Bilton, the blogger, had to work at frenetic
pace which in part reflected the excitement of the day. More leisurely days typically involve
fewer posts, with Bilton having more time to think about and to respond to comments and Twitter
feedback. Martin, another financial reporter, might see his day might change if he‘s focused on a
single big story that has a pressing deadline, but on the day I spent with him, he was chasing a
number of stories.
Life inside the business desk of The Times is variable; no two journalists share the exact
same role, nor does any single journalist encounter the same tasks each day. Routines exist, but
each day allows for improvisation on those existing routines. The days I described were real days
in the life of New York Times reporters, editors, and a blogger. I was fortunate enough to watch
five full months—and to talk to more than 80 people about their work at The Times.
The challenge before me is to detail how each of these days helps us to understand
newswork as it is unfolding in the digital age: the newsroom‘s perceived demands of the print,
online, multimedia, and social media output, and most significantly the way the journalists
negotiate their roles in this news environment. I also showcase how The Times is slowly making
changes to adapt to technological change—and how these changes are due not just to technology
but to how people use technology. What is also important, however, is to ask what remains the
same about doing journalism, and how new routines become renegotiated into regular routines in
the newsroom so the process of news-making can become manageable and predictable despite its
89
unpredictable daily subject matter. In many cases, we will find that these routines are not yet
clear, nor are people‘s roles or role perceptions clearly defined or understood. As a result, people
improvise and use what they know to make sense of the new. At other points, the improvisation is
more elemental, and only enabled because of the routines themselves.
A few major themes emerge from these ―day in the life‖ portraits—ones that are
particularly relevant to future discussion. First, we can see the tension in the newsroom between
creative production and the needs of routines, such as online output. With the journalists working
on breaking news, we saw moments when they were able to reflect and to think about how they
could add value to stories. But much of their attention was based on getting news of the day out
on the Web. Off immediate deadline, journalists were free to improvise: to pursue and to vet
possible stories, to consider multimedia, and to think critically about new stories. And as we saw
with Bowley, conversation during breaking news even with the Web tempo can lead journalists to
purposefully consider questions that may not be covered by other news outlets in an effort to
distinguish their product.
During the speed of the iPad release, we saw quick planning from a team that tried to
think about questions people would be asking about the new product. Bilton specifically tried to
bring new dialogue into the conversation about news by telling his editors and co-workers about
the latest news and the latest conversation on the blogosphere. However, there were limits to
Bilton‘s ability to bring new ideas to coverage; some of his ideas were ignored and were made
into stories only after they were spotted on competitor‘s sites. But his tweets showed his ability to
improvise within the existing routines for covering this story. Even within the demands of speed,
there are still opportunities for flexibility, but journalists have to actively find ways to pause and
to take time to depart from the crowd.
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We also see the differing goals, logics, and rhythms of online and print journalism at
work. These different platforms do not work in synchrony and, as such, require careful balancing
by journalists. Niemi‘s role of making sure The Times doesn‘t miss any important breaking news
reflects an increasing tendency in newsrooms to monitor coverage of competitors online and
match content (Boczkowski, 2010). For instance, we also saw how a Journal story prompted a
blog post about the iPad. Getzfred also plays an important role in monitoring the competition. As
we saw with Getzfred, the story with the freshest content often takes priority, but there may be
stories that are older and have simply lost their impact. Bowley‘s second-day story for print
reflects the different values and expectations journalists in the newsroom have for their final
stories, and as we will see, this has an impact for the rhythms, creative production, and values
placed on news-gathering at The Times.
We also gain insight into two new developments in the newsroom: multimedia and social
media. We see how multimedia gets integrated into daily newswork during Bowley‘s day, and
more significantly, we see how multimedia storytelling requires traditional journalists to think
differently about how they are crafting and reporting stories. Martin‘s relationship with
McDonald reveals the emergent process of multimedia in the newsroom, hinting at the fact that a
clearly established communication routine for creating multimedia has not yet emerged because
multimedia is still so new. With this, we see journalists improvising on a grander scale, creating
new ways of engaging but still trying to return back to their core goal of newsmaking.
Bilton‘s work with social media during his day with the iPad reveals the different ways
that social media can be used in the newsroom. For Bilton, it was a way to keep track of the
conversations of not only experts but the audience interested in iPads. To other journalists, social
media was a more informal way of expressing thoughts and initial opinions about the product.
The use of voice and personality in social media and on blogs is a burgeoning opportunity but
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also a source of tension at The Times. Other journalists have different ways of engaging with a
newly active audience, such as keeping track of reader email. As we will see, the imagined
audience is of particular interest as The Times defines its coverage responsibilities.
And finally, we gain some insight into what will be the next chapter: what makes a
business story. Niemi negotiates a story with Washington, and he also vets stories that may or
may not be important for the business desk. Getzfred does the same thing. As such, the two are
acting as gatekeepers of breaking news—much like the old gatekeeper first talked about in
gatekeeping literature (White, 1950). But other journalists are also deciding on potential stories
and defining what will make business news at The Times. Martin, for instance, turns down two
stories and picks up another. Martin‘s concern for the consumer hints at business news values at
work. Niemi talks about choosing a number based on the common shareholder. Their
consideration of the audience affects what makes business news. As such, we examine in the
following chapters how business news is defined and whether we can articulate a framework for
business news values as they shape coverage decisions, particularly following the financial
collapse.
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CHAPTER 3: WHAT IS BUSINESS NEWS?
On Thursday, September 18, 1851, the very first edition of The New York Evening Times
was published. Its front page contained a bevy of financial information, including a commercial
and money affairs section that featured news about the New York Stock Exchange. A separate
financial section was set apart on the front page by bold lines and contained news about bank
openings, bankers moving their residences, and the introduction of a new form of cooking stove.
Just whom was this new newspaper trying to appeal to with city, national, international,
and financial news? On the second page, the newspaper published a note about its intentions and
prospects for survival:
[W]ithin the last five years, the reading population of this city has nearly doubled, while
the number of daily newspapers is also greater than it was then; that many of those now
published are really class journals, made for particular kinds of readers: that others are
objectionable upon grounds of morality; and that no newspaper which was really fit to
live ever expired for a lack of readers. . . . [italics in original]
This new newspaper would, from its very beginning, be for a certain type of reader. Was
this the investing class? Indeed, from the outset The Times was publishing stock notes and
financial market news. But when The Wall Street Journal began publishing in 1889, it was
specifically targeted at the brokers and commodity traders who made Wall Street their place of
work (Wendt, 1983). In contrast, The Times also published general news for readers who were not
necessarily businesspeople, but likely the elite. Market news was important to The Times, but so
was general news.
In this chapter we take on two tricky questions. The first is, quite simply: What is
business news? The second, and related question, is: How do journalists understand their
audience for business news? These two questions are linked because defining business news
requires having an idea of who your audience is. But business news is also the product of
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institutional factors, which are detailed here, and a set of narrative and structural conventions that
determine whether a story will ultimately be a business story.
In addition, an awareness of the audience helps journalists as they come to create stories
for business news. The idea of this audience is changing, particularly with the rise of social
media. This chapter addresses how most journalists view their audience as a more static,
unidirectional audience, with journalists providing information and the audience not talking back.
Another chapter will address social media, but this chapter‘s discussion of the audience is
explicitly concerned with how journalist most often think about their audience, and what this
means for the definition of business news.
When we take a brief tour of the 20
th
-century Times headlines, it can be difficult to define
what counts as business news because there was no dedicated business section until 1978.
Instead, economic stories, financial market stories, and business news stories appeared throughout
the newspaper. Furthermore, the definition of business news at The Times and who was
responsible for reporting and editing these stories may not have always fit clearly within the
institutional boundaries of the newspaper.
How business stories become part of the business section is a good example of
improvisation in action. Journalists rely on existing routines—sets of knowns about what they
think make a business story. But the reality, as we will see, is that these routines are not explicitly
clear. There is considerable give-and-take as journalists negotiate what makes a business story
within the institutional and narrative goals of each story. As such, it is not always certain what
path a story will follow. Thus, journalists improvise: They think about the types of stories that
have come before, but with each story comes a new opportunity for figuring out where it belongs.
The ambiguities revealed in this section suggest that the routines of newsmaking are not as
predetermined as has been suggested by previous studies. In thinking about what part of the
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newspaper to place each story, journalists are embellishing through improvisation; they consider
stories that fall outside of predetermined routines and then place them into the logic and grammar
of existing newswork.
The History of Business News
What follows is a brief walk through the 20
th
century of Times newspapers, focusing
specifically on where business news appears in the newspaper. I have stopped at 10-year intervals
during the first week of October (chosen at random) to get a brief, and admittedly incomplete,
sense of what business news looked like during each period. For most of the Times‘ history, daily
business news was not contained within its own designated section; therefore, to identify the
business stories, I adopted a broad definition of ―business news‖ as stories that focused
specifically on business, commerce, trade, economics, finance, or labor. As I will explain, it is not
always immediately apparent what news events will be told through The Times business section
today, but these elements tend to form the bedrock of stories that do appear in today‘s business
section.
On October 1, 1900, business news was on the front page in the left column: a story
about a pay raise offered to miners. The story was accompanied by news about a Vanderbilt
racing motor vehicles from Newport, R.I., to New York City; frustrations with the New York
City mayor and the ―Ice Trust‖; and information about the Boxer Rebellion. Though daily
business news did not yet have its own section, a separate Monday weekly financial section was
published. That section was called a ―financial review and quotation supplement.‖ It was eight
pages long and promised distribution throughout the nation. To the modern reader, one thing is
missing: reporters‘ names called ―bylines‖ in today‘s newspaper industry following a story‘s
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headline. For most of the 20
th
century, newspapers did not have bylines, and they began regularly
appearing in The Times after every headline only in the 1970s.
In 1910, the newspaper looked similar to the 1900 newspaper, though by then the
Monday weekly financial section had been replaced by a special Sunday financial markets
section. The front pages that year were obsessed with flight and exploration of foreign terrain. By
early October, much of the news focused on the New York gubernatorial race. This coverage
often had an economic bent that may be properly understood as business news; specifically, The
Times asked whether the Republican candidate was too much in the hands of ―trusts,‖ or big
monopolies. The October 1, 1910, front page featured a robber baron offering his views that the
wealthy are not happy; news about society people getting in trouble (Vincent Astor hit a
motorcyclist with his car); Woodrow Wilson calling for control of trusts;
26
news about the
proposed census; and more about the New York gubernatorial race. Business stories about labor
lockouts appeared throughout the paper, including news about a national bricklayer strike. And in
the back of the newspaper, a page with financial market news featured a markets story with the
summary of the prior day‘s trading. The advertisements, which featured ads for jewelry,
steamship tours to Jamaica and Cuba, cruises to Naples and Genoa, and the like, suggest that The
Times continued to envision an upper-class audience.
In October 1920, the front pages still prominently featured financial news, along with a
diverse mix of general news. Political news about President Warren G. Harding appeared on the
front page of the October 1, 1920, paper, as did news about unrest in Ireland, but the center of the
front page was devoted to business stories about the drop in commodity prices and news about
French financial policy after the Treaty of Versailles. Other business stories appeared throughout
the paper, such as economic news, a story about then-Vice President Calvin Coolidge praising
26
In October 1910, future President Woodrow Wilson was the president of Princeton University and a candidate for
New Jersey governor.
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farmers for their work ethic, news about the city‘s views on pay raises for milk drivers, and news
about free trade. Like in the 1910 paper, a markets story accompanies the financial stock
columns.
In 1930, a year after the 1929 stock market collapse, economic news predictably
dominated the front pages. On October 1, 1930, next to dark reports about Germany‘s President
Paul von Hindenburg‘s trouble with Adolf Hitler, the front page contained sobering business
news about brokers unable to meet obligations. The first few pages of the paper also contained
business news about banks cutting interest rates on savings accounts and the American Banking
Association urging growth in bank branches. The national and international news was laced with
economics. The ads had a different tone that reflected the Great Depression, but they still featured
jewelry, fine clothes, and other goods that would appeal to an elite readership; for example, The
New Yorker Hotel touted rental units as ―Manhattan‘s largest and tallest hotel . . . a bargain in
luxury.‖ The financial markets story was joined by a second markets story and a third story called
―Topics in Wall Street.‖ Thus, we begin to see an expansion of long-form journalism covering the
financial markets. In addition, the separate Sunday section was devoted to financial news and
features graphic representations of stock prices.
In early October 1940, darkening war clouds in Europe and news of Royal Air Force
bombings marked The Times‘ front pages. The front pages contained only war news. But by now
pages marked ―Business‖ were included inside the newspaper. These business pages which
were not yet their own section contained write-ups of commodities, trade and international
developments, and current business conditions; stories about the credit markets; and news about
Japanese goods. Notably, the markets stories deviated from a straight lead and began to offer
explanations for why the markets were moving, such as: ―The international situation still held
forth too many uncertainties for traders to take any grip on the stock market. . . .‖
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In October 1950, the U.S. had entered another war, this time with Korea, and the
newspaper was filled with Cold War news. But the front page once again contained economic
news, such as a story about Canada abolishing the fixed-dollar rate. In the foreign section of the
paper on October 1, there was business news about the Dutch acting to bring in foreign investors,
and business news about labor movements appeared in a section primarily devoted to national
news. The Sunday business section now contained some bylined articles about economic
indicators and a feature on the birth of the cocoa exchange. The business section still contained
columns without bylines, however, including one titled ―Along the highways and byways of
finance.‖
In the early weeks of October 1960, news was devoted to the presidential campaign and
news about ―The Reds,‖ referring to communists across the world. Embedded among the national
news was labor news about union chiefs who refused a 10 percent loan wage deferral. The
business pages, which still did not have their own section, featured more bylines. Bylined stories
conveyed hard news about the markets accompanied by analysts‘ quotes. Stories about the
Federal Reserve and monetary policy also appeared on these pages.
By the 1970s, The Times used bylines for nearly every story. On October 1, 1970,
economic news mixed with news about Yugoslavia and President Richard Nixon. News about the
new Equal Employment Opportunity Commission regulations was on Page One, along with
information about a draft loophole and a federal panel asking for curbs on smut. Consumer-
related business news was also on the front page, informing readers about new eyeglasses made
with safety lenses. Inside the newspaper, a business story about a GM auto strike almost mocked
workers; the headline stated the striking workers were ―enjoying the time off.‖ Despite its labor
theme, the GM story was not included in the business and finance pages, which by now also
included information about personal finance. The business pages contained a mix of news about
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commodities and market indicators. The business pages also contained a feature story
27
on race
discrimination in the corporate suites of major companies and a ―Marketplace‖ column by Robert
Metz.
The 1980 newspaper was the product of recent changes at The Times. In 1978, The New
York Times and other city newspapers faced an 88-day publishing strike. That year, perhaps in
response to growing competition from suburban newspapers, The Times launched four separate
sections, one of them being the standalone Business Day section.
28
The intention of the business
section was, according to the first business section editor, John M. Lee, to be ―[p]art of the Times
rather than a business paper per se or an investor‘s paper per se‖ (Quirt, 1993, p. 173). Unlike The
Wall Street Journal, said Lee, ―which start[ed] a business paper and added other elements, [The
Times] moved the opposite way, [with a] more comprehensive business section to be established‖
(p. 173). One hundred reporters were assigned to the new business section, which is
approximately as many reporters as are on today‘s business desk. In those early years, upper-level
editors decided to place all national and international economic news into the business section.
The new business section was allotted more newsprint than any of the other three sections: local,
national/foreign, and sports.
The goal was to move readers away from what Lee called a ―gray page with a stock
market lead‖ to ―something with more substance‖ (p. 174). He noted that The Times had for
decades run most of the economics and business stories alongside general news, and it was a risk
to encourage readers to turn to a separate business section to find news about inflation and
economic indicators. The tone of the business section was different from that of the previous
27
A feature story is not necessarily linked to a specific event. The story often focuses on an individual, a group, or a
particular trend, and it may have broad general themes.
28
The other sections included metropolitan news, a rotating section (arts, sports, science, living, etc.), and the front
section, which included national, international, and editorial and opinion news.
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business and financial pages, Lee said, and he pointed out that reporters were now calling
companies like GM ―smug and insular‖ (p. 175).
The Business Day of 1978 had a business digest that ran on the front page and featured
quick hits of international, national, markets, and company news, as well as a roundup of what the
columns inside the section said. There was at least one in-depth news article on broader economic
issues on the front, such as Iran‘s turmoil cutting oil prices (in November 1978). Other news
inside the section was also about international affairs, but these stories were all framed by
movements in commodity pricing. The business news was dominated by economic indicator
reports and company news. There was even an entire page devoted to company movers and
shakers, such as people who were promoted to various positions in big corporations. The column
―The Economic Scene‖ tried to make sense of changes in the markets.
Page One still featured economic news, as it had for decades, and on November 7, 1978,
it featured news about Citibank lifting the rate on home mortgages by 0.5 percent. Business Day
in October 1980 didn‘t look much different, but the front pages of the newspaper were filled with
news about the Iran-Iraq War and a bad economic situation. The federal bailout of New York
City was on the front page on October 1, 1980, as was an economic indicator story that predicted
the end of the recession.
The 1990s were downtimes in New York City and the surrounding areas, as reflected by
a letter to the editor headlined ―You can get shot outside of New York, too.‖ The front page had
returned to featuring at least one story about general economic news. The main story on October
1, 1990, was about President George H.W. Bush raising taxes. That news, which contained both
political and economic elements, could also be characterized as a business story, yet the back-half
ran in the national edition. The business section continued with its business digest, company
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news, and columns. Stories about the early European Union monetary agreements were placed in
the business section.
By 2000, the newspaper resembled what it does today in form and in writing style. On
October 1, 2000, two labor stories appeared on Page One: One was about strike fears in
Hollywood; the other was about low-wage jobs leading gains in unemployment. These business
stories were accompanied by stories about presidential candidates George W. Bush‘s and Al
Gore‘s different campaign proposals and stories about Middle East violence. The Sunday
business section, still called ―Money and Business,‖ featured Gretchen Morgenson‘s
Marketwatch column.
Before turning to business news in 2010, the year when I conducted my research, it is
useful to make one more stop in time: fall 2008. The tone and content of the business section in
November 2008, a month after the mid-October financial collapse of Lehman Brothers, is
markedly different from the months and years prior. Even in the days leading up to the 2008
presidential election, economic news took center stage on Page One. Business Day had in-depth
stories about the financial collapse, the markets, and technology, and it contained far fewer
economic indicator reports. Daily columnists emerged in the business section, and the company
news and business digest was eliminated. Economic news now ran throughout the paper, in
national, international, and foreign sections. Dan Barry, the noted feature columnist who travels
all over the U.S., penned a column from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange instead of
from the far corners of the country.
This short overview through history shows how business news evolved into its own
section at The Times. When the daily business and finance news pages first appeared, they
contained entirely news about the market. Now the idea of business news has broadened greatly,
especially in the years following the 2008 financial crisis. Nevertheless, this survey of Times
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business stories in the 20
th
century suggests that economic news has always been at the forefront
of The Times‘ coverage.
Business news angles have always appeared every major section of the newspaper. If The
Times is writing for the investor, it is also writing for a general audience. Providing financial
markets news has also always been a concern for The Times‘ staff; financial news roundups have
appeared since the inception of the newspaper. But this news has also come with a more
comprehensive picture of the economic landscape, as Lee, the first Business Day editor, suggests.
Defining business news at The Times helps gives us a sense of how news stories are
created, who writes them, what angles they will take, how they are talked about, and what
competitive pressures they face. Looking at how The Times‘ business journalists perceive their
readers also demonstrates how audiences are considered in determining what is labeled business
news. Thus, in the sections that follow, I look at where business news fits in the newspaper, and
then how business journalists themselves articulate what business news is at The Times, which is
in part based on how they understand their audience. At times, my research reveals a murky and
ambiguous definition of business news. This means that news production routines unfold along
different pathways depending on how business news is defined and told within the paper.
Furthermore, the considerations that are required with each new story that can be told as a
business story suggests considerable improvisation is required as journalists fit business stories
into established flows of news production.
How Does a Story Become Part of the Business Section?
Here, I want to explore a way to determine how a story may become a business story.
Nowadays, each morning, the print edition of the paper is delivered with a business section that
has a selection of anywhere from 15 to even 25 stories with the day's business news. On the Web,
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there's a specific Business Day section that details the business news as quickly as it can be
posted to the Web. If you were to look at the NYTimes.com home page for your news, however,
there would be no way to discern from what section of the newspaper a story originated. In this
respect, the Web display on the home page is reminiscent of the early days of the print
newspaper, before The Times was divided into sections.
The organizational structure of newspapers is somewhat archaic and, at the same time,
fairly standard from newspaper to newspaper. Most newspapers have ―desks‖—such as the sports
desk, the business desk, and, at The Times, the national, metro, and foreign desks. The Sunday
extras, such as Sunday Styles, are typically called ―sections.‖ But the words section and desk are
often used interchangeably, as I use them here. And then there are journalism outposts, called
bureaus. The biggest one for most national newspapers is the D.C. bureau. This bureau can
provide content to any of the desks. Other bureaus may be scattered throughout the nation and the
world.
29
A reader can make a quick guess at where a story is coming from, whether he or she
reads it online or in print, simply by scanning the dateline, which is the location where the story
was written. For example, a story from Washington, D.C., will typically have as its first word ―—
WASHINGTON.‖ If a reader understands this system, he or she might then reasonably guess that
the story is from the D.C. bureau.
Knowing this journalism lingo is helpful because it makes the turf discussions over
business content a little easier to comprehend. Such turf discussions determine whose resources
are allocated to a particular story: where it runs in the physical print paper and whose staff will be
responsible. There are some stories that blur the lines between desks, making it difficult to sort
29
It should be noted that there are really only three national newspapers at present: USA Today, The Wall Street
Journal, and The New York Times. I call them national because they have reporters throughout the country and the
world and have national circulation.
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out who will write, edit, and host the story—stories about the recession or financial regulation, for
example. Other news requires cooperation between the desks—like the Google/China story
discussed in Chapter 2 or the BP oil spill. Still other news is specific to the business desk and
requires the careful expertise of business desk reporters and its network of sources—such as news
about major banking scandals. On any major story, a number of desks can be working together,
and it isn't always clear which desk will end up with the lead story or, on a small story, which
desk will end up writing the story for the day.
As business editor Marcus Mabry, who was at the time charged with international
business news and enterprise editing, put it:
When I came here, it used to be that if there were numbers, it was a business story. But
there are increasingly. . . national and foreign stories that have numbers, and we bump
heads with foreign and national. There is no stark demarcation. . . . Why should Rio
Tinto,
30
a company that is sucking resources from China to keep growing, not be a
business story? But all of that runs in foreign.
Mabry has noticed, however, that there has been a big shift since 2008, when the global economic
crisis began to unfold. He said that suddenly foreign started to care more about global economics.
To him, though, ―All stories are linked to economics. Few stories don‘t have an economic
element.‖ Business, he notes, ―has the expertise to cover the minute and important specifics of
finance, and no one else is equipped to do that.‖
My observations suggest that there are three types of business stories. The first type of
story is one that will, prima face, always run in the business section. These are stories that have
the institutional legacy of always running in the business section both at The Times and at other
newspapers. They simply do not fit the agendas of the other sections of the newspaper because of
their direct and explicit focus on business and economics. These stories include markets stories,
stories about economic indicators, stories about financial companies (specifically their
30
Rio Tinto is a major British and Australian mining company and the source of tremendous merger activity and
mining activity in China.
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performance), stories about Wall Street and investment, and stories about company performance
(specifically company financial statements and earnings). Stories that fit these categories will not
be generated by any other news desk and require the specific skill set of business reporters. They
require being able to read company financial statements and being able to develop a specific set
of sources—for instance, on Wall Street and within companies, a knowledge base and source
network that other people working on other sections of the newspaper will not have unless they
are working in the business section. Though many of the people in the business section do not
have backgrounds in business or MBAs, some journalists do pursue special training and
fellowships in finance and financial journalism, and business journalists quickly develop
expertise on their beats.
The second kind of business story begins in the business section but soon expands to
include other desks. For instance, Mabry‘s example of Rio Tinto and China‘s growth used to be a
business story that ran in the business section. Now, Rio Tinto stories generally run in the foreign
pages and focus more on the social implications of development in rural China. However, if there
were a merger involving Rio Tinto, the business desk would still write the story, because it would
fall under the first category of traditional business stories. The story about Google pulling out of
China also started as a business story but became a more general news story.
The third type of business story is the flip side of the second: It is a story that begins as a
general news story but expands to be told from a business perspective. For instance, a story about
Pentagon spending will typically begin on the national desk, but it may become a business story if
companies become a prominent part of the story arc. These general news stories may have
tentacles that reach into politics, economics, and society, but may best be told from the
perspective of what the business desk may specialize in—stories about economics, labor,
consumers, and investment.
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The difference between the third category of business story and the second is merely
where the story originates; both represent a broadening of the traditional business and financial
story prototype. Importantly, both trajectories reflect expanding narratives a business story that
expands to include general narratives, or a general story that expands to include business
narratives and in neither case does the story typically shed all of its initial characteristics.
Rather, a business story that expands to other desks will often continue to appear in the business
section with a narrower, traditional business news focus. Similarly, a general story that expands
to be covered by the business desk will often continue to appear in other sections of the
newspaper.
These three categories of business stories suggest that stories turn on narratives and
resources, and the decisions about where to place stories are not necessarily completely clear or
well-established at the outset. Negotiations in the newsroom help designate which ways stories
will unfold. Some of these negotiations I was unable observe because they took place in private
emails, Page One conversations I was not always able to attend, or other meetings and
conversations I was not privy to. However, some of these negotiations also took place when the
business desk tried to set up its news budget or formulate its dress page. I was able to observe five
months of these meetings on the business desk and other, more general meetings, as well as
general conversations in the newsroom. As such, I was able to see how stories proceeded along
all three of these designations.
Foreign and Business Stories
Foreign stories and business stories frequently overlap. For instance, the news that
Google was going to cease operations in China because of security concerns, as well as
censorship, initially began as a business story. Then, the science desk chipped in with a
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business/science writer writing about how email accounts had been hacked. The story would soon
transform into a more general news story.
The foreign desk made the case that Google was in the unique position of acting as a
company that was articulating its own foreign policy. Business could have continued leading the
direction of the story; the news was still fundamentally about a company and its strategy. But the
foreign desk argued for a more general news trajectory that focused on the overall global picture.
Even D.C. got involved as The Times tried to assess how Secretary of State Hillary Clinton might
react, and who on the Hill might have been briefed about Google‘s decision.
This illustrates the second type of business story, in which the story began as a business
story but expanded to include more general characteristics and narratives. Unlike the traditional,
immediately recognizable business news stories of the first category, when the Google news
broke on the front page of the paper, the average reader probably would not have known from
which desk the story originated. The initial breaking story was, in fact, told by the business
reporters. This illustrates that business reporting has grown to include larger-picture stories
beyond the traditional emphasis on markets.
But what began as a business story quickly became something more. The Google uproar
from business news spread into different turf across the paper, even though the people covering
Google day in and day out are on the business desk and there are specific business reporters in
China. In this case, the story began as a business story but ended up with a different narrative
with a broader scope for the paper.
Another instance in which foreign and business overlapped was over the Greece debt
crisis. This also illustrates the second type of business news story, which began as a business
story but took on elements of a more general news story. The Greece debt crisis was fueling
international concern, as I noted earlier, because Greece couldn‘t raise the funds to meet its
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obligations by devaluing its currency. The result is that the spreads on the yields for bonds on its
sovereign wealth funds were extremely high. These are the funds that Greece could sell to raise
money, but it would have to offer tremendous interest—as high as 7 percent to 8 percent—in
return for these bond offerings. Greece needed help from the International Monetary Fund and
other European nations that had the cash to meet its debt obligations. However, the crisis was
highlighting weaknesses in the euro zone overall, especially because Greece and other countries
that had joined the European Union had fudged the books for entry to make themselves appear
more solvent than they actually were. These countries, such as Ireland, Spain, and Portugal, had
taken advantage of extremely low interest rates, both from consumer and government positions,
that, in the end, they couldn‘t really afford.
31
Another wrinkle in all of this was the role of
Goldman Sachs, which advised Greece in two particular deals that covered up some of Greece‘s
bad debt—a story uncovered by Times reporters (Story, Thomas, & Schwartz, 2010).
At the core of the Greek debt crisis was financial news that was being covered on a
regular basis by the business desk. But the Greek debt crisis mounted, and tensions in the country
rose about austerity measures. Similarly, there was disgruntlement in Germany about having to
foot the bill for weaker euro zone members. At this point, the news gained increased attention
from the foreign desk. They were interested in the political and the economic pressures facing
Greece and the euro zone. The foreign desk would detail the pressures facing Merkel or the
consequences of the British election for prime minister. But the daily ins and outs of Greek
troubles and protests blurred the lines between business and foreign. Foreign staff and business
staff worked together to write about the consequences of Greek debt on everything from the
failure of Greece‘s troubled railway system to some of the major protests that Greece saw in
response to the austerity measures imposed by the European Central Bank bailout. Intriguingly,
31
For a discussion of the Greek debt crisis, The Times topics page provides a good overview here:
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/greece/index.html
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when business was writing a story on Greece, the story got the slug ―drachma,‖ for the currency.
When foreign was writing a story on Greece, it took the name of the country.
The third type of story, or general stories that become business stories, often deal with
stories related to a country‘s development. One specific example is the way that China stories are
divided in the paper. The general story is that China is growing as an economic, political, and
socio-cultural force in the world. But there are also business stories that can be broken out of this,
such as stories about Chinese real estate bubbles, inflation, and moves of the renminbi.
National and Business Stories
National stories also overlap with the business desk. For instance, on a day that I was
observing backfield editors on the business desk, a story about the SEIU labor leader stepping
down was sent from the business desk to the national desk. This was a story about labor, but the
business desk decided the political story was more important than the story about the implications
for labor. If the news had remained in business, it would have likely remained more about the
implications for labor (Greenhouse, 2010). In this case, the story began as a business story but
took on another narrative.
Coverage of the ―Great Recession‖ is a good example of how the national and business
desks delineate coverage. The recession is an example of something that began as a business story
but grew into a more general story. The way the recession has been framed in the newspaper and
the allocation of resources reflects the different institutional imperatives behind each desk. The
national desk has so far been is concerned with telling the tales of individuals affected by the
recession, relying on feature stories.
32
Reporter Michael Luo of the national desk has been writing
32
Feature stories often focus on one particular individual or group, and are not necessarily linked to a specific event but
may have broad, general themes or be focused on a particular trend.
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richly tailored portraits of people across the U.S. This project, ―Living With Less,‖
33
also
included the opportunity for readers of the times to contribute via Twitter and submit their own
photos demonstrating the effects of the recession on their own communities.
But the business desk is also writing about the fallout of the economic crisis. There is the
largely quantitative monthly jobs report. However, business desk reporters Peter Goodman and
Catherine Rampell produced a series called ―The New Poor.‖
34
One of these stories looked at
chronic unemployment; one looked at individuals who might have been negatively affected by
the economic stimulus package; and another examined attempts by the Obama administration to
make easier for people to renegotiate their mortgages. These stories did not focus on specific
individuals but on broader trends. Still, individual voices helped shape these stories. In another
set of stories, business desk reporter David Streitfeld has been writing about the aftermath of the
foreclosure crisis in America. He has followed eviction officers into people‘s homes to detail the
process of eviction.
These stories are business stories, but they also paint a picture of the national landscape
as the United States faces its most troubled economic times since the Great Depression. Were
these stories originating from the national desk and the business desk all that different, aside from
the fact that they emerged from different desks? Perhaps the business stories may have been
wider in scope, drawing on more individuals at once, but not always. Nonetheless, it is important
to note that the recession has transitioned from being a business news story to a more general
news story.
To the reader, however, the differences in where these stories originate from may not
matter at all. Each of the major series—―The New Poor‖ and ―Living with Less‖—usually
33
http://projects.nytimes.com/living-with-less/
34
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/series/the_new_poor/index.html
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appeared on the front page. The multimedia packages that accompanied the stories helped keep
these stories prominent on the home page. To a reader, the subject of these stories is still the
recession.
Washington News and Business News
One of the more confusing relationships in the newsroom exists between the D.C. bureau
and the business desk. The business desk will often run stories in its print pages that come from
D.C. reporters. There are reporters in the D.C. bureau assigned to the business desk who cover
financial policy and agencies charged with making important economic policy decisions: the
Federal Reserve, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Federal Communications
Commission. But then there are other reporters who cover business, politics, and economics who
may write either for the business desk or for the national desk. The key distinction I saw after
watching a meeting in D.C. that focused on how D.C. would cover financial regulation is that
Washington‘s version of business news will include more information about the players and the
politics behind the scenes (field notes, May 10, 2010). The business section is more interested in
the financial and economic implications of these policies and the actions of these financial and
regulatory agencies.
Business editor Larry Ingrassia helped explain to me how he saw the relationship
between D.C. reporters and Business Day (personal communication, September 9, 2010). The
D.C. bureau‘s reporters with business-related beats focus on ―the economy, on industries, on
individual companies, and on workers,‖ and ―politics often help determine economic policy, and
the state of the economy often helps shape political decisions.‖ As such, these are business
reporters with a political edge. Their stories may run in the national section, as this is the home
for national political news. However, their stories may also run in the business section. But
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Ingrassia argues that there are clear cases where Business Day will take D.C. stories for the
Business Day print edition
35
: when there are regulatory decisions, decisions on interest rates by
the Fed, or actions by the SEC that affect Wall Street or investors. New York editors do not edit
the D.C. stories, but they are often read by Business Day editors in New York because of the
sense of ownership over the section. Further, because D.C. has no copy desk, these stories are
handled by the business copy desk.
Financial regulation
36
following the economic collapse was another sticky issue of
division of labor. Generally the politics were left to D.C., but the details of financial regulation
often appeared in the business print section. The D.C. business writers were more focused on the
regulatory issues rather than the politics. Consumer protection was a pet issue for the business
desk, but the fights Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) was having remained in the hands of D.C.
reporters writing in the national section. But the details and implications of what financial
regulation would mean for consumers appeared in the business section.
The “All Hands on Deck” Event
The BP oil spill, the largest accidental oil spill in history, sent 4.1 million barrels of oil
into the Gulf of Mexico over 87 days. Some news organizations told this story as a business news
story. For example, at TheStreet.com, a site geared specifically toward smaller investors, the daily
news about BP was told as it would influence investors. But the spill at The Times took on
different narratives involving coordination across the paper, with coverage involving the D.C
bureau and national, business, science, environment, and foreign desks.
35
Online, some stories can be found on the national Web page and the business Web page.
36
For information on financial regulation see
http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/subjects/c/credit_crisis/financial_regulatory_reform/index.html
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The BP oil spill coverage was coordinated out of the national desk. But BP was a
company covered regularly by business reporter Jad Mouawad. The national desk needed his
sources to help write their stories, so desks worked in close collaboration. The business desk
assisted from a particular narrative vantage point. The desk contributed stories about BP‘s past
safety history as a company; news about BP‘s leadership troubles; and other company news. But
The Times ultimately chose to tell a much broader story, one that would focus on the lives of
people and portraits of towns touched by the spill, down to the animals affected. The story could
have been told through an economic angle, but at The Times, the national desk took control.
Breaking Down the Models
I have suggested that there are three general types of business stories: first, stories that
always have been defined as business stories because of the story subject and expected narrative
(such as a financial markets story); second, a business story that is the genesis of a larger story
that develops a broader scope; and third, a general story that can take on a business perspective. A
business story that appears in the business section generally focuses on the direct effect of news
events or news reporting on the economy, on industries or on individual companies, on workers,
and on consumers and investors.
However, as the above relationships between the foreign desk and the business desk, the
national desk and the business desk, and Washington and the business desk indicate, defining a
business story is not always easy. Many stories involve the elements I have just outlined; and
where a story originates may not always determine the ultimate larger narrative the newspaper
wishes to tell. Or there may be stories that seem quite similar to each other coming from different
sections, such as stories about the recession.
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Instead, there is considerable blurriness about where one department‘s responsibilities
begin and end, and this affects the way that business stories are told. At one point I heard a Greek
debt story referred to as being ―rescued‖ from the foreign desk after Ingrassia and a foreign editor
debated on its placement. At times, a D.C. story slated for publication in the business section
would come to New York editors and receive the following complaint: ―Typical D.C., all politics,
no economics.‖ I heard this when the New York editors, for example, were looking for a more
comprehensive story on derivatives and how they would be treated under the financial regulation
bill. Despite the jostling between desks, I never observed anything more than collegial relations at
meetings or in passing conversation.
There are considerable ambiguities in the news routines that go into the production of
making business news that affect the ultimate narrative of a story. Where business news is ends
up in the paper requires journalists to make decisions that depend on the particular nature of the
stories being covered. These decisions showcase how improvisation works within the newsroom
as journalists work to fit new stories with unclear destinations into the newsroom‘s organizational
structures. As Larry Ingrassia, the business editor, makes clear, what seems obvious to him is
actually, in the end, not all that clear—a business news story may be about politics and be for the
national section, or it may touch on politics and still be slated for the business section. This may
be decided on a case-by-case basis. The decisions about the narratives for business news require
improvisation on the part of journalists who attempt to fit new events into existing patterns of
news production. The three patterns I outline suggest the routines that each business news story
may follow, but there are considerable ambiguities as each story arises. The ability of journalists
to adapt their work patterns and to make decisions about story placement suggests that they are
purposeful actors in the creation of news. Thus, in making business news, it is important to note
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that business stories do not always fit into the easily definable categories that seem set out for
them when browsing the Web or reading the print edition of the paper.
How Journalists Talk About Business News
Aside from the types of stories that actually appear, there is also the way that journalists
talk about business news at The Times. This reflects both their professional identity as business
journalists as well as their views about what makes a business story. Some journalists see
business news as having particular inherent characteristics at The Times, while others see business
news as reflective of general stories that become business news.
As such, journalists at The Times have a sense of what their own roles are as business
journalists, and they also have a sense of how they understand their responsibilities at The Times.
This perception is important to understand because it helps shape how they approach their work
and how they understand their professional identities as journalists. Their comments further
suggest a constructed reality in which stories about business news are made and created.
Journalists Able To Define a Business Story
Almost half of the 52 business journalists I interviewed were able to define, with broad
strokes, certain key characteristics that they always saw as present in business stories. These
answers to what makes up a business story provide additional support to the idea that business
stories will ultimately feature a particular narrative core. At The Times, many journalists
articulated an understanding of business news that links directly back to their idea of serving the
consumer, even though they would often define the core elements of financial news as having to
do with what investors might be most interested in—such as financial institutions and company
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performance. Their comments foreshadow how they talk about the audience informing their
understanding of what they do, a discussion which will be articulated in a later chapter.
Editor Phyllis Messinger put it this way, ―I guess it‘s something that has to do with a
company, something financial, but I often end up doing a story about how a company‘s decision
relates to a consumer experience. . . . We look at not what it means for companies and industry
but also what it means for consumers‖ (personal communication, May 4, 2010). Another reporter
noted, ―We‘re covering Merrill Lynch, we‘re covering Smith Barney, we‘re writing about traders
and brokers, but we‘re not just writing about the industry; we are writing about the real people.‖
Other reporters saw money as being the linchpin to what would be the start of a business
story—but then suggested that this was just a potential way to define a business story and such a
story could end up being told through a different narrative lens. Deputy business editor Adam
Bryant noted:
I think I tend to define it very broadly. Any story with money is a business story, but it‘s
just a perspective. You can follow the money in terms of investigative projects in terms
of all walks of life, in terms of stories if you want to know what all Americans are doing
and thinking, how they are spending money, how they are saving, how they are investing,
how they are buying houses. . . . (personal communication, May 4, 2010)
Here we see an audience that is imagined as beyond the investor audience; business news is
imagined for a general news audience because business is a theme that ―all Americans‖ can
understand.
Larry Ingrassia, business editor, specifically suggested that business stories could be
anything, but they did need to have core elements that took them from the general story to a more
specific business story. He noted, ―One of the things I was puzzled by when I came here from The
Wall Street Journal after 25 years to The New York Times was that at The Journal, you never
heard anyone ask the question ‗Is that a business story?‘ Most stories end up having to do with
money or the economy or people‘s jobs or products that they use, so it was actually a question I
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had to confront on occasion when people would ask me why you are writing that story for your
section front‖ (personal communication, May 4, 2010).
Ingrassia took pains to explain the idea of business news as a general story and tried to
explain how a general story would become a business story:
I would say, if you forced me, it is anything that intersects the very broad set of issues
how people go about their economic lives and what affects them as workers, as investors,
as consumers, and sometimes as citizens. For example, taxes and tax policies, is that a
government or a business story? That can be both, and a lot of things, depending on the
emphasis. If it‘s more business than political [it‘s business].‖
Ingrassia‘s words carry significant weight because he is a major decision-maker at The Times. He
is in a negotiating position to decide when stories will become broader than just business stories,
or to decide how more general stories will become business stories. His discussion of the
ambiguity between these pathways reflects the tension of what makes up a business story, but he
was still able to define some key narrative characteristics that make something a business story.
At The Journal, any story was a business story because it was for a business news
organization. At The Times, stories are in part business news because of where they reside in the
paper. But Ingrassia sees business news as having a more expansive definition. The physical act
of separating the business section is further indication that The Times is a general newspaper
intended for a general audience, but from Ingrassia alone, it is difficult to determine whether the
business section itself is set apart for an investor audience.
This question of the business news audience will be discussed later, but these initial
comments from journalists about how they understand business news suggests that they see a
broad definition of business news that extends beyond just the traditional first category of
business news. In fact, these journalists define themselves in opposition to traditional business
news.
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But some journalists defined business news in the sense that The Times has historically
seen business news: either because such news has historically been in the business section or
because it requires the special skill sets of business journalists. One financial news writer noted:
One difference is that business news is much more quantitative. If you were writing an
article about the abortion debate or shootings or bombing you would have facts and
clashing opinions, but with business reporting, you would have numbers, profits, stock
performance, corporate results that no one can argue with and have objective evidence
that a CEO is performing poorly. . . .
I think business reporters are following the stock market and what are going on with
companies. We can read 10ks.
37
We are not afraid of numbers.
However, some business reporters who did not cover financial news disagreed that they had to
have these quantitative skills, and said that they just had to have an awareness of the needs of the
consumer. Or they noted that they had to have specialized knowledge of their particular industry,
which might mean doing company earnings, but more often required being able to cover the ins
and outs of their particular sector of the economy. They saw themselves as providing a broader
picture of business news.
The broad strokes painted by all of these journalists illustrate a few common themes.
First, some journalists are clearly able to define a business story as having something to do with
money, finance, and companies. Thus, a business story can be reduced to core elements.
However, this does not mean that a story is limited to a discussion of money and finance, as
Bryant points out. Thus, in many ways, the precise definition of a business story may be difficult
to pin down. A second key point is that while business news has, as Bryant noted, a
―perspective,‖ such an outlook may be found in more general stories that are generated by other
desks. To some journalists, a business story is defined by the institutional parameters of The
Times. The jostling between the desks illustrated in the previous section reflects the extent to
37
Public companies are required to report certain financial information in an annual report called a 10k to the Securities
and Exchange Commission.
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which the origin of a story may in turn help shape its definition of whether it is a business story or
not.
“I’m Not a Business Reporter . . .”
Other journalists defined their professional identity in a negative way: They were not
business reporters as far as they understood it. Instead, they saw their work as speaking to a
broader set of topics and ideas that somehow became business stories. Others noted that it was
institutional factors, such as where their beat happened to be placed within The Times structure,
that made their work part of the business desk. This further suggests that what makes business
news is also where it comes from within the newspaper—regardless of subject.
Reporter Barry Meier also does not see what he does as business reporting, even though
he‘s been on the business desk for his entire career (personal communication, April 5, 2010).
―I‘ve never considered myself a business reporter. I don‘t understand business. I do medical,
health and safety, legal, things that for one reason or another come out of the business
department.‖ He sees what he does in opposition to the ―hard-core financial reporting‖ that he
admits he wouldn‘t ever be able to do. Meier noted, ―I think the bread-and-butter business news
as defined by The Times is economic news, stock market news, and corporate news. I say the
things I do happen to be in this department but don‘t have to be in this department.‖
Meier‘s stories are health business news, and for much of 2010 were about the failure of
medical devices and their effects upon the consumer. But he does have an idealized version of
what makes up business news and sees himself in opposition to this business news. His words
seem to suggest that any story can in fact be a business story, and institutional factors have
emerged that have created the infrastructure for him to work within the business section.
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In another instance, The Times business desk staff reveals how institutional structures and
the point of origin of story determine whether something is business news. The business desk
includes a broad enough range of journalists that a reporter who used to write for the Style
section
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of The Washington Post sees little variation between his job working for the Sunday
Business section and The Washington Post Style section. David Segal, a Sunday business feature
writer, noted:
I don‘t know if there‘s anything special about business reporting. I am not sure when I
write feature stories if they are tailored to the business section of The Times. I see what
I‘m doing as writing for people who are interested in a subject and want to read in a
somewhat more developed and lengthier story than in other places in the newspaper.
(personal communication, May 1, 2010)
Institutionally, his stories begin as general interest stories and may never take on an explicit
narrative as a business story. However, they are branded as business stories because of where
they come from. This reveals the ambiguities when reporters suggest that any story could be a
business story. It depends on two factors: the narrative and the resources and institutional factors
dictating story placement.
The Audience and Business News
Just a few examples can show how journalists are routinely thinking about their
audiences when they are crafting stories—and as such, audiences influence the definition of
business news. For the business desk, this means thinking about what might be interesting to
people who may not actually care that much about the ins and outs of business. Going through my
field notes, the word reader came up nearly every single day I was at The Times—as in ―What do
we think about the reader?‖ or ―Would the reader care?‖
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The Style section of the Washington Post is a feature section that offers stories about lifestyle and off-the-news trend
stories. These stories are often filled with humor or are in-depth looks at quirky and peculiar aspects of the news. Or the
Style section may also focus on current fashions and trends, including taste-makers.
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Here are just a few examples:
Two reporters had just received a giant memo about more problems with collateralized
debt obligations. But they were concerned about how to write about it.
One reporter noted, ―This is really important. If this is right, it means that we could find
some things, and it could be really revelatory stuff.‖ Financial editor David Joachim began
making the assignments about how to divvy up the work flow. But another reporter jumped in
and noted, ―I don‘t think our readers are really going to understand what a CDO is.‖ The first
reporter then noted, ―We‘re really going to need to write a CDO explainer . . . but if we do, will
we lose the [importance of the] report?‖ Joachim said, ―Maybe we do an explainer, even if it isn‘t
news, and leave the deeper stuff to . . . [other reporters]‖ (field notes, April 19, 2010).
The moment showcases the division facing the newsroom. The complicated business
transactions of multinational corporations, the trading that goes on in financial firms, and the
machinations of regulation and of Wall Street are all part of business‘ domain. But how to write
about it in an understandable way creates a dilemma: The information is crucial for the public
record, in the minds of reporters and editors, as the above anecdote illustrates: The CDO report
could offer important information. But if no one in the audience understands it, does it really
make much of a difference? This is the question The Times business desk must face as it tries to
understand who its readers are: Are they specialists who know something about business? Are
they public decision-makers? Are they corporate traders or business people? The answer to this is
that Times journalists see their audience as all three—and try with their work to consider the
everyday reader while delivering the more mechanical and difficult information a sophisticated
reader would want or need. As such, each story requires thinking of the same question— who is
the audience?—and thinking about how to address this audience requires improvisation as
journalists work with the material that they have to make their work accessible to these audiences.
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Each story raises new questions that are variations on the patterns of writing for their audiences;
elementalism, but improvisation enabled by routines.
When Puerto Rican banks, most of which were being bailed out by the FDIC, were in
trouble, editors were curious about whether readers would be interested in the story (field notes,
April 21, 2010).
Joachim noted that the weekend Page One editor ―might be interested in this Puerto
Rican bank story. There‘s a banking crisis in Puerto Rico, [and] not only is it a banking
island…but unemployment there is higher than the rest of the mainland, and basically the FDIC
has gone through consolidation of banks there.‖
Editor Bill Brink was curious, and added, ―I don‘t think the reader knows that.‖
Another editor was curious though, and remarked, ―Does the reader care?‖ The story,
with these considerations in mind and other news in the mix, did not end up running on Page One
(Dash, 2010).
For another story, editor Winnie O‘Kelley and editor Dean Murphy were debating over
whether to run a short story in The Times about a mortgage report (field notes, April 13, 2010).
Murphy asked, ―Do we get 350 words on the record?‖
The editors debated about it. Ultimately, the decision came down to what readers might
want. ―I guess it does not tell our readers very much,‖ Murphy said, and he decided not to run the
story.
This exchange is significant because it reveals the way that business has to balance
readers who care deeply about business news and want in-depth daily reports with readers who
may not be interested in these details at all. At the same time, another competing desire is the
hope to get news on the record. Ultimately, decisions are weighted in favor of the more general
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reader, who won‘t care about the latest update in this particular mortgage report. But business
news decisions reflect journalists‘ assessment of their audiences.
In another instance, the business desk was trying to determine just how much readers
needed to know about Toyota‘s recalls. They were curious about whether the news was feeding
too much paranoia into the debate, or whether readers needed to know more details (field notes,
February 5, 2010).
Adam Bryant, who was editing the Toyota stories, asked, ―Are we doing too much of
this? Is this making people paranoid? Is everyone going to see something wrong with their car
and ask for a recall?‖
Editor Kevin McKenna jumped in and said, ―No. I think we need to tell people about this.
This happened [to my relative]. People are concerned about driving their cars. We have to tell
them what kind of a problem this is.‖
In this moment, we see a moment of self-reflection in the newsroom that reveals the
journalists acting as purposeful actors in the creation of news. They are aware of their own role in
perpetuating the debate surrounding Toyota‘s recall. At the same time, they are concerned about
overloading too much information on the reader. Would the reader care about every last detail, if
the reader were not an auto specialist? These journalists were trying to balance the needs of the
reader with their sense of what complete story coverage would look like. The reader was an
important consideration in how the story got covered, which was with daily reports. And perhaps
the fact that this Toyota problem actually happened to someone‘s relative may have made the
editors weigh the story more heavily; the audience was now personified.
39
39
This is beyond the scope I wish to address, but it is important to acknowledge how the conversation does turn when a
journalist has some personal investment in a story. This may reveal some indication of bias. Such decision-making bias
has been discussed (and critiqued) by Entman (2007).
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From these conversations, it is clear that the journalists have some idea of who this
―reader‖ might be—but this reader is talked about as a nebulous concept. The reader is considered
when shaping business news stories, but it is important to reflect upon how this reader is
imagined by these journalists. Not everyone shares the same idea of the reader, as my research
shows, but the ―reader‖ is always talked about as a unifying concept that everyone seems to agree
upon and understand as important to how the business desk will pursue stories. To break this
down further, I used interview data I collected to better understand how journalists understood the
audience. In a later chapter, I will discuss how perceptions of the audience relate to the
developments of social media in the newsroom, but for now, I am principally interested in how
journalists see their audience and how that helps them think about how to write business stories.
For most of these journalists, the audience is an audience that is not talking back and simply
receiving information. As we will see with the introduction of social media in the newsroom,
most journalists are confused by the idea of having a conversation with their readers.
Perceptions of the Business News Audience
When I interviewed those responsible for the text content at The Times, namely editors
and reporters, I was principally interested in their reflections on whom they believed they were
writing for. I was not interested in getting a breakdown of whom, exactly, The Times reaches;
instead, I wanted to understand how their impressions of the reader helps shape their
understanding of how they write their stories and, of course, what ultimately constitutes business
news. Some explicitly imagined writing for their families. Others imagined writing for the
general reader. But with the business desk, I also found that the majority of respondents saw
themselves as writing for a bifurcated audience of educated Times readers and business people
and power elite—but this does not mean that they were intentionally changing their coverage to
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satisfy this elite. This audience finding reflects the news talk I heard about writing for the reader,
and the anecdote at the beginning of the section, among others. The third response came from
people who separated the online audience from the print audience, but this represented a minority
of individuals.
Writing for the Familiar
When Gans (1979) asked people in newsrooms who their audience was, they reacted
similarly to the question: Other than people close to marketing executives, individuals couldn‘t
quite give a precise response to whom they understood as the audience and so looked to their
family. He found that most people talked about the audience in terms of their family. This is a
finding my study partially replicates.
Since most of the journalists he was working with tended to be upper or middle class
because of the rise of journalism to a professional class, Gans (1979) suggested that this
perception of family meant that the news skewed in a direction that responded to the news and
information needs of this particular socioeconomic group. To some degree, his findings may be
consistent for some portion of The Times reporters—and may in fact shape the way that coverage
is created.
When I asked reporter Willie Neuman whom he thought he was writing for, he replied,
―My mom, I guess,‖ and then followed the thought with ―If I‘m lucky, if it is interesting to me,
it‘s interesting to other people‖ (personal communication, April 19, 2010).
But some of these journalists‘ parents weren‘t just the everyday parents. As one younger
reporter put it, ―I‘m writing for the kind of people I imagine my parents to be. Middle- or upper-
class professionals who don‘t know a lot about business, but who are interested in it. If they don‘t
understand something or can‘t explain it to their friends, then I haven‘t done a good job‖
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(personal communication, February 17, 2010). This reporter mentioned having regular
conversations with her parents, checking into see whether they understood her stories. So this
reporter is thinking about making her stories understandable to what by most accords would be an
elite group compared with the rest of America.
Another journalist made an explicit class distinction, noting, ―I tend not to write about
payday lending or stuff that would tend to be more useful for working class or below because I
don‘t think that‘s our audience in print or online.‖
Just How Much Does Wall Street Matter?: The Bifurcated Audience
The most common response I got from my 52 interviews was that reporters and editors
felt like they had a dual mission: to write for this interested audience but also to write for a
business audience. This bifurcation of perceived audiences impacts the way that these journalists
think about the definition of business news. Writing for two audiences means that a story has to
have enough interest to please the decision-makers and enough information to compete, for
instance, with The Wall Street Journal. But it also means writing in a way that this smart,
educated audience can understand. Business news at The Times is general business news.
Reporter Peter Goodman talked about how experienced writing for this bifurcated
audience; his stories tend to be long features about the general economy (field notes, March 31,
2010). He said that he sees his audience as the lay reader, not as specialists, and he likes to
―demystify complicated arcane jargon-filled areas of economic policy-making and find narrative
approaches to stories that then open those stories to people who don‘t identify as business
readers.‖ At the same time, he noted, ―I know part of my audience is a self-identified business
crowd, and I have to give them something sophisticated and enlightening. But I am not writing
for someone who can just be told about credit default swaps without explaining what that is.‖ So
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for Goodman, the trick is to find ways to make the story still interesting with enough tidbits to
draw in the business audience but also to keep his stories jargon-free and appealing to people who
don‘t think of themselves as interested in business—a general reader rather than a business
reader.
Reporter Micki Maynard spoke to the interested reader but also to the need of the Times
to influence policy-makers with its writing. She noted:
I think about the [audience] as the same kind of people who care enough to be interested
in business developments . . . the educated upper class. I think about people who care
enough to educate themselves . . . but we want to make sure that people are writing for
the kind of audiences we are covering, D.C. people writing for the D.C. industry and car
writers writing for the car industry. I never felt my responsibility was to write for the
lowest common denominator. (personal communication, May 17, 2010)
Writing for sources has been a constant critique of the press. James Carey (1979), Jay
Rosen (2000), and other press critics have suggested that this has been what distances journalists
from their audiences. Other academics have been even more critical of the source-reporter
dependency (Bennett, 2001; Fishman, 1980; Golding & Eliot, 1979), and argue that sources
recalibrate the agenda of news organizations. Bennett, in particular, argues that these sources, in
controlling access to information, limit what journalists write. The critique is such that journalists
also develop cozy relationships with sources, which in turn limits their ability to become
adequately critical of their sources work—either because they don‘t want to risk losing their
access to information or because they‘ve actually come to identify with their sources.
However, when journalists at The Times spoke about their perceived audience, they
didn‘t talk about their sources. Instead, they spoke more generally about business communities or
people in positions of power or specific interest groups who would care about their coverage. For
example, editor Marcus Mabry spoke more generally about the audience:
I think we are lucky. Our audience is the corporate C-suite [e.g., CEOs, CFOs] or
managers and executives to everyday, normal people . . . the man in the street to opinion
leaders in business and politics. This microcosm of smart people, like people from Ivy
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League schools, math folks, artists. . . . The Times is not just for Wall Street and not just
for traders . . . and we have to keep it from being as boring as hell. (personal
communication, March 29, 2010)
Mabry used the word ―lucky‖ to describe the scope of the audience of The Times as being able to
reach both the echelons of power and decision-making, but also smart (elite) people and the man
on the street. Notably, Mabry is not interested in the source relationship or making sure that
people in corporations are in good communication with The Times—only that The Times is
influencing them. Of course, as I have noted, interview data reflect a problem with self-report,
and so we don‘t know precisely the pressure that weighs on journalists as they consider sources in
their work. But these answers appear to suggest that they do not think about sources as people
they need to influence.
The bifurcation of the audience creates difficulty—writing for an audience about business
news requires constant assessment of whether the news is understandable. At the same time, the
news has to provide something distinct enough to gain the attention of people making decisions
for The Times business section to be relevant to these groups. As such, the business section of The
Times must speak to both audiences, and whether it does so successfully is judged by the reader.
Seeing the Online Audience
Rather than seeing the audience as a bifurcated mass, some journalists preferred to think
of the audience as a more expansive audience online. This online audience—though wider—was
also perceived to have specific niche interests that could help writers tailor their coverage and
inspire greater audience loyalty with regard to specific beats.
Kevin McKenna, deputy business editor, may be the most visionary person on the
business desk when it comes to imagining the online audience. He has been deeply invested in
what The Times calls verticals—the specialized niche segments of the site. On the business desk,
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this includes the global page, personal technology, technology, energy, economics, media, small
business, Your Money (personal finance), and DealBook, the Wall Street-focused blog. These
verticals are designed to cultivate audiences that are specifically interested in this content, as
McKenna has repeatedly told me. For instance, all the technology stories are aggregated on the
tech page. But it is not just technology coverage from the business page; it is technology coverage
from anywhere in the paper.
Larry Ingrassia, the business desk editor, also spoke to the way that online audiences
were more targeted. He noted that there is:
. . . a consumer audience [that asks] every day about how the business world affects me—
the Web audience is that, and that‘s different, and we‘re still learning and adjusting but it
goes narrow and deep . . . . The challenge is to figure out those areas of most interest to
New York Times readers. . . . If you are really interested in whatever it is, media news,
you probably have a number of Web destination blogs, but given our limited resources,
we are cognizant of setting those priorities, but the Web interest is interested in knowing
deeper than the mass readers with a special interest in topic. (personal communication,
May 5, 2010)
Despite the fact that more people are paying attention to The Times online than in print,
many people who spoke about The Times‘ Web site did not change their assumptions about the
general characteristics of The Times‘ reader profile. This reader was still smart, educated, and
upper class. As Duff Wilson put it, ―The Web site is so important, and it‘s a well-educated, higher
than average income with a strong interest in the news and current events with a great audience . .
. otherwise they would just go to the Huffington Post. It‘s the best readership there is‖ (personal
communication, April 8, 2010). This opinion changed, however, when the questions were asked
about how they felt communicating with this audience, as we will see in a later chapter.
Thus, The Times journalists thinking about the online audience see the online audience as
an audience that is still this ―quality‖ knowledgeable audience. Perhaps it is even more
knowledgeable because it is attracted to niche content. Rather than thinking about Times content
as being more open and more accessible to an even more general reader, the trend in the business
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desk is to make content more specialized. This idea of niche content has been one way that news
organizations have attempted to come up with a viable online economic model. Niche content and
destination Web sites are ways to draw reliable readers and build community loyalty and
engagement, which can be sold to advertisers. So in developing these sites, The Times is also
developing a strategy for survival. However, as we will see later, many journalists have difficulty
equating their previous understanding of the audience with the online audience, and see the online
audience as hard to understand and perhaps even scary.
Writing for Wall Street?
The responses of Times journalists suggest that these journalists are not writing for Wall
Street—except insofar as they see a bifurcated audience where Wall Street and the government
may be reading the paper. But The Times‘ journalists are not writing to please the Wall Street
audiences, as their conversations about news suggest and as my earlier chapter about business
news values reveals. From my conversations, I received little impression that these journalists
were deeply in bed with the sources they were trying to impress to get more information, though
my study did not focus on sourcing. However, journalists talked about the audience on Wall
Street or in government was a detached audience simply receiving The Times each day as the
important paper that it is. Writing for these readers, then, means covering the important issues of
the day, but it does not mean tailoring the news coverage to their particular point of view.
A difficult translation process, however, occurs in just how much The Times is able to
explain things to a general audience. The Times may think it is writing for an informed reader, but
as a reader, I sometimes find it difficult to understand business coverage—and when I was in the
newsroom, the only reason I understood some of the stories about the Greek debt crisis was that
people were talking about it every day. The informed reader does not necessarily equate to a
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reader who can follow the conversation. Still, Times journalists are making an effort to devote
time and space in their stories to explain things to the general reader, and I saw such
conversations about how they planned to achieve this take place daily. Whether this ultimately
succeeds is unclear, as I have not done audience research, but the intention is there, at least
according to audience perception.
Who The Times is not?
Part of defining business news meant that Times journalists saw themselves as speaking
to an audience that was not the typical business news audience—and writing news that was not
typical business news. These perceptions reflect what business news might be elsewhere, but also
reveal how journalists at the top general interest news organization understand their role apart
from more ―traditional‖ business journalists.
Times journalists identified a distinct brand of New York Times business journalism that
was unlike the business journalism they saw elsewhere. The competition was almost always
considered to be The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, Bloomberg, The Financial Times, and Dow
Jones (an affiliate and content provider for The Wall Street Journal); the Los Angeles Times as a
competitor for entertainment industry stories; and The Washington Post as a competitor on
regulatory stories. But when some Times journalists answered the question about what defined
business news, they explicitly defined themselves in opposition to what they saw as typical
business news. In addition, many pointed out that it would be silly for The Times to compete with
wire services like Dow Jones, Bloomberg, and Reuters to serve investors depending on instant
information for their tradition decisions. The Times infrastructure and distribution system was not
built to be as fast, the newspaper did not have the manpower, and the desk did not have the
interest in covering the minute aspects of particular industries or companies on a daily basis. Thus
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The Times audience is not the investing class, except insofar as the investing class is also
composed of decision-makers who read The Times along with every other educated Times reader.
Adam Bryant, the deputy business editor, noted, ―I‘ve always thought it‘s not quarterly
earnings or economic statistics. I‘ve been a business reporter for 20 years, but I‘ve never felt like
one. To me it‘s just about sociology with dollar signs.‖ In other words, the other journalists at
other news organizations are writing about economic statistics and quarterly earnings, and Bryant
sees what he is doing at The Times (where he has spent the majority of his career) as doing
something broader than just the straight numbers stories I defined as categorically residing in a
business section.
Business journalists at The Times and elsewhere call news that can be found everywhere
―commodity news.‖ Commodity news provides no unique angle on a news development; it is
news that every news organization will have because it features a canned announcement, or is an
easily replicated story based on the same event, such as an earnings call. Economic indicator
stories and market stories are examples of such commodity news: They can be found across
business news organizations. They have no real inherent competitive value because everyone will
have the story. The big story is one that breaks news and provides new information, not the story
that covers news of the day about a particular company, for instance. The Times sees itself as
moving away from covering commodity news stories, and journalists see themselves as doing
work in opposition to commodity news found elsewhere.
As another financial journalist noted, ―We don‘t want to be commodity news except
when we have to because we have to do some of it to stay in the game. We can‘t ignore when an
event is happening. But generally, we don‘t want to be doing the same thing everyone else is
doing.‖ Staying in the game might include writing a story about JPMorgan‘s earnings, even
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though it will be found elsewhere. But as Graham Bowley‘s earnings experience showcased, the
story took on what The Times likes to call ―added value,‖ a phrase which will be examined later.
Because The Times has limited staff compared with the hundreds of financial reporters at
The Journal/Dow Jones, Bloomberg, or Reuters, it cannot compete with commodity news even if
it wanted to. Therefore, reporters speak about being more selective when it comes to stories. ―We
do things that have added value. If there isn‘t a big drop or a big jump or a big change, it might be
worth waiting before we add something,‖ said Natasha Singer, a health business writer (personal
communication, March 11, 2010).
Peter Goodman also sees other business news as having particular shortcomings that his
brand of journalism and reporting does not:
If I hear someone identify as a business reporter or partition themselves off from
journalism writ large, I worry that means access journalism, top-down journalism, access
to people running the institution and seeing the world through their eyes with a focus on
what makes stock prices with the interest of investors as the narrative engine. . . . I think
the biggest shortcoming of too many of my colleagues [referring to those outside The
Times] is trying to do trophy interviews with CEOs. (personal communication, March 31,
2010)
For Goodman, his journalism stands for news that is outside the corporate suite and beyond news
that is just interested in stock performance. This other kind of news is ―typical business news‖
while the voices of the outsiders, the consumers, and the broader tale is Times business
journalism. Competitors who are looking for exclusives are looking for it in the wrong places—
cozying up to CEOs—and that‘s not what he sees his role as, or business journalists at The Times
as pursuing.
The opposition to commodity news is both an expectation that The Times can chime in
with something better, an assumption that minor news will already be covered, and an assessment
that The Times cannot do it all. The frustration with corporate executive news suggests that The
Times wants to distinguish itself. Thus, The Times wants to see itself as standing apart from the
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competition because it sees itself as doing something different—both because it must and because
it sees itself as having different values. However, as my fieldwork indicates, such differentiation
is not always possible because the realities of competition do influence Times stories and news
judgment.
So What is Business Journalism? And Who is the Audience?
This chapter began with an exploration of how The Times has evolved over the 20
th
century to include a broader version of business news that appears in a designated business
section. News that in the past was scattered throughout the paper now has a home in Business
Day. But even today, news that could be in the business section can be found throughout the
newspaper, with stories that have elements of business, commerce, labor, economics, and the like
appearing across the newspaper. What seems to be the consistent theme of what is designated as a
story that belongs to the business desk are the institutional divisions that determine whether a
story will ultimately come from the business desk. But the negotiations for each story are not
always clear, and require that journalists improvise as they decide where each story belongs.
This chapter also explores the relationship between journalists and their audiences. As
such, this analysis is premised on the idea that it is important for us to understand how journalists
understand their readers because this, too, helps define business news. Knowing how journalists
make sense of readers provides insight into the way that news decisions get made and the way
that coverage is articulated.
Conversations in the newsroom reveal that journalists care about their reader and have a
general sense of who their reader might be, though not everyone agrees who this reader is: Is the
reader a general audience member (of the elite), a business person, both, or a targeted online
audience? Journalists think about their reader as more than just the investor, and as such, they
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begin to see the definition of business news at The Times as different from would-be competitors.
Instead, business news needs to be written for a general audience and a class of decision-makers,
it needs to be clear, and it needs to have something that adds to the discussion. The news will not
be something that audience members are likely to rely on for major trades, but the substantive
news may provide the larger picture. This view of the audience gives The Times a niche way to
position itself in the business news market: as a general interest news publication that reaches
elites and decision-makers, with a business news section that goes beyond just the headlines (or
so they hope). Significantly, these journalists view their audience as a static readership that does
not respond to their coverage; the journalists are putting out their work, and people are not
responding. When journalists confront the idea that people do have more means in a digital world
to talk back, such as through email and social media, journalists‘ sense of the audience changes.
We will explore this distinction in a later chapter.
Online, as the home page becomes the front page for more than 18 million readers each
month, the distinctions between business stories produced by the business desk and stories with
business elements produced by other desks fade. Unlike the print paper, which features only five
to seven front-page stories, a multitude of stories can be on the home page. Online, there are
fewer editorial cues for the reader about which story is a business story. As such, the online
reader may be exposed incidentally to more business stories without knowing about it (though,
conversely, the online reader may be more focused on a particular type of story tailored to his or
her interest). The lack of distinction between the business section and the rest of the newspaper
on the home page may mean that the business desk has an audience that may include readers
whose interests are beyond just specifically ―traditional‖ business news, or the first category of
business news story that I outlined.
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Even with the print product, stories that run on Page One often remain in the front section
of the paper, meaning it is hard for readers to tell whether a story is a business desk story—
particularly if it blurs the subject lines, as we have discussed. As such business news stories at
The Times may indeed reach a broader and more general audience than news targeted specifically
for investors because The Times is a general interest news organization. And most business
journalists at The Times like to think that they are providing business news that is different from
the business news that is provided by news organizations charged with providing content to
readers specifically interested in business news.
This chapter detailed the ambiguity that results in the creation of business news stories.
While there are established routines for the production of news stories, it is not always clear how
a business story will fit into these established routines. Journalists have to improvise and react to
each new story as it comes up to determine its role in the paper. Because business stories can
have so broad an application, business may be a particularly unique case of ―specialized‖ news
that takes on broader properties. Desks must negotiate where to put stories that begin as business
news but expand to become general news, and stories that begin as general news stories but
expand to become business news. This negotiation requires journalists to think about stories that
seem to present new situations and place them into existing demarcations—part of the
provenance of improvisation.
The way that journalists talk about business news reflects the fact that they are purposeful
agents in the creation of news. News is made through institutional routines, but journalists are at
the center of how these routines are constructed and re-imagined. Though they have different
opinions about what comprises business news, they consider what it means to do their job and are
self-reflexive about their position at the newspaper. Further, they are conscious of their larger role
in the business news ecology, and strive to differentiate their coverage from existing business
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news coverage. Their words illustrate the fact that journalists are active in trying, at least, to have
an impact on the way that news is constructed. They help shape and define what it means to
produce business news. And as such, they are agents who shape the structure of the business news
desk, and ultimately, the definition of what makes business news at The Times.
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CHAPTER 4: DECIDING WHAT’S BUSINESS NEWS—AN EXAMINATION OF
BUSINESS NEWS VALUES
The government‘s monthly labor report comes out the first Friday of every month. It
details the national unemployment rate and tells the number of jobs added or lost from the
economy for the month prior. Before the financial collapse, these jobs numbers were generally
ignored by the rest of the newsroom, save the business desk. But on March 5, 2010, the second
the numbers came out, the NYTimes.com home page led with the details. The jobs story would
lead the home page for almost 12 hours. The Page One morning meeting that day showcased the
new centrality of jobs to the news agenda, and the importance of how these job numbers could be
reflected as signs of recovery or decline in the uncertain economic environment.
The business desk representative at the meeting, Winnie O‘Kelley, was quizzed on the
significance of the numbers before any other news from any other section was discussed. On this
day, the unemployment numbers had actually held steady at 9.7 percent, and after a loss of
650,000 jobs that month in 2009, the loss of 36,000 jobs seemed like good news (Goodman,
2010b).
Jim Roberts, associate managing editor, asked her for interpretation: ―Winnie, wouldn‘t
you say the glass is five-eighths full?‖ Jill Abramson, the managing editor, noted, ―We were
braced for terrible numbers.‖ And Roberts, reflecting on the terrible snowstorms that hit the
Northeast in 2010 and dumped more than 40 inches of snow in some areas of the country,
prompted, ―There were rumblings that the weather would have impacted the numbers.‖
O‟Kelley gave some initial thoughts and answered that she didn‟t think the numbers were
impacted by the weather. Later in the meeting she offered this tidbit of news: “It‟s more positive
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than the numbers we expected….But there are still worries on state job cuts, the Fed did add
some census workers, and temporary workers are up. We‟ll expand [on] all of that.”
This snapshot from the Page One meeting gives some sense of the centrality that the
business desk—and The Times as a whole—placed on the role of the economy at this time as
influencing the ability of the nation to recover from the so-called ―Great Recession.‖ This
discussion of jobs reflects what I identify as one of the guiding values of business news at this
time: that the economy is the core center of social life. The details also illustrate another central
theme: The jobs report is a regular occurrence, but the results could be predicted only to a certain
degree. The insight and approach to covering the news had to come from decisions on that day
about how the news of this particular job report might make an impact.
News routines help journalists plan for and anticipate how to cover the news, but there is
still considerable improvisation that takes place in the way that news stories are talked about and
discussed by the business desk. Through this improvisation, which involves a consideration of
how news will be covered, key values that guide business news coverage decisions and narrative
choices emerge. In this chapter, I examine how news routines allow for improvisation; more
significantly, I develop a framework for understanding business news values.
Understanding News Values
These values I identify are different from the values that we typically consider to be at
the crux of journalism: public service, objectivity, a commitment to verification, and impartiality
(Kovach & Rosenstiel, 2001; Schudson, 2001; Deuze, 2005). I instead focus on the identification
of a different set of values as they are applied to the creation and decision-making in business
news: the economy as the cornerstone of social life; consumers deserve a fair shake; Wall Street
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in opposition to Main Street; suspicion of capitalist excess; belief in the global economy; faith in
innovation but fear of possible harm; and the belief that the government has a role in business.
These values are an attempt to establish for business news what Gans (1979) called a
―paraideology of the news.‖ He noted that identifying values in the news is a ―virtually
impossible task‖ because each story can express so many different values. Gans employed what
he noted as a ―narrow definition of values, examining only preference statements about nation
and society, and major national and societal issues‖ (p. 41).
He distinguished between what he saw as topical values, or the thoughts about particular
events of the moment, giving examples of how people might feel about a new anti-inflation
policy or a political campaign. Enduring values, however, are ―values which can be found in
many different types of news stories over a long period of time; often they affect what events
become news, for some part and parcel of the definition of news‖ (p. 41). Significantly, he notes
that these enduring values are not timeless and may change. The values he identified applied to
nation and society, and fell into what he called ―eight clusters‖ consisting of ―ethnocentrism,
altruistic democracy, responsible capitalism, small-town pastoralism, individualism, moderatism,
social order, and national leadership‖ (p. 41).
My goal is to step back from these enduring national and societal values and to assess
whether business news has specific news values. Gans (1979) offers an operational approach to
values as ―a picture of the nation and society as it ought to be‖ (p. 39). These values in the news
are ―not necessarily those of the journalist, nor are they always distinctive to the news‖ (p. 39). I
was not in the newsroom long enough to assess whether the values I identify are ―enduring‖ news
values. However, I was in the newsroom long enough to know that what I deduced to be business
news values withstood the test of being more than just preference statements about particular
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events or chains of stories. Instead, they emerged as ideals about how nation and society should
work in relation to business, commerce, labor, the government, and the economy at large.
My review of The Times‘ historical content touches on how the newspaper has covered
some of the themes associated with the values I have identified. Stories that relate to the value
that the economy is a cornerstone of social life seem to be especially prevalent in The Times
during recessions. In the newspapers I examined, at least one story about the economy was
always featured on the front page of The Times throughout the 20
th
century. Consumer stories
about major product failures started appearing in The Times only in the 1970s, perhaps coincident
with the rise of class-action lawsuits. Wall Street stories are most visible during the Great
Depression, but the tone of these stories are more desperate than anything else—with brokers
unable to pay their debts, brokers committing suicide, and the like. My sense from reading these
stories was that Wall Street was not viewed as responsible for the economic collapse in the same
way that it has currently been blamed for the financial crisis of 2008.
While stories about trust-busting are prevalent in the newspaper through the late 1920s,
which might indicate the enduring value of a suspicion of capitalist excess, Sunday sections up
through the 1960s had extensive picture sections chronicling the happenings of high society. Now
these pictures are reduced to a small corner in the Sunday Styles section of The Times, though
there is still an extensive Sunday weddings section featuring the wealthy and well-educated. The
news I read about striking workers and wage increases seemed to paint a picture of labor as
disruptive, something which continued up through the 1980s. In fact, The Times newspaper strike
of 1978 resulted in a multipage editorial assailing the unfair power of unions and the short-
sightedness of striking workers.
The Times since its inception has always covered the global financial markets.
Newspapers I reviewed across every decade of the 20
th
century included news about various
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countries‘ fiscal policies. But I do not know the extent to which people believed in the global
interconnectedness of the economy in the way that they do now. Similarly, coverage of
innovation has been part of The Times since the 1900s, with stories about aviation, cars, and new
technology—as well as the accompanying fears surrounding them—but these were not
specifically business stories. Coverage about innovation has specifically exploded since the
technology boom and has been particularly present in the business section.
From my review, stories about the government‘s role in business seem to ebb and flow
with the tide of recession; there are certainly more articles about government involvement in the
economy during periods of recession. In sum, what is evident is that some variation of the values
I propose generally appears throughout different historical periods. As such, what this historical
analysis suggests that some form of a paraideology of news values has always influenced news
coverage about business.
Gans (1979) spent 10 years in newsrooms and did a 10-year content analysis to come to
his conclusions about what he calls enduring news values. I am not ready to make the claim that
my values are enduring news values, though they seem to have at least, at times, some historical
resonance. What concerns me most is how values contribute to the selection and the creation of
news, and my most fruitful research came from watching journalists discuss news coverage.
Therefore, it is important to know for this present study journalists‘ views of how nation and
society ought to be during the Great Recession, specifically with regard to business news.
Similarly, looking at values in the newsroom through news talk is also important for
building later arguments about how journalists understand the transitions and similarities between
print and online coverage. This is because discussion of why particular stories are important helps
us to understand how they may be in turn valued and placed into the routines and productions of
print and online news. Furthermore, an analysis of values helps build the case that journalists are
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in fact purposeful actors in the newsroom. Their conversations and plans for news coverage
reveal the improvisation that takes place when new stories are created; the questions that are
asked are different even if the routines have a similar rhythm, and the result is a new product.
Depending on the occasion, more or less improvisation is required, but in the newstalk context,
routines are not fundamentally being reshaped.
What Gans (1979) sees as values, and what I call values, some other scholars call either
media bias or ideology. Entman (2007) provides a good summary of how media bias has been
studied, categorizing it in three ways. The first is news that supposedly distorts reality; the
second, news that favors one set of ideas; and third, decision-making bias, or the motivations and
mindsets of journalists. Because we are concerned about how journalists make business news, all
of these are relevant. However, it is important to understand that discussions of bias are limiting.
Primarily, most discussions of bias use news content for their analysis, and do not look at
decision-making in action, as I do here. Furthermore, these studies are concerned with how
journalists frame conversations around political debate and the use of government power. With
business news, as we shall see, the concern of journalists is far less centered around the focus of
political debate and government power; instead, other issues are more important.
The most relevant form of bias to consider here, decision-making bias, is also limiting.
As Entman acknowledges, it makes ―little sense that journalists‘ personal ideological views are
the only bias of consequence and the sole forces shaping slant‖ (p. 167). In some ways, media
bias and values are two sides of the same coin; however, the focus of media bias and its
association with influencing politics suggests that it may not be the best way to talk about
decision-making in business newsrooms. Furthermore, values suggest a vision of the way things
―ought to be‖—and can therefore better address journalism at the stage of story creation and
formation.
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Other scholars have questioned whether journalists have a set ideology when it comes to
creating and crafting news. Ideology can refer to a wide set of practices and theories, but perhaps
most relevant here is whether ideology reflects the impact of political economy on news (Herman
and Chomsky, 1988), or through hegemonic practices that create a consensus about social order
(Gitlin, 1980 as influenced by Gramsci). This discussion of ideology engages with the questions
of power and influence of journalism in society, and in many ways is outside my area of inquiry
at present.
When I think about journalists and ideology, I instead refer to a different conception of
ideology, one that first takes root with Durkheim. In this sense, ideology takes on a more neutral
meaning. Ideology is a ―shared framework of understanding that characterizes the social and
discursive practices of a specific community‖ (Ainamo, Tienari & Vaara, 2006, p. 614). Ideology
is then an idea that describes how people determine social beliefs, including what seem a lot like
values: what is good and bad, right and wrong (van Dijk, 1998, p. 8). Gans‘ (1979) moderation of
the term from ―ideology‖ to a ―paraideology‖ of values helps detach the discussion of journalists‘
power and influence in society and instead focuses his discussion on the construction of news
itself, which is what I aim to do here. For Gans, ―paraideology‖ refers to the way that values
unconsciously form news judgment.
On the other side of the coin, however, journalists aspire to objective work that is guided
by the norms of professional journalism (Deuze, 2005; Schudson, 2003). When I presented The
Times with my interpretive work about the values guiding newstalk, the editor principally charged
with reading this text bristled, perhaps predictably so. Journalists hope to do their work in a
dispassionate way that is free from their own emotions guiding the decisions that they make. So
describing journalists as being ―frustrated,‖ for instance, with a story, he argued, was imprecise;
journalists were not ―frustrated‖ with the substance of a story, but perhaps other conditions
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surrounding the generation of that story. Similarly, the conversations I observed, he argued,
should be seen as newstalk that illustrates how journalists evaluate and frame stories. But as this
chapter will detail, there is considerable interplay from journalists who reflect upon how the
nation and society ought to be as they assess how, indeed, to shape and to report on these stories.
Journalists do work to achieve objectivity in their work—both as a method and as a professional
value (Kovach and Rosenstiel, 2001)—but to say that their work does not have underlying values
detaches them from their position as actors enmeshed as part of a larger society.
In work with investigative journalists, Ettema and Glasser (1998) make the argument that
these journalists are in fact guided by values about what is right and what is wrong. Journalists
have a moral compass to do their work beyond just the idea of serving as a watchdog of the
public, though often this moral compass goes hand-in-hand with aspirations for journalism. Here,
I extend their arguments about the implicit values journalists hold when they cover institutions,
both public and private, to a broader scale: the coverage of business news.
I use the term values rather than bias or ideology because the word value calls back to
Gans‘ (1979) study, which in many ways I am attempting to reassess for the digital age. It is
likely that most Times journalists could see themselves as sharing the values I articulate here
without viewing my analysis as contradicting their goal of being objective journalists. Given what
Gans has said about the paraideology of news being consistent with larger social forces, it is
likely that values I outline are also reflecting more than just journalists‘ own views, but the views
they share with their family members, their social circles, and beyond. As such, these values
influence news coverage as they reflect a particular social construction of reality.
Gans (1979) uses the term ―responsible capitalism‖ to speak to a broader set of ideas
about the economy. This value is an:
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optimistic faith that in the good society, businessmen and women will compete with each
other in order to create prosperity for all, but they will refrain from unreasonable profits
and a gross exploitation of customers. (p. 46)
However, Gans was speaking more generally about the creation of national news and not the
creation of business news. The business section, and business news more generally, has its own
subset of values that emerge through a study of news talk and decision-making. Business news
generated by the business desk at The Times can be categorized more precisely according to the
seven values I outlined above: the economy as the cornerstone of social life; consumers deserve a
fair shake; Wall Street in opposition to Main Street; suspicion of capitalist excess; belief in the
global economy; faith in innovation but fear of personal harm; and the belief that the government
has a role in business.
I focus on this newstalk to draw out these business news values because it shows the
extent to which journalists act as decision-makers. Furthermore, I look at newstalk as evidence of
routines that journalists rely on to make assessments about what constitutes news and how to
report it. However, each new event requires them to determine how to fit this news into existing
routines—improvisation in action. The new pieces are like the new notes that are being
assembled into existing structures, and are then made into new forms resembling what came
before—only different. And there are deliberate choices that are made in this elemental form of
improvisation. The dialogue that occurs in newsrooms reveals that journalists are purposeful
actors who thoughtfully consider the work that they are doing and that they are aware of how the
different questions they pose may shape the ultimate outcome of news coverage.
The Economy is the Cornerstone of Social Life
As indicated by the previous chapter, business stories can generate from any sector of
news, and business journalists often feel that any news can become a business story. Part of the
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reason for this sentiment is that a guiding value of business news is that business news journalists
place a premium on understanding the economy as the cornerstone of social life. By this I mean
that the economy forms the linchpin for the understanding of the world—from social ties to
politics to technology. This belief in the centrality of the economy as the cornerstone of social life
is also followed by a strong sense that the markets contribute to the well-being of society.
Similarly, markets are directly linked to society‘s prosperity and general economic health. When
the markets are particularly volatile, the market is seen as an indicator for more general issues
from national security to the environment. Some see markets as meaningless reports to
accompany the weather, but when the drops are precipitous, the market (and, to a lesser extent,
international markets) is seen as being a bellwether for everything else happening.
The value that the economy is the cornerstone of social life was especially important
during this time of economic instability I observed in the newsroom, and went beyond the
business desk. As we saw from the introduction to this chapter, the jobs report was the most
significant news of the day to everyone in the newsroom. In the exchange between editors,
business editor Winnie O‘Kelley is asked, ―Is the glass five-eighths full?‖ and expected to
forecast what this means for the nation as a whole. The economy becomes the key to unlocking
how we can understand myriad forces, including political ones. During the debate over health
care, business columnist David Leonhardt was consistently relied upon to write stories that would
explain health reform to all readers of the newspaper—but his frame was most generally filtered
through the costs, benefits, and implications for the economy and individuals.
In one business meeting, editor Phyllis Messinger was asked, ―Is David really going to
take this apart? Is he going to really explain what this means for people?‖ She replied that he
would. Larry Ingrassia, business desk editor, then said, ―The economic factors are a way to get at
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this in a way people can understand. What it means to their pocketbook‖ (field notes, February
17, 2010).
Similarly, volatile markets concern business journalists. Major drops in the Dow Jones
industrial average of 150 points or more on a single day can signal failures in companies, which
can have consequences for jobs. Market drops can signal problems with credit, which limits the
regular buying and selling behavior of companies. Thus, when the markets go haywire, the
business desk responds in a way that underscores the larger enduring news value that the
economy is at the cornerstone of social life.
On May 6, 2010, around 2:45 p.m., the business news editors were standing around for
their daily meeting to assess the state of the stories. As they stood, they watched the New York
Stock Exchange‘s Dow Jones industrial average begin to drop, first 100 points, then 200 points,
then 300 points, then close to 600 points in what would later be known as the ―flash crash.‖
Assigning editor Dan Niemi looked up at the CNBC monitor, ―Holy . . . the market is
just dropping.‖
Larry Ingrassia, business desk editor, looked up again, ―It‘s dropping by 100 points.‖
O‘Kelley noted, ―It‘s going quicker and quicker.‖
Ingrassia exclaimed, ―I haven‘t seen it fall so fast since 2008!‖
Niemi responded in a shocked voice, ―It‘s down about 700 points . . . just in the time we
have been standing here . . . just about 10 minutes. . . . Wait, look, it‘s starting to catch itself, it‘s
climbing back up.‖ The editors and some of the reporters then crowded around the televisions to
watch as the market began to correct itself, moving up 100 points at a time.
People quickly began to surmise reasons for the quick decline and the Dow‘s quick rise.
Niemi said, ―Maybe this was program trading‖ (referring to the computers that trade the large
institutional trades). O‘Kelley offered, ―Maybe this was a mistake.‖
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The finance editors quickly assembled a team to begin reporting on the story. The team
came together to think about possible reasons for the quick crash. News columnist Floyd Norris
posited, ―Maybe today everyone woke up to the risk,‖ and he planned to write a column about
how people had perhaps caught on to the European problems with recent dramatic declines in the
euro‘s value against the dollar. Ingrassia instructed someone else to look at what happened from a
narrow perspective, and then assigned another person to look at the credit markets, the euro, and
gold.
Editors began throwing out their quick impressions.
Dean Murphy, deputy business editor, commented, ―It feels like Vegas.‖
O‘Kelley wondered, ―It‘s like, whose numbers can we really count on?‖
Ingrassia summarized what had happened, ―In a 10-minute period, it was down 400
points, it was down 1,000 in 10 to 15 minutes. The VIX
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was blowing out the roof. Was this
program trading?‖
O‘Kelley asked, ―Or is this the ‘08 uncertainty, and a sign that there is no return to
stability? Is this the day the credit markets felt it and their angst? Was this an anomaly or
something deeper?‖
Norris got a tip that it might have been a million vs. billion trade mistake on a portion of
the S&P exchange, and another reporter was instructed to track that down, as well as to get
market reaction. The editors then planned a broader story about what this freefall could mean for
economic stability as a whole.
Later, in the afternoon Page One meeting, Jill Abramson was intensely interested in what
might have happened. O‘Kelley offered three possible explanations: ―It‘s lots of reprising of risk,
with people fleeing the risk with the Euro markets down because Trichet [president of the
40
The VIX is a market indicator that measures markets‘ volatility.
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European Central Bank] didn‘t do what the markets wanted [to fix Greece]. Other possibilities
were that there might have been a misplacing of a Citibank trade and a second problem with
Procter & Gamble trades. It might have been a Nasdaq mispricing which happens all the time.
The third thing was people saw the euro go down to 1.25 [to the dollar]. So we‘re going to take a
broad and singular event look.‖
Abramson, with consensus from the other editors, immediately decided that one story, if
not two, would be designated for the front page. The markets continued to capture the attention of
Business Day and the Page One editors for the next few days as it remained front page news
(field notes May 7, 2010).
Why would this market irregularity
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be so concerning to the paper as a whole and
require an emergency response from the business desk? The answer lies in the fundamental sense
that a failure of the markets might undermine the stability of the U.S. Furthermore, market
crashes are terrifying because of larger cultural memory about economic downturns. Because
journalists see the economy as the root of social life, business journalists see market insecurity as
having reverberations on everything from housing to unemployment to government spending. As
such, the so-called ―flash crash‖ illustrates the extent to which those in the newsroom saw the
economy as a cornerstone of social life and, more specifically, the market as an indicator of this
expression of social life.
The ―flash crash‖ also illustrates the improvisation that must happen in the newsroom
during unexpected events. Journalists know how to ask questions and how to investigate stories.
The planning is predictable; a team is quickly assembled; the routine goes into motion. But the
setting is new—new questions, and new ideas to investigate. Journalists are actively thinking
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The irregularity came to be known as the ―flash crash.‖ It took months for the SEC to figure out what happened. The
firm Waddell & Reed is suspected of causing the crash. A single institutional investor called for a quick sell order of
$4.1 billion stock index futures, hedging on a market downturn.
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about questions that are relevant to the situation, suggesting their agency in the purposeful
creation of news; their questions are clearly linked to the kinds of stories that are ultimately
written. Newsroom routines are also a product of choices, and the choices are reflected in
coverage decisions. Ingrassia hadn‘t experienced a ―flash crash‖ before, but he knew that the
finance team would need a broader story, a market impact story, a column explaining what might
have gone wrong, and perhaps other, shorter stories. This was routine. But the questions he asked,
along with his staff, were improvisations along that routine in response to this new event. And
their choices in ultimately selecting which stories would go on the front page and the ultimate
narrative to tell readers reflects their role as agents in shaping and creating the news.
A less dramatic example of the value that the economy is the cornerstone of social life
was reflected when editors were trying to plan coverage about the much debated recovery during
the Great Recession. These editors saw economic measures, such as what people were doing with
their leisure time and how they spent their disposable income, as absolutely crucial ways of
gauging the country‘s larger stability. This idea was reflected in a story that business deputy
editor Dean Murphy hoped the section would write. On April 14, 2010, he posed the following
question: ―We haven‘t really said whether we are recovering or not. We haven‘t really told people
what‘s going on yet in a big picture. So?‖
Ingrassia then asked, ―How do you propose we do this?‖
Murphy followed, ―Well, I think it‘s unclear to a lot of people. We‘ve done stories on the
restaurant industry and the retail industry, but people want to know whether it is really getting
better.‖
David Gillen, financial news editor, chimed in: ―So you want a broad sweep. Do you
want one person doing this? Do we have an answer for this yet?‖
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Murphy explained, ―I think it depends on the reporting. I think generally we can say we
are recovering, but let‘s see it from all over the economy. I want vignettes from reporters on
different beats. . . . Let‘s really give people a sense about what is happening. Answer their
questions. It should be reporters all over the country.‖
The conversation in this particular morning meeting about the planned economic wrap-up
reflects the extent to which the economy is viewed as a cornerstone for social life on the business
desk. The way to analyze different sectors of the economy will give the average reader of The
New York Times—this imagined audience—a sense of understanding about whether the country is
headed in a good direction, whether they can relax and start spending again, whether they can be
secure in their jobs. The economy, according to the business desk, is the starting point for people
to understand their social relations. The story was intended for Page One (and was a Page One
story), and this big-picture story therefore reached people beyond just business section readers
and was prominently featured on the Web site (Goodman, 2010c).
This discussion of the Great Recession, recovery or not, also underscores the ability of
journalists to think purposefully about the creation of stories. What is improvised are the
questions that journalists ask about the Great Recession—new questions that can then be plugged
into the well-trodden practices of gathering news and shaping a story. But journalists do play an
important role in coming up with story ideas, and their exchanges reflect considerable
engagement with different ways that stories may be told.
Consumers Deserve a Fair Shake
Another business news value is the belief that consumers deserve a fair shake. This
means that consumers deserve to have companies produce goods and services that are worth their
money. In addition, this value also means that consumers have a right to good customer service
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and that companies need to be responsive to consumer demands. Companies should also not
overcharge consumers or otherwise abuse their power to set prices and control supply. This value
is linked Gans‘ (1979) idea of responsible capitalism, but it more directly addresses the idea of
consumer protection.
A clear example of the business news value of consumers deserving a fair shake emerged
during the failures of Toyota in 2009 and 2010. In November 2009, Toyota faced complaints that
brakes were getting stuck underneath the floor mats. Then, in January 2010, the company faced
mounting evidence that Toyota Corollas, Camrys, and half a dozen other vehicles could face
sudden acceleration. The Times ran dozens of stories on the Toyota failures: the recalls; the
apologies and responses from Japan; inquiries into the treatment of the problem in Europe;
hearings on the Hill about Toyota; and stories about the performance of the National Highway
Traffic Safety Administration.
One meeting illustrates how the editors brainstormed to try to help consumers better
understand the issues facing Toyota and the relevance of these issues to their own lives (field
notes, February 10, 2010).
Adam Bryant, charged with editing autos, asked, ―Are people fed up with Toyota? Raise
your hand. . . . My job is to keep bringing the stories.‖ This comment suggests some inability to
control the rise and fall of the news cycle, as if it is somehow pattern that is somehow self-
sustaining and repetitive. Bryant‘s job was to feed the cycle as long as it lasted.
Health business editor Tim Race noted, ―There seems to be less news. I'm interested in
Honda‘s benefit—I had always seen them as interchangeable. Are they?‖
Mark Getzfred, the Web editor, commented on the number of Toyota stories: ―That‘s just
one of nine stories [we could do].‖
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Bryant replied to Race, ―If you‘re not going to buy Toyota, maybe you won‘t buy a
Honda. Maybe these Japanese cars are not so good.‖
The conversation continued. Dan Niemi, assigning editor, asked whether there was an
obvious column on car-buying for the consumer, but the column had run as a blog post. Bryant
noted that the auto writers were planning a big Week in Review piece on Toyota for context to
give people a sense of the scope of the problem. This Week in Review piece is another indication
of how stories can come from the business desk but draw in a larger audience than just ―business
section‖ readers; the story reflected an expansive definition of business news.
More discussion was devoted to possible Toyota stories, with people generating ideas for
whether a story should be done about consumers who wanted to trade their cars in for Fords.
Others saw a broader story about how the car companies were responding to the plight of Toyota.
Vindu Goel, the deputy technology editor, was confused about whether this was ―just a Toyota
thing‖ or whether other cars were also facing similar recalls.
This conversation demonstrates an interest in the newsroom in investigating matters that
are important to the consumer. The conversation that opens up is one that is consumer-minded,
with Tim Race wondering what he would if he were going to buy a car now, and what other
people might need to know. In addition, the decision to do a big Week in Review piece would put
the problem in a larger lens for people who had not been following the daily coverage. The
conversation illustrates that while these editors were caught in the midst of a significant
developing story, the heart of their question about this story rests on the enduring value that
consumer deserve a fair shake—and their coverage ideas reflect the idea that consumers should
be informed when these companies fail to provide that fair shake.
Bryant‘s self-reflective comment about his role in the news process recognizes that there
is a news routine that requires developing stories to have new material; but he also opens up the
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conversation to input from all editors. The process of crafting what the new angle for the
developing story is one that requires improvisation. Yes, this is another company failure, and
there are patterns for covering these failures. But Bryant wants his team to brainstorm and asks
each editor to think about what he or she might like to read next. From this perspective, the editor
is imagining him or herself to be a typical reader, sick of Toyota stories but still interesting in
knowing more, at least as the conversation suggests. The journalists are thinking about new
stories and ideas based on their own experiences with cars, but it is still the same pattern of
stories about consumer breakdowns, and still the routine news cycle for these types of stories.
At times, I was able to observe editors finding a theme for stories in whether companies
had failed their consumers. Editors were dismissive about Toyota‘s plan to fix the 2010 Lexus
GX460 after the car received a do-not-buy from Consumer Reports because it could roll over on a
sharp turn. Though Toyota promptly recalled the car, the editors responded with hesitation to the
developments (field notes, April 14, 2010).
Ingrassia noted, ―They are doing a popsicle fix. If you read last night, it‘s not redesign;
it‘s electronic.‖
Dean Murphy added, ―And with Lexis, the electronic end [to stop rollovers] doesn‘t kick
in unlike all the other vehicles.‖
Murphy jumped on Larry‘s comment, adding in his own thoughts on how Lexus was
failing the customer. In this instance, again, the customer deserves a fair shake, and the customer
has been wronged.
Though the Toyota recalls were the clearest examples of consumers not getting a fair
shake throughout my time at The Times, there were also other occasions where journalists would
pursue stories that reflected the failure of companies to adequately serve consumers.
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Barry Meier (2010) wrote a story (which was to be the first of many) about the failure of
―metal on metal‖ artificial hips, alerting readers to a series of studies that showed they were likely
to degrade and even cause bone damage within the first two years. The business desk editors were
frustrated because the story was not getting picked up for the front page (field notes, March 1,
2010).
Tim O‘Brien, Sunday editor, noted, ―Why did they make us hold it for two weeks and
then decide they are never going to front it?‖
Editor Marcus Mabry made the case for the story. ―It's a lot of people. We should be
doing this.‖ And laughing a little, he added, ―They should be interested upstairs (referring to the
Page One meeting), this is our target demographic.‖
Editor Tim Race talked about why they might be getting resistance: ―The numbers we are
reporting are hundreds of thousands of people, which is 1 to 3 percent of the population. In the
end, that‘s not a high percent, and it‘s not selling the big news of the week. So maybe we need to
refocus it.‖
Ingrassia replied, ―Well, maybe it‘s this: It's like Toyota, but it‘s not cars, it‘s your hip,
it‘s another product going bad.‖
The story never did make the front page, either because of the issues Tim Race suggested
or because the business desk needed to use the story as a ―display‖ on the dress page because it
may have had a good photo. However, this first story has evolved into several other stories, each
of which has gained more profile within the newspaper.
The conversation illustrates once more the business desk‘s way of articulating the core
value that the consumer deserves a fair shake. As Ingrassia puts it, ―It‘s another product going
bad,‖ with the implication being that products, of course, shouldn‘t go bad, and when they do,
they deserve the media‘s full scrutiny. The ability to adjust to new circumstances is illustrated
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most readily by Race, who thinks about reframing the story and considers why the story might
not be getting the attention of the front page. This suggests a process of improvisation at work to
reconsider how news will be shaped and formed.
Wall Street vs. Main Street
Another news value that exists in the shaping of business news at The Times was the
strong questioning of the excesses of Wall Street in favor of ―Main Street.‖ Main Street is
everyone else—the people left to deal with the financial crisis created by the mess on Wall Street.
This frustration with Wall Street is best expressed in the desire to expose Wall Street‘s excesses
and present them to the public to judge.
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Wall Street was a stand-in for all banks, though, as reporters went after regional banks
that were still duping people on home mortgages or on credit card fees.
Two examples of Wall Street vs. Main Street stand out. The first one is in connection to
the bonuses that bankers were going to get, which relates to the public‘s furor at the excesses of
Wall Street. The other is a form of ―gotcha‖ journalism where Times reporting was surmised to be
influential in the first major reprimand of Goldman Sachs for its manipulation of the financial
markets.
The big banks announce their bonuses for top executives based on the previous year‘s
earnings during ―bonus season.‖ This is a time between late December and early February when
bank compensation committees determine the size of their total bonus pool and alert employees
about how much each individual is due to receive. Bank bonuses were a heated subject following
the financial crisis, as Obama had put forth a proposal to tax them, in effect, as punishment for
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In fact, at one of my other field sites, Marketplace, the public radio financial news show, the ―Wall Street vs. Main
Street‖ phrase had been put on a big whiteboard under a list titled ―cliché wall‖ because it had been said so many times
in the newsroom post-crisis.
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the large banks‘ previous sins. Similarly, the large bonus numbers ranged from $9 million to $18
million for single individuals at these banks—and they were the very individuals who were at the
helm during the financial crisis. The bonuses were causing populist uproar from tea partiers to
left-wing bloggers.
Eric Dash, a financial reporter exclaimed in early February, ―Exec compensation! I have
the story. Who is it [at the top]? Visa and Wells Fargo‖ (field notes, February 10, 2010).
Dash continued, ―Here‘s the story. It used to be the who‘s who‘s of Wall Street. And now
it‘s the who‘s that. Wells Fargo is at the top with $18.7 million.‖
Wells Fargo is in San Francisco. Other banks on the reporter‘s list included what editor
Adam Bryant referred to as ―banks in the heartland, those regional banks,‖ taking big bonuses. He
noted that Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman‘s CEO, took a $9 million bonus. ―That‘s a low bar [for
these other banks].‖ He then posed the question, ―Are these guys flying under the spotlight?
Dash replied, ―There‘s this gap that some people miss and forget these banks, and others
are bowing to public pressures.‖
Editor Liz Alderman put forth another question: ―What would this look like in a regular
year?,‖ implying that generally, Wall Street proper banks would top the list.
Dash continued, ―People don‘t know all that‘s hidden behind these numbers. With all the
estimates, it‘s hard to tell, but senior executives at these banks are getting much more money than
they were before. The banks only disclosed the executive bonuses, but you have traders and
brokers that aren‘t subject to the [public] reporting rules.‖
Editor Marcus Mabry put out this theory: ―Maybe since they are not Wall Street banks,
[at the top] there is less of an outrage factor.‖
Dash maintained, ―There is always outrage [at the bonuses]. Some of it is at the Wall
Street banks. But there‘s definitely outrage.‖
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The reporters and editors discussed the veracity of the numbers, which they had obtained
with the help of a third-party consulting ―number crunching‖ firm, and determined they were
solid enough to build a story on. Despite the high bonus of JPMorgan‘s Jamie Dimon, who
seemed to throw off the story premise, the story re-centered around a fact most people didn‘t
know: that banks flying under the radar of public scrutiny were paying their senior executives
more than ever before—more than before the financial crisis.
The recognition that ―There is always outrage‖ suggests that the reporters were aware of
the public outcry against high executive compensation. The investigation into executive
compensation and the suspicion that these numbers might look different in a ―normal‖ year also
hints at the sensibility that Wall Street is somehow hiding the ball on this round of compensation.
Wall Street—and even other banks that were not on ―Wall Street‖—were paying bonuses that
seemed to mock the recession the rest of the country was feeling, and this story would tap into
this sentiment. Though the story is less about what Wall Street is doing to Main Street USA, it is
still about how Wall Street prospers while the rest of the country suffers. And again, with this
example, we see journalists actively discussing and questioning different story angles. They are
purposefully creating the scope and the shape of the story, as they think about the contours of the
possible ways to tell it.
Another illustration of the sentiment that Wall Street was juxtaposed to Main Street was
in the takedown by the SEC of Goldman for selling a financial instrument that the bank knew was
going to fail (Story & Morgenson, 2010). In December 2009, Times reporting by Gretchen
Morgenson and Louise Story (2009)
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exposed the deals that Goldman had created that had
essentially leveraged them against the financial crisis. In short, Goldman had bet against the
43
Louise Story declined to participate in this project.
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mortgage instruments they created, which caused them to profit if they failed. Selling bad
investments the bank knew would fail was illegal, according to the SEC.
The December 2009 story paved the way for the April 2010 story. Because The Times
knew the stories better than others, The Times had the scoop. They were the first to publish a fully
reported article just minutes after the news that the SEC had filed the suit against Goldman (even
though Bloomberg was the first to report news of the suit). The conversations that followed
suggested The Times commitment to scrutinizing Goldman‘s activities before the meltdown..
Business editor Larry Ingrassia noted at the meeting on April 16, 2010, how ready the
team was to break the news. But the next question was what the follow-up stories would be. The
tenor in the meeting reveals how the editors felt about Goldman‘s maneuverings and showcases
that a central value of business journalism is to examine the extent to which Wall Street may have
become the enemy of Main Street.
Editor David Gillen noted, ―We need to do something on the outside in. We should do
something Q-heady [Times word for news analysis] on Goldman. We should pick up on the
December story about who let this happen.‖
Later on in the conversation, an editor referred to another investor in the Goldman
dealings as the ―person who decided what crap went in it,‖ another sign that continued scrutiny
was warranted with focus on Wall Street‘s role in the financial collapse.
Ingrassia was quick to call attention to The Times‘ success. ―I think there‘s no question
really, that the December reporting made this possible. And we should really point that out,‖ he
said, illustrating his sense of the longer commitment that The Times has had to exposing the
machinations on Wall Street for the rest of us.
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O‘Kelley, during the conversation, noted, ―It would be one of the most foolish things
Goldman ever did if they decided not to settle,‖ referring to the civil lawsuit brought by the SEC.
This reflects her analysis of the options Goldman was likely considering.
But the attention of these journalists is not just targeted at Goldman but at Wall Street as
a whole, as the rest of the conversation regarding story planning demonstrates.
Sunday business editor Tim O‘ Brien was pushing for further stories. ―The Deutsche
Bank thing needs to fall in here. We don‘t have Deutsche people saying they did what Goldman
did. . . .‖ Reporters had received tips that Deutsche had also made similar deals.
Ingrassia replied, ―Maybe the story is who is next.‖
Gillen echoed this thought: ―Maybe the Sunday story is now that we have Goldman, who
is next?‖
The journalism was as much what these editors would likely consider good watchdog
journalism as it was an illustration of the value that pits Wall Street against Main Street. Here,
these journalists are directly targeting their efforts at an attempt to expose the machinations of
these Wall Street firms. In a later series, dubbed ―House Advantage,‖ the goal of the stories was
to examine whether Wall Street simply doesn‘t play fair and is set up so that it always wins while
the rest of us are left to deal with the consequences.
From the perspective of routines, as with the ―flash crash,‖ editors came together to think
about the next set of stories, but this time with a different set of facts. They planned stories about
the SEC‘s new relevance, a Sunday story breaking out more details about the case (the initial
SEC indictment broke on a Friday), and ―how to have a presence in Monday‘s paper.‖ Thus, a
predictable routine existed for news; an initial blockbuster story with follow-ups, one with a big
takeaway, another taking a more narrow slice, and still another keeping the subject relevant for
readers. Nonetheless, what we see through these stories was that even though The Times knew
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that the story was coming, there was still improvisation about what the next set of stories would
be, and considerable discussion about how these stories would be shaped and articulated.
The prior example does not specifically express a desire to relate back to Main Street, but
it does express a desire to expose Wall Street and other financial institutions that are harming
consumers, from credit card companies to regional banks. However, in the following example,
one can clearly see how Wall Street was viewed in opposition to the goals of ordinary people. In
this instance, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon was going to oppose legislation on a government
program that would make it easier for people who couldn‘t meet their mortgage obligations.
At the April 13, 2010, meeting, assigning editor Dan Niemi announced that there was a
story not on the schedule: Housing reporter David Streitfield would be writing on JPMorgan
deciding to fight against the government‘s proposal for modifications for home mortgage loans.
O‘Kelley‘s response was particularly strong. ―This is setting a difference among banks..‖
Editor David Joachim pointed out that JPMorgan would report earnings the next day, as
another possible news peg, or hook to date a particular story.
O‘Kelley continued, ―Now that Jamie is the voice of the industry, maybe he‘s trying to
say something. Maybe Jaime thinks he can set the rules.‖
In this instance, the question was whether the bank would stand in the way of a
government program to help homeowners. The essential tension of the story is seeing Wall Street
in opposition to Main Street, the regular people who need their loans modified. O‘Kelley
suggested that Dimon be held accountable. This is a reflection that journalists felt the need to
examine whether Wall Street was setting the terms of the financial landscape for everyone else,
and further indication that those in the newsroom saw Wall Street potentially in opposition to
Main Street.
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Main Street is never really conceptualized as a particular place, but it is a sense that there
is a ―rest of us‖ that does not get to reap the benefits of Wall Street. At The Times, Main Street is
not small-town America getting screwed by Wall Street, though the newspaper will often write
stories about small towns struggling with the financial collapse. Instead, Main Street is a stand-in
for editors, families, New Yorkers, readers, anyone who isn‘t the presumed billionaires and
multimillionaires who have the power to wreak tremendous havoc on the economy.
Main Street is ―the people who need to know‖ or the people who might require loan
modification. The journalists at The Times (and at other general interest news organizations) see
exposing the backhand dealings of Wall Street as a way to enlighten people and even the playing
field. It is a commitment to keeping those in power accountable that has always been part of the
undercurrent of public service journalism (Schorr, 2005), but the focus here is explicitly on
examining Wall Street.
It is noteworthy, however, that this Wall Street vs. Main Street ethos does not apply to all
parts of The Times‘ business section. The DealBook blog, for instance, is mostly focused on Wall
Street. The coverage focuses on bankruptcies, mergers and acquisitions, and everything else that
the trader or institutional investor might want to know for his or her daily dose of news. In this
sense, DealBook is specialized business news. As such, it is not generally concerned with
gauging a mainstream sentiment because that is not its target audience.
But DealBook‘s original content also features blogs from professors and economists who
break down these issues for readers, providing perspective on bankruptcy, white collar crime, and
merger moves. These professors help bring these movements into context. Further, the lead editor
for DealBook, Andrew Ross Sorkin, the Tuesday columnist, has been extremely aggressive in his
pursuit of naming names in people who have contributed to the financial crisis, writing scathing
columns on AIG, Lehman, Goldman, and others.
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Suspicion of Capitalist Excess
Another important value present in business news coverage was a suspicion of capitalist
excess. This is also closely tied to Gans‘ (1979) more general value of responsible capitalism,
where companies are not supposed to have excessive profits. However, it‘s not precisely the same
thing because Gans‘ responsible capitalism expresses a do-gooder mentality—that companies will
compete fairly—rather than the suspicion I observed toward companies that seemed to be doing
almost too well, especially in down economic times. The value of suspicion of capitalist excess is
different from Wall Street vs. Main Street because it specifically addresses the way journalists
approach companies besides financial companies. These companies include drug companies,
tobacco companies, technology companies, entertainment companies, and other sectors of the
economy that intersect with Wall Street but are not specifically on Wall Street.
One instance in which The Times was suspicious of capitalist excess was in response to
the massive agribusiness Monsanto, which was called to hearings by the Justice Department. The
backdrop for the story was that the Obama administration was going to hold hearings on the
monopoly of agricultural firms. The discussion went as follows (field notes, March 11, 2010):
Editor Justin Gillis explained that Monsanto was worried about its patented seeds
becoming generic. Gillis noted, ―Monsanto has a giant monopoly over innovation and patents.
There‘s a suspicion that they do stuff [the Department of Justice] doesn‘t like around the edges.‖
Editor Tim O‘Brien noted, ―There are so many restrictions Monsanto poses against
farmers.‖
O‘Kelley added, ―If [farmers] somehow use a Monsanto seed without permission or use it
in the wrong way, or one gets into their crop, they can‘t sell it on the market.‖
Gillis explained, ―The basic allegation is that Monsanto is screwing over small
companies.‖
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Bryant asked, ―Is this a story about an evil capitalist conspiracy or patents?‖
Gillis replied, ―It‘s Monsanto. People have been complaining about it for years. They buy
it because they like the seeds, but they hate the company.‖
O‘Brien noted, ―You don‘t have a choice.‖
This conversation reveals that the editors were trying to understand the meaning of the
story: Was it about patents, or was it about an ―evil capitalist conspiracy,‖ as Bryant put it? The
story required consideration, underscoring the role of journalists as purposeful agents in story
creation. Ultimately, the enduring value of suspicion of capitalist excess emerged as the prevalent
value for the story. The company that was pursuing undue profits, Monsanto, was holding
farmers to unfair restrictions about how they used their seeds. Monsanto was putting these
farmers in an unfair position because though the seeds were high quality, the company was
restricting the market. The comment ―You don‘t have a choice‖ suggests the underlying
skepticism about big profits by big companies. The story reflected Monsanto‘s unfair practices
and pricing schemes (Neuman, 2010).
Perhaps the most consistent example of the suspicion of capitalist excess was the
approach to Apple coverage. Apple inspires continued curiosity because of its innovations—but
it is also a company that provokes questions about its business practices as a dominant player
whose proprietary systems might shut out smaller companies.
This premise was reflected when tech blogger Nick Bilton was proposing a story on
Apple‘s treatment of Adobe (field notes, April 15, 2010). Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, decided that
he would not allow Adobe‘s Flash to function on the iPad or iPhone. Flash is one of the primary
forms of multimedia programming used on the Web and is used mostly for videos and graphics.
Bilton‘s proposal for the story tapped into value of suspicion of capitalist excess. Bilton said to
his editor David Gallagher, talking over their cubes:
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I am not sure whether this is for the blog or for the paper, but we should look into
whether Adobe can sue Apple because of what Apple has done to Flash. I want to call a
bunch of legal experts to see if they can sue.
He pointed out that following the iPad‘s introduction, everyone he spoke to at Adobe was just
―frozen‖ because Flash‘s future was uncertain without being able to run on the platform.
Bilton was cautioned by his editors to look at other alternatives and to consider the
question: ―Can you sue if you are kept off a platform?‖
Bilton brought up the lawsuit between Microsoft and Netscape Navigator. But Gallagher
cautioned that Apple wasn‘t a monopoly.
The story idea, however, morphed into a discussion of larger significance: how Apple
and Google were creating proprietary operating systems. Bilton explained:
As we move the Web from the desktop to the mobile, the action is going to be that Apple
is going to own its own devices, and everything is going to run off the Apple [operating
system]. The same thing for Google mobile. But Google is doing the Android open
[source], and Apple is saying you should do it our way.
Though Apple is not a monopoly, the conversation in this snippet reflects scrutiny of Apple on
two fronts: first, whether it was treating other companies unfairly in pursuit of its own gains; and
second, whether it had too much control over its own products. The question was whether Apple
was trying to dominate the market by having everyone play by its own rules. As such, this
conversation and other discussions about Apple suggest that value of suspicion of capitalist
excess as an underlying way that editors discuss and frame stories.
Similarly, the BP oil spill also evoked tremendous anger from editors and reporters
because BP was perceived as a company that had pursued profits at the expense of safety. The
company‘s safety record—namely its disregard for workers and the environment—was what
many said were contributing factors that led to the biggest oil spill on record.
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When planning for coverage on the business of BP‘s oil spill, editor Vindu Goel
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eagerly expounded on how BP had continually disregarded the government‘s safety warnings
(field notes, May 6, 2010). Goel said, ―Jad [Mouwad] has a story on how BP hasn‘t improved its
safety rating. They had two problems in Alaska and one at a Texas refinery, which got the biggest
fine the government has ever given to an oil company.‖
At this point in the progress of the spill, its size and duration were unknown, so editor
Phyllis Messinger redirected the conversation to focus around BP‘s safety record, suggesting,
―The story isn‘t the size of the spill but if they made promises to do better.‖ Goel pointed out that
BP never took the government seriously, despite some of the largest fines in the oil industry, and
never made good on its promises.
This was another instance in which the story tenor was debated and still unknown, and
journalists were actively engaging with possible new questions for the story. But company
failures do take on a similar pattern and routine. And part of this company failure, in this case,
was the suspicion that BP had been pursuing profits at the expense of safety.
On the whole, companies that are not directly affiliated with Wall Street also face
significant scrutiny from Times staffers. The suspicion of capitalist excess is a business news
value that helps construct how Times reporters and editors think about the corporate gain of
companies in varying sectors of the economy. At the core of this concern is whether companies
are competing fairly, but there is also a deeply skeptical tone: that something might be unfair,
unlawful, or harmful to consumers in this pursuit of profit.
The values of Wall Street vs. Main Street and suspicion of capitalist excess might
surprise some people who see business news as written for investors. But those at The Times do
not see themselves as writing for just for institutional investors or a business to business
44
Goel became enterprise, international, environment, retail, and agricultural editor in April 2010. He had previously
been a deputy technology editor.
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community, as I have suggested. There is a populist undercurrent that permeates both Wall Street
vs. Main Street and the suspicion of capitalist excess. Though one might point to the rise of
journalists into the professional class, this does not mean that they have any further allegiance
with those in business. Nor do they stand in awe of moneymakers, as some business journalists
do at news organizations targeted specifically to the business audience. Instead, the values that
guide The Times‘ journalism with regard to profit are deeply concerned with keeping Wall Street
and other companies honest and accountable.
Belief in the Global Economy
The business desk at The Times is acutely aware of the interconnections of the global
economy. On a practical level, the business desk is integrated with the International Herald
Tribune, which sends stories from Europe and Asia to New York. This collaboration means that
there is fresh content for the Web site for the New York morning. Markets stories from Europe
and Asia are especially important because the results of these international markets can set the
tone for the U.S. trading day. This coordination is furthered by an institutional link: Tthe
managing editor of the International Herald Tribune used to be a deputy business editor at The
Times. Thus on a structural level, The Times is aware of a global news flow between what are
essentially three editions of the print Times: the Asian edition of the International Herald
Tribune, the European edition of the International Herald Tribune, and The Times. The staff of
the International Herald Tribune share stories with The Times, and the International Herald
Tribune‘s business desk depends on New York‘s business desk for content for their Asian and
European editions of the paper. The only other desk that is so closely tied to this global Times
brand is the foreign desk.
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This connection between the International Herald Tribune and The Times is just one
manifestation of the belief in the global economy. The editors and reporters at The Times are
believe that the American economy is not the center of the universe, and that the European and
Asian economies can have considerable significance of the fate of the global economy as a whole.
The problems and highlights of the European and Asian economies, however, are viewed through
the lens of how these issues are significant to Americans. The belief in the global economy guides
much of the conversation when the news clearly points to a developing issue or opportunity in
either Europe or Asia, though much of the global South and Australia rarely receives attention
because of their relative insignificance on the economic global markets.
The two clearest examples of this belief in the global economy relate to how the business
desk articulated coverage about the rise of China and the way that the business desk handled the
Greek debt crisis. China was often a dominating theme on the front of the business section. As
one editor muttered following a 5 p.m. meeting, after the stories were finalized for placement in
the print paper, ―It‘s always China, China, China. Google and China. There‘s always something
about China‖ (field notes, January 19, 2010).
The business desk paid particular interest to China stories when they had to do with
currency rates, even though these stories rarely made the front of the business page. For years,
China has devalued its currency to make Chinese exports cheaper. This has been to the ire of U.S.
politicians, who have accused China of trade protectionism; the result has meant that American
exports are more expensive. During one of the moments when China was manipulating its
currency, editor Winnie O‘Kelley asked, ―Why are they doing this now? Is this finally in
response to the financial crisis?‖ (February 18, 2010). The moves of the Chinese central bank
were seen as unpredictable, but important to record, even if they did not make the front page of
the business section.
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China stories from the business desk also received considerable attention from the Page
One meetings. In one meeting, editor Marcus Mabry pitched a story about how the low yuan was
contributing to a possible housing bubble in China, but no one was particularly sure whether it
was a bubble—and whether the Beijing government was doing enough to control it.
Mabry told the Page One afternoon meeting, ―We have a great story. It‘s about the
housing boom in China. It‘s a great, colorful story about all the excess. It‘s basically just real
estate porn if you look at the photos‖ (field notes, March 4, 2010).
Managing editor Jill Abramson warned him, ―You have to explain why this will or will
not be unlikely to bubble.‖
Mabry assured her, ―We‘ll talk about the yuan. We‘ll put it in the context of the housing
bubble and our housing bubble.‖
Here, the underlying concern was that an unrestrained Chinese housing bubble could set
off another financial collapse globally. Readers needed to understand the possible consequences
of China having a hot real estate bubble. But the story‘s (Barboza, 2010) importance came from
the idea that what was happening in China‘s economy was influential in the global economic
sphere, and therefore of interest and importance to the U.S. What happened in the U.S. could
happen in China, and what could happen in China could impact the U.S. America, as it were, is
no longer at the center of global economics but a player on the stage of global interconnectivity.
But another minor theme also emerges from this belief in the global economy: a
fascination with Asian economic prowess. This was evident in the way that business desk covered
innovation in Asia: For instance, two stories about light rails in China rain within weeks of each
other. The light rails in China brought out a spirited concern for the viability of the American
economic engine (field notes, March 6, 2010).
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Dan Niemi, assigning editor, pointed out, “[Reporter] Keith [Bradsher] already did a rail
piece,” referring to a piece about Chinese light rails.”
Gillis replied, “But this [next story] is pretty huge. Now they are going to build it.”
Niemi argued that the story was not that important, but Gillis continued to make the case
for the story. Gillis explained, “This is going to be big. I mean, they are talking about rails from
Berlin to China. If they get this thing built, it could change everything.”
Another editor noted, “That‟s going to be huge for materials and manpower.” Sunday
business editor Tim O‟Brien pointed out that it could even compete with European lines.
Editor Tim Race asked, “Does this mean that we are totally behind on this?” Other
editors nodded.
Though Niemi did not want to run multiple stories about Chinese high-speed rail, the
story still captured the attention of editors. Gillis made a successful argument that the rest of the
editors agreed with: The implications of China doing something as substantial as building rail
lines that would go all the way through Europe had tremendous economic implications. The
interest in China is part of recognition of their dominance and rise as a global power, one that
cannot be ignored, and even small movements in progress forward have implications for the
global economy. The underlying belief in the global economic situation still places America as a
central point of focus however, as Race‟s talks about America falling behind, and everyone
agrees.
The Greek debt crisis, where Greece nearly defaulted on its debt and destabilized the
European Union‟s economy, was perhaps the clearest evidence of the value for the belief in the
globalized economy. The Times‟ response to the Greek debt crisis predated many of its
competitors; in fact, though the crisis seemed to peak in late spring and early summer, The Times
was covering the crisis as early as January 2010. The editors and reporters at The Times were
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aware that fragility in the euro zone could be hazardous to the American economy. European
instability might create, as they understood it, a domino effect that would ripple through the
world economy and affect whatever tenuous hopes the U.S. had for a recovery.
As early as January, editors and reporters were looking at the spreads on the interest for
bonds of Greek debt compared with other, more stable countries. These spreads were widening as
speculation grew that years of easy borrowing by low interest rates had created a situation where
the Greek government had over-expanded and wouldn‟t be able to pay back its loans. On January
28, 2010, editor David Gillen noticed that the bond spreads between Greek and German bonds
(considered the most stable) were “getting crazy.” Another editor speculated that it looked like
European Union countries were “fudging the books, Ireland, maybe Spain, it‟s like the housing
boom but with sovereign nations.” This editor also pointed out that “China is the big winner.
They can buy all the debt out there.” The concern at this early point was that another crisis like
the one started in the U.S. with the housing crisis would begin in Europe, only what would be
tumbling would be countries rather than mortgages.
The Greece story continued to develop over the months I was in the newsroom. By
February, editors wanted people to know just how complicated the Greek debt crisis was. “We
need to help people understand this,” editor Adam Bryant said. “We need graphics,” said another
editor. Staff wrote Week in Review stories to take a step back and to explain to a wider range of
people who were not following the daily coverage what the Greek crisis would mean.
The multimedia and graphics teams helped engineer an interactive graphic that showed
when the debt was due and which other countries were in danger of defaulting (Quealy and
Russell, 2010). The implication of this graphic was that there would be a major problem if there
were no solution for Greece. The multimedia graphic begins with a primer designed to help
people understand the very basics of the crisis, from explaining what the European Union was
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and what the euro zone was to noting which countries had debt as a percentage of gross domestic
product.
Editors and reporters followed the developing story, picking up new details from the
International Herald Tribune and Times reporters in the United Kingdom, Germany, France and
Greece. They covered the steps the European Union was taking to get Greece out of the debt
crisis throughout the spring.
On February 5, 2010, editor Liz Alderman, who had previously been financial editor at
the International Herald Tribune, explained the importance of the inaction of the European
Central Bank to the rest of the editors. “As a whole, the European charter is up for grabs. Is this
going to be a bailout, or is there going to be something to hold down the rest of the union?”
The other editors were unsure about how the European Central Bank worked, wondering
whether it could raise interest rates. It could, but it would affect other countries that were
functioning fine. “There‟s no central political force from the European Central Bank,” explained
Alderman. Gillen expanded on her explanation: “This is the problem when you have vastly
different economies working under one situation.” Alderman continued, “The ECB can‟t do
anything without political might,” since it‟s not like the Fed.
First, this conversation makes it clear that the editors are actively thinking and
brainstorming as they try to understand new problems in the news. And from the perspective of
the value of the belief in the global economy, this exchange details how editors are aware of the
interplay and importance of Europe, even if they don‟t precisely understand the inner workings of
the euro zone. What they did feel was significant was that a failing Europe represented a possible
domino effect—like the U.S. housing crisis.
The desire to explain the Greek debt crisis using everything from multimedia to broad-
sweeping Week in Review pieces underscores the desire of editors to explain the news to people
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beyond just the daily story. Furthermore, it provides further evidence that these editors were
committed to the idea that Greek default would have profound implications for the U.S. While the
concern was for the American economy, the value shaping coverage was that the American
economy was part of a complex series of global relationships.
A subtheme that did develop out of this Greece coverage was evidence that Times editors
thought Europe‟s social welfare system was unsustainable. Alderman (who holds a French
passport) at one point had to stress the importance of the “cradle to the grave” concept of the
French social welfare system and noted that this was felt to be a right by most Europeans (field
notes, March 3, 2010). Alerting editors to this fact suggests that this European view of
government was not one held by New York editors. Other evidence of skepticism toward the
social welfare state came out in bits and pieces. At one point, Ingrassia noted, “The Greeks need
to stop living beyond their means” (field notes, March 7, 2010). A story about how part of the
origin of the debt crisis was the result of tax evasion turned up considerable excitement. “Greeks
just don‟t pay their taxes. They have swimming pool[s], and then they say they don‟t have any
money,” as one editor expounded. “It‟s ridiculous the kinds of claims that are made. It‟s like
culturally no one pays taxes” (field notes, March 14, 2010). The sentiment, then, is that in a social
welfare state, people may be granted almost too much. In the end, this kind of state may be
doomed to failure because it can economically be unsupportable, as represented by the Greek
crisis.
The turn to the business news value of belief in the globalizing economy is a particularly
significant one. It signals a shift in the mentality among news producers that America isn‘t at the
center of the economic story, even if it will shape the narrative center. For decades, the American
economy had been the center of manufacturing, innovation, and growth. But the transformation
on the global scale, starting with the decline of the American manufacturing sector and ending
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with the rise of the Asian economies, suggests a new point in an awareness of how news must be
understood on a global scale. The editors and reporters at The Times see the interconnected link
between the global economic flow, from currencies to the markets, and see the state of the world
economy as having potentially profound effects upon American prosperity. The world economy
has to be what we care about because we are just one player.
Innovation is to be Celebrated, With Caution
Another business news value is one that has been increasingly present as the technology
sector has become increasingly a part of business news coverage. Technology was most often
historically covered out of the business section, though it has had its own presence on the Web
site and, for about eight years, a separate print personal technology section. But this belief in the
promise of innovation has been particularly strong throughout news coverage, and is arguably an
enduring news value missed by Gans (1979). He was not doing his research during the rise of
computing, of course, but he did do his work during the rise of space travel (along with a host of
other inventions, including the increased use of plastic in homes, the popularization of the
microwave, etc.), suggesting that perhaps he missed something as he outlined the paraideology of
news values.
My discussion of innovation as a value (with caution) specifically centers on business
news in its current instantiation because business journalists are often charged with writing about
innovation. However, innovation is a value that is held throughout the paper and, like business
news, can generate from any desk (particularly the science desk). Business journalists write about
developments in biotechnology that affect company performance; new discoveries that affect the
renewable energy industry; and, of course, much of the discussion of innovation centers around
coverage of the technology industry,
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However, innovation is celebrated with caution; there is fear that innovation will both
harm the individual not just in terms of individual privacy but that innovation will have physical
consequences. The costs and benefits of innovation, specifically with respect to technology,
reflect a larger ambiguity about how to deal with the increasing prevalence of new technology in
society.
The most obvious example of a celebration of innovation was the hoopla in the lead-up to
the unveiling of the iPad. On January 19, 2010, the weekly tech meeting featured reporters and
editors trying to figure out how to set up the iPad coverage. It is important to note that The Times
was not celebrating the iPad itself as much as being excited about its possible contribution to the
technology landscape.
Technology editor Damon Darlin instructed, ―We need to figure out the publishing angle.
What‘s this going to do to books? Apple is going to control more of the customer experience. Are
publishers willing to make the mistake with this predatory company?‖ (This is another statement
revealing the suspicion of capitalist excess toward Apple).
The Times staffers had a personal investment in its success even though they were trying
to be dispassionate. Editor Adam Bryant noted, ―This is a do-over media savior with this tablet.
The media is really rooting for this to come out and work. Maybe we can do this New York Times
meta story, something about how this is getting covered and kind of be in on the story, in on the
joke [that everyone in the media thinks it will save the industry].‖
Then he noted a point of inquiry that sounded to him like a Page One story. ―The
keyboard is the natural question. That sounds like a Page One story.‖ The fact that the design of
the tablet could actually make a Page One story suggests the fascination with the possibility of
innovation.
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Other editors and reporters threw out a host of questions. Was this another gadget thrown
at us by Silicon Valley? Since technology people love the latest gadget, what would the
introduction of a new one mean?
Reporter Brad Stone, chiming in via conference call, pointed out that ―people are not
being asked to think rationally about this,‖ underscoring the exuberance reflected in society at
large about this innovation.
But the clearest example of this celebration of innovation comes from the extensive
efforts that the group planned to have for the unveiling at the San Francisco Convention Center.
There would be one reporter live-blogging the entire event, since Apple does not stream or
televise these unveilings. The liveblog would feature a Twitter module where two other reporters
would tweeting from the floor of the convention center. One of these reporters on hand would be
there to make sure that he could potentially grab Steve Jobs for an interview. The tech columnist,
David Pogue, would also be there. The media columnist, David Carr, who had been writing about
the Apple tablet for months, would be at the convention center, too.
The team made plans to take photos that could be quickly uploaded by a Twitter
application to the liveblog, but these were scrapped in favor of having a photographer take these
photos. The iPad launch was an ―all hands on deck‖ event for the technology pod. Every reporter
on the tech pod would be ready to write any part of the story. The movement forward was
considered the fascinating part. However, there were also some concerns voiced, such as how the
iPad‘s pricing might be unfair. Still, there was a general sense that innovation was good, and
could ultimately change the way we experience the world.
Another story equally captured the fascination of the business desk. This story was on the
evolution of Google Translate into a vibrant and accurate translation service (field notes, March
2, 2010).
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Deputy technology editor David Gallagher presented the story to the morning meeting
like this: ―We have translate [the slug]. There is this algorithm of electronic documents from the
U.N. and the EU, and your computer can basically learn to translate it. Google is using the entire
Web and has huge amounts of data to work with to [learn to] translate words [into other
languages].‖
Ingrassia followed up by asking whether there were outside linguistic experts in the story,
and whether this was something that would cost people jobs.
Gallagher pointed out, ―We have experts. . . . No one says that this is as good as a human,
but it‘s really pretty good. It could make it unnecessary for small businesses to have translators.‖
The story made its way up through the various editors to the Page One meeting. When it
was pitched (or offered) to the Page One editors, the story was promoted as, ―Gee, isn‘t this
neat.‖ A Web producer created an interactive graphic that translated passages from languages
such as French and Russian. The underlying value driving the fascination with this technology
was that innovation was inherently interesting and could change society, but as suggested by
Ingrassia, there might be costs, such as people losing their jobs.
Still another example of the celebratory fascination of innovation was with a story
proposed by Nick Bilton slugged ―Cashless.‖ Larry pitched the story in a Page One meeting to
the other editors on April 27, 2010. He appeared on TimesCast with the story:
This is really kind of neat. Basically, you put this thing on your cell phone [which he
demonstrates to the editors], and it‘s really small, and you can swipe your credit card. So
if you are out at a restaurant and you don‘t have cash, you can pay your friend with a
credit card by swiping it on his phone. . . . There‘s no excuse not to pay friends back now.
It‘s really kind of a neat little story.
The Times even created a video for the story demonstrating just how ―cashless‖ worked (Brustein,
2010).
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The story (Cain Miller & Bilton, 2010) made it up to the Page One meeting but
ultimately ran in the front of the business section. Nonetheless, Ingrassia pitched the story as
―really kind of neat‖ and as potentially having transformative capacities for changing the way that
we experience our daily lives. Thus further suggests a fascination with innovation and its role in
story creation and news decision-making.
However, there is a dark side to innovation and its celebration, and that is the potential
effects of technology on people, both physically and in terms of privacy. The negative
consequences of new technology were most fully explored in Matt Richtel‘s Pulitzer Prize-
winning stories about distracted driving, which illustrated the dangers of talking on the phone and
texting while driving, among other things. He detailed how some people actually died while using
their cell phones and driving at the same time. Richtel also related how the cell phone industry
had been complicit in failing to issue warnings to people about the dangers of the difficulty of
multitasking while on the road. He demonstrated to people how multitasking on the road while
driving was a myth, and that cell phone and texting laws were generally ineffective. The series
underscored that technology was a threat not just to the people using cell phones but also to other
people who might be caught in the way of a distracted driver. The irony, as Richtel was careful to
point out, was that these cell phones had been envisioned as a way to help people in cars call for
help while on the road, but now were so destructive that they were actually the cause of accidents.
The physical effects of technology were going to be further studied by Richtel as he took
a closer look at a family addicted to being ―plugged in‖ to too much technology. The series would
examine what might happen to your brain as it remained tied to technology; in fact, the series was
called ―your brain on computers.‖ In the multimedia meeting trying to plan for this series, the
Web producers, videographers, and business editors talked about Richtel's plan to go on a retreat
to ―de-technologize.‖
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Josh Brustein, a Web producer, explained, ―Matt is doing a week in exile from
technology out in Utah for a story. It's ironic but what happens to your brain . . . when you
withdraw from technology is that it takes three days for there to be a cognitive difference. Your
stress levels go down and everything‖ (field notes, May 19, 2010).
Another Web producer commented, ―That‘s crazy. But I believe it.‖
Journalists were also concerned about privacy intrusions as a result of new technology.
One particular example was the release of Google Buzz, a new social network-type feature linked
to Gmail accounts. The details about Google Buzz were not clear until it was unveiled, but it was
clear that it had distinct implications for people‘s online privacy—a fact that concerned editors at
The Times. At the 5 p.m. meeting, on February 12, 2010, the editors discussed how Google Buzz
was a massive failure. Apparently since the product‘s launch, a woman‘s abusive boyfriend had
tracked her down because of the service.
Goel explained, ―By default, it just scrapes your Gmail and adds your contacts.‖
Bryant added, ―You would have thought they would have seen this, with all of their
concern about protecting human rights activists.‖
Editor Sam Grobart chimed in, ―If you were to email [a person], it would tell you all the
people they were emailing.‖
Bryant tried to assess the news value by asking, ―How much of a disaster is this for
them?‖ to determine whether the story merited consideration for the front page. Goel explained
that it was one more failure for Google and that perhaps it was rushing too fast to compete at the
expense of considering the implications for people.
Editor Tim Race commented, ―This definitely undermines Gmail. Gmail was, like, the
best email service, but it‘s totally not secure any more. . . . This is just dumb.‖
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Bryant concluded that the story is worth a ―refer‖ or a possible position on the front page
that shows where the story is featured on the business section. ―Do you have a money quote that
links this to China?‖ he asked. Any reference that human rights activists might be in danger this
technology would instantly add importance to the story, especially since Google had been focused
on trying to protect the Gmail accounts human rights activists in China. The team did not. ―They
might take it,‖ Bryant considered, weighing the news value of the story.
The meeting demonstrates the concern people have that innovation may also be harmful
to their privacy. Google has undermined its previously secure Gmail service by allowing people
to see one another‘s contacts. The implications were dangerous for people who needed to have
their contacts hidden. This was an invasion of privacy by a technology company that could
severely impact society—especially with Gmail being the most popular email service. Thus, the
value of innovation as tempered with caution becomes clear, especially when Bryant talks about
the Page One story.
Overall, what these examples reveal is the ambivalence people at The Times felt toward
innovation, most specifically toward technology. On one hand, technology had the power to
transform the way we live and make purchases and even to transform the news industry. It was
open potential that deserved full attention. This is not, mind you, an uncritical worship of
technology products (as other sections in this chapter also make clear). However, journalists are
nonetheless delighted in the opportunities that innovation can afford to daily life. On the other
hand, the other side of holding innovation as a value driving news coverage is the deep caution
that innovation requires risks to one‘s physical body and one‘s sense of personal safety.
Throughout these conversations about innovation, journalists are engaging with new story types
and having spirited discussions about possible coverage. This is all taking place within the
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confines of the existing routines of creating the news, but it shows the role that journalists have in
being able to help shape coverage through the specific questions that they ask.
Government Should Play a Role in Business
One news value that has likely shifted over the years has been the extent to which
journalists value the idea that government should play a role in business. During my brief tenure
at The Times, journalists generally held that government should intervene. This value was
reflected in the attention given to government maneuvers in the financial markets, the role of
government in adjudicating consumer disputes, and the role of the government in providing
accountability for the financial crisis and preventing another one with financial regulation. This
value piggybacks on the suspicion of capitalist excess, suggesting that there should be some
safeguard against unrestrained profit.
However, teasing out this value is a little bit more difficult than garnering evidence of the
other values. In part, this was often because the government was criticized for not doing enough
to stop problems. In the case of Toyota, Adam Bryant repeatedly referred to NHTSA, the federal
highway safety agency, as ―dropping the ball.‖ In the case of the BP oil spill, the conversations
about the government being unable to enforce any kind of reform on BP (and to let it continue
operating with its horrible safety record) suggests further concern that the government has not
been able to protect Americans. When Goldman Sachs was charged by the SEC, editor Tim
O‘Brien asked, ―Is this new wind for the SEC?‖ and editor Winnie O‘Kelley replied, ―Well, this
is just the New York branch, so we‘ll see‖ (field notes, April 16, 2010). This exchange reflects a
view that many in the newsroom did not see the SEC as being strong enough to enforce its
mandate. Reporter Diana Henriques cited the Bernard Madoff scandal and regulatory problems
with the financial crisis as evidence of the SEC‘s ineffectiveness (personal communication,
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January 21, 2010). But she pointed out to me, ―We didn‘t pay attention to them for years, so it‘s
hard to get people there to talk to us when something happens. That‘s what happened with
Madoff.‖
The financial regulation reform is perhaps the clearest indication of how reporters and
editors saw the government having a clear role to play. But again, the emphasis is on how the
government is failing to help restrain businesses. At a May 17, 2010 meeting before the financial
reform bill passed, editor Winnie O‘Kelley noted, ―The emphasis isn‘t what happened; it‘s what
didn‘t happen.‖ The editors thought about possible additional coverage: what the bill means for
regulators, what it means for Wall Street, and what it means for consumers. Editor David Gillen
wanted to know, ―How this is going to affect consumer pawn brokers to payday lenders?‖
O‘Kelley stressed the importance of writing a piece about the differences between the possible
ways that derivatives could be traded under the bill: a clearinghouse or an open-market exchange
like the stock exchange. A clearinghouse requires that all derivatives would be ―cleared‖ by the
clearinghouse, which would assume the risk of the derivative and would require that the members
of the clearing house post collateral each day, minimizing risk. An exchange would simply
function like the New York Stock Exchange, with the only assurance for risk in the clearly posted
prices in a public venue.
―The Journal did a story on clearinghouses and how they fail,‖ O‘Kelley said. O‘Brien
pointed out that Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was pro-clearinghouse. ―We need to do
two stories,‖ O‘Kelley directed. ―We need to ask: Does this really prevent [a] crisis? [What
about] the question of proprietary trading?‖ Editor Dean Murphy noted that a column on
derivatives needed to be accessible to everyone, and another editor assured him that that was the
role of columnist David Leonhardt. The editors planned for Leonhardt to write a big piece on
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whether the financial collapse could happen again, and whether the regulation would be strong
enough.
This discussion of financial regulation suggests that the government needs to do a better
job of preventing economic collapse—and that financial regulation is the crucial mechanism to
prevent institutions that are ―too big to fail,‖ as O‘Kelley put it that day. The idea to do a story on
―what didn‘t happen‖ illustrated a continuing scrutiny of whether actions taken were sufficient to
achieve the government‘s stated goals.
These journalists see the government almost as an umpire in the game of American
capitalism. Each story is discussed as what did and what didn‘t happen, and as such, is premised
on the idea whether government should have done something in these situations. When a
government agency fails to act in the interest of consumers, the assessment is that it should.
Government, then, should play a role in ensuring that companies and specifically financial
companies play fairly. Government intervention does not mean, however, that business desk is
articulating a specific mode of interference with monetary policy for instance. But the value does
see the role of government playing an active role in mediating business, and in standing up for the
consumer.
The Values, Combined
Here I have discussed what I have observed to be business news values that shape news
coverage and news decision-making on the business desk at The Times, but I also believe this
extends more generally to other business newsrooms. I have spent time in the newsrooms of
Marketplace public radio and TheStreet. Marketplace is a public radio newsroom devoted to a
general interest business news show, and TheStreet is an online-only publication targeted to the
small investor. However, I observed these seven values at work in how these business journalists
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also talked about and selected stories. These values—the economy as the cornerstone of social
life; consumers deserve a fair shake; Wall Street in opposition to Main Street; suspicion of
capitalist excess; belief in the global economy; faith in innovation but fear of personal harm; and
the belief that the government has a role in business—help journalists at The Times shape and
construct business news.
As Gans (1979) noted in his discussion of journalists‘ values, these values are not values
held by journalists alone. Instead, these values may be values more directly held by members of
society at large, though we should question just who these journalists are representative of
(namely the educated upper middle class). Nonetheless, it is not that these journalists develop
these values absent of social forces, but that these values are part of the product of their
engagement with the larger social world. As such, many of the stated values can be said to
resonate with discourse in the public at large.
Furthermore, these values are not stated values, but emergent values that become clear
through analyzing the everyday talk of journalists as they make decisions about news. It is not as
if the newspaper has a particular position on innovation, or globalization, or the role of banks;
however, the dialogue reveals that journalists bring with them a set of values that help them
negotiate their understanding of what are selected for news events. These values are not
newsroom policy, but taken for granted assumptions about the way the world ought to work.
They are commonly enough held that they can be seen to operate in nearly all conversations about
the specific subjects I addressed above.
However, in the cases where a general audience is not the intended audience, these values
I have outlined may be quite different. For instance, readers of The Financial Times and The Wall
Street Journal may be unlikely to read stories that reflect underlying values that show the same
kind of commitment to the consumer, the belief that the government should have a role in
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regulating business, and a lack of suspicion of unrestrained capitalist excess. In fact, these news
organizations—and other business news organizations dedicated to serving business consumers—
are likely to celebrate Wall Street. The Times, however, does not see itself as celebrating Wall
Street. Instead, reporters and editors are poised to find evidences of Wall Street excess and
corruption.
The values I point out here run contrary to what some have argued are prevalent when
writing about business. For instance, Scheer (2010) argues that The Times‘ business desk was
complicit in celebrating of Wall Street and failing to act as a watchdog and, as such, did not do its
job in preventing the financial crisis. The assumption that The Times writes for investors does not
reflect how Times journalists see their own audience, at least. And while the reactions of
journalists to this accusation is a different subject, I have noted how at least some of these themes
appear throughout the history of Times coverage. Chernomas and Hudson (2010) argue that The
Times is in the hands of Publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and sufficiently aligned with corporate
interests, but the conversations I detail and my observations suggest a healthy skepticism toward
big business, with no restraint from Sulzberger or upper management on the production of these
stories.
There certainly may have been a shift following the financial crisis where some of these
business news values were intensified. This is part of why I am hesitant to call them enduring
news values; I simply wasn‘t in the newsroom to observe them before the financial collapse. The
Wall Street vs. Main Street value may not have been as active with the big banks‘ activity not
quite as nefariously destructive to the economy. But as The Columbia Journalism Review (2009)
has admitted, columnists Gretchen Morgenson and Floyd Norris were among the first to start
raising concerns about speculation and the housing bubble. Similarly, the value of the
government‘s intervention in the economy may not have been as dominant in pre-recession
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periods where financial regulation was less significant; however, the consumer aspect of this
value should remain consistent throughout. Values do change and develop in response to new
conditions in society, as Gans (1979) has acknowledged, and as such, this set I have discussed
applies to what I saw in the newsroom when I was there, but may or may not have further
application.
However, we should also consider what is missing from the consideration of these
journalists. There is no value that truly speaks to the concern of workers and labor. There is
indeed a labor reporter at the paper, and journalists devoted to covering the general economy,
including the plight of ordinary Americans. But general news conversation does not focus on
sympathies with any of these population groups: laborers/workers or the underclass and poor (or
the unknowns, as Gans (1979) called them). This does not mean these groups go uncovered, but
that they are not an ever present concern on the minds of business journalists. Being more aware
of the concerns of workers who do not represent, say, the population who can afford the yearly
$650 subscription to The New York Times or more committed to covering the relationship
between economics and poverty might add a different dimension to business coverage. But as I
pointed out in the previous chapter, it may be that these values are more present on the foreign or
national desk if they are taken up at all—or it may be that this is a consistent press criticism that
these stories are not told.
Business news at The Times offers only a handful of portraits about actual people going
through hard times, in proportion to its coverage of companies, the government, and financial
industries. We get more of a big picture of a plant leaving town and less of a micro-look at one
individual struggling. This may not be how business news tells its stories, or it may be what gets
left out entirely. The developing world is covered through the business desk in terms of how it is
changing and advancing, and while some stories feature the effect of development on the
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population, these stories are generally not told from the business desk. There may be more of a
need to tell stories about workers, about the poor, about the developing world, and a better need
to explain stories even during day-to-day coverage, rather than waiting for the weekend take-out.
Regardless, the news decision-making process I illustrate in this chapter reveals that
journalists are actively engaged around issues of news creation. Each story presents a new
opportunity to mobilize reporters and bring the machine of Times coverage into action. New
questions are asked with each story, but the rhythms are the same. An existing grammar is in
place to talk about stories, but a new vocabulary is created for dealing with each story. Big stories
break, but the patterns for follow-ups are the same, regardless of what the story may be. This does
not mean, however, that journalists are not actively shaping news coverage; they are, and this
portrait of journalists at work reveals the extent to which stories are debated and considered as a
part of newswork—the examples in this chapter illustrate the way that improvisation works in
daily news conversation and news production—embedded within routines but still embodying
purposeful, deliberate, and changing actions that can be attributed to more than just
organizational imperatives of production. Routines or not, news is also the product of daily
considerations and news judgments that turn on conversation and interplay with other reporters
and editors; improvisation at work. As such, journalists are purposeful agents in shaping the
direction of how they cover events, but they have an underlying set of values and a system for
arranging coverage which guide their work.
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CHAPTER 5: PRINT RHYTHMS AT THE TIMES
In response to a prediction that The Times would go out of print by 2015, Publisher
Arthur Sulzberger told an audience at a London media conference, ―We will stop printing The
New York Times, sometime in the future, date TBD‖ (Arthur Sulzberger: ―We Will Stop Printing
The New York Times Sometime in the Future,‖ 2010). Other newspapers have, in fact, disposed
of their print products, including the once-formidable Christian Science Monitor. But many at
The Times find it hard to envision a time without the print paper, at least for now. The truth is that
despite the tremendous infrastructure costs required to print the physical newspaper, The Times
makes most of its money from its print product. As Executive Editor Bill Keller told me, ―It‘s not
going away any time soon‖ (personal communication, May 7, 2010).
To many journalists, the print paper represents their best work. The print paper also
signifies the completion of the daily news cycle, predictable routines and rhythms, and a clear
way to assign value to stories. As Larry Ingrassia, business desk editor, told me, ―The print
product is the final product‖ (personal communication, May 3, 2010). This final product reflects
the news judgment and layers of editing that require the work of dozens of journalists throughout
the newsroom.
However, The Times newsroom is also an online newsroom. For instance, all reporters
now understand that breaking stories in particular need to readily be updated for the Web. This
mentality took a while to evolve. The process jump-started in 2005, when Keller announced the
sweeping start of the idea referred to as ―integration.‖ The goal was to bridge the gap between the
print and Web newsrooms. His hope was that journalists would understand that print and Web
held equal importance in the newsroom. But integration was also an organizational mandate to
experiment: Keller could not anticipate how online and print would intersect, or what an online
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and print newsroom would look like. As a result, his hope was that The Times would be a home
for new innovations.
The next three chapters focus on the print and online aspects of news production in the
newsroom. These chapters are specifically concerned with the relationship between traditional
print journalism and online journalism—or, more specifically, how the text that journalists
produce takes shape in both print and online forms. Chapter 5 focuses on the print rhythms of the
newsroom, asking what has remained the same in the production of the print newspaper and what
may have changed as a result of integration. Chapter 6 focuses on the online rhythms and
examines how these routines and practices have evolved to make online news production
predictable and manageable on a daily basis. Chapter 7 discusses how print production and online
news production intersect in the newsroom in terms of the professional values that journalists
place on newsroom production of each medium. Future chapters will focus on the extension of
online journalism into the realms of multimedia and social media.
These chapters all take place at a particular setting in the history of the news
organization. The Times is moving quickly as an organization to reshape for the digital age. As
such, the perspectives and the rhythms that I detail are only a snapshot of a particular moment at
The Times. Nonetheless, this is an important moment because it is such a transitional time when
the print product was still seen as crucial to the newsroom and its central organizing value, but
when online was clearly seen as the ultimate destination forward. Thus, it was important to
document. But a researcher going to The Times may find different attitudes, routines, and
expectations even half a year later. The value in describing this moment rests in the close look I
am able to provide at how news is in fact made. Furthermore, I offer a window into how
improvisation is at work as routines are indeed being reshaped to adjust to the digital age. The
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core principles of routines and the renegotiation of routines remain a consistent theme for any
researcher, regardless of the changes in the newsroom.
The journalists I met all understand that the online newsroom is their future. They know
that the Web reaches a larger audience; they know that the Web can do things that the print paper
cannot, such as tell stories through multimedia; and they know that the print business model is
failing and that online journalism may be the newspaper‘s only chance for continued survival.
But inside the newsroom, print and online journalism are not at all integrated for many
journalists, and in fact represent two different sets of rhythms, priorities, and values.
There is the print world, in which there are specific print rhythms, and then there are
online rhythms. The online world is increasingly complex, especially with the addition of
multimedia and social media. But the production of print and online journalism by traditional
journalists intersects at a few crucial moments—the timing of a scoop, for instance, or the
planning of a daily, developing story for the paper, such as a developing breaking news event.
But for the most part, the print and Web cycles operate in two different worlds. At the center of
these two worlds are the journalists who are writing stories for both print and online, and the Web
editors and Web producers who get the content posted online. Most editors are still focused the
print paper. Reporters still count their Page One stories as great victories, but they know that
being on the most-emailed list
45
of top stories is still pretty important if they want to be noticed
by editors—even if this list it is often filled with animal stories and recipes.
On the business desk, and in my observations of The Times as a whole, the print story
remains the centerpiece of news production. Multimedia is bonus. Online journalism is motivated
by competition and the need to please the online reader. A look at the print rhythms of the
newspaper detail just how important the print product is to many journalists and how important
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The most-emailed list tracks the articles directly emailed from The Times‘ site. The list is on the home page.
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these rhythms and routines are to shaping the entire news product—both print and online. Still,
when print production is juxtaposed with online journalism‘s rhythms, it becomes clear that each
medium can create contrasting expectations. Even the job requirements and personnel have
entirely different goals, with online journalism establishing new routines and patterns that did not
exist prior to the digital age.
Starting at Page One
To start to understand print production, it is easiest to begin with the most formal and
most important meetings for the print paper: the Page One meetings. These meetings are intended
to decide what The Times‘ nearly 1 million print subscribers will see on the front page of their
papers. The stories selected are what the editors present think are the five to seven most important
or most interesting stories in the news that day.
The Page One meeting does include discussion of the Web, but only in a cursory fashion.
The conference room has a giant projection of the home page, but its content is featured in
conversation for only a few minutes at the beginning of the morning meeting and at the end of the
afternoon meeting. At the Page One meeting on February 2, 2010, editor Jim Roberts started off
the meeting by explaining what was leading the home page. On this particular morning, there‘s
―not a lot,‖ as he noted, and he talks about the lead-up to stories on Don‘t Ask Don‘t Tell (the
military policy banning gays from service) and the Academy Awards, as well as ―a foreign story
about food.‖ No one mentions any of the day‘s stories that they would like to see on the Web
page. And typically, no one responds to what he says. Instead, this is a show-and-tell moment
with little feedback. Roberts will sometimes mention a video or multimedia project that has
gotten significant attention, and sometimes someone will say, ―Oh, that was great,‖ but this is
generally a one-way conversation. As such, at these meetings, print is still the primary focus.
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About 40 people meet in the Page One conference room, but not all of them are in charge
of print sections. There are representatives from the video desk, the copy desk, the Web
newsroom; even the Times standards editor takes a seat. But the main goal of the meeting is to
discuss what is going to make it to Page One. Section editors also update other editors about top
news from their section and upcoming enterprise news. The top news is the news that is time-
sensitive, and the enterprise news consists of features and investigations that are unique to The
Times and that, theoretically, no other news organization is working on. The top or spot news
often reflects other breaking news that other news outlets are working on, but the conversation
will center around the angle that The Times wishes to pursue.
The meetings also illustrate the newsrooms‘ reliance on routines to produce news. They
take place regularly at 10:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. The 10:30 a.m. meeting was changed from a noon
meeting in 2009, about a year before I got to The Times, for two reasons: First, The Times was
looking to learn more about what could be on the Web earlier; second, the International Herald
Tribune in Paris wanted to have a better idea of what stories would be available for its print
deadline. Editors explained this new meeting time to me as a way to help make the newsroom
into a more active culture of posting articles early and to help ensure that news could come out in
the European print editions the same day they appeared in The Times.
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In the morning meeting, editors just provide an update about what they know so far
regarding each story planned for the day. The morning meeting is geared toward establishing as
early as possible what the ―best bets‖ might be for Page One stories. These decisions are made by
top editors and sent out to editors in the newsroom between 11 to 11:30 a.m. This best-bets list
will alert the section editors to what stories are most likely to appear on the front page and to help
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A major change has been that the morning Web meeting (as detailed in Chapter 2 with Mark Getzfred) and the Page
One meeting have merged. The meeting now begins at 10 a.m. with each desk talking about what will be on the Web
for the day. Then the meeting shifts to a conversation about Page One stories. In addition, each desk must offer a major
―fresh‖ story for the next morning‘s home page at the Afternoon Page One meeting.
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them determine what extra resources to plan for these stories. These potential best bets help
editors plan their section fronts.
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The afternoon meeting is intended to refine the stories and finalize what will go on Page
One, though this, of course, could change if there are developments after 4 p.m. I attended only
three weeks of Page One meetings, and some of the best examples of how the stories were
developed over the course of the day were big news stories that did not come out of the business
desk. These stories were the failed bomb attempt in Times Square, whose coverage was a
coordination of the metro, national and foreign desks, and the BP oil spill, which was mainly a
national desk effort that also relied on the business, environment, and science desks to explain the
effects of the spill.
For example, during the Times Square attempted bombing, the metro desk offered the
following stories during the morning meeting: ―We are trying to get information about him
[Faisal Shahzad] and his life in Pakistan . . . and see if people appear in court . . . and find out
what happened in the 48 hours he got from Times Square to the [airport] gate at JFK‖ (field
notes, May 4, 2010).
By the afternoon, this turned into the following stories and following questions, with
metro editor Joe Sexton saying:
Let's talk about the bomb package. [Faisal] Shahzad was arraigned this afternoon. . . .
They charged him with terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, and it seems like he
got terror training in Pakistan. They are making arrests in Pakistan.
The second story will be a tick-tock
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—how the [authorities] put it together. The car was
left running. The house keys were in it. They got the [vehicle identification number] from
engine block. A 19-year-old girl was able to describe him to a sketch artist. There was a
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If editors do not have section fronts/dress pages, the editors can then plan the rest of their coverage layouts, as
national and foreign are not individual sections.
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Newsroom language for a timeline type story that attempts to recount events in the order they happened.
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photo array. We have cell phone records [that show that the calls] were prepaid. The
[police] contacted the seller of the car. He had been receiving calls from Pakistan. He had
no interest in the engine or the car except the cargo-hold. . . . We are looking to see how
he was able to board the plane even though he was on the no-fly list and paid in cash for a
ticket to Dubai.
Then we‘re doing to the best we can to say what we can in a profile.
Other editors contributed to the conversation. For instance, Ingrassia asked, ―What
percentage of people buy tickets in cash?‖ And Keller added, ―Was this supposed to be a suicide
bomb?‖ Representatives from the metro desk responded that they would look into both issues
further.
The Page One meeting, then, is a ritual for editors to offer their stories and then get
feedback from other top editors in the newsroom about what might be missing. The desk editors
have come up with their best ideas, but this is an opportunity to get feedback from other top
editors. Even if the story won‘t make the front page, important stories are still vetted through this
process.
Over the course of the same day on May 4, 2010, the conversations about the BP oil spill
coverage also shifted between morning and afternoon meetings. The spill had only just started,
and editors were trying to assess its scale. In the morning, the conversation followed according to
this outline. Jim Roberts, the associate managing editor, started off the conversation by asking,
―What‘s the latest on spill?,‖ referring to the story by its slug.
National editor Rick Berke responded: ―BP executives are testifying privately in D.C.
The peg is that BP safety records may have many safety lapses in the past. This may be one big
story.‖ Here, Berke is trying to alert the other editors to what the ―news peg‖ is—or why the
newsroom is writing this particular story.
Keller asked, ―When they testify, is it a closed session?‖
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Someone from the D.C. bureau chimed in on the phone via a conference call, noting, ―It's
not formal . . . and they are not expected to make comments public.‖
Berke commented on another developing story:
We have a valve story. Bill Nelson [U.S. senator from Florida] had something in 2000
about oil rigs shutting off remotely through acoustics. This is required in other countries,
but when Cheney came to the White House, it was different. With the oil industry, it's not
a requirement in the U.S.
Jim Roberts instructed, ―If the weather is clear, it would be good to go after that.‖
Managing editor Jill Abramson asked, ―What's the damage?‖
It was still unclear how bad the spill was. Berke noted that there was a photographer to
capture the damage clear to the naked eye.
The morning meeting helps editors refine their reporting throughout the day. By the
afternoon, the stories have gone through further development and are ready for another
presentation to the Page One meeting as more clearly formed narratives. The discussion
continues, however, as the reporters still have ample time to work on the stories before deadline,
as the afternoon discussion about BP demonstrates.
By the afternoon, the BP story had taken on a different focus. Berke gave a completely
different update:
With BP in Congress, there‘s a story about fishermen developing. Salazar [secretary of
the interior] is blaming BP right now, the [attorneys general] of Gulf States are
demanding reimbursements for damages, new details are appearing in the settlements. . .
There‘s a cool new detail on the inside of BP. They were going to apologize with an ad
campaign and are now doing something aimed at individuals and social media to say BP
is a great company.
Abramson asked, ―Have they hired a consultant?‖
Berke answered, ―They‘ve hired a crisis expert from Alaska. They are trotting out the
president of BP everywhere. BP has had these years of 'beyond petroleum.' They had this clean
image.‖
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Keller asked whether the PR story was going to get lost in the larger stories planned for
the day. Berke considered the question, answering that it would be prominent in the story or
maybe as a separate news item exclusively on the PR campaign. Keller thought that this PR angle
might be the more interesting part of the entire saga so far.
This conversation reveals how a small story about a closed hearing morphed over the
day. As another note, the story on BP‘s corporate image could just have well come from the
business desk. Furthermore, the conversation details that while Berke knew that the BP story
would most certainly be a Page One story, the reporting and story shaping were not complete. He
did, however, have new details to bring to the conversation. The meeting is a back-and-forth
opportunity to consider how to develop the story, even the print deadline approaches.
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Roberts offered a small update on the Web in this afternoon meeting. However, no one
else commented on the Web. He noted:
We were able to get the latest version [of the would-be Times Square bomber] about the
suspect being a citizen. We want to thank culture for doing a great job with the Tonys.
There is a great video with the search story [a story about Alzheimer's patients getting
lost]. There‘s a print and interactive timeline [of] the 48 hours it was until we caught [the
would-be Times Square bomber].
No one at this meeting offered any input into what should be leading the Web page, where stories
might go on the Web page, or where multimedia might be included. The Web site is constantly
updated, but that is not the concern of these editors.
It might be going too far to say that editors are not paying attention to the Web site during
Page One meetings. On the day that the SEC story broke about Goldman being indicted for
misleading investors, Larry Ingrassia commented to business editors that he was in the Page One
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These deadlines are somewhat flexible and depend in part on a story‘s significance. Later, I address the print
deadlines for the different editions, but story text and page layout must be completed before certain absolute page
deadlines. In the event of a developing story, like a presidential election, deadlines may be extended.
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meeting and noticed the story. ―I was just watching the Web page, and I saw it go up, and it was
great. It was just up there, and it was boom. Fantastic‖ (field notes, April 16, 2010).
The Page One meeting is principally geared toward establishing a collective discussion
about what stories are going to make the front page, though Keller and Abramson ultimately have
the final say. The meetings are intended as a dialogue about how stories develop and how stories
can be improved throughout the day. The focus is on the content of the stories themselves for the
print paper. What the exchanges above indicate is that there is considerable interplay even within
the established routines of the Page One meeting for newstalk—that the routines enable
improvisation about newsgathering for changing real world situations, much more so than
perhaps has been discussed before in academic literature.—There is flexibility within these
meetings where individual actors help work together to shape a story in a purposeful and
intentional way, using new information to aid their work.
But in these meetings, the Web is not a main focus. When I asked Jim Roberts why no
one has anything to say about the Web during Page One meetings, he responded this way:
Print is still the medium of choice. Still, the vast majority of people take their cues from
print [audience]. What we do in print is more symbolic and more permanent than your
home page, which can be erased and altered in handful of keystrokes. I don‘t know if the
lobbying that goes on with the stories makes a difference. It‘s not like they are not paying
attention. It‘s just that I take it as a compliment that the executive editor rarely tells me
that I have overplayed or underplayed a story.
It has happened, but it doesn‘t happen that often. We go into that meeting and in the
version of the meeting held the Web site is displayed in larger-than-life fashion. If
someone had an issue, I‘m pretty sure I would hear about it. I think some of it is just a
matter of just their own interest, and some of it is a matter that they seem to think that we
are doing OK. (personal communication, May 4, 2010)
This comment is interesting because Roberts, who is charged with leading Web efforts,
acknowledges the main role that print plays in news decision-making. He notes that he thinks
print is still the most important and ‗symbolic‘ news product for readers because it is lasting and
permanent. Roberts‘ comment also suggests that the Web site is simply left alone to a set of
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people in the newsroom who are charged with taking care of it—and in the end, it is not truly
integrated into the daily production of print routines because someone else is looking at Web
judgment and Web decisions.
During my research period at The Times, the tempo of the meeting was altered to enable
portions of the meeting to be filmed for the Web. This was a major change for the rhythm of the
meeting. But at the core, the routine of the Page One meetings have likely remained the same as
they were before the digital age; these meetings are focused on developing stories for the print
paper.
Enterprise Stories and Print Rhythms
The Page One meeting is an established routine that also enables the development of
enterprise stories, or stories that journalists originate with the intention of having a unique Times
angle. There are two types of enterprise stories. Both types showcase the priorities and values of
the print paper as pre-eminent. The first type of enterprise stems out of daily developments: the
―tick-tock‖ of the would-be Times Square bomber is a good example. The second kind is planned
in advance and may not be related in any way to the daily news cycle of events.
Most enterprise stories are allowed to develop without constant updating. For enterprise
stories related to the news cycle, it does not always make sense to keep posting updates online
because twists and turns in information can lead to new revelations and new questions. Not
everything can be confirmed right away. Further, editors are concerned about whether these
stories will be matchable—or similarly covered by a competitor if news is released too early
online. Another news outlet may also take The Times‘ previously unique angle. By the end of the
day, the print story may offer no unique perspective because all news outlets may now have the
same set of details The Times once had exclusively.
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Enterprise stories that are planned days or weeks in advance also revolve around the print
cycle. Big enterprise stories are specifically geared for Page One. Editors may not want the story
to run at all unless it can run on Page One. The story about whether we were in recession or
recovery, and Peter Goodman and Catherine Rampell‘s series on the ―New Poor,‖ are good
examples of these types of stories.
Investigative stories are especially valued if their news is shocking enough to merit a
Page One presence. During my time at The Times, the newspaper planned a serious of major
investigations into a suspicious aide close to New York Governor David Paterson—with
information so damaging that some in the newsroom surmised that it might force the governor to
resign. Day after day, one of the business editors would come down to the morning meeting with
an update about whether the Paterson story was running. The timing had to be right, the mix of
stories had to be right, and a Page One presence had to be guaranteed. The timing of the story
depended on the print placement: whether the time was right for a Page One story. Only then did
editors want to see their work revealed in the paper. The terms of the print paper set the terms of
when this big Paterson investigation would unfold.
Print production demands carefully crafted, carefully considered discussion and
development. Print production focuses on differentiation from other news outlets and from stories
that have appeared online. For enterprise and investigative stories, speed is disruptive. Speed
takes away from the ability to conduct these deep, searching stories. Daily stories are important,
but the enterprise stories are where The Times will make its mark; those are the stories that may
change policy or set the news agenda for other outlets, for instance. As such, the enterprise story
that can unfold on Page One still seems to matter most to journalists. However, big investigative
stories are sometimes timed to appear online first; one such example was the investigation behind
the revelation that then-New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was a client in a prostitution ring. This
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story was put online before it ran in print. So these decisions about when to run stories are still
unfolding and are still being negotiated, as we will see in Chapter 6.
Print Production on the Business Desk
The business desk follows a news routine that is geared to the clock of the print
production schedule. Editors on the business desk are primarily concerned with making news
decisions about where stories will be placed in the print paper and do not regularly think about
when stories will appear online. In fact, the majority of the conversations on the business desk
that are not devoted to shaping stories for publication are devoted to where a story goes: whether
it should be a potential ―offer‖ to the Page One meeting (or story for Page One to consider),
belongs on the dress page, or should remain inside the section. All of these conversations are
enabled by routines, which create the spaces for journalists to engage in collective news judgment
and decision-making..
In the morning, a business editor—usually one of the backfielders (main business content
editors) or Ingrassia—goes to the morning Page One meeting. At this meeting, these editors pitch
what seem to be the top stories for the day, though it is still early in the day and editors do not
know what news events might become big stories or what content the rest of the news sections
have to offer. Thus, what they are most likely to pitch at these meetings are top breaking news,
investigative stories, or features that have a loose ―time peg‖—the second kind of enterprise
stories that are not tied to a major news event. For example, one breaking news story pitched to
Page One was a story about the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. This news featured high-
profile Wall Street bankers testifying to Congress about their views about the financial collapse.
But the editors didn‘t know whether the event would yield big news; they just offered the story to
the Page One meeting on the hunch it might become big news.
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After this 10:30 Page One meeting, the business editor comes back to the desk and has a
conversation with Dan Niemi, the assignment editor, about which stories the Page One meeting
seemed excited about. The editor returning from Page One might say, ―Well, Jill seemed
interested in this. She had a couple of questions.‖ Or there might be a joke: ―They are really
interested in the Prius recalls because half the people in the Page One meetings drive a Prius‖
(field notes, February 3, 2010). More certainty comes when Roberts, with the guidance of Keller
and Abramson, releases the ―best bets‖ email.
The business desk has a regular meeting around 11:15 a.m. The meeting time varies,
though. Sometimes the editors are summoned by Niemi at 11; at other times, the editors don‘t
meet until 11:30. The meeting can last anywhere from 10 minutes to close to 30 minutes. The
purpose of this meeting is to discuss stories that are going to be featured in the business section. I
have already provided a sense of the conversations in the meetings: the questions that go back and
forth about how to make a story better, the way that business news values are articulated, and the
way that the imagined audience is invoked in these meetings. But what I have not discussed yet
are the decisions about where stories will go in the business section. Journalists feel that story
placement is crucial because it guides readers and tells them what is important. However,
journalists were mostly concerned, in my observations, with using story placement as a way to
signify to themselves what they thought of a story‘s news value and importance.
Deciding Story Placement
By the morning meeting, Niemi has already put a number of dress page candidates on the
news budget. When the conversation is not devoted to talking about the substance of stories,
people instead focus on where the stories might go on the dress page. The dress page must have a
constant setup of ―display‖ stories, or stories that are the center of the page and can be illustrated
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with a big image. There is great concern about, as Dan notes, ―saving the display‖ to make sure
that there was some story that could be featured in this picture space. The display story is guided
by a number of factors. First, a candidate for a display story should be able to be ―arted,‖ or
illustrated using photos or the original art created by the art director. Another consideration is
timeliness. Displays are often feature stories that could run at any time, such as a story about
glass factories in Germany. A display could be a breaking news story if it might best be illustrated
by art or a photo. Editors seemed to prefer original art created by the art director instead of
photos, unless the photos were particularly compelling,
The display is a constant source of concern to the editors. They want to be able to have a
central focus for the print paper. As Winnie O‘Kelley noted on February 18, 2010, when the print
section had no display by mid-afternoon, she asked the row of editors, ―Did Dan solve the display
problem?‖ The page needs illustration and photos as much as it needs stories. If there is no big
breaking news that warrants the display and no back-up feature stories that can serve as the
display, the business desk is in serious trouble for the page design. In these situations, editors are
often unsatisfied with the layout of the page and will resign themselves to saying something like,
―Well, this is the best we‘ve got for today.‖
For instance, in stories following Google‘s decision to move out of China, the best the
photo desk could come up with were some pictures of the Google headquarters in China. To
better illustrate the concept of Google leaving China, and China‘s censorship, the art director
responded with an illustration depicting ―the great firewall.‖ In the developing stories that were
resulting from the Goldman SEC indictments, the art director was charged with making new
content that didn‘t look just like buildings or pictures of main Goldman faces, such as Goldman
CEO Lloyd Blankfein.
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For his April 20, 2010, cover, Art Director Minh Uong actually put all of the complicated
terms Goldman was using into symbols and drew many different items, combining them into
what looked like a ball of yarn—even including a turkey. He was praised for doing something
with the dress page that ―wasn‘t just another building‖ and got positive feedback from Bill Keller
for his efforts. As Ingrassia said, ―Minh really outdid himself this time. After the sixth Goldman
story in a row, when we thought we had nothing else to illustrate them . . . he comes up with
something‖ (field notes, April 21, 2010). The display is certainly an opportunity for print routines
to produce something new within the existing obligations of print production. The art director
improvises by creating new art for the types of stories that come up over and over again.
It is not always clear what the display will be by the morning meeting. Uong says this
creates deadline pressure for him. February 9, 2010, was an example of this, with editor Adam
Bryant asking at the meeting, ―What‘s the display?‖ and an ambiguous answer coming from
Marcus Mabry, speaking in code: ―We have Toyota with IPO. If bonus doesn‘t make the front, it
could make a good display.‖
The conversation about story placement often breaks down into incomprehensible babble.
The codes for story importance often feature words such as ―down-page‖ or ―top of the page‖ or
―display,‖ each of which connotes different levels of importance. A ―top of the page‖ story may
be the most important given the page design, but a ―down page‖ story might be the most
important if it is a lead news story that is clearly featured in contrast to the display. But it depends
on the day: Sometimes the display story is the most important story. Sometimes these down-page
stories are split into two in the right column, as seen below, with the top of the page as most
important. Columns almost always are on the left side of the page. Stories above the ―fold,‖ or the
crease in the paper, are more important stories. A sky-box is a Business Day ―refer,‖ or a hint of
what is inside the section. These run across the top of the dress page above the words ―Business
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Day.‖ As a result, the conversations about story placement result in considerable juggling among
where the different stories can go based on their possible news value.
Take, for example, the language used in the morning meeting on March 29, 2010. The
editors were speaking in ―slug‖ terms to refer to the stories and were also discussing the
placement on the page.
Editor Justin Gillis said, ―Housing has to run, maybe it should be a display? Or oil could
be a display later in the week.‖
Ingrassia commented, ―Is that a display, or could it just be a down-page story?‖ (Here, he
was signaling that this oil story might be less important.)
Gillis relented: ―Oil could be a down-page story.‖ (The display has the ―wow‖ factor that
draws attention from readers.)
Ingrassia then noted, ―Well, we could have housing as a display, maybe oil at the top of
the page. . . .‖
Editor Marcus Mabry had another idea. ―We don‘t have to use it for the display. Maybe
we can use Ford. It has a nice peg. The day peg is that Ford is late to the Asia game.‖
Editor Tim O‘Brien added another reason to make Ford the display story. ―There's going
to be this huge incentive war breaking out. Honda is at 0.9 percent, Toyota is at zero [interest
rates]. This summer is going to be a car buyer‘s heaven.‖ Marcus dialed back O‘Brien‘s
ambitions for the story, saying that this Ford story didn‘t talk about that idea.
But even in this dry talk about story placement, editors are still thinking about ways to
expand potential stories.
O‘Brien pointed out, ―This should be a separate piece. Toyota is sitting on a lot of cash. If
Ford wants to play ball, it will get creamed. Toyota is throwing money at the problems.‖
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Editor Phyllis Messinger mentioned that there was a blog post about this idea.
Messinger‘s contribution seems to suggest that not all of the editors are reading all of the blogs‘
content. Bucks, the blog she edits, had tackled the issue, but not all the editors had noticed this
online-only content.
The needs of the front page alter the planning for the dress page throughout the day. If the
Page One team decides to take a story that the business desk wanted as a display, the business
desk needs to come up with a new plan. But if the business desk has a story rejected from the
front page, and it is a good story, the business desk may want to give the story the most
prominence possible on the page—perhaps on the top of the page—or perhaps with a good
illustration or photo.
The layout of the page is not the same from day to day, but each position of the page has
significance according to the news judgment of the editors. These routine meetings likely have
remained the same since the beginning of the Business Day section. The assignment of story
value based on where a story goes in the print paper is a conversation that editors have been
having for decades.
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Figure 1: New York Times Business Day Dress Page, December 22, 2010. Note Display, Column
and Down-Page. Reprinted with permission.
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Figure 2: New York Times Business Day Dress Page, December 16, 2010. Illustrates Display,
Column, Sky Box, Down-Page, Top-of-Page. Reprinted with permission.
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Afternoon Meetings and Further Story Development
There are two afternoon meetings that are meant to assess the progress of stories and fill
in the other editors about new stories. The result of these meetings can also change the makeup of
the dress page. The first afternoon meeting occurs promptly at 2:45 p.m. The second afternoon
meeting is around 5:15 p.m., which is after the top editors have made a decision about what will
be on Page One (though this can always change if news breaks).
At 2:45, the business editors are given a fully updated budget list with new stories that
are possible candidates for the dress page. Often these include stories that reporters have been
working on during the day, but reporters and editors may have been unsure whether their work
would be ready for that night‘s paper. Editors stand around the central hub of the backfielders‘
desks and talk for about 10 minutes. The business desk calls this the ―turn-around‖ meeting.
There is less conversation about the development of the stories, except in cases where it appears
that the stories may be particularly difficult to understand or when new stories have been added to
the list.
However, new stories often come up at 2:45 that could even be pitched to the front page.
I have noticed that these stories are often tech stories, in part because of the time difference, as
the San Francisco reporters begin their days later than the reporters based in New York. In one
instance, on February 10, 2010, Google announced that it would be trying to put a form of
broadband, which would be faster than anything else on the market, in some trial communities.
Google was promising to do this for free. Editor Adam Bryant tried to assess whether this could
possibly be a front page story. This was a day where there was particularly bad weather on the
East Coast and the front page was particularly low on breaking news—and top editors were
hoping for some breaking news.
Marcus Mabry commented on the story. ―Is this the future of the Internet?"
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David Gallagher, technology editor, responded: ―It‘s Google‘s attempt to push Internet
companies.‖ Gallagher was careful to note that it was not a business venture but an innovation by
Google to explore new fiber lines.
Bryant asked, ―If this had to be risen as a bigger deal, could it be without lying to [the]
reader?‖ By using the word ―risen,‖ he was referring to the idea that stories ―rise to‖ a Page One
story if they meet certain standards of quality, such as having a particular, unique angle, or if they
are important breaking news.
Gallagher pushed his story but warned Bryant not to make too much of it. ―It seems
unlikely that this is a move that Google will somehow become an ISP [Internet service provider],
but this is still really interesting, and they will end up making a lot of money.‖
The editors discussed how this is potentially ―massive‖ but how no one really knows
what to do with the broadband that Google is unveiling because it is ―so high-speed.‖
Bryant had a follow-up question. ―Has Google transcended the species barrier like a fish
that is not in water, or is this not a big deal?‖ This means, essentially, has Google gone from
being an online tool and operating system to providing infrastructure?
Gallagher answered, slightly equivocating: ―This is one of their more interesting moves.‖
Mabry noted, ―They are news-free at Page One.‖ Bryant points out that it could be worth
a refer, or a mention on the front page that refers to something inside the business section. The
technology editors are instructed by Adam to ―pump it as much as you can before it bursts.‖
Gallagher responded that this was possible. ―No one else is doing it.‖
Adam added jokingly, ―Use the word ‗hegemony.‘ That's a Page One word.‖
This exchange is interesting because it reveals that a new story can be discussed at 2:45
and go through considerable reformulation. The exchange also reveals some of the demands of
the Page One stories—that there be some broader impact and ―game-changing‖ news that will
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transform the way we think. This idea is reflected in Bryant‘s comment about whether Google is
becoming a new species. The conversation also reflects the fact that the stories can be
manipulated to a certain degree to become a Page One story, which of course is the ultimate goal.
In this case, the story would be framed as a particularly interesting innovation in Google‘s move
to have its hands in all sectors of the technology world—hence Bryant‘s comment about
―hegemony.‖
The front page was ―desperate for news.‖ The powers behind the front page still want to
have stories that are connected to daily developments. As such, there is a perceived need to
balance the front page with breaking news. On news day without much breaking news, it may be
easier for more minor stories to make it to Page One.
At the 5:15 meeting, the editors plan together where the stories will go on the page. This
is another standing meeting, which takes place near the art director‘s desk and usually lasts about
five minutes. The page has a preliminary layout that has been decided by art director Minh Uong.
Usually he has put together an illustration for the display. But the editors are just as likely to
reorient the page as they reassess how each story has developed.
Ultimately, Ingrassia has the final say over story placement on the business desk, but
there is a group discussion over the importance of stories. Often stories that have been slated to be
dress page stories all day are switched out in favor of a late-breaking story that seems to ―add to
the mix.‖ The goal, as it was explained to me by multiple people throughout my study at The
Times, was to have a good balance on the page. This means, in addition to having the regular
columnist, the dress page should feature a good mix of stories that balances serious breaking
news with enterprise news and the occasional humorous story.
One meeting stands out as a clear example of how this mix can change at 5:15. At the
same time, it reveals how the editors also at times feel ambivalent about their decisions regarding
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what stories are going to make the dress page—and how they try to help with design cues to
guide the reader. But their conversations also reveal that these decisions are a way for them to
assign value to these stories.
The stories originally slated for the March 5, 2010, paper were about the Greek debt; the
International Monetary Fund; solar power; and the latest sign of recovery: that shopping retail
sales at all the major department sales had shown a big uptick despite bad weather in February
2010.
Ingrassia asked, ―Will our readers have a hard time reading this IMF story? Will they see
this as a hard news story? IMF is more analysis, but the Greece story is the news lead.‖
The editors decided on the following design, which they thought would help readers:
Larry said, ―Let‘s do a two-story package with headlines with a subhead,‖ which effectively
placed the IMF and Greek debt as two stories together for the reader.
But at the moment when the page was about to be finalized, DealBook blogger and
financial reporter Michael de la Merced alerted editor David Gillen that a psychic has been
charged with a Ponzi scheme by the SEC.
The journalists joked about how the psychic was predicting profits. ―Why would they
charge a psychic? This is just ridiculous,‖ editor Tim Race said.
Gillen argued, ―We have to have a fun story. This is just great.‖
But another determination entered into the equation: just how much money the psychic
was being charged with stealing. The psychic allegedly took $6 million.
One of the editors noted, ―That‘s a lot from a psychic.‖
Ingrassia shrugged a bit: ―This has to be really well written.‖ Gillen promised he would
edit it. The editors decide to move the economic indicators story about retail sales inside the print
paper. Though retail sales are one of the few economic indicators that may make the dress page
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because they predict the state of the economy, the psychic was just more ―fun.‖ Another one of
the editors commented, ―[The retail story is] strong, but it can go inside.‖
On this particular day, business editors were concerned that there were not enough staff
stories to fill the section—and not enough quality wire stories worth printing. The need to fill the
paper is something that Tuchman (1980) wrote about as a serious concern facing print journalists,
who have a set number of pages that they must fill each day.
A Times editor pointed out that the newspaper could easily be filled with content—and in
fact, there is often too much content to put into the print paper each day. From my observations,
the tension exists about both whether that content is up to Times \standards of newsworthiness for
making the print edition and whether it may be appealing and interesting to the potential reader
(for instance, some staff-written International Herald Tribune stories that are too Europe- or too
Asia-focused will run online-only). The Times may have plenty of content online, but it may not
wish to run this content in the print paper, so even when the news is plentiful online in the form
of wire stories or even blog posts, editors may feel as though there is not enough fresh content.
On this particular day, there were only eight major staff-written stories. The rest of the
section would be filled with wire stories unless there was additional breaking news that the staff
could cover. Even facing this drought of coverage at 5:15, editors still didn‘t want to use the
stories they had been pitching for Page One but had so far been rejected. They preferred to give
these stories another chance the next day to make the front page. Thus, filling the paper is still a
concern when considering print production.
The 5:15 meeting is another routine that provides an opportunity for discussion. The
meeting is oriented by the need for editors to make a final decision about where to place the five
or six best stories of the day. The intention is that the design of the page will offer readers not just
an enticement to read the page but also some clue about the importance of the stories. During this
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meeting, editors spend much of their time debating about the relative worth and news value of
stories.
Editor Dan Niemi then meets with copy editors, photo editors, and the people focused on
the page layout for inside the section. He decides the placement of the rest of the stories that will
run inside the section without consulting the other editors. These are usually grouped according to
theme—financial news, international news, tech news, etc.—and often are designed not with
news importance in mind but with what stories have art and photos, and where ads in the section
need to be.
The morning and afternoon meetings are therefore crucial routines that allow journalists
to react to development of news stories. They are calibrated around print development. During
these meetings, there is never any conversation about how the stories are developing online,
except to say that a story may be breaking and is in the process of being covered online. The
online coverage does not get the same kind of consideration; editors don‘t talk about how to be
sure particular reporters are adding in the answers to certain questions in the online story. Instead,
the focus is on the final output, the print story. The day is entirely structured to give attention to
the print page.
Night production at The Times
Night print production on the business desk also takes on a regular, predictable routine.
Night editor Keith Leighty regularly comes into the office around 2 p.m. and is joined by the
assistant night editor, P.J. Joshi. The two editors are in charge of working with the business copy
desk to make sure that the print newspaper is ready for production at the designated times set by
The Times. The deadline of the first national edition, which is published in more distant markets,
is 9 p.m.; the first city edition deadline is at 10:15 p.m. and gets distributed to places like the far
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reaches of Connecticut suburbs; the second national edition and city editions, which are intended
for news organizations along the East Coast and New York City, respectively, close at 11:30;
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and there is a final edition at 12:30. The newspaper can stop the presses after 12:30 a.m. ―in the
event of the Second Coming or news of similar importance or controversy,‖ as Leighty put it
(personal communication, October 4, 2010). Deadlines for each page on the business desk are
staggered to the 9 p.m. deadline, in order to help with the flow of content to the copy desk. There
are set print production deadlines, but The Times has the flexibility to determine which pages are
able to go to production later in the evening, and what stories will be on those pages.
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The second national edition goes to Atlanta; Boston; Concord, California; Los Angeles; Seattle; and Springfield,
Virginia.
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Figure 3: National Print Edition Distribution Map by Deadline. Reprinted with Permission.
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Figure 4: City Print Distribution Map by Deadline. Reprinted with Permission.
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These deadlines through the later portion of the night give the copy desk and the night
editors the ability to add late-breaking news to the section and to make changes if they catch
mistakes in earlier editions of the newspaper. On the nights I spent with the night editors and
copy desk, nothing major happened to prompt major deadline changes. The second national and
city editions were used as a way to catch minor errors in Times style. But in the event of the Haiti
earthquake, for example, when The Times‘ front page had to be entirely remade, the business
dress page also had to be changed. So the changes each night depend on the news of the day.
Leighty, along with Joshi, spends some of his time editing content that has later deadlines
than the 6 p.m. deadline that the business desk tries to enforce upon its reporters and editors.
Backfield editors often break this early self-imposed deadline and can be in the office until 8
p.m., pushing right up against the print production deadline. This creates difficulty for the copy
desk, which has to give each article a read-through for Times style and then ―proof‖ each print
page (or check for final mistakes on the entire printed page). Without enough time to copy-edit
each article, factual errors, grammar errors, and the like may slip in.
Each page of the business desk has a specific time target for being sent electronically to
the presses. The first pages to go are usually the planned content. But the pages that have
―jumps,‖ or stories that begin on one page and end on another page, are often the last to go. The
business desk aims to meet these deadlines because if pages arrive late to the printer, the
consequences can include delaying printing the paper and, ultimately, stalling distribution—all of
which costs The Times money.
But the night shift is a predictable routine, even when there is breaking news. The night
ends when the final edition closes. Except on rare occasions, the business desk does not have
continuously updating stories that need to change through every edition. (Financial crisis stories
may be one example that broke this trend.) However, the routines of night print production
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haven‘t really changed in the years that Leighty has been on the desk, save for the addition of
technology that makes tracking, editing, and proofing pages easier. Deadlines in the past used to
be later, but cost concerns have made them earlier. However, the basic process of making sure
that the paper emerges as error-free as possible and sticks to physical print plant deadlines
remains the same.
Online departs from this regularly scheduled process of decision-making, planning and
editing a story, especially when the story is a breaking story. I asked associate managing editor
Jim Roberts why there were not Web meetings like the print meetings to decide coverage and
story placement. He told me, ―You‘ve seen how fast the Web moves. You can‘t sit around and
plan for that. It‘s too quick for people to stand around and debate‖ (personal communication,
April 16, 2010).
Planned News at The Times
If there is so much concern about filling the page and putting together the display, is the
business section a slave to making sure that predictable routines produce news? Are business desk
reporters reliant on regular sources to make sure that there is content in the paper each day? This
suggestion is offered by other ethnographers who argue that news is a product of these daily
routines because these routines manage the unpredictable and ensure regular coverage.
To some degree, there is a demand for regularly-occuring content in the print paper.
Editors feel there should be a regular flow of international business news, and much of this comes
from the International Herald Tribune. In addition, there are themed pages for each day (except
Friday) that take up pages in the business section: Monday is the media section; Tuesday is the
itineraries/travel section; Wednesday is the commercial real estate section; and Thursday is the
personal tech section. These all consist of preplanned stories designed to make sure that there is
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original content from Times journalists in each section. Friday used to be the Wall Street section,
but, as was explained to me on multiple occasions, after the financial crisis, ―The whole section
kind of became the Wall Street section,‖ according to editor Kevin McKenna (field notes, January
27, 2010). Friday also features personal finance. The Sunday paper is devoted to Sunday
Business, a separate subsection of Business Day that is home to long features and investigative
pieces. This section reads more like the Week in Review for business and has plentiful columns
and book reviews.
However, though Fishman (1980) and Tuchman (1980) attest that content designed to fill
newspapers is just content generated from sources, the planned news at The Times instead has
another role. Some content is ―service journalism,‖ as most journalists refer to it: news you can
use. These sections, perhaps more than all the other news in the business section, are acutely
interested in reader feedback. Dedicated readers form fan communities around blogs about
personal finance and personal technology, for instance.
Each day also features a regular columnist, so the dress page is guaranteed to have at
least one story. However, these columns are held to a high standard, according to Ingrassia, and
are supposed to feature original and distinctive reporting. These columns are also supposed to
feature news, not opinion. A document from standards editor Phil Corbett outlines the goals for
these columns
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:
[The] news column has to give readers the arguments and factual information that led to
the writer‘s conclusion—enough argument and fact on both or all sides of the issue to
enable the reader to decide whether to agree or disagree.
This is a fundamentally different requirement that does not apply to editorials or Op-Ed columns,
which “are not intended to give a balanced look at both sides of a debate.”
51
Obtained March 30, 2010. Document has no official name as it was sent to me in an email.
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The Reader‟s Guide, a document available online on NYTimes.com,
52
outlines Times
standards. According to this guide, a news column is:
A writer‟s regularly scheduled essay, offering original insight and perspective on the
news. The column often has a distinctive point of view and makes a case for it with
reporting.
Columns in the newspaper are displayed with the writer‟s name and the column‟s title inset into
the text, as you can see from the figures provided in this chapter.
These columns are not dependent on routine sources but are expected to provide “original
insight,” even if their presence is routine. These columns have been used to provide further
insight into the Wall Street world, such as through the reporting of Andrew Ross Sorkin and
Floyd Norris. Gretchen Morgenson has said her Sunday column is intended to provide more
knowledge about the machinations of institutional investors (personal communication, March 30,
2010). David Leonhardt‟s columns were considered so insightful by others in the news industry
that he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2010. So columns may be routine news, but it is not
routine coverage.
To a certain degree, there are routines in the creation and collection of news that do
facilitate the regular production of the dress page. The news comes from a few key sources:
government hearings, regular company reports, and legal developments. But these are unlikely to
make the dress page unless they reveal something particularly noteworthy for readers. Only major
economic indicators stand a chance of making it to the dress page. As editor Dave Joachim noted
to me, “How often does market news really make the front [dress page]? Almost never. How
often do these economic stories make the front? Almost never” (field notes, February 19, 2010).
The flash crash, when the Dow dropped nearly 1,000 points in close to 10 minutes, however, was
an instance where everyone took notice and the markets did become a front-page story.
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http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/readers_guide.html
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Ingrassia clarified that markets were occasionally quite important stories that might even
make Page One, but the criterion was whether these stories were telling readers something new
rather than just displaying ordinary market movement. Ingrassia explained:
On the markets stuff, for quite a period of time—mid-2008 to mid-2009, and even
beyond—the markets were a major news story, on some days one of the biggest news
story, and we feel it is important to provide our take on major news. We shouldn‘t, and
for the most part don‘t, cover the markets nearly so closely when things are slower. At
least I don‘t think we do, and definitely don‘t think we should. (personal communication,
May 4, 2010)
Company announcements make some of the regular news, but it is often more likely that
a dress page story will be about a new take on a development at a company, a change in policies
toward workers, news about a particular individual who is a game-changer behind the scenes, or a
story aimed for Page One that never quite made it there. The goal is not to write the same kind of
news that every other newspaper is writing. And the goal is not to rely on company statements to
be the big story of the day. As Ingrassia explained to me, ―I don‘t think we do very much
commoditized news. There are some things that we feel we need to weigh in on, but in those
cases we aim to be more analytical and explanatory. We do few earnings stories, for example‖
(personal communication, May 4, 2010). In fact, I have watched how editors, reporters, and
bloggers systematically do not answer their phones just to avoid getting calls from PR people
begging them to write stories.
Weekend News
Weekends, however, require intense planning to fill the newspaper. Breaking company
news almost never comes out on the weekend unless it is a financial deal, though the Saturday
paper will often be filled with news that breaks late Friday afternoon. Government news related to
the Federal Reserve or the SEC also generally does not happen over the weekend, and hearings
are scheduled during the week. So the weekend editor has to make sure to plan enough features
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and content so that the section remains full. The Saturday paper is still full because this is still
carry-over from Friday‘s news. On Sunday, the Sunday business staff has created a stand-alone
business section for the business page which is entirely self-contained and focused on features. So
the major concern is the Monday paper.
In addition, because the weekends are a time when editors feel that the most people are
reading the newspaper (and when circulation is the highest), editors try to push their best stories
for the Sunday Page One. They also try to have stories ready for Monday Page One paper,
knowing that there will likely be more space for enterprise stories and less breaking news over the
weekend. If there is major breaking business news over the weekend, it is the job of the weekend
business editor to get this business news on Page One. Because the Sunday business section is
pre-planned and cannot accommodate any new stories, the business news will get ―buried‖ in the
front section of the newspaper unless it is on Page One.
The Monday business section is a themed section that focuses on media and technology
news. The Monday section for the following week is planned on the prior Tuesday afternoon,
when the media section and the tech section sit down in a joint meeting to plan possible stories.
All tech reporters are present, but only the media desk editor attends this meeting. Of course,
media and technology news breaks throughout the week, but this Monday section is designed to
focus on features and longer-term trend stories. By Friday afternoon, the pictures for the Monday
section are already picked out and the page has been designed.
The Page One meeting I attended for the weekend newspapers was quite different from
the Page One meetings during the weekdays (field notes, February 10, 2010). The first weekend
Page One meeting takes place at 3 p.m. on Friday. There was considerable joking around the
room, and most of the editors were wearing jeans and casual clothing instead of the business
casual that was pro forma at the weekday Page One meetings. The Web page was not projected;
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instead, the focus was entirely on the print product. The editors all pitched enterprise stories
because there was no indication of imminent breaking weekend news. This is ironic, given that
Sunday is the biggest day for when people read the newspaper. However, Sunday might have the
least actual ―breaking‖ news on any given weekend day, though this might be a prime day to run
an investigative series.
David Joachim, who was the weekend editor during most of my research at The Times,
would often say on Wednesday meetings, ―Alison [weekend editor] is desperate for news.‖ On
the day I spent with him, he worked with Peter Goodman to make his lead ―more newsy,‖ but
they also had to work on ―not killing the feature‖ (field notes, February 10, 2010). The two
versions of the lead had to be approved by both Ingrassia and editor Winnie O‘Kelley. The lead
had to be more ―newsy‖ to spice up the news value of the Sunday paper. Ultimately, breaking
news came out of Washington, D.C., that kicked Goodman‘s story off the Sunday slate. The
weekend Page One editor preferred to give stories a place on Page One if they had a ―hard news
lead,‖ according to Joachim, simply because there is usually less breaking news on the weekend.
Print News Routines
The print newspaper relies on predictable routines that result in a manageable flow of
news coverage. While news stories change throughout the day, the print meetings are structured
in a way that allows editors a chance to develop these stories. What emerges from these routines
are conversations that can help journalists pursue different angles of a story, and allow editors to
change the look of the print newspaper. But these routines have almost nothing to do with the
online newspaper.
Looking at print news routines gives the impression that print and online are almost
entirely unrelated. The majority of editors spend their time thinking about the print newspaper—
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―the final product.‖ The goal is for the best story to be the print story. The focus is on how the
print front page and print section front will appear to readers. The conversations are designed as a
way for editors to express and articulate news judgment. None of this relates to any of the
concerns regarding online journalism, except insofar as these stories will ultimately end up
online.
The editors are not talking about when stories will appear online. They are not talking
about multimedia elements. They are not talking about comments. This print cycle seemingly
offers no guidance to the online process that is unfolding over the course of the day. Stories are
still being posted online, but the majority of editors are not commenting on how these stories are
progressing.
Print routines have likely remained the same for decades. However, as the discussion of
online routines will make clear, print journalism has likely changed to value more in-depth stories
that cannot be found anywhere else. The goal for print, as will become clear in the discussion of
online news, is a differentiated product. Print is not concerned with the now, but with leaving a
lasting impression.
Significantly, the routines have little to do with new technology. The routines do reflect
the need for planned news, but this planned news is more than just news that depends on sources.
This planned news includes enterprise coverage where journalists hope to bring new insight to
their readers. So while filling the paper is a concern, and making sure that there is a display is
important, journalists at The Times generally care more that they have differentiated content. But
as these routines show, the conversations are not static. Each day brings new considerations with
new stories requiring different opinions about story worth—journalists are improvising according
to a set of known rules and routines. In the case of print, the improvisation just reflects elemental
changes. Newstalk itself is dynamic, but these conversations themselves do not alter the structure
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of routines. Nonetheless, looking at print in the newsroom details the extent to which journalists
act as purposeful agents in the creation and shaping of news—and provides greater insight into
the way that the imperatives of producing the newspaper plays into news decision-making.
The next chapter explores online news rhythms. But the routines of online and print
converge at unexpected points such as the end of the evening and the close of a breaking story.
And print and online are more integrated than this breakdown of print news might suggest, for
reporters are the link that feed the Web with content, and Web producers and Web editors
facilitate this connection.
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CHAPTER 6: UNDERSTANDING ONLINE RHYTHMS
On March 1, 2010, reporter Sewell Chan found out from the Federal Reserve that Fed
Vice Chairman Donald Kohn would be retiring. Because the Fed sets monetary policy, a
retirement could change the Fed‘s perspective and therefore its effect on the U.S. economy.
Chan learned the information from an embargoed press release
53
and immediately began
writing B matter to post to the Web the second the announcement was official. Chan was working
from D.C., but was in constant communication with Mark Getzfred, the Web editor, who is based
in New York.
Getzfred prepared a news alert to run across the top of the business Web page. He also
alerted the home page editor about the news. The home page editor replied, ―Who is that?‖
However, the home page put an alert across the banner of the home page below the New York
Times logo. This was fresh news, and after all, there was little domestic news breaking on this
particular morning.
Chan was paying close attention to the competition and noticed that both CNBC and
Bloomberg had broken the embargo. He quickly found out that the Richmond Fed president
leaked the story, and Chan simply didn‘t get the scoop. He quickly scrambled to match the story
online and put something up right away.
The pattern for this story was like many others. First an alert. Then a brief story. Then
additional inserts, or new information got added to the story as the day continued. But after new
information stopped trickling in, the Web editor and Chan paused. A new question entered the
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An embargo is a restriction on when a news organization can make information public. This restriction is set by the
source providing information for the story. Most news organizations will have the same story, and there is almost an
unwritten rule to honor the embargo or risk losing access to the source.
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equation: What would be the ―added value‖ to this online story now that the facts of the story had
stopped trickling in?
Editor Winnie O‘Kelley then started talking to Chan, helping him find ways to
demonstrate how what seemed like a minor move in the federal government could actually have a
significant impact on the country's economic policy. O‘Kelley at that point wanted the "second-
day story.‖ This would be a story that would differentiate Times content from all the other news
outlets that had the information about the Fed move. This second-day story would also feature a
broader angle. The updates had to stop so Chan (2010) would have more time for reporting the
story to get this bigger picture.
―Added value‖ and the ―second-day story‖ are the phrases used to describe the moment
that a Times story stops being a generic story found anywhere on the Web—commodity news—
and instead becomes something editors feel is unique to The Times. And these ―added value‖ and
―second-day‖ stories are destined for the print paper (and, of course, are posted online when
completed). Once freed from updating the story with new information, journalists turn their
attention to more considered reporting for the print edition.
Getting to the point where journalists know to file first to the Web, and for Web editors
and the home page to fire into rapid action, has taken nearly 15 years at The Times. This online
action makes The Times competitive with all the other news outlets, but the print product is often
viewed as the source of differentiation when it comes to text content. The Times‘ online work
distinguishes The Times because it routinely offers multimedia content and updated news that few
news Web sites can compare to.
But when speaking strictly about text updates, the Web site is most often home to
breaking news and features constant change, whereas print production routines favor a static
product. The routines for online journalism are still being ironed out, however, and there are other
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story types beyond breaking news that also showcase the complicated interplay between print and
online. The variations in online routine highlight some of the clearest instances of improvisation,
as people are harnessing new technology to do newswork. Some of what likely had been
improvisation online before my entry into the newsroom has now become more rigid routines,
such as online news production on the business desk. But one of the challenges for online news
is, in fact, making the work more routine so it is manageable in a 24-7 news world.
In Chapter 2, we took a look at how one breaking news story evolved into a more
expansive, second-day story when Graham Bowley wrote about the Goldman Sachs earnings
report. Here we revisit this process again, looking from a granular level how the story itself
actually changed over the course of the day. This chapter also explores how scoops work in an
online world. In contrast to the daily meeting cycle of the print newsroom and daily print
deadlines, the online journalism at The Times operates on a close to 24-7 cycle. The rhythms and
routines for producing this work are considered new routines still in flux because the newsroom
continues to figure out the best way to conduct online journalism. For some perspective, however,
it‘s helpful to begin with how The Times got started in its journey to becoming one of the world‘s
top five most visited news sites (―15 most popular news Web sites: December 2010,‖ 2010).
A Brief History of NYTimes.com
In the 1980s, The Times was one of the most popular electronically delivered
newspapers—by fax (Boczkowski, 2005). The four to six pages of news, features, and editorials
were ultimately not commercially viable, however. During this time, the newspaper also used a
technology called videotex to deliver news electronically to hotels and businesses. People could
get electronic headlines on machines that looked a lot like the present personal computer, but
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most in the newsroom were not devoted to advancing the project, and it failed. (Other newspapers
also experimented with this project and had similar results, as Boczkowski recounts.)
The first major Times initiative to take hold was on America Online. The site was called
@times, and it launched in mid-1994. It featured little original content, though it did include user
forums where readers could discuss news. Consultant Rich Meislin, former editor-in-chief of The
New York Times Electronic Media Company (as it was then called) from 1998 to 2001, noted
that the site was viewed more as a marketing opportunity than as an avenue for growth. The
editorial side of the newsroom had virtually ―no participation at all‖ (personal communication,
May 7, 2010).
By the summer of 1995, people from the newsroom began to get involved in thinking
about the strategy and content for the Web site. But the Web site was an ―after-thought, if it was
thought of at all‖ to most people in the newsroom, according to Bernard Gwertzman, who became
one of the first editors of the Web site (personal communication, May 17, 2010). The Web site
operated in a different building from the rest of The Times. The physical separation of the Times
Web site from the print newsroom continued until 2007, when The Times moved into its new
building.
The official Web site launch was Monday, January 22, 1996. The Times did a test run in
early October 1995 to cover the visit of Pope John Paul II to America, according to Kevin
McKenna, who was at the time editorial director of the Web site. The site included most of the
paper online—what some would refer to as ―shovelware‖ because it repurposed the paper‘s print
content exactly. But the site also included original articles designed to appeal to the Web
audience.
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CyberTimes,
54
created in 1996, was The Times‘ first foray into original online content. As
John Haskins, one of the former editors of CyberTimes, explained:
Most of the people on the Web at that time were early adopters, so we put together a
section about tech culture. We would write technology articles, about one to two a day
about the Internet, and have about four to five columns. There was even a news feature
that would go something like, ‗Camping is easier because you can book your tent on the
Internet.‘
In addition to the columnists, CyberTimes also featured 12 freelancers who wrote about
everything from legal issues to education to e-commerce trends. CyberTimes eventually folded
into the general NYTimes.com Technology section in 1998. As Boczkowski (2005) documents,
the creation of CyberTimes signaled a break from routines to create a new product specifically for
the Web. Journalists had to think in a new way about technology online.
Another step forward for the newspaper was the creation of the continuous news desk,
which was an effort to bring together the print and Web newsroom. The continuous news desk
began in 1999. Its goal was to ―manag[e] a news report on the Web that would extend past the
simple print cycle. The need was to update the Web, and the desire was to do it in a way that
didn‘t overtax the print reporting staff,‖ according to associate managing editor Jim Roberts
(personal communication, April 6, 2010). Roberts notes that this was done in a ―very gentle
way,‖ with one of the premises being that the CND (as it is called in the newsroom) would
―shield reporters from the Web site.‖ CND‘s function was to update content for the Web with
wires and some original reporting while other reporters worked on the main story for print. At
that time, reporters really didn‘t want to be writing for the Web; the perception was that writing
for the Web took away from the deep analysis required for full-scale reporting (and this idea still
endures, to some extent). The idea was to have a handful of reporters updating breaking news,
leaving print reporters to focus on the print story.
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See Boczkowski (2005) for a full account of CyberTimes.
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The September 11, 2001, attacks demonstrated the utility of the CND, according to
Roberts. Reporters could call into the desk and get it instantly on the Web. But there was still
friction between reporters and editors who did not see the online newsroom as part of their role.
Online was still distinct from the print newsroom with ―those online people over there [in that
building],‖ according to one Web producer.
Getting journalist to write for the Web rather than to relying on CND was a slow process,
as many journalists resisted the idea that they should write online. The ethos in the newsroom was
to save the best stuff for the print run of the paper. Journalists wanted to keep the Web site
looking just like the paper. However, around 2002, foreign correspondents and business
journalists were among the first to adapt to writing for the Web, according to assistant managing
editor Susan Edgerley (personal communication, April 2, 2010). Foreign journalists wanted to see
their work online, mostly because they couldn‘t get their work in print. Business journalists saw
the importance of timeliness as they wanted to be competitive with the Journal and other business
news outlets, including the business wires.
Len Apcar, who had become the editor of NYTimes.com in 2002, began sharing with the
newsroom what could be done online. He held regular brownbag lunches where journalists would
say to other journalists, ― ‗I have seen the light‘ and stand up and give their testimony,‖ or
evangelize to other journalists about the benefits of online (personal communication, May 10,
2010). He recalled one particular session when political reporter Kit Seelye described live-
blogging a 2004 presidential debate. ―At the time, a lot of people thought this was heresy,‖ he
said. Apcar brought Web producers to the different desks and introduced them to people in order
to explain what Web producers actually did.
However, as I have noted, the seminal moment for change came when Executive Editor
Bill Keller announced that the print and online newsrooms would merge: His buzzword for it was
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―integration.‖ Print people would eventually take on the responsibilities of Web tasks, but some
others would still be principally devoted to the production of the Web site and its associated
activities. By 2005, however, the cultural change was not just one that had to come from Keller.
Journalists also had to buy into the change. They quickly saw that online was part of the future of
their survival in the industry, according to multiple people I spoke with about the transition to an
online and print newsroom working together.
At this point, The Times was experimenting as an organization with a variety of new
online forms; live-blogging was still a new way to cover events as they unfolded. Blog after blog
sprouted up. But perhaps the most significant example of experimentation was the City Room
blog,
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which began in 2007. The blog was dedicated to up-to-the-minute coverage of New
York‘s metro news. Specific reporters were assigned to be just City Room bloggers; Chan,
incidentally, was the first City Room editor. City Room was a place for experimentation with
multimedia and user comments. Contrary to Times fashion at the time, City Room linked outside
The Times to other Web sites. The goal was to make City Room New Yorkers‘ primary
destination for news about the city.
City Room‘s style was also novel for The Times, with short briefs written in a more
casual style. City Room also took up lighter fare that more serious metro stories might ignore and
focused on original content that would not be in the paper. In short, it was an opportunity for
improvisation, which in turn created new routines as journalists embraced new technology.
Keller explained how internal rewards and examples such as City Room helped the
integration process. ―People would look at what this kid was doing and saw that it was really
neat. We were leading by example in the newsroom. And when someone did something really
great, we let other people know about it‖ (personal communication, May 7, 2010).
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http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/
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Jonathan Landman, the ―integration czar,‖ would go through the newsroom telling people
about the benefits of the Web. He wrote more than 100 emails from 2007-2009 (about one per
week) chronicling The Times‘ progress and development on the Web. His goal was to show
people what could happen online. He said:
I was like the guy in the white coat. If you wanted to start a blog, you could. You didn‘t
have to have meetings or much of anything. I tried to find enthusiasts and cajole different
people, and, yes, there was technical development, but presto, there would be blogs.
(personal communication, May 3, 2010).
The willingness to break from routine, while still sticking to the goals of newswork, is a hallmark
of the improvisation that was taking place within the newsroom at this time.
Still, like any newsroom, there were resistors: people who simply didn‘t want to write
online and never saw it as their duty to do so. But as Edgerley explained, ―Anyone who still
thinks like that has to be on their way out. That‘s just not a sustainable way to think around here
anymore.‖
According to most people I interviewed or shadowed, the biggest change in terms of
integrating what was seen as the ―two newsrooms‖ was the physical movement of The New York
Times in 2007 into the new offices on Eighth Avenue. Web producers actually sat with each desk,
and Web production became a visible process. As reporter Diana Henriques told me, ―I could
actually see who these people were. If I had a problem, I could go talk to them‖ (field notes,
January 20, 2010).
Keller described the changes this way:
Integrating was more than a matter of administration and getting us all in same building.
A lot of it was psychological and cultural, impressing upon people who thought that what
they were trying to do was write a story for the front page of newspaper to think more in
terms of home page of [the] Web site and to appreciate the value of blogging, to look at
video and audio and slide shows and interactive graphics, not as something someone else
did to decorate journalism but as really journalism in [its] own right. I don‟t claim on any
front, administration, jurisdictionally, culturally, psychologically, that we are one big,
happy family, but we are a lot closer than we were.
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But the reality of journalism also helped, in his view:
In a funny way, the euphemism [of] the „challenging‟ economic environment in [the]
newspaper business helped motivate people to [change]. [People realized that] a lot of
[the] Web is the future, and print is in trouble, [so] “I better get with program, I better
figure this out and see if there are skills that I should learn.” There was some small
element of professional insecurity that helped stir people into embrace the Web more
fully.
Notably, during the period of integration that Keller and others speak about, the primary
motive driving integration was not one that clearly imagined the audience as the newly
participatory reader. Instead, competition, survival, and internal reward were more important to
encouraging integration.
Is There Still a Web Newsroom?
Looking at the organizational structure of the Web newsroom helps reveal the
connections between print production and online production. The ―integration‖ is not a complete
one, and a separate Web newsroom masthead still exists at The Times.
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But this Web newsroom
is crucial for enabling the rhythms and routines of online news production. Similarly, the Web
newsroom originates much of the experimentation at The Times, particularly with regard to
multimedia.
The Web newsroom may be thought of as a way to organize personnel, but the titles on
the masthead make little sense for what people actually do. This is just one example of the post-
Fordist flexibility in action at The Times. There are about 68 Web producers, described as senior
producer, chief producer, producer, and news assistant. There are some Web producers who are
explicitly concerned with actually moving the content produced by traditional journalists onto the
Web content management system. Then there are Web producers who are given more time and
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http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/webmasthead.html.Following my departure, The Times Web
newsroom was officially dispersed in November 2010 as Web journalists were placed into individual departments.
However, the metaphorical question about the existence of the Web newsroom still remains.
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freedom to produce what we think of as multimedia features: slide shows of pictures, interactive
graphics that allow a user to scroll over a graphic and engage with the material, Web video, and
beyond. Some Web producers both produce multimedia content and place content online, like
most of the Web producers on the business desk. Other Web producers are extremely influential
because they are directly responsible for making the minute-to-minute decisions of what goes up
during the day on the home page. Still other Web producers are concerned with the back-end
development of NYTimes.com, and think about the actual computer science and development
questions behind the creation of the Web site.
Web producers also keep a schedule that departs from the daily newsroom schedule most
reporters and editors keep. Web producers on the business desk had three shifts: the 6 a.m.-1 p.m.
shift, the 1 p.m.-6 p.m. shift, and the 7 p.m.-2 a.m. shift. In the graveyard hours, The Times has a
Web producer take over from about 2 a.m. to 6 a.m., when there are but a handful of people in the
building. Thus the Web newsroom is 24 hours. In contrast, reporters and editors may work a day
schedule (which can be a 12-hour day), and then a shift of night editors comes in at 2 p.m. and
stays until the paper closes at 12:30 a.m. Copy editors also generally come to work around 2 or 3
p.m., though some now come in as early as 7 a.m. to accommodate the influx of news posted
online during the day.
On a day-to-day basis, Web producers charged with getting content on to the site are engaged in
constant conversation with the Web editors on each desk. These Web editors are a link between
traditional newsroom production and online production. Mark Getzfred, the Web editor for the
business desk, gives directions to the Web producer about where to place stories on the Web
page, though the Web producer has some latitude over certain elements of production. Daily
workflow online has resulted in the adoption of a new variety of routines for Web production and
for considering how to distribute specific stories. I will now detail what some of these rhythms
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are like, showcasing how these routines also provide opportunities for improvisation in the
newsroom.
Breaking News Stories in the Online World: Rhythms and Coordination
Breaking news stories are one of the best illustrations of intersections of the print and
Web newsroom. Furthermore, breaking news also showcases the demands of online journalism
on reporters and editors. The monthly jobs report, a routine story, doesn‘t leave much time for the
journalist to add details for the Web that enrich the story beyond news that is already prepared.
But with more time for writing and reporting, the online updates grow more distinct, illustrating
the potential for improvisation within the existing routine. Reporter Peter Goodman‘s efforts on
March 5, 2010, showcase some of these points. However, the question remains: Did the time set
aside for improvisation really result in a story that could not be found elsewhere—a ―value-
added‖ article?
News about the government‘s jobs report is a scheduled story that is planned for days in
advance. As Javier Hernandez, the continuous news desk reporter assigned to the business desk
put it, ―You kind of get a sense during the week whether the numbers are going to be good or bad.
You don‘t know what the numbers are, but you can kind of get a sense of it from talking to
people about how the economy has been going,‖ (field notes, March 4, 2010). Hernandez
prepares the B matter for the jobs story in the days leading up to the report, which is always
released on the first Friday of each month. The goal is for Hernandez to be able to put up the
story as soon as it breaks.
He explained to me that he collects quotes from people who say ―the jobless rate is good‖
or ―the jobless rate is bad,‖ so he has a collection of quotes that can be used depending on what
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happens with the jobless rate. He joked to me, ―We always try to find at least one unemployed
person for this before the story gets written.‖ Humor aside, he was also quite serious about this.
On March 5, 2010, Web editor Mark Getzfred and Hernandez were ready for the
unemployment numbers. At 8:30 a.m., these numbers first came up on the Department of Labor
Web site, and CNBC nearly instantly repeated the numbers on the air. Getzfred sent an instant
message to the home page editor so he could put up an alert across the top of the home page.
Hernandez put the numbers into his B matter. Peter Goodman, the main writer on the
story, came over to Hernandez to hear the numbers. In February 2010, job losses were down,
from 109,000 in January to losses of 36,000. The unemployment rate remained steady.
The first lead for the story at 8:47 a.m. looked like this: ―Friday‘s losses were less than
the estimates by economists, who said that a series of winter storms were likely to affect the
employment numbers.‖ There were a few typos in this first story, including a stray comma and an
extra space, and a sharp-eyed reader has alerted The Times about the typo.
Hernandez added another update at 9:26 a.m., putting the news in perspective of the past
few weeks of economic data. The lead changed: ―Just as unemployment in the United States
seemed to be abating, the government said Friday that the economy was hit with another round of
job losses last month.‖ He then added this section to the story, with an analyst‘s comment:
The job losses reported Friday were less that [sic] the consensus estimate of a 68,000
decline for February.
At a time when doubts about the recovery are surfacing, the report did not offer a clear
snapshot of the economy‘s underlying health. Analysts generally expect the jobs market
to improve this year, but only at a grudging pace.
Hernandez contributed another update at 9:31 a.m. with additional tweaks in the lead. All
of these changes were monitored by Getzfred. The new lead: ―The economy lost fewer jobs than
expected, the government reported Friday, bolstering hopes that a still-sputtering recovery is
beginning to gain momentum.‖
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Getzfred encouraged Hernandez to start adding something to make the story different
from just another story on the Web about unemployment. Getzfred instructed Hernandez to start
putting in something ―value-added.‖ Hernandez then added a section about a company that had
people banging down the doors to get jobs. He also ended the story with an unemployed worker
trying to make ends week. However, Hernandez pre-reported these anecdotes days earlier, so
whether this differentiation actually reflected new insight merits some critique. Still, other stories
on competing sites were just providing the facts about the report.
The headlines changed rapidly over the course of the morning. The first headline was
―36,000 Jobs Lost in February; Rate Steady at 9.7 percent‖ and was posted at 8:47 a.m. At 9:31,
the headline changed to ―U.S. Job Losses in February Obscure View of Recovery.‖ Ten minutes
later, the headline changed again to ―Jobless Rate Holds Steady, Raising Hopes of Recovery.‖
The lead completely changed its tone—from ―hit with job losses‖ to ―grudging pace‖ to a ―still-
sputtering recovery beginning to gain momentum.‖
Part of the reason for this positive turn in the headline was that Goodman was more
experienced in interpreting these numbers. But that doesn‘t entirely explain the change of
emphasis. Getzfred and assigning editor Dan Niemi have seen years‘ worth of jobs reports, but
they did not change the lead when they were working with the numbers to post the story online as
quickly as possible. One possible explanation for not seeing the underlying meaning behind these
numbers was that they were caught up in constantly updating the story. The step-back analysis
may have required someone who was not involved in the minute-to-minute updating of the story
to step back and ask, ―What do these numbers really mean?‖
Goodman, the senior economics reporter, took over the story around 10 a.m. His goal was
to begin sharpening the story for the print edition and adding more substantial analysis, though he
would be also be providing more online updates. He was also working on an online update that
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could also be used by the International Herald Tribune for its print edition. This meant a 1 p.m.
deadline for Paris‘ 7 p.m. print deadline. Here, the online deadline was helping print production
for a global print edition of The Times.
Goodman quickly began the task of broadening the story beyond the numbers and the
pre-written B matter. Editor Winnie O‘Kelley took over the direction of the story from Web
editor Mark Getzfred now that the constant updates were over. Goodman was excited. ―This is
great: I‘ve got Dean Baker, this huge bear, telling me that this is good news.‖ The lead changed
again, and Goodman becomes the sole author on the byline for the article. The first four
paragraphs of his story changed to this around 11 a.m.:
The American economy lost fewer jobs than expected last month and the unemployment
rate remained steady at 9.7 percent, the Labor Department reported Friday, bolstering
hopes that a still-tenuous recovery may be starting to gain momentum.
The government‘s monthly snapshot of the job market found that another 36,000 jobs
disappeared in February—hardly cause for a celebration.
Yet compared to the monthly losses of more than 650,000 jobs a year ago, and against
backdrop of recent news that increased the possibility of a slide back into recession, most
economists construed the report as a sign of improvement.
―It‘s strikingly good,‖ said Dean Baker, a director of the Center for Economic and Policy
Research in Washington, who has been notably skeptical of signs of recovery in recent
months. ―It‘s much better than it had been looking.‖
The analysis was starting to take shape. Goodman had a good three hours since getting into the
office to analyze the trends in the data and to begin taking the story in his own direction.
Goodman added additional analysis as the Paris deadline edged closer:
Even as the report eased worries that the economy might teeter back toward a decline, it
did little to dislodge the widespread notion that the recession has given way to a weak
and uncertain expansion, one that is unlikely to provide the robust growth in hiring
needed to cut significantly into the teeming ranks of the jobless.
Some 15 million Americans remained officially unemployed in February, and more than
4 in 10 had been mired there for longer than six months. The so-called underemployment
rate—which counts people whose hours have been cut and those working part-time for
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lack of full-time positions, along with those out of work—reached 16.8 percent of the
work force, up from 16.5 percent in January.
This version was 950 words and would be printed in the International Herald Tribune. The
version would also remain the online version for most of the workday.
After working on this deadline, Goodman had to prepare for multimedia. Jane
Bornemeier, who was directing the Web video, ordered Goodman and O‘Kelley into a corner.
The shoot required several takes because Goodman complained he felt his posture was unnatural.
O‘Kelley interviewed Goodman about a few subjects: the debate between economists; recovery in
particular sectors of the economy; whether this was a positive or negative report. These questions,
incidentally, became part of the larger print story.
Goodman was then instructed to go up to the podcast booth. Jeff Sommer interviewed
Goodman about the report. Goodman told me at the time that he enjoyed the podcast moment
because could talk more freely about the story and said that it helped him develop his ideas for
the story. These multimedia moments are not yet routine for traditional journalists; though they
are increasingly part of the daily process of a big, front-page story, not everyone knows how
multimedia will fit into their day. Nor is there necessarily a standard idea in print journalists‘
heads for what they are supposed to do with respect to Web video—as illustrated, perhaps, by the
need for multiple takes. Incorporating multimedia into the news process is at this point an
improvisation—something new and different. But as time passes, it will be likely that the type of
improvisation in multimedia for daily breaking stories will be limited to more elemental changes
and variations as multimedia expectations become more clearly defined and more integrated into
daily workflow.
For instance, in the midst of these multimedia demands, Goodman still had to fit in
traditional reporting and excused himself to fit in a call from U.S. Secretary of Labor Hilda L.
Solis. He saved this comment for his larger print story. Goodman also worked with the photo
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editor to think about pictures, which they realized they should have thought about the day before
so they could have assigned someone to take photographs of people lined up at temp agencies in
the wee hours of the morning. O‘Kelley then came over to tell Goodman that the president was
speaking on ―green jobs‖ and that Goodman should probably include this in the story.
In a sign that Goodman has this rhythm of updating the online story and then writing the
print story down to a science, he actually took off for the gym for two hours, between
approximately noon and 2 p.m. He noted that there wasn‘t much more he could do for the big-
picture story until he knew what the Page One meeting wanted from him. This well-ironed
routine likely took considerable experimentation and involved uncertainty before it was
perfected—what was non-routine at first became predictable enough to go to the gym.
Goodman came back from the gym and immediately began making phone calls. After the
Page One meeting at 4 p.m., O‘Kelley came over to talk to Goodman, concerned that his lead was
―too feature-y.‖ For the majority of the day, the lead had been hard-news driven, but Goodman
had been trying to take the story in a more thoughtful direction. Nevertheless, the editors from the
Page One meeting did want Peter to ―spin ahead‖ the story to forecast what the numbers meant
for the future, but they still wanted the hard-news story.
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Goodman started adding new information to frame the jobs report as a debate about
recovery between economists with the following paragraph:
But the report did little to resolve contrasting views of the basic dynamics at play, with
economists in roughly two camps. Some say a now-tepid economic recovery will
eventually become vigorous; others envision a long slog through relatively anemic
growth. Optimists point to modest expansion on the factory floor and continued increases
among temporary workers (whose ranks rose by 48,000 in February) as a sign that
commerce has reawakened.
The final story was posted to the Web at 9 p.m. Goodman did not update the story for the Web
aside from his International Herald Tribune update. During the course of the day, he spoke to the
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Hard news is news that deals with serious or formal topics.
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labor secretary and a number of economists, analyzed economic data, and thought about ways to
advance the story—even to the point at which the hard news had become ―too feature-y.‖
Online journalism demanded the quick story, the instant interpretation. But the print story
demanded the attention of a journalist uninterrupted by constant updates. In this case, there was
even a second reporter writing the online updates so Goodman could focus on broadening the
story. The story (Goodman and Hernandez, 2010) did not change much from the International
Herald Tribune version, but Goodman added information about Obama and consumer
confidence, and dug deeper into the different implications for all of the sectors of the economy.
The jobs report reveals specific online patterns for a ―known‖ breaking news story. The
reporter charged with the initial story was actually a member of the continuous news desk
assigned to the business desk. This is a bit of an anachronism that recalls the early days of the
CND. Nonetheless, the imperatives of the online journalism process were clear: to get the news
out fast. But the desire for a more ―original‖ and thoughtful story could only be truly provided not
from Hernadez‘s B matter but once Goodman was able to talk to various sources, analyze the
numbers, and consider other breaking news related to the subject. Despite what Boczkowski
(2010) has said about the homogenization of news in an online world, Goodman never once
checked any other news organizations to see what they were writing about the unemployment
numbers. At no point during the day did anyone come over to Goodman and say that another
news outlet was covering an angle that Goodman didn‘t have.
Despite all of this time for reflection, the story in The Wall Street Journal on the same
topic looked remarkably similar. The New York Times story had 500 extra words of more analysis
than the Wall Street Journal (Dougherty, 2010) and was organized differently. But they were
nearly identical stories from the beginning. Consider the lead few paragraphs of the New York
Times story (Goodman and Hernandez, 2010):
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The American economy lost fewer jobs than expected last month, bolstering hopes that
the worst may finally be over in the wrenching event known as the Great Recession.
The monthly snapshot of the job market released by the Labor Department on Friday was
hardly cause for celebration: about 36,000 jobs disappeared from the economy in
February, while the unemployment rate remained unchanged at 9.7 percent.
Yet compared with monthly job losses of more than 650,000 a year earlier, and against a
backdrop of recent news viewed as pointing to the possibility of a slide back into
recession, most economists construed the report as a sign that a tenuous recovery might
be gaining momentum.
“It‟s strikingly good,” said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and
Policy Research in Washington, who has been skeptical about earlier signs of recovery.
“It‟s much better than it had been looking.”
The February job losses followed a drop of 26,000 in January. Most experts now expect
the economy to begin steadily gaining jobs during the spring, as employers edge toward
hiring.
Now consider the Wall Street Journal story (Dougherty 2010):
The Labor Department's closely watched employment report, released Friday, suggests
the nation's unemployment rate, which peaked at 10.1% in October, has hit a plateau as
employers gain confidence in the economic recovery.
Employers still shed 36,000 jobs last month. But many economists say the U.S. would
have added jobs if not for the snowstorms that kept people from working and potential
employers from hiring. The unemployment rate was flat at 9.7% last month, while a
steady rise in temporary workers and job gains across a spectrum of private-sector
industries showed companies are growing more willing to hire.
Upbeat signs in the labor market cheered Wall Street and sent oil prices higher. The new
report suggests January's drop in the unemployment rate wasn't a fluke. Indeed, the new
report also showed that the number of workers facing long-term unemployment fell.
"There's a good chance we're at the turning point for unemployment," said Bruce Meyer,
an economics professor at the University of Chicago.
Both stories also featured a similar tale of someone unemployed.
Was ―added value‖ really ―added value‖? Were Goodman and O‘Kelley under the
illusion that they were producing something original when the two leads of the competing stories
read so similarly? The Times wants to avoid commodity news, but this was one story that every
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news organization was going to have. Goodman explained to me what he saw as the similarities
and differences in a later email conversation:
Stating the obvious—the stories are similar because they are written off the same set of
data at the same point in time about the same thing: the unemployment rate. I am
assuming the Journal reporter called up a range of economists and asked them to
interpret the data and got similar responses. I then tried to use the data as a jumping off
point for a broader discussion about the future of the economy. (personal communication,
October 8, 2010)
Still, there was improvisation at work. Goodman was making particular choices about
whom to call, deciding what angles to take, and thinking with his editor about what might make
the story interesting. But these very same conversations were happening across town—with the
exception being Peter‘s attempt to broaden the story in his last 500 words. The relationship
between print and online is clear in this routine for breaking news. The online story was quick,
rushed, competitive, and constantly updated with the latest news. The print story was carefully
considered. But the two stories eventually converge, as the print story ends up online. Both print
and online want the same type of story at the end of the day—a final look at the day‘s news.
Goodman understands the pattern he must follow so well for this particular story that he can even
take a break in the middle of the day. In this regard, we can see how a new routine has formed
around the production of a breaking story.
“The Scoop”
Another type of story that illustrates online rhythms is a ―scoop.‖ Historically, a scoop
has been defined as a news story gathered and distributed before another news organization has
the chance to find out about it. A scoop might come from an investigative report, such as news
about Governor David Paterson. On the business desk, I observed two types of scoops that
illustrated how online routines have yet to be formalized, and how these routines can lead to both
flexibility and confusion. In the instance discussed here, The Times had an exclusive story about
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how Goldman Sachs often appeared to be betting against its own clients in an effort to maximize
profits for Goldman.
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The story demonstrates that timing can be particularly difficult to
anticipate when producing news in the online world.
Online distribution means that editors have to be particularly careful not to put out stories
that can easily be matched by another news outlet for that news outlet‘s print edition. If another
news outlet is able to match the story, this decreases the value of The Times having something
new and different. While my research did not investigate whether scoops matter to the general
public, I do know that scoops matter internally. The Times prided itself on being able to deliver
news that no one else had, and when The Journal had stories that The Times missed, there was
collective disappointment about not also having the story.
In late May, reporters covering Goldman discovered that Goldman‘s clients were worried
that Goldman had ―dueling roles‖ both in gaining profit for itself and in making sure its clients
were making a profit. These two goals would seem to benefit both parties. However, Goldman
was ―shorting‖ the very toxic assets clients wanted them to sell—or betting against their clients.
As such, Goldman was putting its own interest ahead of its clients. The reporters had documents
proving that particular clients, such as Washington Mutual, were concerned (Morgenson and
Story, 2010).
On May 18, 2010, O‘Kelley told the editors at the morning meeting that Page One editors
wanted to see the story right away so it could go up on the Web as soon as possible. ―They want
client on the desk now,‖ she said, referring to the story slug. But the story wasn‘t actually posted
on the Web until the evening for a number of reasons, some competitive and some having to do
with online rhythms and concerns.
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Goldman is an investment bank, so it helps other companies make investments, but it also is a bank itself that also
has its own shares and trading desk.
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O‘Kelley explained to me that there was a strategy that affected when ―client‖ was placed
on the Web site. She noted, ―If you put the story up at 6 p.m., you give the competition more
time.‖ But the story was also complicated, and putting it on the Web before it was ready might
even have been dangerous for the newspaper. ―It‘s a story you don‘t want to rush. It was carefully
lawyered,‖ she told me the next day.
The story went up on the Web site at 9 p.m., past the early print deadline of The Journal.
The reporter who had gathered up the long paper trail of documents agreed with the editors that
the documents could and should be available online to the public to bolster the story,
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but that
they should not go up at the same time as the story. If the documents went up too soon, they could
give other journalists at rival news organizations a chance to write their own credible, document-
based stories. As a result, these documents were posted at midnight. The Times alone had the
scoop.
O‘Kelley tried to explain how the strategy worked:
It depends on a story. When it‘s a matchable story and there‘s direct competition, we still
hold things back, but it doesn‘t happen that often. This was one of these cases where we
had to weigh the competitive point for how easy it was for The Journal to match it.
A number of conflicting online priorities are revealed through this Goldman example.
First, there was pressure for the story to be put online immediately—this time from top editors.
But business pushed back, concerned about competition. So here emerges a question that flowed
through many of these scoops: Was The Times going to put its stories out before the print
deadline, or was it going to wait and publish these scoops after someone else could get them?
Many in the newsroom told me that The Times ―used to‖ wait on scoops and publish things after
the print deadlines, but increasingly The Times was more trigger-happy online.
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In the past, putting up exclusive documents was simply not possible. Now, thanks to the Web, journalists often put
up documents that they have collected from their investigative efforts as further proof of their reporting.
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Still, this example illustrates how some parts of the newsroom were focused on
immediacy whereas others were concerned about originality and competition. But the tension
between immediacy and ownership of the story is particularly relevant. The decisions about when
to put stories online requires improvisation on the part of editors who as of yet have no clear rules
and routines about when best to put stories up; each story seems to present a different case for
consideration.
Life on Producing the Business Page
A look at the 24-7 cycle of the business page from the perspective of the Web producer
helps illustrate the relationship between print and online. Furthermore, this review demonstrates
the decisions that Web producers and Web editors make when determining whether content is
―fresh‖ and ―new‖ and when content should stay on the Web page for a longer period. Web
producers and the Web editor make decisions about each story‘s potential importance; the process
is a routine one as each story goes through a similar procedure when Web producers and Web
editors determine its worth online. This is a new routine, however, that has developed in response
to the perceived need to keep the Web site looking freshly updated for readers and more dynamic
than the competition.
I spent multiple days watching Web producers post content online. Their jobs changed as
I watched these journalists over the course of my research; they were responsible for new
imperatives from editors, and they had to adapt to the restructuring of the business Web page.
These renegotiations required improvisation from these journalists, who were straying from
existing patterns to create the Web product. And depending on the time of day and the particular
stories, their ability to exercise their own news judgment shifted; when the Web editors were not
present, Web producers had more authority to make changes to the Web page. Ultimately,
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however, the Web producers still took many of their cues from the decisions made by editors or
from the print paper.
Web producer Kelly Couturier is responsible for the 6 a.m.–1 p.m. shift on the business
news desk. When she comes in during the morning, she is usually the only one on the business
desk. The day I spent with her on May 20, 2010, underscored how The Times is part of a global
flow of operations from the International Herald Tribune to Times content. Early in the morning,
Couturier was communicating with the business editor from the International Herald Tribune‘s
Europe edition. Her efforts were primarily directed toward organizing the ―global business‖ Web
section. Still, she began readjusting the main business Web page, removing content that had been
up on the Web page since the previous evening and replacing it with more news from Europe and
Asia. This was done at her own discretion.
When New York editors came in around 8 a.m., Couturier began deferring to their
judgment. Her impulse to put a story about teachers facing their worst funding crisis in years up
on the page was rejected. Kevin McKenna, deputy business editor, instructed her that this was
―mostly public sector workers.‖
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McKenna also began giving her ideas about particular blog
posts to try to push for the home page—to give them ―home page love.‖ Couturier, however, had
the freedom to tweak the Web headlines as the stories came in, and to change the small
summaries that follow each Web headline.
The first two screen shots showcase how Couturier changed the Business Day Web page
over the course of the morning. In the first screen shot, taken at 6:57 a.m., most of the previous
day‘s stories from the newspaper are still in prominent places on the Web page. By 10:40 a.m.,
the look of the Web page has changed, with new stories appearing in prominent places. The third
screen shot illustrates how the Business Day Web page has completely changed by 11 in the
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Notably, the business section has run a number of stories about pension problems for state workers.
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evening, with new stories fresh for the print paper. For instance, the big story in the early morning
is about whistle-blowers. By mid-morning, the main story is about European stocks. And by the
late evening, the main story is about the Senate passing the financial regulation bill.
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Figure 5: NYTimes.com, Business Day Web Page, May 20, 2010, 6:57 A.M. Reprinted with
permission.
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Figure 6: NYTimes.com Business Day Web Page, May 20, 2010, 10:41 A.M. Reprinted with
permission.
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Figure 7: NYTimes.com Business Day Web Page, May 20, 2010,11:11 P.M. Reprinted with
permission.
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For the process of actually getting content online, Web producers engaged in the daily
production process are specifically charged with taking the stories that have been sent from The
Times‘ print-content management system to the Web production platform. From this Web
platform, they ―rank‖ stories according to their importance, determining what will show up on the
page first. The producers‘ responsibilities include keeping the Web page looking ―clean‖—that is,
they must limit the number of summaries after the headlines. Web editor Mark Getzfred will
often provide suggestions about tightening headlines and summaries. Web producers select
images to accompany stories and use various tools to resize these images for the Web page.
Notably, Web producers are generally left to choose their own photos for the Web page, generally
without the input of photo editors.
Web producers are in constant communication with the home page, suggesting possible
stories deserving of home page attention to the home page producer. Nudging the home page
producer and editors is important because mentions on the home page can drive traffic to the
stories. All of this communication takes place over AOL Instant Messenger. The language over
IM is also almost in code, with Web producers referring to stories in ―slug‖ terms. Getzfred often
offers instructions about which stories to recommend to the home page.
The Web producer also functions as another set of eyes on the Web page. On the day I
observed Web producers Danielle Belopotosky and Tanzina Vega split the afternoon shift (field
notes, January 19, 2010), I watched as Belopotosky found a spelling and spacing error in the
story. She found this error because the copy desk hadn‘t had a chance to see the story, as it was
still early in the morning.
Copy editors are not involved in editing Web summaries once they go up on the page.
They are also not involved in writing Web headlines. These duties are left to the Web producers.
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In this regard, Web producers are given tremendous latitude to craft what many people‘s first
impression will be about a story when they write this web summary.
The Web site, then, is edited in a more instant fashion than the print paper. As Gerry
Mullany, the news editor who oversees the night Web production, told me about the home page
producers, ―I trust them because they are also very fine copy editors and journalists. They may
not be copy editors, but if there‘s a mistake, we can change it. But these guys don‘t really make
mistakes‖ (personal communication, April 5, 2010).
Another task of the Web producers is to make sure that mistakes are corrected properly.
Vega noted, ―You can‘t just delete [mistakes] from the Web and pretend it never happened. Some
people say it‘s not like the paper, but we still published it, it‘s still us.‖ Her comment suggested to
me a theme I heard throughout the newsroom: Typos didn‘t matter, but mistakes such as numbers
or facts did—and if there were mistakes in online stories that were being quickly updated, The
Times would place corrections underneath the story.
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Just before 4 p.m., the Web editor and Web producer prepare for the ―scrape‖ of the
business Web page content. The editor works with the Web producer to make sure stories are on
the page in the order that will best reflect the day‘s new judgment for the online news letter sent
out each day as the ―Afternoon Update.‖ This ―Afternoon Update‖ includes stories from the
entire newspaper, but has a section devoted to business. If stories from business are on the home
page, then the ―scrape‖ will automatically go further down the list of business Web page stories.
The Web producers are also integral to the 24-7 cycle because they communicate to the
next shift of Web producers what stories take priority. The biggest change is the night ―handoff‖
meeting. There are two of these meetings. One meeting is at 5:15 and features the day Web
producers. The second meeting is at 7 p.m. and features the night Web producers. Run by night
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The percentage of online corrections that appear in the small print section devoted to corrections would be an
interesting area of future research, but I did not devote much attention to this.
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editor Mullany, this meeting is intended to give each producer some idea of what other news
desks have on their pages. Because the Web pages can have overlap (a metro story about
Starbucks can appear on the business Web page and on the metro page), producers have to know
about these stories in order to ―rank‖ them on each page. These meetings are also important
because they give the home page producers a chance to hear about the top news. The Web
producers also talk about the multimedia that their desks have produced, with the intention of
encouraging the home page producer to give the multimedia some time on the home page.
The morning and afternoon Web producer jobs follow a steady routine of producing
stories based on the news judgment of the Web editor and other backfield editors, principally
Getzfred and McKenna. The editors are vigilant about keeping track of the site. The Web
producers are in constant conversation, offering advice about which stories seem to have been on
the site for too long, but they ultimately defer to Getzfred and McKenna. The patterns that have
developed illustrate the way in which The Times has made the use of new technology an
embedded practice in the organization; grand-scale improvisation is not required (though it likely
was before) because Web producers know what their expectations are on the business desk each
day. But more elemental, daily improvisation still occurs because of the need to adapt to new
news stories.
Web production at night is different because the Web producers have more indirect
communication from editors on the business desk about where stories should be placed on the
Web page. These Web editors do not sit near the business desk, but instead sit on the third floor
and spend from 6:30 p.m. to 2 a.m. producing stories. In compensation for the lack of direct
communication from editors, the Web producers have the dress page to guide their news
decision-making. They also know which stories have made Page One. As a result, their decisions
about where stories are placed on the Web page are influenced by the print cycle. However, these
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night Web editors must also consider what stories have had too much prominence throughout the
day and reduce the presence of these stories online, even if they are significant stories in the print
newspaper.
On the business desk, the night Web producers are provided with a hand-off note that
offers them some additional instructions. Here is an example of the email they receive before
starting their shift (field notes, April 1, 2010).
Biz/Tech night producer: Cate Doty x1424
Biz night editor: Keith Leighty x5828
On A1: GARNISH
Leading Dress Page: EMIT, GADGET, YUAN, GOOGLE, AUSTERITY, NORRIS
AdSked: NETFLIX, AIG, BANKRUPTCY
Embargoes: BANKRUPTCY (exclusive) *10pm embargo*
Online only: ASIAECON, RATES, AIG, CREDIT
Slug Notes:
- CARBON is up in IHT form—please replace with CCI version
- TIMES replaces Media Decoder post up now
Multimedia:
- Video with GADGET story—scoop slug: ipad. The headline is ―To iPad or
Not to iPad‖ (there is another Pogue video slugged iPad—so just to avoid
confusion)
- TimesCast segment should also go with GADGET story. Slug is:
decoderapril1
Questionable IHT Stories:
- Don‘t produce 02iht-EMIT—see 02CARBON
Technology:
GADGET—should be produced as technology and lede the page.
GOOGLE—is up
NETFLIX—from biz/media can also go on tech.
Thanks and have a great night!
Laurie
This confusing note offered night producer Cate Doty
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important information that helps
her make decisions about how to rank stories on the business Web page. From this note, she
could tell which stories are going on A1 and which stories will be on the dress page. These are the
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The night producers are not assigned to particular desks. As such, Doty will also, for instance, spend a few days a
week producing the Web page for the national desk or the foreign desk. These night producers switch around because
they say that their jobs are monotonous without a variation in routine and content.
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stories she knew would be the most important stories. The ―Adsked‖ tells her stories that were
added over the course of the day. The embargos tell Doty the time that she would be allowed to
produce the story online, or put it up on the page. Online-only stories suggest stories of lesser
importance because they have not made the print paper. Doty is also charged with producing the
global business page as well as the technology home page, so there are additional notes. There is
also language about how to treat International Herald Tribune stories, which come to The Times‘
print content management system over a different software program. Other relevant notes are
production notes about where to place multimedia so Doty will be sure these get put with the
appropriate stories.
After attending the 7 p.m. turnaround meeting, Doty printed out a daily budget of the
business news stories. Doty began her day by decreasing the importance of a dress page story that
had appeared in a prominent place on the Web page all day. The editors had considered this
important enough to appear on the dress page, but it was stale news for online purposes. Most of
Doty‘s job is to make sure that stories coming from the copy desk at night get good placement
online. If a story has multimedia, it is her duty to make sure the home page knows about the story
so it can get featured on the page. All of this communication, again, happens through IM.
When the print newspaper is close to its first edition, Doty generally prints out the proofs
of the print business section and Page One. She tries to make sure the headlines on the Web
match the headlines in the print paper as closely as possible. She also tries to make sure that every
story that has a picture in the print paper also has a picture online.
Again, just as Couturier had communication from the International Herald Tribune, Doty
also is part of this global cycle. Doty generally hears from the International Herald Tribune‘s
online Asia editor around 11 p.m. The focus is generally on the Asian markets story, but this is
not generally considered big news unless there is more than a 1 percent to 2 percent variation in
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the markets. The 24-7 cycle, then, has already involved three sections of the world: Europe in the
morning, the U.S. during the New York day, and then Asia, as New York prepares to close for the
night.
Over the course of the evening, Doty spends much of her time getting rid of old stories
and ranking, or ordering, stories that are new. In the evening, the copy desk writes Web
summaries, but most of these Web summaries are too long or written in the wrong tense (past
tense instead of present tense for the Web). According to Doty, these summaries might be fine for
a print reader, but they sometimes don‘t make sense for a Web reader scanning a headline.
Unlike during the day, when Getzfred or McKenna would be following the progress of
the Web producer, the night Web producer is making many judgments on her own. During the
night, the final person looking at the page is the Web producer. A night editor might occasionally
make a comment about a particular story, but this is rare. And most of the night editors are gone
by 12:30 a.m.
The night Web producers do receive a copy edit that isn‘t officially from The Times. It is
called a ―Cowling Note,‖ and it is written by a professor who works for The Times over the
summer as a copy editor. He goes through each section‘s page looking for Times style errors, and
the Web producers cannot go home until they receive this note. Nonetheless, even after this note,
Doty usually remains at The Times until 1:30 or 2 a.m. and receives instructions from the
International Herald Tribune‘s Asia online business editor. During the true graveyard shift, the 2
a.m. to 6 a.m. shift, two or three Web producers are staffed to monitor content for all the Web
pages. But the newsroom is back to full swing by 6 a.m.
For morning, afternoon, and night Web production, the producer is generally filling a
routine that involves simply pushing content onto the business Web page. The room for
improvisation comes when the Web producers have the opportunities to write headlines and to
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write Web summaries. But as the night shift revealed, the headlines at the end of the evening
should be a close match to what ultimately appears in the newspaper. Copy editors take over
some of the latitude Web producers have in writing the Web summaries once the evening shift
begins—and Web producers are left to editing these summaries. Web producers can exercise
some news judgment about what stories are important and which stories can stay on the Web
page, but they must take their cues either from spoken direction from the business editors or from
the print newspaper itself. Interestingly, the most ―copy-edited‖ version of the Web page is the
midnight page, after Doty (or another night editor) receives the ―Cowling Note,‖ though once
more Asia news starts to flow in, the Web page can again change.
The Web production process also reveals some of the values of online journalism at The
Times. Journalists are concerned with keeping content on the Web page looking fresh. The
reason? Readers. The imperative was to keep the Web page looking different in case readers
came back and wanted something new and different. Despite what Boczkowski (2010) argues
about homogenization and the focus of online news organizations trying to match the
competition, the process of ranking and selecting stories for online placement had little to do with
competitors. The discussion was mostly an internal reflection of what The Times wished to
prioritize. The daily print discussions guide online journalism decisions, especially close to the
end of the day as the night Web producer tries to prioritize stories. But during the day, editors are
looking to keep the page dynamic, as the screen shots from different points in day indicate.
Life Behind the Home Page
Though the Web producer has more limited opportunities for decision-making or
improvisation, the home page producer has an entirely different mandate. The home page
producer has considerable flexibility to reshape how people see Times content. NYTimes.com has
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38 million unique visitors a month (EbizMBA, 2010), with many readers checking in throughout
the day. This is in comparison to the average weekly circulation of the print edition, which is a
little less than 1 million.
The home page producer has considerable latitude in deciding how long stories stay alive
on the home page, when these stories move down to headlines rather than having Web
summaries, and which stories get to have big pictures. During the day, the home page producer is
in constant motion, trying to refresh the page. In the evening, the home page producer slows
down and spends more time trying to reflect the decisions of the print paper. Ironically, the home
page most resembles the print paper at the end of the night.
The home page producer, like the business Web producer, has consistent routines that
help guide production. But unlike the business Web producer, the home page producer has much
more of an opportunity to decide what readers will find important without the constant
supervision of a team of editors. Both during the day and in the evening, the home page producers
rely on self-made time guidelines to help them keep track of when to put new content on the
page. But they are putting new content together into a single assemblage with no predetermined
order on a minute-by-minute basis; in this way, the home page producers are improvising to a
much greater degree than anyone in print production or anyone working for the business Web
page.
Unlike the Page One meeting, which takes 40 people to decide on a final product, the
home page is often the product of one or two people making decisions about where to place
content. The home page producer and his or her editor take into account the recommendations of
Web producers and Web editors who are using IM from across the building to determine what
content to place on the home page. And while the print paper is a guide for the importance of
where stories should be on the home page, home page producers are also sensitive to whether a
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story is new to the Web page, and whether it might offer something more to the reader, such as
multimedia or interactive graphics.
I spent April 2, 2010, with Mick Sussman, the morning home page producer. His shift is
from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. He explained to me that his goal is to have something new up on the home
page about every 10 minutes. The big changes that he makes are in the ―A‖ column, or the
leftmost column going down the home page; the photo spot, which he tries to change every 30
minutes; and the ―B‖ column, or the column underneath the photo spot, which is a prime spot for
a news story other than the top of the ―A‖ column. Sussman is also constantly rotating out blogs
in the ―on the blogs‖ section, but admits that he doesn‘t have much knowledge about style or
sports so he often relies upon other people in the Styles section to alert him to whether something
is important.
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Figure 8: NYTimes.com Home Page, April 2, 2010, 7:59 A.M. Reprinted with permission.
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When I spent the morning with Sussman, continuous news editor Pat Lyons (who
supervises Sussman), Sussman, and the global home page editor were debating whether to use a
picture of a Muslim, teenage widow bomber who set off a suicide bomb in Moscow. Other news
outlets were using it, but The Times did not want to use the photograph unless The Times could
independently verify it. Eventually, the home page photo editor was able to identify the photo‘s
origins, and the group decided to give the picture ―a good run.‖ This is one example of where The
Times used visuals to compete with other news sites. Sussman also checked The Washington
Post, the BBC, The Wall Street Journal, and CNN. Like The New York Times, all of these sites
were leading with the news of the latest jobs report. Throughout the course of the day, however, I
saw Sussman check the competition only three times. He was too busy updating home page with
Times content. And I only once heard him mention a story that The Washington Post had but The
Times didn‘t—and Sussman‘s concerns got vetoed.
Sussman uses a FireFox plug-in
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that allows him to manipulate the home page before he
publishes it. He also does a lot of hand-coding for promos for other sections of the site, which go
at the top of the page. He uses Google Reader to keep track of new blogs being posted to The
Times so he can change them out as quickly as possible.
Sussman sends headlines for stories back and forth with Lyons over IM. If Lyons doesn‘t
respond, Sussman will just put up a headline. When I was observing Sussman, he asked Lyons
about putting up a story on a conspiracy movie. When Lyons didn‘t respond, Sussman put the
story up. His justification was, ―I think this is pretty interesting.‖ For a time, this story was in the
section right underneath the main photo on the home page—a prominent spot. This is an
indication of the latitude that Sussman has over the page. A few minutes later, the foreign desk
alerted Sussman about a story on Saudi Arabia, and Sussman decided to put this story on the
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An add-on to a Web browser that has additional functionalities.
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home page. While he conferred with Lyons about a possible headline, it was ultimately up to
Sussman to make sure the headline and Web summary fit in the required space.
Sussman also spends a significant chunk of time dealing with corrections on the home
page. People write in to the ―Web editor,‖ and all of this mail goes to the inboxes of the home
page producers. He then will alert various desks to possible problems in stories. He said that he
responds to every query except for ―the wacko stuff.‖
Sussman‘s goals are to balance the home page between all of the different sections of the
newspaper and to keep the news constantly updated. Though the metro section had an interactive
graphic about how the Census affected New York City, the editors and Sussman decided the
graphic had been up for too long, as it had been on the home page since the day prior. As
associate managing editor Jim Roberts put it, ―It feels very yesterday.‖
Sussman is prepared for constant updates as part of his routine. Coincidentally, when I
watched him, he spent most of his morning preparing for the jobs numbers. First he had to
prepare an alert, and then he had to deal with the constant changes to the headline for this
particular month‘s story (the April numbers). Sussman also checks to make sure that The Times
hasn‘t missed anything by watching the wires. While he monitors this, he also gives many of the
new blog posts coming his way about 20 to 30 minutes on the home page.
Noon is a big time for Sussman to make updates to the home page, as many people will
check the Web again during their lunch break. Sussman changes the promo boxes and adds new
information to the B column, though he will keep the lead story on jobs. Sussman put all fresh
content up on the home page, such as a story on attacks in Israel and a Times feature story on
what makes Senator Kirsten Gillibrand scary.
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As an example of monitoring the competition, Sussman learned that was a Washington
Post story about governors quitting and how that could be dangerous. But Lyons pointed out that
the ―could cause danger‖ really didn‘t make it news, so that story was nothing for
The Times to be concerned with. Sussman learned that Obama was speaking at noon as well, so
he had to make sure he would have a video link to Obama on the home page.
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Figure 9: NYTimes.com Home Page, April 2, 2010, Noon. Reprinted with permission.
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Sussman made three other major updates to the B column while I watched him. Each
major update consisted of changing the big picture on the home page. The first update was at 1
p.m. to put in TimesCast, the five-minute Times video that includes some highlights of the Page
One meeting and interviews with reporters about breaking news. At 2 p.m., he put in a shot of
Obama speaking in the main picture. Sussman then inserted international news into the second
slot underneath the jobs report. Then by 3 p.m., Sussman made another switch, moving news
about New Jersey Governor Chris Christie into the column beneath the main photo. All of these
changes seem a bit superficial—but they made the home page look completely different.
None of the editors were consulted when Sussman made these changes. For the most part,
he is left alone to decide the order of the major stories, how long they stay up, what their
headlines say, and how their Web summaries read. Sussman gets to vet which of the minor news
stories coming from the metro, business, national, and foreign sections and D.C. bureau receive
prominence. Major news was discussed with Lyons, but ultimately Sussman gets to make final
decisions over wording based simply on what can fit in the allotted space. Since the majority of
Times traffic comes from its home page, according to people at The Times, this power over the
home page is significant. Whether a story is on the home page can make or break whether a story
captures people‘s attention. And Sussman can be the arbiter of that.
Sussman has a routine to keep Times home page constantly looking different. He puts in
new blogs; he subs out minor stories; and he changes around what gets featured at the top of the
page. He systematically checks his Google Reader and knows when he should plan major updates
(usually each half-hour to every hour). As such, this new job of home page producer signifies the
creation of new routines in the newsroom.
The job of the night home page producer differs from the day producer. The day producer
is trying to get the freshest news out on to the Web page as quickly as possible. The night
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producer, however, is trying to get the home page to balance the decisions made by print editors
about the most important stories along with the need to keep the Web page fresh. When Sussman
is producing the home page, editors haven‘t yet decided the final importance of each story in each
section, and have only some sense of what will be on Page One. But by the time a night home
page producer like Lillie Dremeaux takes over, the situation changes because print imperatives
guide online production.
The night I observed Dremeaux was also the night of the worst mine disaster in American
history (field notes, April 5, 2010). Dremeaux‘s job took on added importance; she was not just
refreshing the home page to keep things looking interesting, but she was also refreshing the home
page with the fresh news coming out from the disaster. Nonetheless, much of Dremeaux‘s routine
was the same as Sussman‘s. She was in constant communication with night editor Gerry Mullany
about when new copy would be available from the copy desk and, like Sussman, was continually
getting bombarded by IMs from other Web producers. She tried to make changes at least every
half-hour to the page. She was also charged with writing Web summaries and fixing headlines for
the home page, with minimal oversight from Mullany. The home page producer and editor were
the last ones on the page—no copy editor was checking spelling or these summaries. In addition,
Dremeaux also monitored the competition about three times over the course of the night, but this
monitoring did not affect any of her story placement, picture selection, or general news judgment.
However, as the night home page producer, Dremeaux‘s work was guided by the
decisions made by print editors. Her goal was to give each section‘s strongest dress page story
play on the front page for at least some period of time. Unlike Sussman, Dremeaux had more
multimedia to choose from, since most of the multimedia projects and their accompanying stories
were complete by the evening. As such, it was up to her discretion to make sure that the
multimedia from each desk received some form of attention on the home page.
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Unlike Sussman‘s time on the home page, almost no new blog posts were coming in. As
a result, she did not have to monitor the influx of blogs using anything like Google Reader. On
the night I was watching her, there was actually a March Madness finals live blog that replaced
the blogging space, so Dremeaux did not have to worry about this space at all. Dremeaux also had
to be careful to ―save‖ some stories for the next morning‘s home page.
Over the course of the night, the home page became increasingly static and began to look
more and more like the print paper. Around 9 p.m. Dremeaux printed out a mockup showing
where on Page One each story would go. This front page guided where she placed each story;
using the visual cues about the most important story in the paper (the lead story on the right-hand
column) and the off-lead (in the left-hand column), she would place these in the most prominent
places on the Web site (the A column or under the B column) and would also be sure to have the
other stories that made the front in prominent places. As Dremeaux put it:
The front page tells me what are the five or six most important stories of the day. I follow
that because there are some really important editors—the most important editors at The
Times—saying that this is what we think is important. And the home page should reflect
that.
The home page is most like the paper people will see in the morning late in the evening—and
when they wake up, the home page will look completely different, with news coming in from the
foreign desk and the business desk heading up the site, and the remainders of what didn‘t make
the home page the night before.
Thus, the life of the home page producer reveals some particularly important online
imperatives and values at The Times. There is considerable importance placed on keeping the
Web page looking as fresh as possible, particularly throughout the day. The home page producer
employs the breadth of content available throughout The Times to make this possible. What
Sussman and Dremeaux do each day doesn‘t vary much, but their decisions about which stories to
place in particular places on the Web space is an act of improvisation. This improvisation is
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particularly present during the day, when the print edition is not yet set. Home page producers
have considerably more latitude and less oversight than anyone who is working on the print side
of the newspaper, and for the most part, they are making decisions about which stories are most
important based on what news happens to be available at each particular moment. As a result, the
home page producers‘ capacity for improvisation is much more like the embellishment that
Berliner (1994) writes about than the elementalism present in the print discussions..
The home page is also a space where the layers of editing and copy editing that exist for
the print edition simply don‘t happen. The final edits of Web summaries and headlines are left to
two people, whereas the print paper might have a dress page that has gone through six edits. But
these Web summaries are written by one person, read over by another, and then published.
Nonetheless, these are the words that the majority of Times readers see. There are no Page One
meetings for the Web; online moves too quickly and focuses on change. Still, print does guide the
final look of the Web page at night. The question is, however, whether anyone is really looking at
The New York Times late at night to be the beneficiary of this matching print and online
judgment.
Looking at Online Rhythms Overall
Here, we have examined a number of crucial moments in the lifecycle of the 24-7 online
newsroom. All of these moments illustrate new routines that now exist in an online world. These
routines have emerged in response to new pressures about speed, efficiency, competition, and
perceptions of the audience in the digital age. They likely began with improvisation in the
newsroom because there was no set routine, and this improvisation led to the establishment of
more predictable newswork.
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Online rhythms refer specifically here to the way that news content gets posted and
placed online. But the category of online news is far more extensive than just the production of
stories, which was the subject of most of this chapter. Instead, online also includes multimedia
and social media, and we will see in forthcoming chapters how these platforms for online news
affect the newsroom.
The Times online journey began in 1994. Along the way, there were stalls and starts at
integrating print journalists into online routines, but eventually print reporters understood that
online journalism was just as much a part of their job as their print duties. What emerges, though,
is a tension, especially during breaking news, at the point where print and online values collide.
As we will see in the next chapter, it is not always easy for journalists to constantly update stories
and simultaneously to write the big take-away story. Nevertheless, having both of these stories
means that The Times can fulfill its goal of being responsive to the latest news developments as
well as its desire to have a more comprehensive and unique story at the end of the day.
Reporters and editors have adapted their breaking news strategy to a particular method.
As much B matter is written before the actual event as possible so numbers or names can be
plugged in right away. The Web editor works with the reporter for the quick updates, and when
the news stops coming in the form of constant updates from key figures, the Web editor hands off
the story to one of the other backfield editors, and the reporter turns to the second-day story.
Traditional journalists have also had to learn how to time a scoop properly in the online
world. While these journalists have always struggled to find the right time to unveil a big story
for the print edition of the paper, now scoops that run online may be matched by competitors
within the same news cycle. As such, editors and reporters are still deciding when to run stories
that are scoops.
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The general rule in the newsroom is to be the first to break the news, but The Times still
wants to get credit for all of its reporting. In the world of a 24-7 news cycle, when other news
outlets will be able to write about a new development within minutes, The Times‘ hard work can
be lost on readers who happen to go to other outlets first. So the routines for a scoop online are
still being negotiated, and seem specific to the story and the situation. As such, the way people
are using technology to break these stories enables improvisation as each new scoop comes along.
I did not talk specifically about blogs, but these are an important part of online news at
The Times. To try to make a uniform statement about the rhythms of blogging at The Times is
quite difficult because there are multiple types of blogs at The Times. In fact, no one at The Times
could quite give me a precise number of blogs, saying, ―Oh, maybe there are 50,‖ or ―I think there
are 70,‖ or ―Maybe there are 60; I think we just added two yesterday,‖ or ―There are blogs for
everything.‖ Even within the business desk there is substantial variation in blog patterns. For
example, the Bits blog focuses on highly-differentiated and original technology news content.
DealBook focuses on aggregating, curating, and breaking Wall Street news. Both have different
goals and rhythms.
An examination of the Web producers on both the business page and the home page
reveals some of the online priorities for The Times in terms of the daily content production. On
the business desk, the Web producer has only a few chances to exercise news judgment on his or
her own. Instead, the Web producer defers to the editors for most decisions about where to put
stories on the Web page. At night, the process becomes more fluid, but the business page
producer is then guided by the decisions made for the print edition about what stories are most
important. The nexus of Web editor and Web producer form the crucial link that determines what
The Times‘ business Web page will look like. The Web producer can make suggestions, but
ultimately it is the editor‘s decision about where to put stories.
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On both the business Web page and the home page, both the editor and the Web producer
are the last people to tweak the Web page. There is no layer of editing before Web summaries and
headlines are posted to the site, though these can always be changed. The Web producer has
considerable latitude in writing these summaries during the day before the copy desk has edited
all the stories, but less flexibility once the copy desk begins to provide their own version of Web
summaries for stories edited later in the day. Nonetheless, the Web producer often has to change
these summaries because they are not quite right for the Web: They may be too long, in the
wrong tense, or missing information about the article. In this case, the Web producer still has the
final say on what the Web summary says.
As such, the Web producers and their editors are shaping the content that most people see
without the typical Times obsession with perfection: The goal is to make the page dynamic and
interesting, and then to go back and fix things if there are mistakes. The producers and their
editors are looking for news that is updated quickly and will provide new information to readers.
The goal is to keep the page looking different by placing new content online. Home page
producers and business page producers have their routines to make sure that NYTimes.com
remains a dynamic site, but by the end of the night, the Web site looks quite similar to the print
edition of the newspaper. And oddly enough, at the end of the night, the Web site is most copy-
edited, a vagary of the online routine of Web producers.
Nonetheless, the home page producers have some of the most flexibility to decide what
the home page will look like, and as a result, can improvise to a greater degree than others in the
newsroom. The home page remains in constant motion until the close of the night. While the
producers are still using news judgment to make their decisions, what they choose to feature
comes from a wealth of existing material and is largely up to their choosing.
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In the next chapter, I look ahead at how some of the imperatives of the print process and
online production process intersect. These production values represent different and occasionally
contrasting priorities for journalism, but as it clear here, online and print do merge at certain
points throughout the routines of news production in the digital age. But online goes beyond just
producing stories for the Web; to think of the Web as just a re-creation of what happens in print
would be incorrect. Online journalism at The Times is an expansion of print and includes many
elements that the print paper does not, from blogs to interactive graphics.
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CHAPTER 7: STAYING THE SAME AND SEEING WHAT’S DIFFERENT—
PRINT AND ONLINE PRODUCTION
Executive Editor Bill Keller has vacillated on the extent to which the newsroom has
achieved integration. Looking back to the efforts of 2005, he noted, ―Five years later, I try to
resist saying we have an integrated newsroom‖ (personal communication, May 7, 2010). But The
Times also allowed integration czar Jonathan Landman to step down to become culture editor
(Perez-Pena, 2009). The article announcing the change noted:
In a memo to the staff making the announcement, Mr. Keller said that with the
integration that had been achieved, there might be no equivalent to that role in the future
[Landman‘s], as other top editors take more responsibility for Internet operations.
Keller‘s ambivalence seems on point in a newsroom where print and online can have two
such completely print and online production rhythms, but come together on only a few occasions.
Still, journalists seem to be able to live in this integrated world in a way they were unable to five
or even ten years ago. They write unquestioningly for the Web. People see their section‘s Web
producers, who sit right by the desks of main editors. Web editors sit on every desk. The 24-7
newsroom is in place.
But in many important ways, the print and online values diverge.
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In other ways, they
converge. But the intersection of these two different mediums means that it is important to take
stock to determine what remains the same and what has changed in an online world. Are routines
still the same? What makes print and online seem so different? Have the professional values
associated with print changed as a result of the intersection of online work? One way to look at
this is through the way that routines were explained, most clearly by Tuchman (1980). Another
way to think about this is through the observations in the newsroom, taking a step back from the
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By these values, I mean professional values that journalists have about the way they do their work, not values in the
sense that I have talked about what is felt as important for nation and society.
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routines to see what really matters for each medium and put them in dialogue with each other.
And finally, it is important to see how journalists themselves engaging in both worlds. A look at
both print and online reveals the way that news routines have developed and changed, in part
through improvisation. These changes in routine reflect the need to be flexible in response to the
new demands of making news in the digital age.
Typifying the News
Tuchman (1980) came up with categories of news that still seem to resonate today, even
with new technology (pp. 51-52). Do these still work? And what do they tell us? These story
types include the following: hard news; soft news; spot news; developing news and continuing
news.
Hard news can be unscheduled, or an event that occurs unexpectedly; such news should
be disseminated immediately. Hard news may also be prescheduled news, or news that is set to be
released at a specified time it occurs, such as an earnings story. Soft news is non-scheduled news,
meaning that dissemination is not urgent. This might be a light feature, for instance, like the
cashless story about cell phones and credit cards (Cain-Miller & Bilton, 2010). Spot news is
unscheduled; it appears suddenly and must ―be processed quickly;‖ spot news covers, as
Tuchman notes, ―specifically unforeseen event-as-news‖ (p. 53). A good example of that would
be the flash crash, where journalists had to scramble to cover the Dow dropping rapidly. Then
there is developing news, where news results from an emergent situation: for instance, the Greek
debt crisis. Continuing news is predictable but also repeating; this might be represented by the
business desk‘s efforts to cope with covering financial regulation.
These definitions can be difficult for journalists to wrap their heads around, as typically
journalists think of hard and soft news not as time-dependent but as related to story content. So a
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hard news story might be an investigative story that has taken months to prepare and is about a
serious subject, not one that is unscheduled. Spot news is the fire, something happening right
away: the BP spill, or the flash crash. A soft news story may be about a lighter subject. There
were actually fewer stories that seemed to be soft news from the business desk, but a good
example might be a story about how the price of beef bowls in Japan were a sign of deflation in
the country (yet this still focused on something serious). The business desk‘s inside theme pages
on travel, personal technology, and personal finance are ―soft‖ news stories, though all of these
might at times be related to ―serious‖ news developments. Personal finance columnist Ron
Lieber might theoretically fall under the category of soft news, but he has written many pieces
that have dealt with the effects of financial regulation on consumers. But for Tuchman, time and
technology make all the difference, and it is the routines of newswork that distinguish these
typifications.
One of Tuchman‘s (1980) key observations is that technology makes a difference in the
way that each form of news is disseminated. She put it this way:
Different news technologies each have their own varying news rhythms. Film can be
shot, edited and aired in an hour; print technology is more cumbersome and time
consuming. Accordingly, as might be expected from the finding that technology
influences the organization of work . . . as well as my argument that technology
influences typifications. (p. 54)
She adds:
Practical problems of dealing with a technology and its rhythms are so important that
they even affect the newswork‘s perception of a spot-news story, especially whether the
typification ―developing news‖ will be applied to an event-as-story (p. 54).
The different technological challenges she observed between print and television stations
influenced how at a newspaper, the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. was developing
news, and as a result, it required tremendous effort in reformulating the print newspaper. The
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television news network treated this story as a spot news story, with each change in the
developments about King‘s assassination a separate spot news event in different bulletins.
Her central argument—that technology is important in creating routines—is one I also
agree with. Boczkowski (2009) has also confirmed her observations in more recent newsrooms.
He suggested that time plays a major factor in the way that stories develop inside a news
organization; he argued that with the pressure of shorter turn-around time, news organizations are
more likely to produce hard news; with more time, journalists produce unscheduled news stories.
But Boczkowski was just looking at the rhythms of an online newsroom. In my observations of
the intersection of a print and online newsroom where both print and online priorities are being
articulated, the typifications of news break down because of the way that the routines of both
mediums intersect. This emerges both technically as a matter of production but also as a matter of
the way that journalists articulate their values about what they define as important. As such, I
propose that there are two new story types: the ―second-day story‖ and ―the scoop-setting story.‖
The “Second- Day Story”
A planned, pre-scheduled earnings story from a company could be boring. The newsroom
knows about it weeks, even months in advance. It is hard news, sure, as it has to go up online
because it is time-sensitive once the numbers are released. The other business news organizations
will have the news on their Web sites. However, the story develops over the day with more
details, as we saw with Bowley‘s story in Chapter Two on the Goldman earnings. But finally, for
the print edition, there‘s a big take-away piece. The same pattern happened for Goodman and his
jobs report story.
In Tuchman‘s world, the TV news updates regarding King‘s murder were typified as spot
news. Each story offered new information with each news bulletin. But in this case, the
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technology of the Web breaks down these barriers. The dependable news flashes aren‘t coming in
big breakouts set up by commercial flashes and news promos. Instead, the news story develops in
drips and drabs based on the reporter‘s pace throughout the day as he or she goes through the
process of compiling the story. And at the end, there‘s a big story, a complete story, that attempts
to distinguish all of the online work from the print story, where the print story becomes the so-
called ―second-day story.‖
How do we classify this? Online has allowed for new routines, including the routine of
constantly updating a story over the course of the same day. The rhythm and timing is
accelerated. Does it make more sense to call each new online update a new spot news story?
Probably not, as it‘s hard for the reader to tell where each update begins and ends, other than the
time stamps on each story. Maybe it would make more sense to call these types of stories
―developing stories‖ as they shift and change throughout the day to become something more at
the end of the day.
But I think we need a new classification for the constantly updated story that becomes
something more in print—(and possibly also on TV). This classification is the second-day story;
this typification acknowledges how new technology has changed the routines that shape
newswork. And in effect, if time is what categorizes stories, and time depends on technology,
then this story form represents a new change for newswork. The way people use technology to
update the story makes it a developing story throughout the day online, and then when it becomes
a broader story for the print paper, it can be typified as the second-day story.
Wire news organizations have always updated stories throughout the day regardless of
the changes in technology. And at the end of the day, these wire services will often do a write-
thru, or the final edition of a story, or the big ―take-out,‖ as many journalists refer to this story.
This could very well, then, seem to be a second-day story that has always existed. In fact, as
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editors have pointed out at The Times, people have always been talking about the second-day
story—for the second day of news coverage—but now, the second-day story is talked about the
same day the news story breaks.
However, the second-day story in the digital age is different for newspapers, and perhaps
for broadcast and cable news channels as they plan their evening coverage, as it tries to offer
more than just what has been on the Web all day. Time and technology results in what is
hopefully a substantive content difference. Unlike the wire story, which is for everyone to use in
any paper, the second-day story aims to be unique and specific to the particular news
organization.
The second-day story, then, is unscheduled, if we are to stick with Tuchman‘s terms,
regardless of whether the initial story was predictable news. The second-day story is
unanticipated because it is unclear how it will develop over the course of the day. News routines
predict the process of reporting, but each story requires improvisation as to the particular story
arc.
The unscheduled, second-day story routines reflect how people have adapted to using
technology to advance the news. First, because the story is intended for the print edition, the
second-day story must be built to last. This is a demand that did not exist in the print-only era.
There was no competing Internet coverage that was up all day for readers to consume on multiple
outlets. But the built- to-last idea suggests that even with content that is constantly updating, the
print version of the story should not ―feel‖ old because it brings to readers a more complete
version of the story. Thus the second-day story form uses old technology, print, for its
distribution, but the second-day story typifies a new routine and type of story because it requires
journalists to take a step back and find something new that represents what The Times‘ final word
of the day will be on a particular angle.
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Other Stories: The “Scoop-Setting Story”
Other stories that are not breaking news do not go through this intense online updating.
But they do have a premium placed on their ability to be different from the competition. These
stories are investigative stories, off-beat features, or enterprise work. To journalists, these stories
would be called hard news or, if an off-beat feature, soft news. However, to Tuchman (1980), all
of these stories would be soft news. But the timing of these stories online can make all the
difference, and this timing changes as a result of technology.
In the past, a news story could only be broken in the print edition. And, in fact, as this
research reveals, there is still some resistance to breaking a story online first. A difficult equation
enters the timing of stories as a result of new technology. This is a new routine, as journalists
must now weigh the decision of when to put an exclusive story online. Planning when to unload a
major scoop has always been something journalists have had to strategically consider, but now
this planning takes on a new combination of factors. These factors include determining concerns
that did not exist previously for print news organizations: whether another news organization will
have the time to match the story. The question emerges as to whether the story is strong enough
to hold up on its own.
Is there a new way to typify this potentially ―matchable‖ story? What about a way to
describe this routine? I propose describing this type of story as a scoop-setting story. This story is
specifically time-bound because it is a non-scheduled story, as journalists determine when the
story itself will be run. But at the same time, technology creates a new set of imperatives that
determine how the story will be released. The process of negotiating when the story requires
considerable guessing about how competitors might behave online to respond to the story—and
improvisation on the part of journalists. Before, a news organization had a claim to a story for a
day; it was clear who owned the story in print. But now, news organizations may pick up on a
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story the second the first news organization breaks it, and the unique Times value may be lost on
the reader. Nick Denton (2010), the founder of the Gawker media empire, has argued that scoops
bring people back to news Web sites, and while it works for his blog traffic, it‘s unclear whether
his idea will hold up for mainstream news.
Thus, the scoop-setting story is non-scheduled, but it faces timing pressure as a result of
the way people are using technology: Journalists need to consider whether the story can be
matched online. This is a new way to think about stories. And as such, it is a new story type.
This scoop-setting story is different from the pre-existing categories Tuchman suggested for a
number of reasons. First, the scoop-setting story is different from a non-scheduled story because
in Tuchman‘s world, a soft news story, or a non-scheduled story, was unaffected by technology.
In this case, technology clearly enters into the equation of whether to run a story. While the story
is non-scheduled because journalists can decide when the story will run, it does not fit Tuchman‘s
idea that it does not matter when these stories will run. Even though Tuchman seems to be
distinguishing stories based on time, she is in effect distinguishing stories based on content.
According to Tuchman, a soft news story does not become obsolete if it is not immediately in the
newspaper. But this scoop-setting story could become obsolete because another news
organization could have the story, or the actors or issues in the story could have a certain
timebound relevance.
The story about Goldman clients concerned about company‘s dual role as an investor and
also as financial advisors had, in part, depended on private documents The Times had obtained.
The story was not scheduled, and The Times could have run this almost certain Page One story on
any day. But the story itself was not timeless; the news mattered especially because Goldman had
recently been charged by the SEC. From a competitive perspective, who might get these
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documents that made Goldman look even more shady was a concern—but this always existed in
the pre-online world.
However, there were new considerations, thanks to the Web, about when to release the
story and whether to save it for the print paper (or post the story late enough that it would be
―unmatchable‖ in print). This strategizing signals that the Goldman story represents a different
type of story because technology does matter in its distribution. Time is considered differently
than it was in Tuchman‘s era because technology affects these decisions. In this case, the Web
enables new routines to form around the distribution of stories, and the result is a new typification
of story. What remains the same is the fact that the news organization is still concerned about
competition. But the competition is on hyperdrive.
Print News and Online News: Different Concerns
Below is just one moment that illustrates when the values that journalists place on print
production seemed directly opposed to the online rhythms and the associated professional values
of the Web newsroom.
Dean Murphy, deputy business editor, was on the phone with housing reporter David
Streitfeld, who was checking in to see whether he needed to write about a particular new housing
report that was coming out the following morning (field notes, April 13, 2010).
Murphy said to the backfield editors, ―There‘s a 220-page report that David Streitfield
has gotten. . . . David said he will stick his fingers in his ears if he has to write it about it one
more time, but he wouldn‘t be surprised if The Washington Post or The Wall Street Journal
writes about it. Do we want 350 words on the record?‖
Editor Winnie O‘Kelley responded, ―I don‘t think it tells readers very much. It‘s what the
expectations for housing are. . . . I don‘t think we need it.‖
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Instead, the editors decided that Streitfeld would spend his day analyzing a much more
complicated, and what they saw as a more interesting, housing report from the Treasury.
Murphy then called up Streitfeld, who works out of the Chicago bureau. He instructed
him, ―When you get a call from Jim Roberts in the morning asking for 600 words on this housing
report for the Web, just say no. You don‘t need to write it.‖
This is just one example, but it shows how the print and Web values contrast: The print
side wants the reporter to do a more analytical story on a more substantive report, not follow the
competitor coverage would be available online. They don‘t want the news that is going to make
their reporter, who is so sick of doing these reports, ―stick his fingers in his ears.‖ So they instruct
him to ignore the demands of the Web in the morning.
But the Web in the morning will be looking for two things: fresh content and anything the
competition already has. Online wants news early and often even if other editors judge that it
might not be that helpful or interesting to the reader. The immediate focus online is on getting
the headlines and getting something new. The print focus is on getting something different with
added perspective.
Print News Production and Associated Values
What‘s changed, of course, is that print news and online news are now in the same
newsroom and use the same pool of journalists to create content. What‘s also changed is that now
the newsroom must juggle how it values each medium, instead of having one medium to focus
on. But what remains the same is that the print cycle still results in the story that most journalists
care about by the end of the day. Now that story is a different story from the first one posted
online, a big-picture magazine-type story or ―second-day story.‖
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Thus it is worth breaking down explicitly what is valued in the print production at The
Times: conversation and discussion about stories; time to write and think about stories; collective
news judgment and decision-making about story value to the overall news placement; explanatory
reporting or value-added journalism; art and design; and a particular image of the audience.
Print rhythms showcase how journalists value conversation with other journalists. These
conversations help journalists improvise in their work, creating new questions with each new
story. These print rhythms bring together editors who can provide feedback on stories, reducing
the influence of a single editor on shaping a story. In the early phases of a story that is breaking
online, this news does not have the benefit of these conversations with multiple editors. The story
benefits from discussion and collaboration only as the day unfolds and can be considered from
multiple vantage points. Each meeting is held at the same time each day, but the conversations are
different depending on the stories for that day, as I have made clear. So while routines are a
necessary part of the print production process, there is considerable opportunity for people to
think about the meaning and shaping of stories.
Journalists also value this collective decision-making and care about the importance of
news placement in the print product. Print production allows journalists to assign news value to
stories through visual cues to readers (though this may be more for to journalists in the
newsroom) about which stories are important. Print production, then, gives them a sense of order
and structure because print news is a static product that can be planned for (generally); and the
result is one that reveals the collective wisdom of considered news judgment. For example,
consider how all the people in the 40-person Page One help decide what the front page story will
be and how editors improve other sections‘ stories.
Print news also enables journalists to think of how they can ―add value‖ to stories in a
way they cannot in the quick-updating world of online news. Journalists thinking about the print
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news product value exclusive news and a unique perspective. The perception that the print news
is the final statement for the day means that journalists believe this product should give more
breadth and perspective to daily events. Editors imagine this process as ―what we are basically
doing more of now is writing a daily magazine,‖ as editor David Gillen explained (field notes,
March 4, 2010), or as the ―second-day story,‖ as Adam Bryant and other editors called it in
multiple meetings. The print newsroom values having reporters step back from their minute-by-
minute coverage online and produce this second-day look at the story. The emphasis is placed on
perspective, depth, and analysis.
Furthermore, just as Tuchman (1980) and Fishman (1980) have attested, those concerned
with print production still care about filling the newspaper. The focus of meetings on the business
desk is to make sure that the paper has the best stories on the dress page. But in a departure from
what Tuchman and Fishman have argued, concern about filling the paper does not reflect the fear
that there will not be enough news. This need to fill space may have in the past played much more
of a role in reinforcing routinized journalism. But now, the goal for print news is differentiation
from the routine news story: how journalists can make their work in the print paper more than
something that can be found elsewhere. Even if the news may come from routine sources such as
companies and the government, journalists say they work to try more than just to regurgitate what
these sources are saying; instead, they work to produce something with ―added value.‖ The Times
writers are encouraged to go beyond the superficial story in the print edition: The routinizing of
the unexpected, as Tuchman put it, becomes the routinization of going beyond the expected.
Even the display section on the dress page needs to be filled with something different,
something good enough for this space designated with art. This display section is not dependent
on the daily news cycle, as Tuchman (1980) and Fishman (1980) might attest. Instead, this space
is occupied by what editors and reporters think would be interesting for readers: feature stories
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that shed new light on existing subjects or, in the case of breaking news, art that might illustrate
this news visually. The display is a space that needs to be filled and is an obligation, but it is also
the opportunity for improvisation and agency in the newsroom.
Print news production also symbolizes what journalists value most about their imagined
audience. The imagined audience for print is one that has seen the latest news online and wants
something more, or one wants to read a longer story with more depth than can be found
elsewhere. These print readers are thought of as people who spend time with the paper and are not
scanning for headlines. These readers care about content and substance over speed. This is the
audience that journalists want to write for.
Online News Professional Values
By far, the most important professional value for online news at The Times is a push for
the new. What this means, however, is that online rhythms can push out quality content at the
expense of less important breaking news. In the morning, I often observed that the business Web
page‘s most recent news would quickly be shifted into the most important part of the page, while
the ―higher‖ quality second-day story from the print paper vanished. In fact, by the time I go
online in the California morning, the print newspaper I received that day looks virtually nothing
like the online version newspaper. To find dress page print stories, I can occasionally count on
seeing one or two new stories during the day that were not in my print paper, but I have to be
checking the Web page constantly. More often than not, unless I‘m paying attention to The Times
at night, I sometimes never see online some of the print dress page stories that correspond to what
I get in the print newspaper each morning.
Looking at the process of home page production and business page production makes it
clear how this cycle works. News is continually refreshed. But as we also saw, the news online
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eventually comes to resemble the news in print. This is because NYTimes.com also wants to be
the best The Times has to offer. And this is where things get complicated. At the end of the day,
as I explained, The Times Web site, both the home page and the business page, come to resemble
the output of the Page One meeting and the business desk, respectively. But The Times‘ online
presence can‘t always achieve this goal. And as such, The Times content online throughout the
day is the best that The Times can offer at that particular moment, not the sum total of The Times‘
careful daily print product.
As such, the gatekeeping online is much more open than it is in print. All of the content
on The Times site will not appear in the paper. Stories that make the front of the business Web
page in the morning, such as markets stories or economics reports, have a rare chance of making
the dress page in the evening. Online, gatekeeping still means screening for content appropriate
for Times journalism, but the values are different from print; if the content is new, then the gates
are more likely to open to allow for the fresh content to populate the front real estate of the Web
site. In the print section, the gatekeeping is much more guarded; the hierarchy of where stories
appear requires significant discussion and planning.
The professional values associated with producing online content also suggest that
journalists are imagining a different reader from the print reader. This online reader is interested
in a variety of elements that the print reader may not be focused on experiencing, though there is
crossover between people who read The Times in print and online. Generally, the online reader is
thought of as caring about quick news headlines from The Times. Similarly, this online reader is
thought of as someone who might check in a few times throughout the day. The belief is that The
Times must give these readers something new so they will keep coming back, or at least feel the
need to keep coming back.
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Those concerned with online production also value the niche reader; this is particularly
true on Business Day. As Kevin McKenna, deputy business editor, and Larry Ingrassia, business
desk editor, have explained, the vertical strategy of providing in-depth areas of coverage is
specifically intended to address online readers. Online readers are believed to approach their news
in a much more targeted way; hence, the online experience on the business desk is organized
around these verticals, such as personal technology, technology, energy and environment,
personal finance, DealBook, global business, small business, and media. The intention is to allow
readers to dig deep into one particular area of coverage. This is one of the reasons I was told that
The Times has so many blogs.
Another distinction between online and print professional values is the fact that online
journalism production focuses on an interactive audience. As we will see in the two forthcoming
chapters, one of the extensions beyond just text and photos in the online world has been the
growth of multimedia and social media. This interactive reader is someone who is perceived as
wanting to talk back to journalists. This reader is also believed to desire more than just text and
photos. Online journalism places a value on conversation with readers, through blog posts,
comments, and social media, as we will also see.
Those concerned with online production also value telling stories in new ways, as the
next chapter discusses. This is part of the idea of transmedia—that the same story is not retold
again through new media forms, but added to and retold in new ways. The professional values of
online journalism production at the time assign importance to the ability of stories to exist in
multiple forms and in additional dimensions: as audio slide shows, as interactive graphics, as text
stories, as blog posts, as videos. Some of these forms of storytelling have existed for a long time,
but have been adapted for the online experience. But those in the Web newsroom, and those who
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see the potential of online journalism beyond text, see the importance of telling stories across
multimedia platforms.
Duking it Out
One of the most common complaints that I heard was that the online rhythms of the
newsroom meant that major stories that reporters had been working on were pushed off the Web
site in favor of breaking news. I observed how the system of ranking stories often put the freshest
news content in place of the second-day story that had appeared in the print paper. Unless the
story was a column or a major investigation or the most important dress page story, a story from
the day before might be demoted into headlines or pushed to the bottom of the business page
come morning. The same thing happens with the home page as stories from the dress page may
get a hour or a few hours of viewing but disappear by the morning.
As one reporter explained to me:
I spent weeks working on a story. And we got major multimedia up.. We had this whole
project. It went up on a weekend, spent almost no time on the home page—maybe it was
because there was more serious news, but it wasn‘t even big on the business page. You
couldn‘t even find it by Monday [for a weekend story]
Another reporter explained to me, ―I can work on a story all day, but when I look in the
morning at the page, even if it was a big story, it isn‘t there anymore. My sources want to know
where it is, and I can‘t find it.‖
Still another reporter noted that from his time zone, his stories had changed completely
and the home page looked nothing like the front page of the paper.
The rhythm of moving stories out of promotion spots quickly and changing things to
create a fresh impression for the morning became exacerbated when the new business Web page
was introduced. Though Business Day already had a Web page, this new business Web page was
intended to be a ―home page‖ for the business desk, According to deputy business editor Kevin
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MeKenna, the new business page would be a new destination inside The Times that was explicitly
designed as a branding mechanism for Business Day to give the section its own look and feel.
The goal, as articulated by McKenna and echoed by Ingrassia, was to provide ―fresh insight all
day‖ to ―try to keep [the business Web page] unique to us and update as quickly as possible‖
(field notes, April 8, 2010).
McKenna gave a presentation about the new Web page to reporters on April 8, 2010.
Because of the desire to keep the page short, e.g., decrease the amount of scrolling down on the
page, the business Web page would now include just a few new stories as they came out. There
would be an “insight and analysis” section that would show case blogs and unique stories.
McKenna pointed out in the meeting:
Some reporters might be wondering where there story is at the end of the day or come to
the Web site and not be able to find it. This is the reality; it can‟t stay up there forever.
People will be able to find your stuff on your pages [topics pages devoted to reporters]
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.
There is a need to keep the page fresh. We are going to be moving things out more
quickly.
He later added that the page would not resemble that morning‟s paper; the aspiration would be to
keep it looking different. The goal, then, was to make the page more dynamic by increasing the
amount of new news posted online and cycling in and out blog posts and other news that met the
“insight and analysis” criteria. McKenna and Web editor Mark Getzfred would be the principal
gatekeepers for helping to decide what was “insight and analysis.”
The business desk editors and reporters were open and receptive to the changes. The
comments from those in the room were positive, noting that they liked the new design and were
excited to see it move forward. There were not any responses to McKenna‘s anticipated concern
that reporters would be worried about seeing their stories disappear. Instead, reporters seemed
excited about having a more dynamic page.
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See, for instance, the topics page for Diana Henriques:
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/h/diana_b_henriques/index.html
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But the process of ushering in this new reality was difficult given the different rhythms of
the print and online newsrooms. On the second day of the new business Web page, Ingrassia
made the following announcement:
Kevin and Mark and a whole bunch of others have put a lot of hard work into making the
new section front, which I think frankly looks great. But we need to be in communication
with them about when stories are going to go online. So when you have a story that is
ready, let them know, and let‘s start to talk about that. (field notes, April 13, 2010)
Later in the meeting as news was discussed, Kevin asked, ―Can we think about the section front
over the course of the day?‖
At the following meetings, I watched as McKenna continued to ask the editors when
stories might be up and when others would have estimated posting times. McKenna was wrestling
the information out of the editors rather than the editors volunteering this information. As such,
the editors could be seen as having the tendency to hold on to the dress page stories for later in
the day. The new routines for the new business page front had not yet developed.
But McKenna pointed to a quick turnaround—and new routines were already starting to
fall into place by the following week: ―We‘re getting stories earlier and earlier. We had a dress
page story up all afternoon and others up early. We‘re getting this from editors‖ (field notes,
April 20, 2010).
As I left the newsroom at the end of May, it appeared that a more fluid dynamic was
developing between the demands of feeding the new Web site and the print deadlines. Editors
were more aware of the need to keep the Web site fresh. Editors were making efforts to give
McKenna stories. Even editors charged with blogs were making attempts to help McKenna
anticipate coverage for the ―insight and analysis‖ section of the Web page.
And as I look at the Web page now after leaving the field, I see dress page stories up
earlier in the day. However, these dress page stories are also pushed down earlier in favor of more
recent dress page stories that come out later in the day. As illustrated by the way that the home
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page and business page producers go through their days, the online site prizes change over
permanence, except at the moments when the business page is completed for the day in New
York, and Asian and European news has yet to take on prominence. As a reader, I now have had
trouble finding dress page stories from the same day I get the newspaper on the new Web page.
This is a sign of the rapid turnover of stories.
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Figure 10: New Business Day Web Page, December 29, 2010, 1:02 P.M. Reprinted with
Permission.
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New rhythms and routines came together as Web and print intersected for the new
business Web page. Editors began pushing their journalists to prepare dress page stories earlier.
This means that even with stories that were not breaking news, the deadlines were moved up from
the print cycle to an online cycle. As Mark Getzfred told me in September 2010, ―It is not unusual
to have two dress page stories up by afternoon.‖ This signals a significant change in the rhythms
of the newsroom, where editors would wait for the print deadline for their story. In this case, the
way people were using and adapting to technology enable a new routine to emerge: one that
facilitated the production of a more vibrant and dynamic online Web page.
Does this change, however, signal an end to the way that print news seems to dominate
the way that most journalists at The Times think about the news? The newsroom organization is
still focused around meetings, collaboration, and conversation when it comes to the dress page
stories. The reason the Web wants dress page stories is that it wants to have something that does
indeed represent the best of The Times‘ content. But the fact that these stories are still called
―dress page‖ stories, and the fact they are still assigned importance based upon where they will be
in the paper, suggests that the print-think still dominates. The deadlines may have moved up, and
editors may want to improve the Web site, but the print process of crafting quality stories and
shielding them from instant deadlines still matters. Many dress page stories are also feature
stories, and as such, they can be ready for these new deadlines without compromising any print
values for exclusivity and uniqueness.
At the same time, those promoting online journalism at The Times can‘t have everything
they want at all times. Many news stories still have embargos
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intended for print deadlines.
Journalists try to honor these embargoes, as breaking an embargo can mean that a source will no
longer provide the same level of detail regarding a future announcement, for example. So the
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As explained previously, embargos are times that sources say the news can be released to the public even if the news
has already been released to news organizations.
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Web has to wait for embargos before posting stories. And as indicated with the Goldman ―client‖
story, and with other sensitive stories, journalists must weigh whether a story will be easily
matched by another news organization.
In the end, though, print and online value exclusivity, or making sure that The Times has
something that other publications don‘t. But online, The Times is quicker to publish information
that everyone else has. In this regard, online professional values seem to be more concerned with
staying on top of information and immediate competition. Online journalism is, at times, in the
chase for commodity news. But as online news production increasingly works with print
schedules, Times content online will increasingly become differentiated even during the day as
enterprise dress page stories appear on NYTimes.com. Holding back competitive stories from the
Web is a strategic tactic designed to make The Times look unique. The goals of print and online
journalism at The Times are the same: to make sure that these stories work to maximize The
Times‘ impact. Strategically, having both work together enhances Times content.
Journalists’ Experience of the Print and Online Worlds
The reporters I spoke with had a myriad of reactions to working in a world where they
are bifurcated by the demands of the print paper and the online world. Some journalists felt that
they were exhausting themselves to complete their online tasks at the expense of reporting. They
felt the pace of online and print reporting at present Times expectations was simply
unsustainable. Other reporters saw the online process and the online demands as a boon to the
work they do. The bifurcation in the newsroom suggests that we are at a transitional point in
newsrooms where people are adjusting to new rhythms of the expectations of online.
Even though The Times has reporters who are fully ready to write for the Web, it does not
mean that these reporters are fully invested in writing for the site at the pace editors demand.
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Furthermore, not all journalists see the process as helpful for their reporting. Some reporters see
themselves as little more than wire reporters, whereas other reporters see opportunity. I
specifically spoke to reporters who do have the experience of writing breaking news on at least a
semi-regular basis, as there are reporters in the newsroom who are charged with long-term
projects and are not affected by the online process except as it relates to when their stories will
ultimately go online or in the planning for multimedia.
“I Didn’t Join The Times To Be a Wire Reporter.”
Reporter Ed Wyatt explained how the process of updating a story online involved both
paying attention to the competition and also made him feel like the wire reporter he began his
career as. Wyatt had recently moved from working as a business reporter in the Los Angeles
bureau to covering regulatory affairs out of D.C. for the business desk. While working in L.A., he
also wrote for the culture desk, which demanded considerably less online coverage. He explained:
When I got out of business school, I was working for a wire service, Dow Jones, and the
emphasis there is speed and getting a story up as fast as possible, reporting story with
enough info to write a headline and two or three paragraphs to write a headline and send
that out. . . . Now without a doubt, I will write something for the Web immediately, it‟s
almost exactly like reporting for a wire service. . . .
I didn‟t think that I would be at The Times as a wire service reporter, and it is a trend
back toward that, and it is discomforting. You have to react to what‟s out there from AP
and other newspapers but also react to what every blog has posted out there. (personal
communication, May 10, 2010)
Wyatt also felt that he had to match everything that other organizations were covering on
any breaking story. He saw this as a consistent complaint.
It‟s a common complaint about the arena that we are in that as reporters you have to
respond to everything . . . everything. Every blog report. Editors see it and they want to
know why don„t we have [it]. And sometimes we don‟t have it because it‟s not true.
Sometimes other people have different sources. Sometimes we can learn something and
we can confirm it, but it leaves less time for original thought when you are chasing
everyone else‟s reporting.
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I asked Wyatt about whether the idea for the second-day story worked in practice for him
as he wrote breaking stories. He noted:
It‟s good in theory. . . . Yeah it make senses that we want to do that . . . and we want to
have added value and we should in the story for the newspaper, but if you have to spend
time writing the updates and story for the Web, it cuts into time [you need] to ruminate
for bigger thoughts. It‟s good theory but in practice doesn‟t always work.
To Wyatt, the second-day story approach while writing Web inserts was one that cut into his
ability to craft the larger narrative for the paper, though there is considerable pressure to come up
with something new. Wyatt, at least, has been unable to see how to make a new routine work
where he can cover a breaking news story online and still write a differentiated second-day story.
The promise of a new routine is there, and the outcome of a new routine is there: combining both
online and print. But he can‟t do it yet.
Other reporters share this view. I spoke with Jad Mouwad, who does less breaking news,
but when he does, he finds the process similar to the wire service where he also started (March 3,
2010). Mouwad also did not expect to be doing the constant updates at The Times. Instead, he
wanted to spend his time thinking about the big story rather than putting out inserts as they come.
He told me:
I came from a newswire [Bloomberg], so the whole immediate reaction, immediacy
reactivity, bang a story and get it out, bang six stories [and] get them out each day, that‟s
something I am used to, but it‟s not something I thought I would be coming over here and
finding. That‟s a big surprise to me and one of the biggest changes I‟ve seen in the six
years I‟ve been at The Times.
The immediate needs of all the news all the time on the Web has taken over. We are now
asked to do a lot of things, get news out very fast, feed the Web site, the Herald Tribune,
and do eight or nine versions, do something for the Paris deadline, and flip the story
around and write a second-day analytical piece that seems fresh. This is not what you
would have done 10 years ago.
There are more demands on time. Some reporters in the newsroom [as they are working
to promote themselves] send out tweets, some will proactively use their own social
networks to reach more people, but I‟m just working on that.
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Journalists are not unprepared to work at this intense pace, but they are still trying to figure out
how to do the balancing act The Times has asked them for between producing online content and
producing the second-day story.
On the other hand, Mouwad points out the upshot to working on the constant Web
pressure: “By 1 p.m. [the deadline for the Paris print edition], half your work is done and you can
reshape story for paper, especially if it‟s big story or breaking news story, and make the next day
a yesterday story. It‟s a nice exercise to turn around the story, and it makes for a full day.”
Mouwad, at least, finds the challenge and the new rhythm one he can make work for him. His
favorite days, though, are those when he has no deadline at all.
Other reporters find the pace of reporting and writing the second-day story difficult to
maintain. As one reporter said to me:
The pace is simply unsustainable. Maybe you can ask someone to come in here early in
the morning and start doing that, but they are going to burn out. You can‟t have someone
doing that regularly. Maybe the young people can handle it, but it is not a way to do this.
And then you turn around and write a longer story for the paper. That‟s like two entirely
different stories in one day.
This reporter had adjusted to the idea of writing for the Web, but not the demands of the new
routine. And this reporter wondered whether it was even possible.
A senior reporter, Diana Henriques, had less to respond to the online pressures of filing
stories, but she acknowledged that online writing meant thinking about things she hadn‟t expected
to (field notes, January 20, 2010). She explained:
I spend more time than I ever thought I would thinking about online. Of course I would
always have to think about photos, but now I am thinking about online as well. . . . At this
stage in my career, I should be spending my time having long lunches and cultivating
sources. But that‟s not the reality. Things are moving much quicker.
An important distinction emerges between the reporters and the editors, who aspire
toward the second-day story. The reporters acknowledge that they are more than capable of
producing a second-day story for the paper, but the breakneck pace of doing so makes it hard to
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sustain. They find the demands difficult, and many see this as cutting off potential venues for
more in-depth reporting opportunities. The editors, however, see the most important story not as
the online story but as the second-day story. Still, they expect their reporters to do both.
But from the perspective of reporters, this is a tiring process that makes it harder for them
to cultivate the kind of relationships and sources they need to make their reporting into the
second-day stories that will truly add the kind of value to the print paper that editors want. As The
Times progresses through its attempt to balance the demands of online and print, the needs of
reporters to sustain their pace must be acknowledged. However, it is important to note that few
reporters are regularly doing breaking news all the time; most reporters do breaking news when
their beat has a major story. The breaking news impetus happens during major events, but these
events may come in clusters, such as the financial regulation bill, or a large series of bank
earnings over the course of several days, or hearings about Toyota. For journalists, the second-
day story represents a new routine, and they have to figure out how to deal with it in their
reporting.
Reporters Who Feed Into Speed
There are some reporters who can feed into the speed. Some find the work energizing;
others see it as a potential venue for connecting to audiences. These reporters enjoy updating
stories for the Web, and while they may also draw parallels to wire services, they see themselves
as doing something that is additive to their work rather than subtracting from their ability to craft
something more substantial at the end of the day. The more substantial story, with The Times
brand, is what keeps the story from being a wire story.
Graham Bowley said he felt like he understood the reason behind the need to get stories
out on the Web early.
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[The reason we do the breaking news] is to be there at the beginning of the conversation.
You cover the obvious part, and it helps the bigger story. I don't believe the people that
say they could have spent their time reporting. Covering at all points [during the day]
really helps the story. The question becomes when you want to leave off for your paper
story. Do your readers have a New York Times concept even if it is commodity news?
There is a distinctive voice. We recognize certain standards. The Times is well placed to
do [something different], and it doesn't think commodity. We think, ―What is the original
take?‖ and we do what we to do. (personal communication, January 21, 2010).
For Bowley, writing the story as it breaks helps his reporting. He does, however, see that there is
a moment when the story has to be put aside for the ―original‖ take that The Times offers. The
online story is to ―be there at the beginning.‖ Even if it is news everyone has, there should still be
a ―New York Times‖ concept.
Other reporters were also positive about the way that they use breaking stories to fuel
their later reporting. Micki Maynard talked to me after she had been covering many breaking
news stories about Toyota‘s problems from the Hill (personal communication, May 17, 2010).
She also covered the airplane industry for years and wrote breaking news from this beat.
Maynard adopted a particular strategy for her work. She said she thinks constantly about
“what kind of B matter I can have about GM or Toyota already in my head.” When she sits down
to write the first take for the Web story, Maynard said she is already “thinking . . . [about] what
you want for the paper and the paper has to be different—spinning it forward and really doing it
twice.”
Another one of her strategies is to be in constant conversation with her editor about the
second-day story. As she noted:
One of things you do really is talk about is the [second story] upfront. You almost have
the conversation as soon as the first Web take is ready about what do we want to save for
the print story, where do we want to go for the print story, and what do we want to avoid
giving away in Web story, or someone else is doing it.
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Maynard said it also helps that she has a clear picture in her head about what a second-day story
really means: “[It‟s] what you can you tell people that‟s new who have been following this, but
there are people who haven‟t read this, it‟s a hybrid of story and the analysis.”
For reporters who feel a disjunct between the stories that they are asked to produce as the
second-day story and the demands of the online product, the solution might be to be in better
conversation with editors about the second-day story from the beginning of the breaking news
event, as Maynard suggests. However, this may not be possible because the story may be
evolving and the second-day angle may not be clear until more reporting is completed. There is
tension about how to satisfy both demands at The Times, and while some reporters do find
themselves energized by fulfilling both roles, other reporters see the online pressures as zapping
away their opportunities for greater coverage.
However, none of the reporters I spoke to who were covering breaking news objected in
any way to the idea of writing news online. Online is a must; it is, as Maynard put it, ―in the
DNA‖ of The Times at this point. The online newsroom is fully integrated as far as the rhythms of
breaking news. It is simply just another reporting duty. Whether reporters like the frequent
updates and demands of online is another question—but the distinction between print or online
reporters has been erased. They know that they will do both.
Does Page One Still Matter?
Editors and reporters are in a transition point as they are trying to determine the value of
a story online versus its print counterpart. Because a story has such an ephemeral position on the
Web page, the placement of a story at the top of the home page is not a source of celebration in
the newsroom. I never heard any reporter exclaim ―My story made the home page,‖ though there
was the expectation if the story was breaking news or a Page One story that the story would
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indeed make the home page. Bloggers pushed for the stories to make the home page because it
would drive traffic to their blog, but again, this was only a temporary victory.
Executive Editor Bill Keller told me that the one of the primary ways the Web became
integrated into the newsroom was through rewarding people with recognition that they were
doing a good job online.
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One of the ways for journalists to know how their articles are
performing is a quantitative measure: how often they are read or emailed online. The Times
introduced the most-emailed list in 2000. This most-emailed list is an imperfect science that
tracks the number of times a story is emailed to someone else using The Times‘ email options.
But it does not track how often a link gets sent without using The Times‘ ―email this article‖ tool.
It does not track tweets or other mentions on social media. The Times introduced a ―most viewed‖
list in 2009, which tracks the number of times a story is viewed. But again, this is imprecise; it
does not count mobile readers, it does not count people getting their news from RSS feeds
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, and
it does not count e-readers.
Journalists told me that editors do pay attention to the most-emailed list. On one day, I
watched as Ingrassia exclaimed, ―See, farmers read The New York Times. Monsanto is at number
4!‖ (field notes, April 13, 2010). But a reporter told me, ―It matters, but not that much.‖
Some reporters and editors do campaign to get their stories to have better play on the
Web. Steven Greenhouse wrote a story about student internships and how students were not
getting paid for their work. The story did not make the home page initially, but Greenhouse
campaigned for better home page play. As associate managing editor Jim Roberts told me,
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In this sense, he‘s simply talking about getting journalists to write for the Web.
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RSS feed stands for Really Simple Syndication. This is a content delivery vehicle used when a person individually
selects news sites and other Web content and distributes the content by a feed. RSS feeds are hosted on a platform such
as Google Reader, for example.
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―Steven Greenhouse asked for better play on the home page, and we gave it some play, and then
it was the number one most-emailed story‖ (field notes, April 9, 2010).
However, editors are still primarily concerned with Page One stories. As Brian Stelter
told me. ―The most-emailed and most-viewed are imperfect. . . . I know that my promotion and
my time here depends on getting Page One or A1 stories. That‘s what matters most‖ (field notes,
April 5, 2010). Another reporter expressed to me, ―A1 is the prime real estate; yeah, editors are
paying attention to the top 10, but what really matters is the A1. That‘s what they are judging you
on.‖ One reporter expressed frustration that online-only articles were basically ignored, even if
they made the most-emailed list. The reporter said, ―I can be on the most-emailed list with my
blogs, but if it isn‘t a Page One story, it doesn‘t seem to matter.‖
While some reporters and editors work to actively promote their stories, and these online
quantitative measures of value seem to make some impact on how well a story is perceived, the
emphasis and value still lies in the Page One story. The Page One story is what the whole day in
the newspaper print workflow is geared around: producing the five or six best stories The Times
has to offer. This is The Times‘ final statement regarding what was important on a particular day;
unlike the Web page, it is unchanging and leaves a mark for history. Page One stories are
prominent signifiers of whether a reporter is standing out at The Times. If the final product is the
print paper, then the ultimate focus remains on creating and crafting the Page One story.
Discussions at the business meetings focus on how stories can make it to Page One. Even if a
story is a silly one meant to lighten the front page, such as one story I saw talked about featuring
dogs who could no longer bark, Page One story considerations are still taken seriously.
Some editors rejected the idea that the singular focus on Page One stories meant that they
were unconcerned about the Web. As Adam Bryant explained, however, Page One is also a way
that online may be talked about: ―We use A1 because that‘s how to talk about a good story. A
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Page One thought is a big thought. That doesn‘t mean we aren‘t thinking about online‖ (personal
communication, May 3, 2010). But my sense of the daily print rhythms suggest that the A1
designation is the most important and overriding concern at the paper in terms of how stories are
valued and judged as to their contributions in the paper.
Thus far, the world of metrics and online monitoring of Web traffic has yet to hit The
Times, and Bill Keller has expressed wariness at giving his staff too much knowledge about their
performance. The tech folks got updates on the most read stories of the week and the most read
blogs, but these traffic numbers were highly guarded and quite sensitive. During my research, I
never heard anyone other than a blogger or someone speaking about larger Web strategy talk
about being concerned about increasing Times Web traffic. This is certainly not the case in other
newsrooms where traffic is a constant concern as it is seen as the key to monetization (Peters,
2010). But Page One stories are still the most pressing interest at The Times. Page One is a central
organizing rhythm; it assigns value and worth to stories in a way that has lasting and historic
meaning; and it gives journalists an aspiration for their work. In this regard, Page One stories
matter more than the home page in the minds of journalists at The Times.
Is Integration a Reality?
Print and online journalism production have different imperatives and values. The
overarching similarity is that the goals for both print and online journalism are to have the best
Times content available to readers; but the Web wants this content now. As such, how does The
Times stand on its goal of integration? What does integration say about the routines and flexibility
of journalists at The Times?
Integration, as we noted at the beginning of this chapter, is a bit fuzzier than Keller‘s
original meaning of bringing together the print and Web newsroom. If integration means that
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Times journalists are writing for the Web, then integration is complete. If integration means that
the Web personnel are a visible part of the business desk, then integration is complete. But there
are still many areas where integration is incomplete, as Keller acknowledges. The time for selling
the importance of online journalism with an integration czar may now be over, but challenges still
remain.
Among these challenges are reconciling what are two very different value systems and
two very different rhythms for production. The differences between print and online also have
implications for the kinds of improvisation that takes place in the newsroom, with online routines
newer and certainly more flexible than print routines. However, the most powerful people on
most desks are still editors who care most about print stories; their days are spent in meetings that
will decide what goes on the front page of the newspaper and on the front page of their section (if
they have a section front). On the business desk, these daily meetings and routines were all geared
to make the print paper.
These print meetings were not just about story selection, but also about story
development. Through these conversations, as I have illustrated earlier, journalists negotiate
different questions for each story. The print rhythms provide another sounding board for feedback
on stories. As a reporter is busily filing away for the Web, the editor is sitting in meetings crafting
what will hopefully be a perfect version for the print paper. Even in instances where the news is
not breaking news, editors are concerned more about the placement of the story in the print paper,
what art and design will go with it, and they spend their time in meetings talking about narrative
arc. There is little to no conversation about the strategy for a story‘s life online, for instance.
Editors became better about letting McKenna know about when stories would be ready for the
Web, but the decisions about why certain stories might be good for the Web still focused around
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what would ultimately be best for the print paper—particularly when it came to questions of
exclusivity.
Print daily production values the novel, the different, the unique spin on a story. Online
production wants that, but at the end of the day. During the day, the online beast just wants
something—even if it is the commodity news angle or the lesser story that may ultimately not be
particularly important in the next day‘s paper. The goals seem at odds until they converge around
particular moments, such as timing a big scoop, or after deadline in the evening, when the Web
site most accurately represents the best of what The Times has to offer to its readers for that day
online. And then it all changes a few hours later.
Integration of print and online is difficult for journalists trying to accommodate the
values of both media. The way that they talk about doing their tasks reflects that there is a
division in the newsroom between what the Web wants and what the newspaper wants. The
second-day story is the print story, but the online story is the up-to-the-minute story.
The people who do think about online coverage as their primary concern serve as bridges
between the print and online newsroom, and they have distinct positions. The Web editor—and in
this case, the deputy business editor Kevin McKenna—takes charge of making sure that the print
side is producing and planning for the Web. These people are integration, and they are thinking
about how to transform the story into an online product; however, they do not think about how to
turn this online product back into a print story. The Web producer facilitates their work.
Many reporters, in particular, are struggling to make the dream of a second-day story part
of their routine. Some have adopted tactics to make it easier, and some enjoy it, but others find it
more than they can handle—particularly because having a unique Times angle brings the pressure
of doing something special. This illustrates that journalists are having some difficulty with the
post-Fordist experience of work in the newsroom; as Sennett (2007) might suggest, these
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journalists are always on and always producing. They don‘t have time, or so they say, for
reflection. These journalists are supposed to be able to be part of a 24-7 operation that demands
that they be producing some definable good at regular intervals, but they find it difficult to meet
these demands. Technology enables the opportunity for new routines, but new routines do not
exist until people incorporate and embrace this technology and make it part of their lives.
At the same time, it is clear that new routines are slowly evolving—in part through the
testing process of improvisation as journalists try out different methods and practices to keep up
with their reporting expectations and needs for online production. Some journalists are adapting
to doing the second-day story. And journalists on the business desk were quickly able to begin
making changes to their workflow so that print goals could meet online demands with the hope of
having dress page stories up earlier in the day. New routines are unfolding, but they are not yet
stable. Furthermore, as the new business Web page makes clear, the relationship between print
and online is far from static, and new modes of engaging with each medium are going to continue
to unfold.
Now there are two different audiences imagined in the creation of news: the imagined
print audience, as suggested by the need to create this second-day story, is an audience that has
the time and the desire to take the news at a slower pace. This audience wants the bigger picture,
the larger recap. Maybe they‘ve been following the news all day, but they want The Times‘
perspective on the developments. To journalists at The Times, the online reader cares less about
big pictures and more about the breaking content. The Times needs to find a way to understand
the distinct needs of these two audiences—if these imagined audiences do in some way reflect
reality.
What has changed from the past is that print and online news now exist side by side.
Technology affects the routines of production, as Tuchman (1980) and Boczkowski (2009) have
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noted. This remains the same. But the negotiations between print and online are uncertain,
especially for reporters. The values for now suggest that the print production routine of creating
Page One stories that ―print first‖ may still be at the forefront of many journalists‘ minds. At the
same time, the Web makes journalists feel that they should always be producing new content for
an active Web audience. Reconciling how to produce the two using the same people with the
same quality remains a still out-standing question for The Times.
Executive Editor Bill Keller put the dilemma this way:
One of great existential questions around here for last few years has been: Do we
jeopardize standards as we move into a digital world? Doing journalism takes time for
research and time for reflection. The appetite for the Internet is constant, and deadlines
are always and continual. This is clearly a tension, and we‘ve come up with all kinds of
devices for maintaining the balance and preserving time for research and reflection.
(personal communication, May 7, 2010)
But in my observations, not everyone has found that balance yet.
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CHAPTER 8: MULTIMEDIA—OPPORTUNITIES AND INNOVATIONS
Ann Derry, the head of the video department at The Times, sits in an office that has
shelves ringed with prizes—including Emmys from her time in television. But she is no longer
the documentary filmmaker she once was; instead, she is making documentary quality videos, as
she sees it, for NYTimes.com.
In her ideal world, The Times would be a completely platform agnostic place. By this she
means a future at the newspaper where instead of people thinking of stories with text/print first
and multimedia second, staff at the newspaper would think about what medium is the best way to
tell the story.
I‘ve thought for years that in a really multimedia world, Jill [Abramson] and Bill [Keller]
will sit down and say, is this video, graphics, and/or multimedia? Maybe you never write
the article. But I‘m waiting for the ceiling to drop on my head. (personal communication,
April 19, 2010)
While Derry waits for the ceiling to drop, she and her team are still producing work that
earns them awards. They are not alone in these accolades. In addition to video awards, the
multimedia team won an Emmy in 2009.
Derry has more sympathizers in top management than she may realize. What may be the
issue, however, is that Derry‘s vision for The Times as a multimedia institution hasn‘t yet caught
up with the realities of how people think about news production or how the news organization
itself is structured.
In fact, Managing Editor John Geddes is well aware of The Times‘ need to figure out the
best way to tell stories. Moreover, he sees multimedia as essential to the newspaper‘s survival. As
he put it:
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The world is changing and consumption of information is different. How people want to
consume it is changing. . . . That is going to be the long-term differentiator for The New
York Times. There are going to be many ways for people to become aware of
information. . . . [W]e are going to have to appeal to people.
There is huge money soon from this. In 20 years. When everyone is only consuming The
Times on their iPad, we are going to say, ―Why didn‘t we just choose the best way to tell
the story and not have duplicative content—not have the reporter, graphic, slide show,
and the article?‖ (Personal communication, May 7, 2010)
But Geddes recognizes that The Times isn‘t yet truly a multimedia organization—even
though it has some of the best multimedia for any news site on the Web. He explained to me,
―We [as an institution] are learning new skills and learning how to publish in new ways. We still
haven‘t evolved enough to say what is the most efficient way to tell story X.‖ And he admitted,
―We still have the written-story bias.‖
As a result, The Times is in a period of transition as it begins to incorporate multimedia
into its daily workflow. There are still variables that are unknown; for example, many traditional
journalists do not understand how multimedia can be used as part of their work. The labor
requirements and skill sets are different for creating and for thinking about multimedia. While the
newspaper has had decades to understand the interplay between print, photography, and graphics,
the institution has had multimedia for only the past decade. People could stream Web video in
any real, reliable way, beginning only in mid-2005.
These new developments with multimedia have offered opportunities for people to move
outside of established routines to pursue new ways of telling stories. What remains the same,
however, and what makes multimedia a site of resistance for some, is the urgency of
communicating information in the best and the most efficient way possible. Similarly, the types
of storytelling on audio and video require the same skill sets they always have—though these
standards are adjusted for an online audience and require knowledge of online software. At The
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Times, these new opportunities for multimedia mean chances for flexibility within the
organization, but the process, because it is so new, does not yet have established routines.
Multimedia is more than just the story text, photographs, and static graphics that have
accompanied stories for decades (and now also appear online). Deuze (2004) defines multimedia
for news sites as:
the presentation of a news story package on a Web site using two or more media formats,
such as (but not limited to) spoken and written word, music, moving and still images,
graphic animations, including interactive and hypertextual elements (online journalism).
(p. 140)
Multimedia is one more level of on-demand storytelling, where users help direct a visual, aural,
or graphic experience that responds to their commands. In the Web, tablet, or smart-phone
context, multimedia commonly refers to the videos, audio slide shows
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and photo slide shows,
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interactive graphics,
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interactive databases,
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and documents. To some degree, The Times has
tried to cope with the variety of new forms to tell stories by establishing departments and
designating specific job descriptions for people to create these forms of stories. But projects are
frequently overlapping; an interactive graphic can have an accompanying interactive database,
videos, and audio, for example. And traditional journalists themselves are in a position of
understanding how this all works for their jobs—dealing with innovations they never before had
to consider.
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An audio slide show is a series of online photographs accompanied by sound, from a reporter, from the subject(s) of
the photographs, or both.
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A photo slide show is a series of photos, often accompanied by text. Users can scan through the photos at their own
pace.
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An interactive graphic is a graphic that engages the user by offering changing elements to the graphic, which are
often revealed through navigating the mouse over the graphic with a mouse or simply exploring the different elements
of the graphic.
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An interactive database is a form of multimedia that invites the user to enter data, which are then fed into existing
Times data. The user may find out information about water quality, the Madoff case, public pensions, or any other
forms of information, and these databases are often used with public records.
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The business desk is not the shining example of The Times at its most exuberant displays
of multimedia prowess. As one journalist warned me, ―If you want to see multimedia, you‘re
looking at the wrong desk.‖ But this is simply because the business desk does not have the
shocking environmental or political catastrophes to respond to, such as the Haitian earthquake of
2010 or major protests, nor does it have big elections to predict, or colorful (or depressing)
human-interest stories collected from all over the world. I often heard business desk staff self-
deprecatingly refer to their options for visuals and multimedia as pictures of buildings, logos, or
white men in suits.
The reality that I saw, however, was that the business desk was a vibrant place to watch
multimedia production, particularly as multimedia producers and traditional journalists negotiated
the demands of each form of multimedia. Multimedia production is nimble and flexible, creative
and often award-winning. Web producers routinely produce audio slide shows. These producers
will often work with reporters across the world to weave their voices from, say, a bureau in India,
over a series of photos and create a narrative that tells the story about these photos.
The business desk‘s use of timelines for interactive graphics, for instance, was hailed at a
multimedia meeting as being particularly innovative because users could manipulate two different
timelines at once. The graphics had the ability to run two sets of images and information (field
notes, January 19, 2010). The business desk, working with the interactive news team, originated
an extensive online database that allows anyone to look up the water quality in his or her
hometown (―What‘s in your water,‖ 2009).
The Pulitzer Prize awarded to journalist Matt Richtel and the business staff featured
video games, timelines, videos, and other multimedia features to create a complete Web package
for the series. More so than any other desk, the business desk routinely posts documents using an
in-house software platform called ―the doc viewer.‖ Almost every reporter who has documents
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that the public can see will give them to a Web producer to be put up online. Multimedia on the
business desk is a successful, daily accomplishment for the user experience. But the creation and
production of multimedia is a bit more complicated.
This chapter will outline some of the ways in which multimedia creates new avenues for
improvisation and the opportunity to create new routines that haven‘t existed before. It will also
illustrate the flexibility that exists in these still brand-new positions in the newsroom, and their
resulting space in the organizational structure. In many regards, the chapter demonstrates how it
is difficult to plan for something new, but people nonetheless try. And those who have had more
opportunities to plan for the new—the multimedia—are more able to find ways to incorporate it
into their daily workflow. Similarly, it will address just how well people understand what
multimedia can do—the transmedia potential of creating new stories across multiple platforms,
extending beyond the original theme. In this way, multimedia is a prime illustration of
improvisation within the news organization as a whole, as journalists are embarking beyond
previously existing norms and ideas about journalism to transform what they do into a new form
of news. The goal is to still have multimedia resemble the news, but ideally, a multimedia success
will tell a different story from traditional news.
But before addressing all of this, it is important to provide a brief look back at the history
and present state of the various ―multimedia‖ departments as they exist at The Times. This gives
an insight into how the unstable and unknown has been structured and incorporated back into a
predictable routine—and made into desks, even if what they produce is still new to the
newsroom.
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Structuring New Structures in Multimedia
The way that most newsrooms understand how to coordinate their workflow, based on
decades of organizational patterns, is through the idea of desks. Each desk is thought to have
clearly defined roles. Desks are in charge of producing a specific section of the paper and have
beat writers. Or there is the photography desk, charged with making sure that there are photos for
the paper. So the natural way for The Times to organize its new units of video, podcasting (also
called NYT Radio), Web producers producing multimedia, multimedia teams, and interactive
news is through some divisions into desks.
However, the reality is that these old routines of desk assignments don‘t work particularly
well, as many of these ―desks‖ have overlapping responsibilities, and even the traditional
graphics desk is now producing online material. Nonetheless, it‘s worth a look to see how they
work together and how they overlap, as well as to understand their history at the organization.
Specifically, I will talk about video, podcasting, interactive news, graphics, the multimedia team,
and Web producers, but the figure below gives a sense of the desks‘ relationship overall.
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Figure 11: Multimedia Graphic Organization Chart as Made by The Times. Reprinted with
permission.
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This figure was provided to me by Andrew DeVigal,
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multimedia editor at The Times.
He uses it for his presentations about multimedia at The Times. It is slightly different from the one
I put together, which illustrates my perception of the overlapping desks. DeVigal‘s graphic
illustrates the overlapping idea of the desks having coordinating functions. He noted to me that he
put multimedia in the middle because that‘s his desk, but, ―Anyone can be in the middle. In fact,
the one in the middle depends on the type of interactive we're putting together. Anyone one of us
can take the lead based on the focus and priority of the package‖ (personal communication,
December 12, 2010)
Video at The Times
In 1995, The Times acquired a Philadelphia company called Video News International,
and The Times began to produce some television content featuring Times journalists and other
features that did not have much to do with Times journalism. Some of this material included
credits on shows such as Trauma: Life in the ER or some PBS Frontline or A&E Investigative
Reports episodes (Kolodzy 2001). Other productions from The Times included work for TLC,
National Geographic, Discovery, and Showtime. The Times had also had a short partnership with
ABC News during the 2000 political season—the result was a daily webcast called ―Political
Points,‖ which appeared on ABCnews.com and NYTimes.com.
In 2003, The Times launched a joint venture with the Discovery channel called Discovery
Times. One of the Discovery Times‘ first programs, Derry pointed out, was a three and a half
minute daily news show produced from The Times newsroom. Having cameras permanently
placed in the newsroom was, as editor Kevin McKenna put it, ―a big cultural change,‖ as he noted
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I have explicit permission from him to reproduce the graphic here.
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that in the 1990s cameras were actually banned in the newsroom (personal communication,
March 6, 2011).
At the time, Jane Bornemeier and Derry faced resistance in the newsroom from reporters
and editors who did not want to be on camera, but according to Derry, people eventually became
more cooperative. They kept the show running for four nights a week for two years. The unit also
produced ―Movie Minutes,‖ a brief weekly program with critic Anthony Scott. In 2006, The
Times sold its share of Discovery Times and closed New York Times Television. However, a
small core group of television producers were kept in The Times newsroom.
This burgeoning time for Web video created new opportunities for the Times television
producers. The Web video unit grew organically, and the Web site put a video player on the home
page in 2006. Derry said that at first reporters didn‘t understand the potential, but this changed
once the videos started going up regularly. Derry noted, ―The story changed really quickly with
how we cooperated in the newsroom. They saw us every day. We became a desk like a real
department and it just evolved. We were a desk in the print newsroom before the Web was
integrated. We were a precursor of integration.‖ These videos had what Derry called the ethos of
―documentary filmmakers.‖ They were ―not any different than the documentaries but now tied
into the new cycle as a four- or five-minute piece when the story went into the paper.‖
The video unit still strives to have its VJs (or video journalists) continue in the style of
documentary filmmaking. As a result, the video staff can get overwhelmed with requests from
Times staffers. Derry explained:
We don‘t cherry-pick our projects. There are some projects that are great projects but are
just not visual. The best projects that lend themselves to video will have good visuals and
good audio and good characters, and I think the best video is one that is complementary,
not the same story.
As far as the aspirations for her standards for videos that go on the home page, Derry
insists that they should have a specific quality. It‘s what Derry considers, ―broadcast quality …
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what you would see on TV is what we produce and should be able to produce because it‘s The
New York Times. We bring the technical craft of the high-quality film- and television-making and
the journalism of The Times.‖ As emphasis for this point, she pointed out that The Times
multimedia staff won an Emmy in 2010 for the series One in Eight Million, which profiled 54
New Yorkers in weekly episodes.
But Derry acknowledged that videos at The Times range in quality. The video team
produces highly edited videos. But there are also videos that are shot with a Flip cam,
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for
example; David Carr, the media columnist, used to regularly set up his own Web video from his
basement and shoot the ―Carpetbagger‖ videos for the Oscar Awards. David Segal on the
business desk goes out with his own camera to capture video. Each reporter has a different faculty
with the camera; some videos are deliberately designed to look like they are rough cuts, while
others are intended to be more highly produced.
Derry says there is a space for all of these kinds of videos on The Times' Web site, though
she carefully guards the home page video player as the ―front page‖ for Times video. One point of
confusion, however, is the relationship between Web producers, who can also shoot video, and
the videographers. Web producers often come to her with video ideas, and she will instruct them
to shoot the video themselves and to think of the project as a multimedia portfolio. However,
Derry says that this depends on the abilities of a Web producer. Some can craft videos that meet
the quality expectations of video, but others create more informal videos. Still, as Derry contends,
―Everyone has a stake in this. It was harder to get integrated with the Web producers than the
newsroom, but as more people are doing more videos themselves, all the desks are more fluid.‖
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A Flip cam is a miniature video camera that looks like a digital camera and can be set up to shoot with just the push
of a single button.
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Podcasting at The Times
Another of The Times‘ multimedia offerings is podcasting. Jane Bornemeier started the
podcasting unit of The Times in 2006.
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The Times owned public radio station WQXR from as far
back as 1944, and The Times initially relied on its station for technical assistance with podcasting.
In 2006, NYT Radio began producing segments for the radio, including hourly newscasts, and
podcasts. The reason The Times got started podcasting in 2006 was, as Bornemeier put it, ―There
was just a feeling we needed to be doing it.‖ Now, The Times does podcasts and audio for the
website itself.
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Podcasts at The Times are a relatively low-tech affair, and the most difficult part of
Bornemeier‘s job may be the scheduling she has to do in order to get podcasts produced. The
business desk used to have a daily podcast, hosted by business desk journalist Jeff Sommer. This
has scaled back into a weekly weekend podcast that gives an overview of the week‘s news.
Sommer, however, will often grab reporters working on a breaking story to do an interview
during the course of the day and not wait until Friday, the day he records his full, approximately
30-minute show. Both Bornemeier and Sommer have no formal training for radio—though they
have learned over the years from working with people in radio.
To produce the weekend podcast, Sommer writes out an introductory script that attempts
to weave together all of the elements he‘s gathered over the course of the week (field notes,
January 29, 2010). Most of these are interviews with reporters working on stories, but
occasionally he will have on guests. On the occasions I watched him, he interviewed a reporter in
New York and on another occasion called a reporter in Detroit. The tone is informal; as he told
one China expert he interviewed: ―[I]magine NPR . . . but a little looser‖ (field notes, April 8,
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Technically this is still known as NYT Radio, but the unit is principally charged with creating podcasts.
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The Times sold WQXR in 2009.
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2010). On these podcasts, the journalists have a chance to be more conversational than they are in
their writing. Economics reporter Peter Goodman explained to me that the podcasts ―help me
think through what I‘m writing‖ (March 30, 2010). The podcast, according to Bornemeier, is not
intended as an audio version of the story, but is instead viewed as a way to provide listeners with
new information or analysis that might get lost in the longer article.
One question that arises from these podcasts is whether journalist will inject too much of
their own points of view. I asked both Bornemeier and Sommer about the potential of
editorializing content on the podcasts. Both said that the reporters were giving their analyses and
knew the lines about what they could and couldn‘t say. The questions, as Sommer told me, are
intended to give reporters the chance to ―explain their stories in more detail‖ (field notes, January
29, 2010). But as Bornemeier told me, ―This question of a reporter‘s view has come up for a long
time, before we started doing this. It comes up any time a reporter wants to go on TV, for
instance. We really are just doing the same thing and people get it.‖ In many respects, then,
podcasting raises old issues even with a new form of distribution, and the newsroom has set
patterns and understandings for how to negotiate what can and cannot be said.
Podcasting is also one of the easiest forms of multimedia for a reporter to get used to
doing. As Bornemeier and Sommer told me, reporters are accustomed to talking to their sources.
Reporter Jenna Wortham told me that she liked being on the radio and liked podcasting, but TV
was just something she hadn‘t been prepared to do. ―I worry about the way I look. I can just talk
on a podcast‖ (field notes, January 27, 2010).
Further, editors on the business desk thought there should be more podcasts and wanted
more from The Times‘ current offerings. Editor David Gillen told me he thought there should be
a five-minute, early morning pre-markets podcast and a post-markets podcast (field notes, March
2, 2010). In fact, he was able to see the podcasts as an alternative to the print story: that The
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Times should not run the markets stories in the paper and instead deliver them to people as
something they can listen to. Of course, as Gillen noted, that would require the continuous news
reporter or someone on the desk to be up early enough to do pre-market reporting—perhaps early
enough to get the podcast out by 5:30 a.m. This suggests that multimedia would place new
demands on reporters. But to some extent, podcasting is considered so easy by people in the Web
newsroom that it isn‘t even considered multimedia by the Web producers. At their turn-over
meetings in the evening, where Web producers pitch multimedia to the home page, Web
producers do not mention podcasts. Putting podcasts up on the Web page is simple;—there is an
easy code to embed the podcast into the story. Podcasts are unlikely to be pulled out as home
page multimedia content. Podcasting, then, may be the most comfortable form of multimedia, but
it is also the form that inspires the least sense of adventure. The question and challenge is to what
extent podcasting becomes not just recasting the story but truly retelling the story in a way that
brings a new dimension to the story that wasn‘t previously there.
Graphics, Interactive News, and the Multimedia Team
Interactivity is common to many of the multimedia desks across The Times. Video and
podcasting require the user merely to press a play button for a produced experience, but other
forms of multimedia, such as audio slide shows and interactive graphics, invite the user to
become part of their own storytelling process. Web producers, people on the traditional graphics
desk, the interactive news group, computer-assisted reporters and multimedia designers all help
produce these interactive forms of communication that invite user engagement. But the divisions
between the groups I mentioned are quite blurry because what appears to us as a multimedia
experience can come out of one of these groups at The Times or, in turn, these groups working
together to create a multimedia package.
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The traditional graphics desk has increasingly evolved to create more than just still
graphics for the print paper. A simple example on the business desk might be the way that users
can use data to manipulate stock charts and to create their own stock portfolios. The graphics
desk relies on external data for the information but has created a mechanism to make this
possible. The interactive news desk is best known for creating projects that involve making data
accessible to readers—for instance, creating an interactive database that users can put together to
search for the water quality in their local municipalities. DeVigal‘s multimedia team is more
concerned with pictures and visuals to tell stories. However, look at this project, Faces of the
Dead
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(ongoing; see link in footnotes), which was completed by a member of the multimedia
team and the head of the interactive news team working together. Web producers also create
interactive experiences online, often aided by the research of reporters: Consider this business
desk project on the biography of Ben Bernanke (see link in footnotes).
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Aron Pilhofer, head of the interactive news team, explained some of the differences
between interactive news and DeVigal‘s multimedia team:
Generally, I would say we are more about building backends, specialty/event Web sites
(Oscars, Olympics, elections). If there is a database involved, we're involved. Multimedia
is more about visual/audio storytelling, character-driven multimedia. They also build
storytelling tools for producers. That‘s a radical simplification, and there's a lot of
overlap—particularly on technologies. Multimedia is doing a lot more with
HTML/[Javascript] than they used to. (personal communication, December 11, 2010)
Whatever the role descriptions of these individuals and teams,—The Times has many
people at work creating a multimedia experience for users. The work of these particular groups—
multimedia producers, graphics, interactive graphics, and Web producers—differ from video and
audio because of their emphasis on user engagement in creating and constructing an experience of
manipulating information. This is a signal not only that a story will be told in a new way, but that
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http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/us/faces-of-the-dead.html
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http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/05/14/business/16ben-timeline.html
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the user can choose how much or how little he or she wants to learn of the story, and the user can
construct his or her own experience of the narrative. While The Times ultimately has control over
the content, interactivity allows users to create their own stories from existing information.
Web Producers and Multimedia Production
The capacity of Web producers to create original multimedia can be absolutely
tremendous; just look to some of these efforts following major crises during the time I spent at
The Times in 2010, such as the earthquake in Haiti or the BP oil spill. But the role of Web
producer is still one that remains murky in the hierarchy and structure of The Times. In part, this
is because many Web producers are still charged with the daily act of posting online content. Yet
for those who have the time to work with reporters and editors to create multimedia, the lines
between their roles and the graphics, photo, interactive news, and multimedia teams are not
always clear. This suggests the newness of this role and that The Times is still trying to figure out
the best way to produce multimedia efficiently using the skills of people on hand.
For instance, the relationship between Web producers and video is not as fluid in practice
as Derry, the video chief editor, had described. In my time, I watched as one particular video
made by a Web producer was pulled off the home page for not meeting the quality of what the
home page player should hold. Those who had seen the video hadn‘t noticed what Derry found
fault with—small editing issues. Upon second review, the Web producer saw these flaws but
wondered whether anyone watching the video would have noticed. Similarly, the relationship
between Web producers and the video team is also complicated by the fact that there are so few
people working on video compared with the demands that the business desk has for video. Many
Web producers feel that some of their best projects are taken from them by the video team.
Instead of an audio slide show done by a Web producer, for instance, the project will become a
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video produced by the video team. The video staff often gets the first right of refusal for visual
projects. Web producers have no guarantee that if they produce video, it will be featured with the
same prominence online.
Thus, Web producers are then subtly encouraged to spend their time working on audio
slide shows and interactive graphics. However, these slide shows and interactive graphics also
intersect with the collaboration of other desks. While video journalists and traditional journalists
can work together to produce a project, the Web producer is dependent on the photographer or
photo editor for the raw materials for a photo slide show.
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For a simple slide show featured on
the home page, for instance, a Web producer can select photos from pre-existing photos taken
from the online photography storehouse, Merlin. But photographers and photo editors also want
to have some say over which photos are used in these slide shows. I observed this during
multimedia meetings, when the photo editor and Web producers debated whether there would be
enough high-quality photos for such slide shows. Where the photo editor might not see a slide
show, a Web producer might. A standards question comes into play: Do the photos all have to be
the quality as photos that would run in the paper? Does the photo editor have to approve every
photo? Or can the Web producer decide? Further, as more photographers learn to capture sound
while they are in the field and edit text, more photographers will also be able to produce audio
slide shows. This will provide further complications to Web producers looking to craft
multimedia.
If there are existing templates, the Web producer can build these interactive graphics, but
more complicated graphics require multimedia design and programming specialists. Similarly,
Web producers generally do not work on data-driven projects; this is left to the interactive news
desk. So Web producers are often in a position where they may be trying to coordinate
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These slide shows often include audio and explanatory text.
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multimedia treatment of a story but in the end may not have a clear sense of how much a role they
will play in the ultimate project.
The intersections of all of these new roles in the newsroom suggest opportunities for
organizational growth and learning. The coordinated processes are not quite worked out; nor are
the expectations, standards, or demands for multimedia. The Web producer‘s role is particularly
fungible in this equation given its considerable flexibility. But the way that all of these desks
relate is also new because there was no regularly occurring multimedia before 2000. Interactive
graphics, Web video, audio slide shows, and the rest are all recent inventions and new to the
newsroom. All of the interplay between the different parts of the multimedia desks in the
newsroom suggests that new routines have not yet formed, and that improvisation is occurring as
the desks work with new forms of multimedia for the Web site. In this way, they are at the peak
of what it means to do improvisational work in the newsroom. So it makes sense that The Times
is still working on how to incorporate all of its multimedia talent. Despite the chaos, The Times
still has the fifth-most-viewed Web site in the world.
The Creation of TimesCast
One of The Times‘ big experiments in multimedia during my observation was the rollout
of TimesCast, a five-minute newscast of the day‘s big news and the Page One meeting. The slow
planning for the newsroom to adopt the idea, the initial resistance, and then the eventual
acceptance signals the way that multimedia change can be conceived of throughout The Times as
a whole. As such, TimesCast is a good example for understanding multimedia exploration at the
newspaper as it evolved from a centralized, top-down mandate. It would be misleading to assume
that improvisation is simply something that happens by chance, and TimesCast demonstrates the
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way that improvisation can be a function of an organization experimenting with new ideas and
breaking existing routines to pave way for new ones.
The idea was developed, according to associate managing editor Jim Roberts, as a way
for people to see what was inside The New York Times newsroom (field notes, April 16, 2010).
The goal was to bring people inside the daily workings of the newsroom without giving them too
much information about breaking stories. The hope was to stoke the public‘s curiosity to find out
more later, either in print or online.
Video cameras were present at The Times from when I started my research in January.
The video team experimented with several different iterations of trying to make TimesCast. They
began by filming smaller news meetings. To give reporters and editors practice speaking on
camera, I would see the video team in the Bizday area doing beta tests for breaking news video
segments with people on earnings or jobs reports.
I also went to Page One meetings where the editors were literally being coached into
preparing their meetings for being taped. The concern was that having cameras in the room would
somehow invite competitors to see all of the exclusive news that The Times was preparing for the
day. So the editors in Page One were instructed to do a ―lightning round‖ of breaking news for
the cameras. Then the cameras were turned off so a conversation could happen about exclusive
news. The lightning round of news featured little conversation and generally just had the editors
rattling off the day‘s series of events.
But it was difficult for these journalists to divide their conversations between the
breaking news shared by all competitors and the exclusive material that just The Times had; the
conversation flowed naturally from breaking news everyone had to the exclusive Times angle.
The presence of cameras interrupted the natural flow of conversation, and Derry often had to
remind people that the video would be edited.
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TimesCast also meant that editors might have their mistakes broadcast over the Web.
These mistakes might happen in ordinary conversation but would generally be corrected before
appearing on The Times‘ Web site or in print. For instance, Bill Keller misspoke on the second
day TimesCast was live on the site (March 23, 2010). He made a mistake about Britain expelling
the head of Israeli intelligence. This mistake was caught by a Reuters reporter, and Clark Hoyt
(2010), the public editor, wrote about it in a weekend column. Hoyt noted:
―Agh,‖ wrote Keller when I sent him [Reuter reporter‘s] message. ―This is why I went
into print rather than TV.‖ Because ―TimesCast‖ is taped and edited, Keller said he
should have said, ―cut,‖ and given a more careful summary of the story then in progress.
Ann Derry, the editor in charge of the paper‘s video operations, said, ―Several pairs of
eyes view every segment—and the entire show—before it goes up.‖ She said they all
missed Keller‘s errors and will ―‗button up‘ our procedures going forward.‖
TimesCast was at first a subject of controversy in the newsroom. I was at meeting in the
newsroom (not in business) where editors complained that TimesCast was ―horrible,‖ that it
―looked like acting,‖ and that the conversations seemed ―forced.‖ Others were concerned about
the competition, noting, ―I think the only people watching this are our competition.‖ In the initial
days of TimesCast, people were bemused by a Gawker write-up of TimesCast called ―Desire
under the big red stairs‖ (Lawson, 2010).
But the business desk warmed up grudgingly to the idea of TimesCast, showing how
multimedia could gradually be accepted by the newsroom. David Gillen, the editor principally
responsible for financial news, told the morning meeting a month after TimesCast debuted:
For TimesCast I'm keeping a tie in the drawer. I was asking [in the Page One meeting]
are people looking at this, but apparently some young people are. Someone tweeted it
when it was late and said ―Where's my TimesCast?‖ More people are looking at it than I
thought. (field notes, April 20, 2010)
Another business editor, however, mentioned feeling extremely lucky that she had listened to the
radio before coming in. She was asked about a story for TimesCast and was barely able to get
something off that ―sounded intelligent and like I knew what I was talking about.‖ But the new
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reality was that everyone was going to be ready to be on TimesCast and that people would need
to be prepared for the video to be distributed on the Web. Jane Bornemeier, the head of NYT
Radio and podcasting, and also a major developer of TimesCast, was pleased to see how far the
newsroom had come by allowing people to shoot in meetings. ―If you had tried this a few years
back, this would be no way. You can tell how far we have come‖ (personal communication, April
8, 2010).
The significance of TimesCast is a symbolic one. Many in the newsroom suspected that it
was The Times‘ answer to The Journal‘s hub—also a five-minute newscast. But the presence of
TimesCast at what was once such a formal ritual as deciding the Page One stories suggests a
radical transformation in the way that The Times understands the way that it needs to tell its
stories. First, it suggests the need to connect with audiences in a new way. This is a commitment
to transparency that did not exist before, even if this transparency is somewhat artificial. Readers
are still brought inside Page One meetings in the newsroom. Second, it suggests that The Times
has bought into multimedia as another way to build interest and content around developing news.
TimesCast also suggests a pattern of decision-making about multimedia at the highest levels:
People will do this TimesCast whether or not they. Some compromises will be made to protect
exclusivity, but people will have to participate in being on camera. There was no choice; it was
just a mandate that people had to live with. And this new mandate was making multimedia.
Multimedia in the Newsroom: Trying to Bring the Process Under Control
To help coordinate the process of making multimedia when the roles and responsibilities
are somewhat undefined in the newsroom, various processes have emerged to bring routine back
to newsmaking. For instance, there will be major meetings for special projects in the newsroom
that will require the attention of multimedia teams. The business desk has its own strategy, with
regular multimedia meetings. Part of the goal, then, is to make sense of the improvisation in a
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routine context itself, even if multimedia itself is still breaking traditional routines. The business
desk is the only desk to have such regular meetings, according to Amy O‘Leary, news editor for
the Web site (field notes, April 20, 2010). The subjects for these meetings are generated by story
ideas coming from traditional reporters. The meetings are intended to help multimedia staff work
with photographers, editors, and reporters to craft visual, audio, and interactive displays of
information that have made The Times one of the best sites for multimedia. But the process of
coming up with multimedia can be difficult to manage organizationally because roles and
expectations are still undefined.
Kevin McKenna, deputy business editor, has used his leadership skills to try to
systematize multimedia production on the business desk to insure a regular flow of multimedia
stories to accompany enterprise work. Almost every Tuesday after the morning editors‘ meeting,
McKenna invites the business Web producers, the graphics staff assigned to business, and the
enterprise editor to a brainstorming meeting to think about multimedia potential for upcoming
stories. The people present in the room run down the enterprise list of stories to see which might
benefit from multimedia treatment, whether that might be in the form of an interactive graphic,
slide show, audio slide show, or video.
But sometimes, unfortunately, the people who could make the projects happen were not
in the room to provide the necessary information. For instance, the photo editor had a conflicting
meeting for almost half the time I was in the newsroom. The video staff was able to attend some
of the meetings but not all. And the enterprise list did not always reflect the latest progress of a
reporter. Sometimes a story had already run, was about to run, or was so far out in the planning
process that a reporter hadn‘t even begun thinking about it.
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Nonetheless, the multimedia meetings are brainstorming sessions with everyone shouting
ideas about what might make an interesting multimedia presentation. Consider, for example, the
meeting on January 19, 2010.
The first story discussed was a piece coming out of Detroit on how U.S. cars were getting
smaller. The conversation went from people envisioning a slide show of the evolution of the size
of cars in the United States (despite the fact that, as the graphics editor pointed out, there were no
hard metrics for this) to a story about businesses that watch people shop.
The story was premised on how stores are installing video cameras to observe our
purchasing behavior—without us actually knowing that these stores are doing so. Web producer
Tanzina Vega pitched the story with information she had gotten from reporter Stephanie
Rosenbloom:
It‘s like a video ethnography. They are in stores. There are these cameras in stores
tracking what you buy and how you buy it. The guy behind it is willing to talk and go on
record - whether a retailer will let us do it will probably not happen—but the guy will
analyze everything and give us good access.
Seth Feaster, graphics editor, added, ―It's like anthropology, they are looking at us.‖Amy
O‘Leary added, ―I kind of want to see the ethnographers talking. Even from file photos there has
to be something he uses for his sales calls.‖
This multimedia pitch in particular was one I followed through to its creation, and as such
I was able to watch it evolve from an idea in January to a story in late April.
On occasion, however, the communication between reporters, editors, and multimedia
producers result in missed opportunities for multimedia. I saw this at a meeting I attended on
March 8, 2010. The team assembled was discussing a story about how for-profit culinary schools
were beneficiaries of the stimulus package but were unwittingly causing tremendous debt for
students who were no better off than when they entered.
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Kelly Couturier, a Web producer, noted, ―It would be cool to do an interactive schedule
of repayments, what the payments are, what kind of interest they are holding.‖
But as Marcus Mabry, the enterprise editor, informed the meeting, ―They are pitching this
now,‖ meaning that the story was slated to run soon. O‘Leary added, ―We probably would have
needed more time [to do something]. . . .‖ Mabry noted, ―The dates [on the enterprise list] are
usually wrong.‖
When dates are wrong, it may be difficult for the Web producers and multimedia staff to
plan for stories. This is especially true if there is not enough communication between reporters
and editors. As such, there is more pressure on the Web producers and multimedia staff to be in
better communication directly with editors and reporters about their story progress. As one Web
producer told me, these kinds of conversations can be awkward because, ―You don‘t want to ask
a reporter too much about how their story is going or be this thing they don‘t want to do. You
want to help them feel like they thought of it, too. You can‘t keep bugging them about it.‖
But this lack of communication is not unique to multimedia. Missteps happen with
reporters, editors, and photographers, who have had decades for a reliable system of
communication to gel. For instance, Vindu Goel, who succeeded Mabry as enterprise editor,
updated the photo editor that a reporter had gotten permission to go to a specific site for a story.
The photo editor commented that it was this reporter‘s ―MO‖ to tell him after the fact that she had
done the reporting and been to the site (field notes, April 20, 2010).
Within the established business multimedia meeting, there are problems with
communication between the rotating desks that are trying to bring together coverage for
multimedia potential. Photo, for instance, might have already taken the pictures for a story that
Web producers think would make a good audio slide show. Video might not be present to discuss
a story that could benefit from its input or a status update.
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For example, the photo editor had already taken pictures for a story about Wal-Mart
plaintiffs who were suing the company for sex discrimination. Amy O‘Leary asked about the
potential characters for multimedia. Goel, the new enterprise editor, noted, ―We are working on a
new draft. The women whose lives are in it began this thing nine years ago. Their photo has been
taken [a few weeks ago]‖ (field notes, May 5, 2010). The photo editor also noted, ―We have taken
the photos of the principal people.‖
The Web producers all paused for a moment. O‘Leary noted, ―These could be great
audio clips.‖ Goel responded, ―Let me see if the story focuses on that.‖
This exchange reflects two moments of transition. The first is that photo and editorial had
not communicated with the Web producers that the photographs had been taken, which would
have been the ideal time to gather sound from the subjects. Another tension is also interesting: the
way in which traditional editors understand multimedia and the multimedia team sees multimedia
potential.
Goel suggested that he had to see whether the story would focus around the two women
whose lives had been shaken by Wal-Mart. However, according to those who work in
multimedia, the story should not be duplicative. In fact, multimedia should tell a new story that
complements the original story but does not simply offer more details. The multimedia story
should stand as its own piece of work, not just as window dressing to a text story. The mentality
that many reporters and editors in the more traditional newsroom have, however, is that
multimedia is simply additive. As such, it is an accessory to the more important story rather than
providing another story in itself.
Despite efforts to streamline communication through this multimedia meeting, the fact
that not all parties were present made it difficult to gain the perspective of units that could help
plan multimedia. Though video was making it to some meetings, McKenna adjusted the time to
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accommodate photo and lost video‘s attendance. The absence was noted in conversations such as
the following meeting (field notes, April 20, 2010).
O‘Leary pointed out a possible story for video, with the slug ―homefront‖: ―People are
working remotely, but they are not out of the war—[they‘re still working for the military]. This
could be a great portrait of a new kind of war. This seems like it would be good for video.‖
McKenna noted, ―I‘m disappointed that [video] isn‘t here. We were spoiled with him.‖
But when a member of the video team was present, he was able to help others see why
certain stories would not be good for the medium. Stephanie Rosenbloom had another story prime
for multimedia treatment, on vending machines that were selling products beyond just food and
cigarettes—such as art and iPods. The story had been suggested by Manging Editor Jill
Abramson, so it was receiving particular attention from McKenna. At first, video suggested they
would consider the story but then rejected it (field notes, April 13, 2010).
Video‘s rejection of the story helped those at the meeting think more critically about
whether it was worth any sort of multimedia effort. Web producer Eric Owles noted, ―A slide
show of just products seems boring.‖ The photo editor said he had no idea what photos he could
find yet. The final verdict on the story was no video, no slide show—just two different photos and
a podcast with Rosenbloom about the different kinds of vending machines.
Could vending machines themselves tell a story? No. But Rosenbloom could—one that
gave more detail than just her text story. And ultimately through these series of conversations, a
different multimedia package was imagined. The story had two pictures and Rosenbloom with
recorded audio. The package ran on the front page of the paper and received home page attention
(Rosenbloom, 2010a).
Unlike the traditional patterns where reporters and editors are used to requesting photos
for every assignment, the roles of Web producer and videographer, and the new capacities of
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interactive graphics, are entirely new. The routine of coming together as reporters, editors, and
multimedia to work on stories on a regular basis has not yet been well-established, in part because
it is not yet in the DNA at The Times‘ business desk. But even photographers, editors, and
reporters still have missteps in communication despite their long institutional memory.
Decentralized Creation of Multimedia
Due to the flexibility of multimedia roles, cooperation among the staff may not best be
evaluated through meetings, but in the more organic day-to-day relationships in the newsroom.
Many of projects bubble up through relationships that exist with multimedia staff and are
decentralized from the routines that have been set in place so far, showcasing the way that
improvisation functions as extensions of individuals making use of new technology in their work.
For these projects, the Web producer was the central organizing figure who helped bring together
traditional journalists with multimedia designers and programmers in the newsroom. The Web
producer was in the best position to communicate between these two domains: The Web
producer‘s role each day meant engaging with editors and reporters on the business desk, and he
or she was also knowledgeable about the people in the Web newsroom who could assist in
projects beyond the producer‘s capacity. Here, I highlight to projects that reflect the initiative of
the Web producer to help bring together two multimedia projects, one small and one large. The
first is the follow-through of Stephanie Rosenbloom‘s store camera story, and the second is an
interactive personal-finance checklist.
Cameras That Watch You Shop
With no firm deadline on the story, Stephanie Rosenbloom had the idea on her retail beat
for this story after learning that stores such as Best Buy monitor what you are buying from video
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tracking. The story idea originated in January but didn‘t come to fruition until March. I spent
most of my time learning about the multimedia opportunities with Tanzina Vega, a Web producer
on the business desk whose primary coverage responsibility was personal finance. But
Rosenbloom and Vega were also personal friends. As many other reporters would echo, the
personal relationships between people who knew how to create multimedia were crucial in the
willingness of people to experiment with multimedia. This was one more example.
After Rosenbloom began reporting, Vega had a better understanding of the kind of
multimedia opportunities. Vega learned from Rosenbloom that that the source had multiple tapes
that he was willing to narrate that showcased the experiences of shoppers going through stores.
However, the source was someone who had a shaky voice, so Vega was concerned that she would
have trouble editing his audio. And Vega couldn‘t predict the quality of the video.
On March 1, 2010, Vega took me with her to speak with Andrew DeVigal, multimedia
editor, about options for the story. Vega explained that retailers couldn‘t be exposed but that there
was ―sanitized video,‖ which had identifying information from stores removed. She wanted to
know whether his multimedia team could create a sample, interactive store. She batted one idea
around: ―Maybe we could do a 3-D map of a store as a typical store?‖ DeVigal explained that the
spacing on the store would have to be equidistant to work. He showed her a graphic that depicted
what she had in mind: a graphic that details the Metropolitan Museum of Art‘s new Greek and
Roman galleries. He commented, ―It took [producer] a month.‖ Vega commented that they at
least now had the template for programming coding for building a new project. She stressed that
this was the type of story that could go A1.
DeVigal warned Vega that the geography of a store might be irrelevant given the video:
if all of the surveillance, for instance, was at the front of the store where the entrance and cash
registers were placed. Instead, DeVigal suggested what Vega ultimately ended up doing—using a
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template that already existed and getting the video and putting the explainers
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into a video
editing program called Final Cut Pro. However, before leaving this meeting, Vega noted, ―The
reporter is excited about the multimedia, but the editors want the print story.‖
The entire meeting took almost 40 minutes to discuss the various options and templates
for the multimedia. Vega encouraged DeVigal‘s interest in the project by stressing the potential
placement of the story on the front page. Even in multimedia conversations, Page One, or A1, still
operates as a way to designate a story‘s possible importance. The placement of a story on Page
One, as we have noted, will also likely mean prominent home page play—at least for a few hours.
But with every print story that has multimedia, readers are invited in the paper to see more online,
and a Page One story might get this cross-over traffic online (or, at least, this is inferred by those
working on online multimedia projects).
The story did, in fact, run on the front page (Rosenbloom 2010b), but it went up online on
a Friday afternoon, and weekend material quickly began crowding out the story online. As a
result, the online presence of all the multimedia team‘s hard work moved off the home page
quickly. This risk is always present when crafting multimedia for feature stories; even if they are
designated for Page One, more pressing hard news can displace the project from the home page,
and the multimedia may lose its maximum chance to reach readers.
The system for making sure that all the multimedia gets in front of all of Times viewers is
not perfected—nor can it be. The Times simply produces so much multimedia for all of its stories,
and the turnaround on the Web site is so quick, it is inevitable that some multimedia will not get
featured as much as the effort that went into might merit, according to many in the Web
newsroom. But as Jim Roberts, associate managing editor, told me, ―We give multimedia as good
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Explainers are text that accompany the video, interactive graphic or slide show.
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of a run as we can. Not everything can get up there, but we do our best‖ (field notes, April 5,
2010).
The Financial Tune-Up Checklist
Personal finance columnist Ron Lieber began advocating in 2009 that in addition to
everyone taking a personal-health day, people should also take a personal-finance day. This day
would be a day for people to stay home from work and sort out their personal finances. For the
2010 edition, he wanted to offer some form of multimedia. What he had in mind to go with the
story was some sort of checklist that people could follow to help them go through the different
steps for this ―financial tune-up,‖ as it was called. Vega and Lieber began imagining this checklist
as an interactive and customizable checklist that would give people the chance to figure out the
best use of their personal-finance day.
Because they knew that this project had a set date to coincide with Lieber‘s financial
tune-up column, Vega and Lieber began planning for the checklist early. The first major meeting
called for the checklist was on February 10, 2010,—a full six weeks before the checklist and
column would be launched. Before that meeting, Lieber and Vega had been talking about the
potential features of the checklist, from investments and retirements to loans to credit to planning
to consumer issues. At this meeting, Vega brought together people from video, Kevin McKenna
as the Web overseer, Lieber, and Andrew DeVigal, the multimedia editor. This meeting was set
up outside the traditional multimedia meeting and designed as a project meeting. The close
involvement of the traditional reporter in the project signals his understanding of the way that
multimedia might aid his reader in a way that his column would not.
DeVigal started off the meeting asking what Lieber‘s goals were. This was a useful way
to begin the meeting because, as a result, Lieber was not put in the position of thinking up the
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multimedia treatment himself. Instead he could leave this to the people who regularly create
multimedia. Lieber began with what he was hoping the checklist would achieve:
This comes out of a desire to inspire people to take a chunk of time to make a list of
things that are undone in their financial life. People who are half-engaged have a mental
list. So if they had eight free hours, and there were ten things they could take care of, this
could be an inspiration.
Vega noted another goal: ―This is also for people with different levels of financial
ability.‖
Both Vega and Lieber wanted the list to be interactive, but the video editor pushed them
to ask what would make this truly interactive beside links, texts, and blog posts. Vega said that
she had drawn her inspiration from looking at interactive online checklists for weddings. She
thought that with videos, there might be a way to make the checklist more interactive.
The group ran through a variety of different brainstorming ideas: using different colors to
indicate the amount of time each task would require; whether the list would be something people
could print out or whether they should design it as something people can come back to; how to
tell users what prerequisites they would need in order to accomplish each particular task; and how
to use videos as possible explainers.
The idea of using video in conjunction with the checklist that people could actually check
off took hold. But Lieber said, ―There should be something more than just me standing up in front
of a video.‖ He was assured by the video editor that this wouldn‘t be the case. ―We‘re going to go
all James Cameron on you. You‘ll have an avatar,‖ he joked. The videos would be used sparingly
and only for tune-up items that needed more in-depth explanations.
McKenna brought up the need for a community aspect for this presentation. Vega
suggested linking to previous blog posts and having the discussion continue there, instead of
using the actual multimedia home as the site. McKenna also talked about using the print version
of the paper as a way to draw attention to the multimedia.
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Following the meeting, Lieber made commitments to work with the video editor to
determine how the videos would look, and Vega agreed to work with DeVigal to continue
conceptualizing the checklist (with Lieber‘s content and input). The group collaborated over the
next six weeks through Google Documents that featured the list of what Lieber would be writing
and a brainstorming list for the ―video treatments.‖ The group also had informal meetings to
produce the checklist.
By March 24, 2010, the checklist was ready to go. Vega explained that she and another
multimedia editor were doing Web coding by hand up until the last minute. But the reward was
one unusual for a multimedia project (Wise, Lieber & Vega, 2010): It appeared on the most-
emailed list.
As Vega exclaimed on March 26, 2010, the multimedia checklist made it up to the
number two ―most emailed‖ story at the newspaper. "That never happens for multimedia . . .
ever," she said.
In a subsequent interview with Lieber, he noted that he was also pleased to see the
checklist reach into the ―most emailed‖ list. He was similarly surprised but pleased because of all
the hard work that had gone into the checklist (personal communication, April 8, 2010).
In this instance, the planning for the multimedia worked through the coordination of Web
producer and traditional print reporter. The Web producer helped spearhead connections with
other parts of the newsroom, but the print reporter was equally invested in creating the
multimedia project. Lieber saw the multimedia not just as an add-on but as something that was
possibly ―more important than the story itself‖ (field notes, February 10, 2010).
This multimedia checklist showcases, then, the potential of transmedia storytelling: It
extended the story beyond its original message and beyond its original form to tell provide new
information. It did involve more work for the traditional reporter. In addition to his column,
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Lieber had to think about video and about what he would choose to feature in the checklist—as
well as how to write the content. And it took considerable coordination and collaboration between
members of the multimedia team to produce the checklist. But the checklist was ultimately more
successful than the story itself, if the ―most emailed‖ list is any indication of success. The column
made the ―most emailed‖ list, but the checklist out-ranked it. To readers, the checklist was more
important than the story, in the end.
Notably, to create this product, much informal collaboration had to happen between
multimedia and traditional reporters. There was no set pattern about how to create a multimedia
checklist, no routine for how to gather this information or to produce the videos. All of these
work products came out of emergent discussions and activities, not from pre-existing patterns.
The ideas came first, then the meetings, then informal collaboration. This suggests that
multimedia may be one of the key sites for improvisation in the newsroom.
The Making of the Multimedia Reporter
As John Geddes, managing editor, noted, multimedia is an important part of the future of
The Times. As such, the buy-in from traditional reporters is absolutely necessary as The Times
moves forward. Strategically, people on the business side of The Times speak of a Web strategy
for monetization called ―engagement.‖ This is a term derived by online advertisers to reflect both
the amount of time users will spend on the site and how active they are in participating and
manipulating content—everything from clicking on links to reading articles to commenting to
looking at multimedia. Martin Nisenholtz, the senior vice president for digital operations at The
Times, speaks of engagement as a new strategy—as a way to ―leverage the audience‖ (Tartakoff,
2010).
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An engaged audience will watch video (which The Times can sell ads against),
manipulate interactive graphics, and spread Times content through social media. This user is
extremely valuable. And for The Times to remain viable, making multimedia a part of the way
people think is just as important a next step as it was making online part of people‘s daily routine.
As such, it is important to look at where The Times is in its development of creating multimedia
awareness from the traditional newsroom editors and reporters.
Thus the traditional reporter‘s adaptation to the multimedia newsroom is crucial to The
Times‘ future. Multimedia packages at The Times generally come from the story ideas generated
by traditional editors and reporters. As such, if the Web producer is negotiating and coordinating
the process of production, the traditional journalist must provide the raw content. The traditional
reporter is needed to have his or her voice used to narrate an audio slide show, using his or her
sources for video or audio. His or her reporting may be needed for help in finding key dates,
documents, or other data that can be turned into an interactive graphic. The traditional journalists
I interviewed had three responses to making multimedia part of their workflow. The first response
was negative;—these journalists thought multimedia was valuable but that it was extremely
disorganized and that it was often a waste of their time to pursue multimedia. The second
response was that multimedia indeed added more time to reporting but that it could be a valuable
experience. Most of the people I talked to felt this way. The other response was that multimedia
was simply a habit of their everyday reporting lives already—and that it already fit into
established patterns and routines.
These different responses illustrate that The Times is still at a point in transition in how it
approaches the creation of multimedia, from its organizing process to encouraging traditional
reporters and editors to think about new ways to tell stories. For example, even if audio and video
are old media and the standards for telling stories with them hasn‘t changed much, multimedia
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staff are still thinking about how to use these media online. They are also thinking about how to
integrate their production into the overall framework of the news product. The routines for
making multimedia into the news production process are not yet set.
Some journalists who spoke with me were forthright about their feelings about
multimedia, while others were not. But I had multiple confidants at The Times who had heard
stories from different reporters about their experiences working with multimedia. Even some of
the reporters who had told me they had positive experiences working with multimedia, according
to my confidants, actually did not enjoy the process. In some cases, I was told that an individual
hated his or her experiences with multimedia despite telling me he or she liked it. While these
confidants could not provide insight into every interview, I was able to get a good sense of
whether the reporters I was speaking to were not just giving the party line about supporting
multimedia and pretending to enjoy it. Of course, as with any interview data, there are always
concerns about pleasing the interviewer, obfuscating the answer, self-report bias, and other
methodological challenges (see Appendix A).
Regardless, the interviews shed some insight into the perceptions people had of their
work with multimedia. The fact that reporters felt that they had to say something positive about
multimedia suggests that they at least get the message that multimedia is part of their future goals
and part of their responsibilities, even if they do not want to be doing it. Thus, The Times has
been successful in transmitting the message that multimedia is a new reality of how stories are
going to be crafted—even though not all reporters have bought into the process and the process
itself may still be unclear.
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The Resistors
At times of organizational change and ambiguity, there are always those who resist the
changes in place—and in this case it is a movement toward a more multimedia newsroom. The
resistors of multimedia news find multimedia to get in the way of their perceived more important
responsibilities of producing content for the print (and therefore online) paper. Other reasons
included the fact that multimedia appeared disorganized. I encountered only a few people who
were willing to admit they found multimedia to be extremely frustrating, but I did hear grumbles
throughout the newsroom. One reporter during the course of a busy day referred to multimedia as
a ―virus,‖ to which another reporter replied, ―I know, it‘s onerous.‖
One editor I spoke with had this in mind: ―We are trying to do everything. The place has
to figure out what it does best and what we are good at. In a time of limited resources, we have
video, multimedia, audio, and we can be doing all these endeavors. But we can‘t be about blogs
and multimedia and have a shitty paper—or maybe we can.‖
One reporter had been particularly frustrated by poor communication on a recent project.
He said, ―It hits me that this multimedia stuff is hellishly disorganized and usually ends up being
a whole mass of logistical conversations and email miscommunications about what the story is,
and in the end they don‘t do the thing they were going to do. They haven‘t figured this out at all.‖
He went on to explain his typical experience:—He will pitch a story, multimedia will be
interested, and then he will start hearing from a Web producer, and/or a person on video, and he
will start having meetings. He said:
I just start getting emails from people, and sometimes I‘ve met them and sometimes I
haven‘t, and I don‘t know what they do. . . . I have to have three emails with different
people, and they want the story before I have done any preliminary reporting. I don‘t
know the focus of the story yet. And when I am reporting, I don‘t want to have to spend
an hour of my reporting time with a video producer guy because that‘s time I‘m not doing
the story.
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In echoing the theme of miscommunication, this reporter‘s words demonstrate the lack of
routine and informality that still exists when it comes to making multimedia a systematic part of
news creation. The confusion between Web producer and video editor may occur because the
Web producer may be the person to begin the process of setting the multimedia project in motion.
The videographer may follow up with more emails but may not necessarily have conveyed to the
Web producer that the videographer will accept the project. As a result, the reporter is getting
emails from people whose roles he is not used to seeing in the newsroom and from people whose
importance he does not yet understand. Similarly, it is also important for reporters to work with
multimedia staff so that multimedia staff can aim to tell a different but related story. This staff
needs cooperation from the reporter to understand what the reporter‘s particular angle might be.
But this reporter points out one of the difficulties in this exchange:—just how much reporting
needs to be done to understand whether a story deserves the limited resources of the multimedia
team.
Other reporters agreed with this reporter and found that multimedia made it more difficult
to do their work because multimedia had different priorities. These reporters also weren‘t sure
they understood what the purpose of doing multimedia was for helping to tell their stories. One
reporter explained to me, ―Multimedia. I don‘t quite understand it, and maybe some people do. I
don‘t know if multimedia is a different way to retell the same basic story or whether it is ideally
additive to the print story. Or is the reader of the print story in theory supposed to look at the
multimedia? Or do you just look at the multimedia? Or is there some other combination?‖
He continued, reflecting on his experiences with a recent project, ―The writing part can
go very slowly. Sometimes reporting can take three, four, five times to get everything you need.
With filmmaking, they want one direct shot because they don‘t want to keep flying out to do
this.‖ He questioned whether the video would be able to get the depth that his reporting would be
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able to reach. The reporter also explained to me that he was confused by the way that he was
supposed to deal with this ―additive‖ process with the expectations of multimedia.
The input from this reporter suggests what I believe to be a more common sentiment in
the newsroom than one I heard expressed to me in interviews:—that reporters don‘t understand
how to fit multimedia into their reporting and are unsure of how to deal with the different
storytelling demands of multimedia. Similarly, the reporter reflects what might be a more
unspoken confusion about the position of multimedia in the newsroom. As I have noted,
multimedia is often seen to be additive rather than its own story. But others in the newsroom see a
different future for multimedia. The confusion over how multimedia becomes part of a story
without becoming the story is difficult for traditional journalists to understand.
More Work but Good Results
The majority of journalists I spoke with said they had positive experiences with
multimedia but that it caused them to do more work than they would traditionally do for a story.
This work ranged from coordinating and communicating with sources to asking questions
differently and helping multimedia producers think about their particular story angles. However,
most of these reporters felt that the experience had been worthwhile and, in some cases, thought
their story was really told through the multimedia rather than through the story they had written.
These journalists were ambivalent about how to fit yet another new task into their workflow but
were also conscious of how much multimedia could bring to their work.
Personal Technology columnist David Pogue stars in a video every week that is part of
his responsibilities for The Times (but is produced by CNBC). The videos are set at his house and
in his living room, and they are always an ―illustration of whatever column is that week. . . . I
attempt a more entertaining stance. I do accents and characters and have extras and do
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rudimentary special effects, and sometimes it‘s more cheesy and funny and looks more ahead
than a product review‖ (personal communication, May 13, 2010).
But Pogue also described the videos as ―[a] blessing and a curse. It‘s an exhausting
obligation every week. It‘s lots of prep time. CNBC has to script everything before, and that‘s
like two columns—what‘s said and exactly what I have to see on camera. It‘s something that is
added on definitely in terms of workload because in my case the video is not told in the same way
as the column at all.‖
However, Pogue also mentioned the blessings of doing the extra work for the video. ―It‘s
a lot of work but it also opens a lot of doors. . . . [I]t‘s where fans get to know me through videos
rather than through written stuff.‖ Pogue is columnist whose Twitter followers number 1.3
million, and his reviews on products are eagerly anticipated. So his thoughts that multimedia
brings him one step closer to making him visible to this audience is particularly noteworthy. But
he was also careful to point out: ―None of this was my idea. None of this was what I pushed for.‖
Pogue is expected to produce a weekly video. But other reporters are just supposed to
have multimedia in mind as they think about major enterprise stories or investigative work. Some
of these reporters explained to me that crafting stories for multimedia changed the way that they
think about stories and that it made for extra work for them—though they were happy with the
final product.
Reed Abelson, a health business reporter, explained how multimedia changed her
reporting:
I‘m a print reporter, so my interviewing style and management of story style is different.
Eliciting information from people who don‘t want to talk to you is different from
persuading them to get on video or taped in some fashion. The timing is different. I have
to get the people who I want in multimedia earlier, but I might wait to the end of the story
to talk to them. What I find hard is that before I do the reporting, I don‘t know who
would be the best people to make it work, and so there‘s a fair amount of wasted effort on
both sides. I can‘t figure out the arc of the story, and sometimes it means that someone
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has to be interviewed by me and then by someone else. (personal communication, April
19, 2010)
Nonetheless, Abelson sees the benefit of doing multimedia. ―I think it‘s a great way for
when people aren‘t quite getting enough room or space in the story or are reduced to a couple of
sentences.‖ Abelson mentioned a story she wrote on the lack of research for muscular dystrophy
and how it was ―powerful to have someone talk about that.‖ However, Abelson said she still
hadn‘t figured out how to use multimedia for the ―gotcha‖ stories in which people who are being
criticized would go on tape.
Abelson, like other reporters, took issue with workflow problems. For her, the extra work
is the wasted effort that comes from trying to figure out the story line before she has a sense of
the story. This reflects one of the other reporter‘s concerns that multimedia wanted more
information from him before he could provide it. The push for multimedia to get information
from reporters is uncomfortable to journalists‘ standard routine, and there is still no established
pattern of communication where the multimedia producers know they have enough information to
begin their work. It may be that as The Times and other newspapers proceed in creating more
multimedia, the way a reporter does his or her reporting might have to change, with more pre-
reporting to account for multimedia—or the multimedia producers might also have to do
reporting. Abelson, for example, was concerned about the duplicative process of having one
person interviewed twice, once by her and once by a multimedia staffer. She pointed out that such
a source might be a patient, for instance, or a person critiqued in the article, and getting that
person to open up twice may require considerable maneuvering.
Abelson‘s comment about having difficulty getting controversial people in multimedia
projects is also significant. If multimedia is going to become another way to tell stories and
provide information, reporters are going to face a challenge not only in coordinating their work
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with multimedia but also in convincing their sources to appear on yet another form of ―the
record.‖
Technology editor Damon Darlin compounded the sentiment I often heard about
multimedia being more work for journalists:
It‘s a lot to ask of reporters if they are reporting to think of video. . . . [I]t‘s more time out
of their day. They have to think about how to fit it into their life and style of reporting.
There are dedicated video folks who are conceptualizing and editing it, but it [workflow]
is something that the paper has an institution has to figure out. It‘s very hard for print
reporters to do multimedia on their own. They need to have someone else always
thinking of things. . . . [P]rint reporters don‘t always even think about a photo, but they
are trained to make photo assignments. Other than they might think of what makes a good
picture, they don‘t think in visual terms. (personal communication, April 21, 2010)
Darlin points out what hasn‘t changed: the fact that reporters for a century have been
working with photographers to get visual images and they still don‘t always think visually. Now
they are being asked to think in multiple media—sound, video, photo, graphics—and even with
the help of a production staff, reporters are not yet conditioned to thinking this way. Darlin also
echoes the fact that multimedia feels like an added obligation to the work that reporters already
have.
Other journalists have done isolated multimedia, never to return again, but have had
positive experiences that they have said made the story even better than the written version. Julie
Creswell, a Sunday business features writer, noted that she worked on one major front-page
project over the past two years that required multimedia:
I think what we are doing now is putting a lot more data and video and all of these
amazing things behind the stories or alongside the stories that enrich them in ways you
cannot do in print. Last summer I did a big series, a big story on Simmons, the bedding
company. It was amazing to do. It was the first time I really worked with video team and
the data team, and this video series they produced was stunning and added to the story
and delved into aspects of story [I didn‘t. It] touched upon deeper things. It connected the
audience in a way the story couldn‘t quite do.
You were hearing voices of employees, seeing faces of employees, interacting. It gives
the stories so much more depth, even more than print, and that‘s been really fun from my
standpoint, growing and trying new things. It‘s not something I would have expected to
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have done here, and I‘m looking forward to my next project. (personal communication,
April 1, 2010)
But as Creswell told me, the project was geared to be a Page One story. The start of the
multimedia project involved a meeting that had 20 people in a room to discuss multimedia
potential. This was an organized attempt at doing a major project that may have facilitated her
experience. Notably, she had not done any major multimedia since that project:—She was
waiting for people to approach her rather than approaching other people about doing multimedia.
The question remains about who is supposed to do the multimedia thinking.—Is all of
this left to multimedia producers, as it was in Creswell‘s case? Or is it more like Abelson and
Pogue, who change what they do to accommodate what multimedia needs, as prompted by
multimedia directors (though Pogue now knows what his video requires)? The conversations that
are required suggest that multimedia is very much an evolving process and medium at The Times,
one that has yet to be incorporated into the workflow. Routines have not yet formed, and
improvisation is still one of the key means through which multimedia is created in the newsroom.
The Convinced
There are a small number of journalists at The Times who are absolutely convinced that
multimedia is the new essence of what they do as part of their jobs and have taken action to make
sure that it is always a constant feature of their work. These multimedia converts are people who
don‘t think twice about interrupting workflow, for instance, to make multimedia projects, or don‘t
see much of an impact on their reporting process. Of the 52 interviews I conducted with reporters
and editors on the business desk, only four people saw multimedia as a regular part of their work
lives—as a seamlessly integrated experience with their daily production process and story
planning. But of these converted, they describe the process almost as if it is something that was
just a natural evolution in their lives as journalists.
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DealBook editor and financial columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin thinks about multimedia
and how he can use it for his work and sees it as beneficial to getting sources. During my first
week at The Times, Sorkin was begging McKenna, the deputy business editor who deals mostly
with the Web, for a camera to take with him to Davos for the World Economic Forum so he could
interview sources. He was explaining to McKenna that he thought he would be able to get people
like George Soros to talk to him on video and that it would be great (field notes, January 14,
2010). The camera ultimately didn‘t happen, but the impulse to make multimedia part of his work
because it would aid his reporting was not something I observed with many other people.
Micki Maynard, a Detroit-based reporter, is one of these people who has embraced
multimedia and never looked back. She said she is a ―willing subject‖ and regularly does what
The Times calls a ―backstory‖ podcast—or a behind-the-scene look at a news event (personal
communication, May 17, 2010). She says that multimedia does involve more reporting, but she
said, ―I‘m doing the reporting anyway.‖ Maynard used to work at USA Today, where working
with photos and graphics was ―baked‖ into her. She said, ―These were important tools to reach
our readers, and now the emphasis is to reach out to our Web folks.‖ Though Maynard is not as
comfortable on video, she considers multimedia as an extension of what she has ―been doing for
her whole career.‖
David Carr, the media columnist, also sees multimedia as part of his work. Similarly, his
experiments online are also a sign that The Times is willing to let him experiment with
multimedia. The Times let him set up Web video recording equipment in his basement, and he can
record multimedia whenever he likes. He noted:
I wanted to be blogging and doing these almost daily, they don‘t want that yet—but that
fact that I just [asked to film] videos in my basement, and they said, ―OK, Sparky, give it
a whirl‖ [shows that] they are a lot more prone toward beta and experimentation on the
Web. (personal communication, April 5, 2010)
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Despite this set-up, after his initial success with the Carpetbagger series, Carr hasn‘t
produced many Web videos. But it is notable that he is thinking about making it part of his
routine—even if he hasn‘t yet. Carr was given the tools to experiment and saw that as part of his
work, not as more work.
David Segal, a Sunday features writer, has shot his own video while on the road for big
stories. He has the skill set to edit and shoot, though he admits that he doesn‘t spend much time
thinking about or planning his videos. He said:
The short answer is I‘ve liked doing it and I‘ve done it. I like shooting and I like editing
it. It sort of seems like it is part of the argument of the new dimension of journalism, and
I subscribe to that, and I have embraced [it] maybe because I like doing it. (personal
communication, April 1, 2010)
However, Segal wasn‘t sure whether what he was doing was really having an impact on
people visiting the site. ―I like doing it, but at the same time it‘s not clear that it resonates.‖ He
mentioned that when he did a video for a story, the only comment he got was from a single
colleague.
Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that both Segal and Carr like multimedia—in part
because it is a project of their own creation. Segal hands off his project to the production staff for
finishing, but he enjoys the idea of shooting as part of his work. Carr gets to do his own
production in his basement. Sorkin wanted to do the shooting at Davos himself. For them,
multimedia is a hands-on activity rather than one that requires constant coordination with a
multimedia team to plan stories and shape ideas. This may be one reason why they find it so easy
to integrate into either their thinking or their regular workflow:—It is something they can actually
control.
For the most part, The Times‘ standards for excellence as expressed by Derry are unlikely
to leave room for dozens of poorly produced and shot home videos by reporters. The kind of
multimedia that The Times aspires to produce requires coordination. While more and more
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journalists are being trained as multimedia journalists, it would be difficult to imagine a journalist
who could balance doing an investigative story while making an interactive graphic—at least
now, given the demands of both.
Multimedia: A Round-up
Multimedia thinking may be one more step in the evolution of traditional journalists in
the digital age. Here, reporters and editors are learning how to think about telling stories in an
online world across multiple platforms. This idea of telling stories in new ways across multiple
platforms reflects the idea of transmedia storytelling: new stories building on existing stories but
expanding on the previous story‘s horizon. Transmedia storytelling has always existed, but the
rapid diffusion and potential for storytelling on the Web, which brings together all sorts of media,
allows for transmedia storytelling to take place in an immersive context.
When we hear reporters and editors talk about the frustration of finding new information
for their multimedia stories, this is precisely the reason: because in a transmedia storytelling
world, multimedia should not replicate the story that is already being told in the text format. And
in the upper echelons of the newspaper, and in the multimedia departments at the newspaper,
people understand that multimedia is not additive but can add new dimensions and tell new but
related stories. The ability to tell stories through audio and visual elements has always existed,
but the ability to bring them together online has not. Similarly, the ability to tell stories through
interactive graphics and to give users the chance to learn about stories through interactive
databases was not possible before multimedia programming potential. This is a change in the way
that stories are told.
There is also see a change in the kinds of routines happening in the newsroom—and new
routines beginning to emerge. The newsroom is taking steps to make it as easy to coordinate
multimedia as it is to coordinate photos or graphics (though there are still, of course, missteps
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with these departments). There are top-down motivations to make multimedia an important and
crucial part of The Times‘ future. The Times has structured multimedia into desks, for instance.
The Times has instituted organization-wide efforts such as TimesCast as part of multimedia
initiatives. And the business desk has meetings to try to coordinate making multimedia into a
process that is controlled and clear, with deadlines and organization about who will be
constructing the project and leading the way. All of this demonstrates that journalists are
improvising along pre-existing routines to find new ways to incorporate the changes in their work
into the way that newsrooms have always worked. There are new opportunities, but they being
reformulated into something known. As such, we see improvisation in action.
The reality is that routines are not yet enshrined, and the job descriptions are so new that
many overlaps take place between existing roles. The difficulties in distinguishing the multimedia
departments and understanding people‘s roles, and the difficulty in figuring out the
communication patterns for multimedia, demonstrate the flexibility of labor in a post-Fordist
workplace. At the same time, the pushback from traditional journalists demonstrates the
traditional Fordist expectations that have been a part of newsrooms for decades,—a steady
understanding of how production takes place. But multimedia staffers demonstrate that labor is
flexible, that their roles are often changeable depending on the situation.
In addition, the flexibility of multimedia to emerge from a bottom-up process
demonstrates that journalists are agential individuals who are purposeful actors thinking about the
creation of news. It shows they are actively thinking about ways to make multimedia and that
they take active efforts in thinking about how they will do their work. This is an important
illustration of journalists moving beyond routine to transition into new ways of working together.
At the same time, the agency of journalists is also evident in their self-reflexivity of the
difficulties and the successes of their work with multimedia.
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What has stayed the same and what has changed is a particularly interesting question for
multimedia. What has always been true is that there have been communication missteps in
newsrooms; that traditional journalists have not always been able to think, for example, about
photography or graphics; and that audio and visual stories have to be told differently and have
different criteria. What is different is the flexibility that is now present in the newsroom—though
it is unclear whether this will remain. Similarly, the agency that journalists have to create and
shape multimedia into new products and ways of telling stories is new because their opportunities
to tell these stories across platforms simply didn‘t exist before. And the job descriptions within
the newsroom are also new. Furthermore, what multimedia ultimately means to the survival of the
newsroom is an issue that was never before considered.
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CHAPTER 9: BUSINESS NEWS IN AN ONLINE + WORLD—SOCIAL MEDIA AND
THE “NEW” AUDIENCE
Reporter Micki Maynard regularly updates her Twitter followers with the latest airplane
and auto news. She has 4,308 Twitter followers,
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whom she engages with in conversation about
everything from the weather to Detroit-area sports.
Brian Stelter, a media reporter, uses Twitter to help fellow journalists with their
reporting. On the day I spent with him (field notes, April 5, 2010), Stelter explained how he had
just gotten a byline for an article about a small earthquake in California. He got credit for helping
write the story because while the L.A.-area reporter was out in the field, Stelter was following
what was happening on Twitter and feeding her the news.
DealBook blogger Michael J. de la Merced will head off on reporting trips and keep
readers updated with regular Twitter posts. For instance, he spent most of his time tweeting while
attending the Allen & Co. Sun Valley Conference, an annual conference that features investors,
political figures, and newsmakers. The posts kept his 3,286 followers abreast of the news. And de
la Merced simply couldn‘t capture everything he was seeing in an article or blog post, and Twitter
allowed him to be much more informal, offering observations such as, ―In light of today‘s news,
at Sun Valley, it‘s Waiting for Google. Larry Page just zipped into the inn. No comment. Just
dashed inn [sic]‖ (de la Merced, 2010).
Journalists are also using Facebook as part of their reporting process. When Stelter is
reporting, he‘ll often post on Facebook about what he‘s covering. For example, on December 21,
2010, he posted: ―Back on the net neutrality beat all day today.‖ Five people ―liked‖ his status
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Each follower can theoretically retweet to his or her potential followers (usually approximately 126), who can then
retweet something to their followers. So a low number of followers can still mean that someone‘s tweet can resonate
throughout the Twittersphere. For example, representatives of WBUR, the radio station, often give this example. The
station had 4,385 followers in January 2010, but with retweets, theoretically, a tweet could go to 552,510 people, and
then potentially 69 million people.
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update. One of his friends commented that he should ―keep explaining this ‗cause I know it‘s lost
on most.‖ Another friend told him, ―Read Master Switch by Tim Wu
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,‖ to which Stelter said,
―That‘s exactly what Barry Diller
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just told me, actually.‖ The same friend noted, ―Fine minds
think alike.‖ But not all of these friends are Stelter‘s close friends: He‘ll make anyone his friend
on Facebook.
For these journalists, and for other reporters at The Times, social media is very much a
part of what they do. Social media is ingrained into their reporting, and for some, it even becomes
part of the way that they connect with the audience. Yet for most people at The Times, social
media is still a confusing phenomenon and one that they aren‘t quite sure how to use. And for
many of those who did use social media, the goal was to circulate content rather than to engage in
collaboration and participation with the audience. What happens as journalists use or refuse to use
social media represents a new relationship between news organizations and third-party Web sites.
Furthermore, looking at how news organizations are adapting to social media shows that
newsrooms are improvising around something that has no established routine in the newsroom.
Online +: A New Framework
Part of understanding what is happening in newsrooms when it comes to social media
requires the development of a new framework. I call this framework Online +. It refers to the idea
that newsrooms are increasingly not just using their own sites, but are actively relying on third
party sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and other social media and social networking sites to
create, to produce, to distribute, and to fund news. Online + establishes a new relationship
between news organizations and the audience that could not be facilitated before these social
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A professor at Columbia Law School and head of media reform group Free Press, which champions network
neutrality.
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Media executive and Internet impresario, currently chairman of Expedia and founder of Fox Television.
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networking sites existed. These social media platforms allow for the possibility of instant
audience feedback in a way that never before existed.
Before elaborating on Online +, I want to provide a working definition for social media
as I use it and as I believe it is understood at The Times. Social media can be thought of as
―internet-based applications that depend on the creation and spread of user generated content‖
(Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010, p. 61). Similarly, social media is premised on the idea of Web 2.0,
where the Web can be thought of as a participatory and collaboratory place for the exchange of
ideas, information, and other content (Kaplan & Haenlien).
Using this definition, Online + is a framework for understanding how news organizations
employ social media for the following:
The distribution of content
The curation of content
The branding/identity of the news organization
The creation of conversation
For reporting
For potential funding
For example, news organizations now rely on social media as an additional venue for
distributing content. The Times has Facebook pages that are dedicated to specific interests, such
as movies and politics. But news organizations are also relying on the audience to share and
distribute content. Right now, The Times offers multiple ways to share its content, through email,
Facebook, and Twitter.
Online + also signals an evolution in the curation of content. While Times journalists
using social media platforms to their sense of what is important (operating as ―link-engines,‖ as I
will discuss later), what is more interesting is that The Times is also relying on the audience to
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curate content. For instance, through a portal on The Times site called ―Facebook Recommends,‖
I can see what Times articles my friends on Facebook are suggesting I read. And when my friends
post Times articles to their Facebook page, they actually curating news stories for me, rather than
editors doing this for me as they would with the traditional print or online product.
Similarly, as the strategy conversation with Times‘ social media editor Jennifer Preston
will detail, an Online + world demands that news organizations also turn to social media for
branding. So The New York Times has its own Facebook pages, and its goal is to make reporters
into recognizable individual names and faces so they are more than just bylines. Branding The
Times goes beyond Times content and extends to social media.
In addition, Online + means that news organizations are trying to get journalists to have
conversations with their readers. And news organizations are also trying to get readers to have
conversations about content. But the conversation part is coming slowly for some journalists, who
do not understand yet what it means to be part of this dialogue, or have other hesitations about
joining in.
Online + also reflects the ambitions news organizations have for journalists to use social
media for their reporting and as they report. Journalists can turn to social media—to their instant
audience—and fetter out questions or find sources. In turn, journalists can also keep the audience
up to date with snippets of what they are doing as they report throughout the day.
And perhaps most significant to the issue of sustainability and the news, Online + reflects
the desire of newsrooms to use social media as a source of funding. I have not specifically
addressed business models in this study, but social media provides a means for news
organizations to find out more about their audiences than was ever before possible. This enables
news organizations to selectively target advertising based on who is likely to read a specific type
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of article. Social media as a source of funding was only in its testing phase when I was at The
Times, but it will be an important part of how news organizations rethink their funding models.
But how does Online + actually work within a news organization? At The Times, Online
+ functions as a means of external and internal strategy. Most journalists can ignore the external
strategy, which is how The Times plans to have readers use and manipulate its content on social
media sites. The internal strategy—the process of making social media part of the actual process
of reporting and the idea of creating a conversation—is one that is still new to many journalists.
Both of these strategies are still fluid, and organizational improvisation is at work as The Times
experiments with social media.
The “New” Audience?
Much of the hype and the hope at The Times and elsewhere about social media comes
from the idea that audiences are now able to talk back more than they ever could before. As
Rosen (2006) has argued, the Web opens the space for the ―people formerly known as the
audience.‖ Shirky (2008) argued that social media makes it possible for people to entirely bypass
conventional media, to self-organize, and even to create social change; the audience is now
connected and emboldened in a way it never was before.
The question is, however, whether we are actually dealing with a different kind of
audience than ever before. Is this a more engaged audience? Or is social media simply reflecting
the same audience that has always been engaged? Furthermore, do journalists think of this
audience any differently?
The audience has always been active, just not in the same kind of way. People have
always talked about news, from gathering at the coffee houses of 18
th
century Europe (Habermas,
1962) or their workplaces or local diners with friends during American political campaigns and
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elections (Katz and Lazarfield, 1955). The social experience of news happens during the
everyday talk about current events and in the ritual experience of making news part of daily life
(Carey, 1992). The question is whether the engaged audience of today is different from the
engaged audience of the past—whether the numbers on Twitter represent an audience that wasn‘t,
for example, talking about news previously. There are more chances to talk back to news
producers, but whether the actual engagement of the audience has changed is not clear. Audiences
have been participating in news from everything from advice columns (Gudelunas, 2007) to
letters to the editor to television call-in shows.
Now the gratification is more instant and the reach is wider. But whether journalists
know anything more about their audience as a result is unclear, as this chapter will demonstrate.
In fact, many journalists are afraid of this online audience. While the ―new‖ audience is presumed
to be actively engaging with journalists—for instance, contributing via email, sending in
comments, communicating on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter—most
journalists don‘t really know what to do with all of this interaction.
As Chapter 3 revealed, journalists on the business desk were most likely to think about
their audience as passively receiving the news rather than actively being part of the conversation.
Most journalists thought of the news as something that landed on doorsteps or was read online;
they were in a one-to-many relationship with their readers. As such, most of these journalists
were not thinking about the audience 2.0, as it is often called. As such, despite talk of a ―new‖
audience, most journalists do not see their audience as responsive nor as able to help them craft
their coverage.
As a result, The Times‘ social media efforts are significant because they are an attempt to
bridge the gap between the imagined audience journalists presently have and the audience that
actually wishes to engage through social media platforms. From an external perspective of Online
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+, The Times is trying to build its reader base, spread its content, and create brand loyalty. But
within The Times, the framework of Online + reveals an organization in transition. Most
journalists know that the next stage of their responsibilities—along with thinking about
multimedia—is also to become more engaged in social media. But not all of them know what this
means.
Online + and The Times’ External Strategy
Along with the marketing team at The Times, social media editor Jennifer Preston has
been directing the Times‘ external and internal efforts. The primary goal for The Times on third-
party platforms is to build The Times’ social media profile with users.
But Preston wanted to capitalize on what has been happening for decades ―around the
dinner table and water cooler. There has always been a lot of conversation around our content,
and social media allows us to be committed to being everywhere the conversation is taking place‖
(personal communication, April 21, 2010). She rattled off some statistics for me: At the time,
Times content was being tweeted every four seconds, and The Times had more than a million fans
on Facebook (more than its print circulation). Staff members are on Tumblr, Facebook, and
Twitter; Times content is even spread on YouTube. The goal, Preston explained, is for The Times
to be where content is being discussed.
The 2010 strategy for social media was very much tied into what Preston called tapping
into the ―quality audience‖: the audience that already reads and cares about Times content. The
quality audience, as she explained to me, is an old marketing term that refers to an audience that
is loyal, cares about the product, and, in general, is educated, and often has a high income. But
this quality audience for The Times means more than that in this strategic plan. They are Times
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loyalists, but they care about having conversations about Times content; they want to extend their
experience of The Times beyond just the story.
As part of The Times‘ social media strategy, The Times unveiled a series of Facebook
pages related to events or particular coverage areas. For instance, The Times created a Haiti page
after the earthquake where Times fans could find the latest Times content, information about how
to help, and also a place to for people to have a conversation about this event. People can use the
space to place additional links on the site that go outside The Times‘ content. They can contribute
photos and videos. Other pages, for instance, are more evergreen—or lasting beyond the news
cycle—such as pages on movies, soccer, and politics. I was told that part of the social media
strategy is that with the new Times paywall in 2011, Facebook content is a way to drive people to
Times content. Because this content is on Facebook, people will be sharing this content with their
friends and, in turn, drive more people to The Times.
This idea of building community around content is one that Jenkins, Xiaochang, Domb
Krauskoph, and Green (2009) take up in their whitepaper and book on what they call ―spreadable
media.‖ They argue that companies need to build on existing communities in order to be
successful in their efforts at making their content something that people want to share. These
communities, this group argues, have their own existing history and dynamics. The Times may be
lucky in that these communities may already exist around Times content, because The Times has
such a strong and loyal band of readers. But some content for this sharing might work better than
other content based on this pre-existing community; for instance, The Times‘ Politics and Movies
pages have many active contributors, but The Times‘ Soccer page does not.
Though other news sites are often accused of not linking out to sites beyond their own
proprietary content, The Times does redirect people as part of its overall social media strategy.
The Times‘ Twitter strategy involves a process of ―aggregating and curating content.‖ Preston
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noted, ―We‘ve always done curated content in context of stories, but putting up someone else‘s
tweets and stuff, that‘s editorial judgment.‖ Times staffers on Twitter can retweet comments and
link outside The Times. They are encouraged to add their own comments when tweeting to
followers. Furthermore, for special events, The Times will set up Twitter modules on pages
hosting the special events. For instance, on the iPad day, there was a Twitter module set up. This
was a curated Twitter feed hosted on the liveblog that had the tweets of some of the best
journalists and bloggers in-the-know in Silicon Valley. The feed even included Wall Street
Journal tech columnist Walt Mossberg‘s tweets (put in, as one editor put it, ―to be a good sport‖)
(field notes, January 27, 2010). Unfortunately, The Times cannot control what these individuals
are saying, and their words may not be ―appropriate‖ for The Times‘ sense of its audiences. One
tweet during the Times liveblog for the iPad launch day, for instance, used profanity. This
violates Times standards. As such, this individual was kicked off the Twitter module that was
providing commentary on the unfolding events.
The social media strategy is a radical departure from anything news organizations have
ever done before. They have, as Preston points out, always been in the business of curating
content. But on Twitter, the content is curated in a different way; people are no longer staying
inside The Times for their information. The Times no longer has the last word. Instead, other
people are regarded as experts, and people are directed to these experts. Instead of someone
appearing as a source in a story, he or she appears as a live person able to answer questions for
the audience and is actively responsive to audience needs. Similarly, by redirecting users away
from Times content, the newspaper is signaling its belief in a wider ecology of news and
information. Not all information for readers has to come from The Times, but the newspaper
wants to be the place that people can rely on as a sorting mechanism to find this good content.
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The Times becomes a destination site where conversation is happening, but the entry point is
often through a third-party social media site.
Facebook Recommends is another extension of this movement to get users to bring their
friends to Times content. In exchange for providing The Times valuable personal information that
The Times can then use in its marketing efforts, I can, for instance, see right on The Times‘ home
page what my friends are reading and recommending on Facebook. As a result, my friends are
curating and selecting content for me. Thus, Facebook acts as a way to increase my time spent on
The Times site, which ultimately helps The Times make an argument for charging higher rates to
advertisers.
Online +: Inside the Newsroom
Preston‘s second goal for social media is to make it part of the everyday work flow of
journalists at The Times. The external and internal goals, of course, are not mutually exclusive;
building a community of Times users around conversation about The Times also involves having
Times reporters contribute.
She refers to this mission of spreading social media through the newsroom as
―evangelizing‖—hoping to get the staff to see that social media can help both their reporting and
also contribute to the building of Times community. The Times actually holds classes for reporters
to show them the advantages of using social media for their work. As one reporter told me, ―I‘ve
been meaning to go to one of those classes but I just haven‘t yet . . .‖ (field notes, April 6, 2010).
Journalists are aware that The Times is making an effort to get them involved in social
media. Nearly everyone I spoke to about my interest in Twitter and social media more generally
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pointed me to The Times‘ public list of people on Twitter. Even people who barely understood
Twitter knew where to find this list.
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Now, it is Preston‘s goal to ―bake social media into the production and editorial process
in the newsroom.‖ She wants editors and reporters to think of social media and community just
like they think of graphics and photos. Part of what this may involve is a recalibration of
workflow around how journalists do their work. This is an acknowledgement that doing social
media and cultivating community may indeed be an additional layer of work for a journalist—
though some journalists already have social media as part of their workflow, as I will detail.
Preston noted, ―If you are editor, you also have to be asking, ‗How are readers and users
going to engage around your story or article?‘ Instead of having our reporters go off to the next
story, maybe what we really need to do if give our reporters time to go into the comments and
engage with our users.‖
This idea suggests a change in the way that some journalists think about journalism: that
journalists are no longer just producing content that goes out to the public and is simply left there
for consumption. The Times is used to a world where their content develops its own discussion
and has its own impact. As such, journalists at The Times are not used to participating in this
conversation.
At the same time, though, Preston recognizes that not every journalist will be on board.
―An increasing numbers of journalists recognize value that social media that social networks
bring to their reporting. But do we have every journalist using social networks? No . . . not every
reporter uses the same toolkit.‖
This attitude about flexibility toward change suggests that while there is definitely an
imperative coming from management about incorporating social media into work flow, The
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http://www.nytimes.com/twitter
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Times isn‘t going to force people onto Twitter. Instead, The Times will continue to evangelize
about the importance of social media and hope that reporters and editors catch on for themselves.
Improvisation, as it were, is encouraged from the top, but people are given the space to see how
this new feature of newswork fits into their existing understanding of their workflow.
Though it is not yet evident to some in the newsroom, the need to become connected with
the audience will likely become another key to the survival of journalism at The Times. Once it
becomes clear that survival is linked to conversation and news on a social platform, it is likely
that journalists will become invested in social media. When journalists start to see that social
news is part of their own platform for connecting and creating community so their news survives
and spread, journalists will likely adapt to incorporate social media into their workflow. What is
different is the need for content to survive in a world of increasing media and increasing content
online—and the reliance on the Web as a way to share information among friends. That
journalists have to encourage this sharing is also new. But the fact that news is shared socially,
however, is not a new phenomenon.
Creating Conversation on NYTimes.com
Along with building a social media strategy, The Times is also in the process of trying to
understand how to create a community of users around Times content within the Times Web site.
The Times has a dedicated community news editor who thinks about ways to build ―community‖
on the site. This mainly includes thinking about how comments and ideas for user-generated
content.
Interestingly, Times forums were alive and present on the @NYTimes America Online
incarnation of the Web site. An interactive audience was seen as important from the inception of
the site. Prior to the current system for article comments, which began on The Times‘ site in 2007,
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The Times had discussion boards. This form of community were ―post-moderated‖—in other
words, Times staffers would come in and edit the comments after they went live on the site. Most
new organizations currently have this method of comment collection.
Now, at The Times, comments are pre-moderated, where nothing can get on the site
unless someone at The Times has read it. Eight people are dedicated to scanning potential
comments for obscenity, flaming,
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abusive behavior, and even for comments that are written in
another language. Blog comments are moderated by the people who edit each blog.
Comments are moderated to insure the quality of the debate, according to assistant
community news editor Vanessa Schneider (April 19, 2010)
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. The Times gets the final say over
what gets posted, and as such The Times has not truly built an active platform for interactive
community engagement. Often, the moderation is delayed because it takes the moderators time to
go through the influx of comments, so a live-time discussion may not happen surrounding a
breaking news event.
However, Schneider believes that the pre-moderated comments actually mean that
journalists in the newsroom are actually paying more attention to the comments. These comments
are viewed as actually contributing to the debate, rather than being ―flames‖ or pejorative remarks
that do not add anything to the discussion about the story. She noted that there was a big cultural
change when comments first began appearing on the site:
Culturally, in the newsroom people had to get used to the idea that ―there will be
someone else‘s voice on my article and on my site,‖ and giving the user real estate on
your piece takes some getting used to. Before, the journalist assumed they were smarter
than the reader, telling you what to think, but now some of the Times‘ most exciting
content comes from experts writing into the blogs or commenting.
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The BBC has an excellent definition of the varieties of ―flaming‖ here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A1082512
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Schneider noted that her title was self-created and accepted by the newsroom; that there was no title to describe her
work; and that technically she was a news assistant. But her title suggests the newsroom does not have formal titles that
are readily adaptable for new roles in the workplace.
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Comments are useful, again, in attracting and building the quality audience who wants to
―participate in smart content,‖ as Schneider put it. The comments are a strategy for building
engagement for the site by increasing the time spent on the site and by building brand loyalty
with users.
Another goal of commenting, as Schneider puts it, is to ―keep reporters on their game.‖
Ideally, the comments may encourage a reporter to fill in holes in his or her reporting because a
commenter might have more information about a story, or a reporter may have failed to include
something that has resonated with readers. She has noted that many reporters and editors have
told her that reading comments on their stories has lead to new ideas.
At the same time, Schneider commented that she acknowledges she has a rosy view about
the role of comments at The Times. Not all reporters read their comments; in fact, while I have
seen reporters request comments for their stories, I have also noticed that these reporters request
comments and then fail to read what these comments have to say. Comments, however, usually
mean that a story will remain on the home page longer, especially if the story continues to get
many comments—so this may be a strategy that some reporters have for keeping their stories
from being cycled out of the home page.
Schneider noted that there was still resistance to reading comments:
Twitter and reading comments won‘t happen in the company absolutely unless Bill Keller
says you have to read your comments, answer them on Twitter, and promote your stuff
on Facebook. But that takes people away from A1 stories, and at the end of the day, the
head print editors have the final word on how people spend their time. The text is what‘s
most important.
Schneider, like Preston, has been on a campaign in the newsroom to get reporters to see how easy
it is to reply to comments on stories. She added:
Replying doesn‘t take that much time, and people don‘t really know that. You know the
information. A reporter can just write a couple of sentences acknowledging the
comments. They know people are listening. It could make all the difference in the world.
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Thus, despite the growing importance of the quality audience and the idea of engagement
online as part of The Times‘ strategy for survival, comments and social media are not yet a daily
function of everyday life at The Times.
These features are viewed as getting in the way of people‘s ability to promote what is
seen as the most important and flagship product: The Times‘ text content. In the end, despite the
conversations about creating social media and establishing communities, The Times is most
focused still on getting front page stories. For example, when I brought up the name of a reporter
who uses Twitter throughout the day and is actively responding to audiences, I was told by a top-
ranking editor that he wished this reporter spent less time on Twitter and more time writing for
the front page. Within the hierarchy of what is seen as important, conversation and engagement
with the audience is secondary.
Online + in Action: Baking Social Media into the Reporting Process
The Online + framework notes that inside news organizations, journalists also need to see
how social media can facilitate their work—and that social media adds new elements to their
jobs. From the words of Preston and Schneider, it would seem that the adoption of social media at
The Times is coming from a top-down mandate. However, I observed instances where I saw
informal occasions of journalists teaching other journalists about social media—how to use it,
what it can be used for, and how to use it more effectively. The adaptation of social media into
the newsroom signals the flexibility of the workplace and its participants, and it also signals
journalists acting in ways that improvise on their traditional routines within the newsroom. Social
media experimentation will become a new part of their work, and watching this kind of
improvisation is an important way to see how technology becomes part of the structures that
people shape and create.
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On one day, I was roaming around the business desk when I overheard tech blogger Nick
Bilton and tech reporter Jenna Wortham complaining about Foursquare (field notes, February 3,
2010). Foursquare is a location-based social network site that lets you register your location at
bars, for example. Reporter Willie Neuman, who covers agriculture and food safety, sits behind
the tech pod and is the only non-tech pod in the cluster of five tech people. Neuman asked what
Foursquare was, and Wortham explained.
Then the conversation turned to Twitter. Neuman asked, ―What‘s it for?‖ Wortham gave
a quick response, ―You can use it to send out articles.‖ Neuman said had an account already set
up, but he hadn‘t ever used it. Bilton explained to Neuman that he can ―add‖ people to his Twitter
list to see what they are saying. He began instructing Neuman to add Times staff members to the
list of people Neuman follows. Bilton began calling out names from his own Twitter list for
Neuman to add. Neuman notes, ―Carr [media columnist David Carr] is just talking about . . .‖ I
didn‘t catch what Neuman had said, but he was likely surprised that Carr, who tweets about what
he ate for breakfast, was tweeting about nothing related to the news.
Bilton and Wortham started instructing Neuman to add people who are influential in the
media world. Bilton noted, ―This guy writes a column at Wired, and he‘s really good.‖ They told
Neuman to add their tech editor David Gallagher, who was sitting nearby. Gallagher commented
to the group, ―I have been known to tweet at work.‖
Bilton then showed Neuman how to retweet. Neuman was confused and asked, ―Why
would I want to do this?‖ Bilton explained the concept: ―Say you‘re following me, or liked
something I said, you‘d retweet me. Then the next time I saw something you said that I liked, I‘d
retweet you.‖ Wortham then showed Neuman how to make links shorter for Twitter so he can
send out Times articles using Bit.ly, the link shortener. She also showed Neuman The Times‘ own
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social network, Times People, which is an internal way of recommending articles, but concludes,
―It‘s too much to keep track of.‖
Neuman was a willing subject and listened to his younger, tech-savvy colleagues.
Significantly, they didn‘t really explain the idea that you can build an audience following and
engage in conversation with this audience. Instead, they tell Neuman it‘s a way for him to
promote himself and to help promote other journalists. Neuman didn‘t look particularly
convinced, but at the end of this lesson, he did say he would try it.
Wortham and Bilton do use Twitter to engage in conversation, as I will later discuss. But
in presenting this new technology to their colleague, the prime motivation was to be a one-to-
many medium. And, as I will also note, many people on The Times business desk use Twitter as a
link engine more than anything else. This means they use Twitter to promote stories rather than to
share snippets about extra ideas about the stories or to respond to their readers.
When I spoke to Neuman two months later about social media, he had indeed tried using
Twitter. He noted:
I haven‘t used it very much. I looked at it for a while, but I have lost interest. I can see
what companies were doing with it, and they were mostly just plugging themselves in
pretty innocuous ways. Some people use it every time they write a story. And they put it
up there. I tried that a couple of times but didn‘t keep doing it (personal communication,
April 19, 2010)
This is an important snippet of newsroom life with regard to immersive change in the
newsroom. The Times itself is a learning newsroom where colleagues informally collaborate to
share new innovations with one another. Learning organizations are typically more collaborative
and open to change (Barker and Camarata, 1998). The tech folks wanted Neuman to understand
Twitter and walked him through how to use it. And though he ultimately wasn‘t a convert, he did
try it enough to understand what it could be useful for in his work—tracking companies and
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posting his stories. Twitter hadn‘t grabbed Neuman, but he was willing to experiment thanks to
the help of his colleagues.
I saw other occasions of journalists trying to do new things with social media. In one
exchange, I watched as Andrew Ross Sorkin, DealBook editor and financial columnist, and David
Joachim, a business editor, talk about the merits of different Twitter platforms (field notes,
January 14, 2010). Joachim and Sorkin were sitting side by side at Joachim‘s desk with Joachim‘s
monitor turned to Tweetdeck, a Twitter platform. Sorkin asked, ―What is it?‖ and Joachim
explained the advantages of using Tweetdeck over the main Twitter site. ―You can post the whole
URL instead of going to that shortening thing,‖ Joachim said. ―And it updates to Facebook
automatically‖ (though Twitter can do this, too). Though I don‘t know whether Sorkin switched
to Tweetdeck, this was another example of someone who was actively using social media
instructing another member of the newsroom about new innovations. Informal learning was
taking place in the newsroom—without top-down mandates to instruct their peers.
Similarly, I also watched as individuals experimented with social media on their own. On
the day I observed deputy tech editor Vindu Goel, he was working to understand software called
Publish2 (field notes, March 1, 2010). This software was connected to The Times‘ automated
Twitter feeds. The software was two weeks old, and he was still getting used to it. His goal was to
put every Bits technology blog post through Publish2,—which could then be posted to Twitter.
He talked the steps out loud—I‘m not sure whether he did this for my benefit or for his—multiple
times as he went through the process. He, too, was actively in the process of trying to learn how
to mobilize social media for The Times.
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For Goel, the focus was on getting Times links out. Goel would occasionally look on
Twitter to see how the Bits blog items he was posting were doing on Twitter—whether people
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Publish2 has since been retired as a platform.
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influential in the tech world were retweeting these items. Occasionally, he would tweet something
out through his personal account. But he was watching promotion of content rather than the
conversation itself, and he did not take the opportunity to participate in the conversation.
However, observing his workflow, I noticed that what he was doing left him little time to
start having conversations with readers. He had little time to do anything other than monitor the
blog, edit stories, and make sure the Twitter feeds were working. So baking that extra step of
conversation into the newsmaking process is indeed another challenge for workflow. While some
have adapted social media into their workflow, it will not be, as Preston noted, part of every
reporter‘s toolkit.
Online + and Conversation: How Journalists Engage (or Not) with Audience 2.0
News organizations are increasingly relying not just on comments on their own sites as a
way to build conversations with readers, but on social media. While people could always talk
about the news, and people could always write in letters, the Web provides the power to the
audience of instant reply and response to articles, blog posts, social media content, and the like.
The Web also makes it far easier for the audience to direct comments to specific journalists. An
interesting tension emerges; journalists are comfortable with thinking about their audience as a
static audience receiving information to process, but once this audience is perceived as an active
entity that can talk back, it suddenly becomes for many something to be concerned about. To
others, the interaction with readers is something that makes them better journalists because their
readers bring them new information—but again, journalists now see a new kind of audience that
can now talk back. So for many journalists, the new Web audience encourages them to rethink
how they want to engage with their readers.
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When I asked about social media, I would generally ask them about Twitter and
Facebook, then wait for them to bring up other forms they might use. Twitter was by far the most
active form of social media in the newsroom. While people had Facebook pages, most of these
pages were set to private or restricted to their friends. Thus, I was interested in understanding how
conversations were unfolding on Twitter to better understand how social media might impact
journalists‘ work and how it might influence their relationship with the audience. But some
journalists simply talked about their relationship to the audience in terms of what I would call
audience 1.0—or getting audience feedback via email.
Scholars for years have been complaining that the absence of the journalist‘s voice in
stories has resulted in a departure away from a true conversation about events. Instead, journalism
has become an either-or experience (Carey, 1986; Rosen, 2000). The result, these scholars argue,
is that people are turned off by the news. The inclination to build more conversation into
journalism has a new chance with social media that it didn‘t have before. The social media rules
at The Times prescribe some ways for talking about stories that prohibit journalists from
expressing their explicit opinions, but their personalities can come through. And for those who
regularly use Twitter, social media can become a means of increased transparency as people
receive updates on the progress of a journalist‘s reporting. As with multimedia, there are resistors
and adaptors, but with social media and audience engagement, there does not seem to be much of
a middle ground.
Email: Victims and Lovers
Perhaps the most basic form of audience engagement in the Web era is email. The Times
has made it easy for reporters to receive email from readers: Readers can click on a reporter‘s
byline, and the email is delivered directly to the reporters‘ inbox. But the email is designated
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[READERMAIL] and thus the journalist can easily ignore it and proceed to correspondence from
people who actually know his or her email address. Between ten and twelve years ago, The Times
had a list of reporters who agreed to make their email addresses public on the Web site, according
to Kevin McKenna. Allowing people to email reporters directly (such as by clicking on their
online bylines or on what The Times calls topics pages) is a feature that was added approximately
four or five years ago.
To many reporters, email allows them to retain their ―reporter voice‖—acting as
objective informers with additional information. They do not, for instance, keep up regular pen
pals. Their responses are not intended to give people more insight into who they are as
individuals, nor does email serve as a means for mass distribution of additional information to the
public. Yet for some, email is still an unwelcome presence in the newsroom.
One reporter fumed at me:
I think we made it far too easy for people to email us. I get a lot of insane comments from
online readers. I can‘t believe they are our typical readers. They got to my story by other
means, and they are not coming back [to The Times]. . . . They are insulting, it‘s
annoying, and abusive. Is that our audience? These are just fools who stumble on [the]
Web site through a search engine or saw it reposted somewhere and email an attack.
There‘s a huge difference between those emails, which are 80 percent rants, 20 percent
considerate.
We get less of that physical mail mailed in, which are longer and elaborate. They aren‘t
cranks. They take the time and reach out.
For this reporter, email is an annoyance—even a distancing effect from his audience—and, in
fact, he does not think that the people who contact him are his audience (field notes, March 24,
2010). This is a significant departure from the familiar perception of the ―reader‖ as friend or
family, or as intelligent audience member or political decision-maker.
Still another reporter viewed The Times email option for readers as almost a breach of her
privacy. She noted:
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For a long time, The Times was protective of us and not giving out our emails, and there
were people who didn‘t want email addresses known. People bombard you, and it‘s like
you are sitting in your house with your front door open and anyone can shout at you.
Nine out of 10 times it‘s not interesting. Before people would pick up a piece of paper
and a stamp and it was not abusive. . . [I]t happens all day, and I don‘t want to look at it
when one in a million is helpful. It‘s incredibly hard to stay on track with the noise. . . I
am bombarded by email, and I don‘t know who any of these people are. . .
This reporter talked about being overwhelmed by communication from her audience—and did not
see the audience as being potentially helpful to her reporting. Part of this, she explained to me,
had to do with the fact that writing about the financial crisis made people particularly touchy. She
was writing about difficult subjects that stirred people‘s passions, and while she understood
where they might be coming from, their commentary was something that she simply couldn‘t
handle.
Nevertheless, some journalists in the newsroom have found email to be an invaluable
source for testing reader feedback and for furthering their own reporting. Some of these
journalists have not tested the waters of social media, but they still appreciate the new ability of
email to connect with their readers.
I spoke with Diana Henriques, a senior financial reporter, who explained to me that she
doesn‘t use social media because she doesn‘t have time for it (field notes, January 20, 2010).
However, she does actively rely on reader email and comments from stories for story ideas. When
she was working on the Bernie Madoff case, she read her email carefully and was able to be in
touch with some of the victims from Madoff‘s fraud. Once a major searchable database was
posted of Madoff victims, she was also able to get in touch with more people. She noted to me
that she has received tips from email and in general has found email ―incredibly useful‖ for
stories, but then added, ―Of course, I get too much of it.‖ But for Henriques, part of making the
Madoff story so powerful was humanizing the extent to which he had reached down and hurt
people—not just rich people—and email was one way for these people to find her.
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Columnist David Leonhardt noted that reader feedback in the form of email and
comments was very helpful to him. While he doesn‘t use social media, he notes:
Reader feedback is another way to find out what the audience is thinking. It‘s impossible
to reply to all the reader feedback you get. On the other hand, it‘s really useful. I‘ve
found sources through people giving me emails. You can tell from these comments
whether an argument you are making is weak—some of these comments are really
serious. (personal communication, April 12, 2010)
This response is noteworthy, as Leonhardt, a Pulitzer finalist, even lets reader opinions help shape
his understanding of how he writes his columns. For him, reader feedback is a productive way to
test his own thoughts. This suggests that he was actively considering the audience as part of the
production process.
Just because some reporters haven‘t taken up the clarion call of social media does not
mean they are not paying attention to an audience that can instantly respond to them—directly as
reporters. This suggests that the audience does help play a role in the construction of the news in
a way it hasn‘t before—absent of all the utopian fervor surrounding social media. Even if email is
audience engagement 1.0, for many reporters, it is still a means of connection that provides
valuable input for their reporting.
Social Media Isn’t for Me (Yet?)
Online + is also premised on the idea that journalists will extend social media into the
workflow. But this is challenging for many journalists. I spoke to journalists in the newsroom
who had either tried Facebook or Twitter but had either not quite figured out the technology.
Some simply didn‘t see how they could make time for social media in their work life. Others
were worried about developing an online persona that could be used against them. The concern
about objectivity with regard to social media reflects the sense that social media brings more of a
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―reporter‘s voice‖ back to the journalistic process. These reactions reflect ambivalence to the new
technology.
Time is one issue journalist site for not using social media. As financial reporter Jenny
Anderson explained to me:
I have no time for social media. Literally no time. I‘m writing a book, I have a job, a
baby. I have a Facebook account to share pictures of my kids with my friends. But it‘s
not for a lack for interest—it‘s for a lack of hours. The time I could be spending on
Twitter or Facebook, I could be reporting or sleeping. (personal communication, March
3, 2010)
Labor reporter Steven Greenhouse agreed. He told me, ―I just spent six months moving from the
suburbs to Manhattan . . .‖ (personal communication, February 5, 2010). Social media was just
one more thing; as busy Times journalists—and parents—social media wasn‘t yet part of their
work flow. These journalists were not opposed to social media, however, suggesting that the
barriers to bringing social media into their workflow as social media becomes more of a part of
news construction may not be as difficult.
Other reporters hadn‘t quite figured out how social media fit into their reporting. Reporter
David Streitfeld put it this way:
I look at a lot of stuff, but I don‘t do too much myself. I do not use Twitter
professionally. I do not tweet myself, but I do read what other people say. I don‘t find
Twitter helps me covering real estate. . . . [S]ocial media does not yet play a dramatic role
in my journalism for better or worse. I don‘t know whether this is just my feeling or
social media just isn‘t adaptable to the reporting needs of writing about real estate or
maybe a little of both. (personal communication, May 3, 2010)
Other journalists weren‘t sure about how their words on Twitter or on other social media
platforms would be taken up as part of the debate. Journalist Natasha Singer represented how a
few journalists felt about this:
I am a follower, not a tweeter. I‘m using it to see what [is] said. I haven‘ t started
tweeting yet, because [I am] trying to figure out what unique thing I add. I see reporters
linking to stories or stories to colleagues other colleagues have posted and to other things
that interest them, but I want to add something, and I want to be more than a listener. I
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am getting a lot out of following other people, but I haven‘t figured out my unique
contribution. (personal communication, March 11, 2010)
The impulses of Singer and other journalists reflect the idea that social media will empower
journalists to have more of a voice in addition to the articles that they write. These journalists
want to make a contribution to public discourse—whether it be through new information, or with
a new perspective on a particular piece of information, or via dialogue on Twitter. This is a move
away from the detached journalist who has been imagined for decades.
One question journalists brought up is what these contributions would look like. Would
they be snippets from stories that didn‘t make it into the story, thereby keeping the journalist
objective? Would they be commentary on existing dialogue, thereby inserting the journalist into a
conversation and giving the journalist a personality? Or would journalists merely be working as
link engines, pushing out their stories without providing any new insight that would help a reader
better understand the story? And further, how would they then engage with their followers? This
is something new for journalists to consider that didn‘t exist before: an additional platform
beyond just their story to express additional information for their work.
Certainly journalists have been invited as experts on TV and radio for their commentary,
but social media is one more venue for this conversation. And most of the journalists invited to be
on TV and radio are the big stars in the newsroom, people who are used to this kind of attention.
Furthermore, contributions on social media are different: Journalists aren‘t talking with talk show
hosts used to speaking to