Deciphering Code: How Newsroom Developers Communicate Journalistic Labor

ABSTRACT

Newsroom developers often share code produced by their organizations within open source software (OSS) environments. This study details how newsroom developers communicate journalistic labor around code in these spaces. Here, they explain how code operates, as well as illustrate its centrality to newswork. This research finds engagement in OSS environments provides visibility for news organizations to showcase their computational approaches to digital news innovation. This work also advances that OSS engagement helps develop shared practices to digital newswork, further unifying newsroom developers as an interpretive community within journalistic practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Code
• interpretive community
• metajournalistic discourse
• newsroom developer
• newsroom technologist
• open source

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Michael Bugeja for his feedback on earlier drafts of this work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.