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Abstract
Using an ethnographic case study of the Newschannel at TV2 Norway, this article reveals ways in which the assembly-line mentality required by 24/7 news production nevertheless encourages reporters to negotiate a certain autonomy over their work and the routines required to produce it. By reorganizing its staff's use of time, space, and resources, TV2 was able to generate roughly 18 hours of “live” news coverage a day during the article's research period from 2007 to 2009. This production process is framed in terms of Schlesinger's “reactive” mode, here qualified as “reactive-active”, because it allows for the possibility of broadcasting live and gathering news at the same time. The article also revisits the concept of “professionalism” with regard to a traditional broadcaster's implementation of a 24/7 news channel within its existing newsroom. As a result of this process, more news—and more content concerning that news—is produced more efficiently while the tenets of traditional journalism remain operative.
Acknowledgements
The author thanks Henrik Ørnebring, Terje Rasmussen, Gaye Tuchman, David Ryfe, Arne Krumsvik, Steen Steensen, and Nils Nadeau for their advice, the two anonymous reviewers at Journalism Practice for their valuable comments, and staff at every level at TV2 for their selfless accommodation during the research process. Also a special thanks to graphic designer Hans Magnus Mikalsen Nedreberg.
Notes
1. Stephen Cushion and Justin Lewis's longitudinal content analyses conclude, among other things, that the breaking news mode is “becoming increasingly predictable and routine” (2009, p. 304).
2. Cushion and Lewis note that research on the Al Jazeera network has even focused on the impact of rolling news on military conflicts (see also Figenshchou, Citation2010).
3. Ingrid Volkmer (Citation1999, p. 138) notes the link between the fetishization of breaking news and consumers’ demand for continuous coverage.
4. Editors and reporters frequently phrased their ultimate goal as “more for less” during my field observation.
5. According to Enli et al. (Citation2006, p. 37), “hybrid channels” are either “privately or publicly owned, but … have in common that they are financed by advertisement and committed to certain obligations concerning their distribution”.
6. Internal TV2 seminars: news seminar, one day, Bergen, 4 May 2009 and 5 May 2009; seminar for daytime and evening-time editors at the news channel, first organized meeting, one day, Oslo, 21 April 2009; news seminar for all TV2 news staff, one day, Bergen, 14 January 2010. Internal TV2 documents: description of project, 29 May 2006; document for TV2 board, undated (oral statement that it is from 2006); presentation of the Newschannel, undated (oral statement that it is from 2006); memo on technology at the Newschannel, 14 August 2006.
7. This source includes TV2's annual accounts of programs, an internal analysis of the production process.
8. The study (University of Bergen) looks at how media develops from the perspective of the audience as well as the media organization.
9. While multitasking has long characterized the labor of the journalist, it is important to distinguish between multitasking as an option for the individual, and multitasking as part of an industrialized process of production that extends throughout the newsroom.
10. The internal pooling of news content has long characterized TV production—Schlesinger (1978) describes the same thing at the BBC's internal news agency, the General News Service (GNS)—but with the advent of new technology, one person is now often the source of all of the “synergy”.
11. Internal document, undated description of project, 2006. Several internal planning documents, as well as interviewees, also point to both CNN as well as the United Kingdom's Sky News as models for the TV2 Newschannel's division of newsgathering and news processing, and its emphasis on immediacy, among other things.
12. When I collected my data in both 2007 and 2009, Newschannel editors expressed concerns about missing stories because they were not told about them.
13. TV2 is able to do this now (2011), although the technique is still low quality.
14. This journalist clarified these comments for me a few years later: “It is not so much stories as small video clips. The anchors in the studio comment and the video clip is broadcast while the anchor speaks. But as the reporter says: we write text as well as edit. What I mean by 50 stories is that there are 50 points in the program. It may seem like a lot, but during busy days this is the reality. On regular days you could say this would be about 20–30 visual video clips, where we write the text and edit the pictures” (feedback, desk reporter, May 2010).
15. At an internal meeting for Newschannel editors (21 April 2009), one editor observed that it “is important that the viewers get the impression that something has happened”.
16. Warren Breed (Citation1955, p. 335) conducted a famous study of the ways in which newsroom colleagues influence each other as they work.
17. See also Currah (Citation2009) for a discussion of the tension between accuracy and immediacy in Great Britain.