Matrix Organisation

Abstract

Confronted by increased internal and external complexity, traditional forms of newswork have reached their limits. Journalistic start-ups, such as Quartz and NZZ.at, form emerging editorial teams around “obsessions” or “phenomena” to gain cross-beat perspectives of complex issues such as climate change, the financial crisis or the refugee crisis. Legacy media experimenting with cross-beat newswork see themselves confronted by challenges arising predominantly from beat structures. Consequently, this paper focuses on an example of cross-beat teamwork at a major Swiss daily newspaper, investigating the journalists’ experiences of working in a particular project. Insights from 13 interviews indicate that a matrix organisation is one way to organise cross-beat topic-focused newswork in larger newsrooms. A matrix organisation combines traditional functional hierarchy (i.e. the beat structure) with a project dimension. Based on insights from organisational studies, I compare the known advantages and disadvantages of a matrix organisation with journalists’ experiences and derive implications for the introduction and design of a matrix organisation in newsrooms.

KEYWORDS:

• complexity
• cross-beat teamwork
• editorial structures
• matrix organisation
• newswork

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Special thanks to the project partner and the interviewed journalists for their support, openness and their trust.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The editorial team recently adapted this concept and is now working with a limited range of sections.