Editorial Technologists as Engineers of Journalism’s Future: Exploring the Professional Community of Computational Journalism

Abstract

Editorial technologists, such as developers, designers, or data specialists represent novel interdisciplinary computational journalism positions in newsrooms. Drawing on field theory, this explorative study evaluates the character of the professional community of editorial technologists by analyzing their discussions in the peer conference “SRCCON” over four years (2016–2019). Findings indicate that editorial technologists are united by the goal to improve journalism. They critically reflect on their roles and strive to augment their agency in the field through normalizing their computational skills, accumulating social capital, e.g., by building enduring relationships in newsrooms, and gaining symbolic capital. Instead of pressing to enforce technological adoption at all costs, editorial technologists acknowledge their responsibility towards the editorial office, news organizations, audiences, and society at large. These responsibilities form the core of their doxa, which is why we conceive of editorial technologists as a community of accountable engineers of sociotechnical change in journalism. Editorial technologists’ collective professional imagination aims at overcoming the inert processes, hegemonic structures, and restrictive culture of journalism.

Keywords:

• Computational journalism
• digital journalism
• professional community
• professional culture
• role conception
• sociotechnical perspective
• technology
• transformation

Introduction

News organizations have increasingly hired staff with computational skills to their newsrooms (Guo and Volz 2019; Usher 2016). These “computationally knowledgeable individuals” (Wu, Tandoc, and Salmon 2019, 1250) include the diverse and interdisciplinary professional group of editorial technologists. Editorial technologists comprise newsroom-facing or integrated roles for which programming skills are essential to a varying degree. “Programming technicians” (Westlund and Lewis 2014, 22) are involved in developing news bots, automatically written articles, storytelling and visualizations, as well as news apps or news recommender systems (Caswell 2019; Dörr 2016; Thurman, Lewis, and Kunert 2019). Roles range from software engineer, multimedia product designer, or data specialist, but job titles may also be reporter or editor (Owens 2017). Since editorial technologists either acquired their computational skills ex post on the job in newsrooms or ex ante through formal education in computer science or related fields (Kosterich 2020), their job titles do not necessarily reveal computational skills. Previous research studied editorial technologists’ impact on change in journalism (Kosterich 2020), their role in interactive newsrooms (Usher 2016), as well as particular professions of editorial technologists such as app developers (Ananny and Crawford 2015), data journalists (Hermida and Young 2017; Stalph 2020), or product designers (Kosterich 2021; Royal and Kiesow 2021). Editorial technologists are active in trans-organizational professional associations (Lewis and Usher 2014, 2016), which are examples of collective actors that potentially affect individual and organizational actors. In combination with their ability to continuously enact information technology that is new for their organization (Orlikowski 1996), editorial technologists may represent a pioneer community in journalism (Hepp and Loosen 2021).

By investigating editorial technologists as a professional community, we attempt to examine the sociotechnical transformation of journalism (Anderson 2013; Westlund and Lewis 2014). We understand the emergence of editorial technologists as both consequence and indicator of this transformation that, as a whole, is usually difficult to grasp. By choosing editorial technologists as an access point, we can get a glimpse of journalism’s sociotechnical transformation, and may understand whether editorial technologists “embody imaginations of possible future scenarios” of journalism (Hepp and Loosen 2021, 582, emphasis in original), reflecting upon the status quo as well as possible futures of contemporary journalism.

Building on field theory (Bourdieu 1983), the concept of pioneer communities (Hepp and Loosen 2021), and professional imagination (Kunelius and Ruusunoksa 2008), we explore the self-perceived status and influence of editorial technologists as a professional community within the journalistic field. We ask the overarching research question:

What imaginations about journalism does the professional community of editorial technologists hold?

This study contributes to an understanding of the transformative capacity of news workers, showing how editorial “technologists facilitated, if not directed, different projects and outcomes, given their distinct communities of practice, cultural norms, and perceptions of the audience” (Westlund and Lewis 2014, 23). Following Wu, Tandoc, and Salmon (2019), this study sheds light on these agents of information technology, representing potentially transformative actors in computational journalism.

Empirically, we qualitatively explore the panel and workshop discussions in 15 sessions of a trans-organizational professional conference of editorial technologists over four years, representing a meta-journalistic behind-the-scenes occasion, in which normative and agency-related struggles of a professional group become observable.

Literature Review

The literature review first employs field theory to derive the concepts through which we explore editorial technologists as a sub-group in an evolving journalistic field: capital accumulation, collective agency, and doxa. Second, we conceptualize editorial technologists as a professional subgroup in the field at the intersection between journalism and information technology.

The Journalistic Field and Its Dynamics

A field is a micro cosmos of a social space with specific rules and conventions that differ from other fields (Bourdieu 2005). A field connects the micro level of individuals, who have authority and agency in that field through their accumulated capital, with the macro level of a field’s environment. The members of a field hold conventions that they take for granted, which represent doxas. Doxas are deeply internalized self-evident understandings of how things ought to be and how they ought to be done. In that sense, doxa includes a “‘universe of tacit presuppositions’ that organize action within the [journalistic] field” (Bourdieu cited in Benson and Neveu 2005, 3). In journalism, these can include “stylistic norms” or “prescriptions of professional and ethical conduct” (Tandoc and Jenkins 2017, 489). Moreover, journalistic doxas “appear as evident, natural and self-explaining” (Schultz 2007, 194). Doxa represents the point of view of the dominant members and thus the dominant point of view in a field (Bourdieu 1983). To dominate a field, actors need to accumulate different forms of capital that can be gained in their field, such as economic, symbolic, social, and cultural capital. That is, material assets, prestige and recognition, durable relationships, and acquired knowledge and skills which, respectively, determine the social position of an actor in the field. For example, editorial capital includes reputation in the newsroom, professional experience, or winning journalism prizes (Schultz 2007).

A field is structured around the conflict between “the ‘old’ and the ‘new’” (Benson 1999, 467) and evolves these poles over time. Therefore, novel collective, corporate or individual actors enter the field, and specific rules as well as dominant groups adapt. At the same time, old structures remain intact as new entries to the field must accept “the rules of the game” (Benson 1999, 468). Carlson and Usher (2016) illustrate that corporate actors new to journalism experience a conflict between adhering to traditional doxa while developing new ones. In the digital age, journalistic doxa and practices have been open to reinterpretation through the profession of online journalists (Singer 2007). The subgroup of online journalists enacted professional practices that strongly differed from those of legacy journalists, signifying a clash between the old and the new (Singer 2004). For instance, audience-oriented editors developed routines to understand audience behavior that indicate novel aspects in journalistic practice (Ferrer-Conill and Tandoc 2018). An audience turn in journalism to focusing on “how to be of service to audiences, how to open up their minds, how to broaden their horizon” (Costera Meijer 2020, 2338, emphasis in original) reflects novel aspects being implanted into journalistic doxa. With advancing digital technology an intersectional “techno-journalistic space” (Ananny and Crawford 2015, 192) established, in which “the blending of journalist-technologists” (Hermida and Young 2017, 171) occurs. In this space, a subgroup with specific symbolic capital, specific doxa, and agency can develop, such as editorial technologists.

Editorial Technologists as a Subgroup in the Journalistic Field

Editorial technologists work “at the intersection of traditional journalist positions and technologically intensive positions that were once generally separate” (Kosterich 2020, 52). They are equipped with two forms of capital seen as valuable inside the field. First, they bring in cultural capital such as web development, programming, data analytics, design, or data visualization which they combine with news judgment, reporting, and editing (Kosterich and Weber 2019). Knowledge about software coding or particular software application represents a specific shared capacity among editorial technologists (Usher 2016). Their unique cultural capital may lead editorial technologists to view problems from novel perspectives and approach them differently than traditional journalists may do.

Beyond cultural capital, editorial technologists have accumulated symbolic capital: Even though they have previously described themselves as outsiders to journalism and lacking journalistic legitimacy (Hermida and Young 2017; Kosterich 2020), the profession of editorial technologists has become more visible over time—initiated by winning Pulitzer Prices such as the New York Time’s famous “Snowfall” report in 2012 (Usher 2016). The visualization and multimedia storytelling used in the “Snowfall” report became known throughout the news industry and increased editorial technologists’ cultural capital in the field. For instance, a Wall Street Journal editorial technologist affirms, “Snowfall was a huge, interesting thing in the community because it got on the radar of so many traditional journalists that had no idea how we did our jobs” (Cited in Kosterich 2020, 62). However, Kosterich (2020) notes that structural and cultural struggles persist even in newsrooms where editorial technologists have accumulated cultural capital. Assuming that editorial technologists could already accumulate different forms of capital inside the journalistic field, we raise the following research question:

RQ1. How do editorial technologists conceive of symbolic and cultural capital that is relevant to their work?

Based on accumulated capital, editorial technologists may define their subgroup as well as their agency inside the field. The members of a field collectively develop a professional imagination about the agency of their field vis-à-vis its environmental context (Kunelius and Ruusunoksa 2008). Through professional imagination, challenges to journalism are translated into practical changes in news work (Kunelius and Ruusunoksa 2008). For such transformation processes, proactive change agent roles are required. Such roles include generating ideas, pursuing or challenging new ideas, and orchestrating new ideas through creating a climate for change to steer innovations through the organization’s political process (Lajqi and Lischka 2021; Meyer 2000). Hence, change processes are biased toward agents who have power and prominence (Meyer 2000), i.e., who have accumulated capital and gained habitus in an organization. Hepp and Loosen (2021, 578) describe the group of professional change agents as pioneer communities, i.e., a “particular group of professionals who incorporate new organizational forms and experimental practice in pursuit of redefining the field and its structural foundations.” Pioneers regard themselves as an organizational elite who embody imaginations of the future of journalism and aim at transforming journalism on a structural level (Hepp and Loosen 2021).

Previous literature provides evidence of editorial technologists transforming the journalistic field. For instance, in a case study on the BBC, Bélair-Gagnon (2013, 483) found that “tech-savvy journalists involved in social media-related projects” use their computational skills and related agency to shape journalistic practices, co-create new editorial guidelines and, most importantly, to re-negotiate how journalistic values such as impartiality are applied at the BBC. Accordingly, Bélair-Gagnon (2013) argues that these professionals are “architects” (485) of journalistic values, who exercise “definitional powers” (488) and gain interpretive dominance over practices as well as doxa. Similarly, Kosterich (2021, 1) describes product managers in journalism as “institutional entrepreneurs [who] promote change and reengineer journalism’s longstanding professional boundaries.” In this sense, novel professional agents in a field conduct institutional work (Lawrence and Suddaby 2006)—and, in Bourdieu’s terms, refine dominant doxa. While Nielsen (2012, 959) emphasizes that technologists are “increasingly integral to how legacy media organizations operate in a new and ever more convergent media environment under circumstances of great economic uncertainty”, Lewis and Usher (2016, 543) show that journalists’ and technologists’ ideas of news making resulted in a shared goal: Journalists and technologists aim to make “news more process-oriented, participatory, and socially curated”. These findings underscore the change editorial technologists have guided by marrying journalistic and technological perspectives. We ask:

RQ2. How do editorial technologists perceive their collective agency for change as a professional community?

Editorial technologists may have acquired software-coding capabilities from outside the field, such as in computer science, or have taught themselves how to code while having a background in journalism (Kosterich 2020). The former type of editorial technologists deliberately decides to become a member in the field of journalism instead of working in any other industry, due to the motivation to dedicate their work to society’s enhancement (Kosterich 2020). These newcomers to journalism undergo a process of professional socialization to become competent members of a community of practice (Wenger 1999), negotiating between the old and the new. The old dominates the new when doxa are inherited from the larger professional group of journalists in editorial offices. This is, for example, demonstrated in a study by Lowrey (2002) with visual editors who have a background in photography or graphic design adhere to the prevalent doxa. When the new dominates the old, a subgroup may develop unique doxa. In this regard, Stalph (2020) shows that data journalists gain independence from the prevalent group of journalists in their editorial offices and follow specific ethical norms when selecting, analyzing, and visualizing data. At the same time, data journalists strive to normalize their practices and doxa to gain professional legitimacy within journalism (Stalph 2020).

Regarding the new, editorial technologists may bring in convictions of the technological field including “(1) a focus on the needs of audiences, (2) a desire to provide widespread access to data, and (3) the drive to create easy-to-consume products” (Wu, Tandoc, and Salmon 2019, 1251). Moreover, they aim to change the journalistic field by introducing new skills and technologies such as news automation (Wu, Tandoc, and Salmon 2019). Editorial technologists might also foster a milieu of constant experimentation with news products (Bélair-Gagnon and Holton 2018; Carlson and Usher 2016; Royal and Kiesow 2021). Editorial technologists share a common understanding of their work having a larger public impact (Usher 2016). In that sense, they may not only question but also adhere to “the old” journalistic doxa. To explore editorial technologists’ doxa within this field of tension, we ask:

RQ3. What doxic principles do editorial technologists hold?

Method

We conduct a qualitative content analysis of peer discussions at a yearly held editorial technologist conference in the U.S. between 2016 and 2019, representing a form of meta-journalistic discourse (Carlson 2016) that is held within a community of peers. The social situation of meeting peers may represent a behind-the-scenes occasion in which dominant norms may be renegotiated, as assumed by Lowrey (2002), and where doxic values—usually unspoken and taken for granted—are reflected upon and therefore become tangible to researchers (Schultz 2007).

Sample

We chose the yearly, two-day SRCCON (“Source Conference”) that takes place in the U.S. and brings together “a network of developers, designers, journalists, and editors to collaborate on open technologies and processes within journalism”¹, representing a self-selected sample of conference participants. We assume that the participants are interested in questions addressing the intersection of journalism and technology since the conference focuses on professional exchange being “full of conversations and workshops focused on the practical challenges that news technology and data teams encounter every day.”²

According to a survey of the SRCCON community in 2017, participants are predominantly from U.S. news organizations, with large organizations such as the New York Times, Washington Post, and ProPublica leading the list of news organizations (Owens 2017). Many of the surveyed participants have a background in journalism (every fifth has a Bachelor’s degree and every fourth a Master’s degree in journalism) and are rarely (about 10%) educated in software engineering (Owens 2017). Frequent job titles of participants include reporter, developer, editor, executive roles, app designer, interactivity designer, and software engineer (Owens 2017). Accordingly, it remains unclear to what extent participants can count as computationally knowledgeable individuals or are merely interested in the intersection of journalism and information technology. Nevertheless, we consider SRCCON participants suitable representatives of editorial technologists, given that the purpose of the conference is to explore the intersection of journalism and information technology through best practice-exchange.

To explore the discourse among the participants, we analyzed transcripts of the official SRCCON sessions, usually consisting of an open discussion about best practices but also everyday struggles, facilitated by a short presentation and/or small group exercises that the participants reflected on. Hence, sessions are no conference presentations but a combination of a short panel introduction by the hosts of each session and workshops as well as discussions about own experiences of participants. Each session addresses a specific topic that people within the community found relevant to discuss at the conference. Each yearly two-day conference consists of about 50 of these sessions (Min = 46 in 2019, Max = 60 in 2016).

The session selection follows a criterion-based process to identify information-rich cases for the phenomenon under study (Suri 2011). First, of the total sessions, those are selected that have transcripts available (n = 86 between 2016 and 2019). Second, for each year, those sessions were selected that address views on journalism and information technology based on their title and description. Third, from this sub-selection, three sessions per year were selected that inform the research questions. After the first round of analysis, a fourth and fifth session per year was added, where possible, to reach theoretic saturation. Session themes of the final sample include newsroom collaboration, technology design, revenue models, and social impact (see Appendix 1). During our observation period, the 2018 SRCCON was specifically resourceful regarding informing the research questions. The selected sessions focus on sharing experiences and thus depend on who participated and is willing to express their thoughts in each session.

Material

The transcripts are “live transcripts” written during each session. They include statements of hosts, revealing the first names, statements of usually anonymous participants, and indicate laughter and applause. Often, hosts introduce their topics using slides, which however were often not available. If slides and additional material were available, it was used to contextualize the transcripts. Transcripts do not include the individual discussions during breakout sessions of smaller groups but only the summary given by one or two persons of each group presented to all participants. Participants could mention issues off the record, which the record does not include.

Analysis

Building on the work of Carlson and Usher (2016) and Gravengaard (2012), we conducted an inductive and deductive categorization of the material combined with note taking and sorting supplemented with selective and axial coding (Glaser and Strauss 1967). In the first step, all statements informing the research questions were identified and assigned to one (or more) research question(s). Second, major themes within the statements were noted and, if possible, assigned to community, capital type, agency, and doxa. Especially identifying capital accumulation and agency themes were unfussy. In contrast, doxa were hard to clearly disentangle at first. However, during the analysis, various responsibility themes emerged that reveal dominant ethical norms of editorial technologists. Hence, through the responsibility themes that emerged from the material, we were able to identify the core of editorial technologists’ doxa. Third, a meta-narrative regarding a theme was constructed, resulting in thick descriptions of emerging themes. For thickening, we applied rounds of selective coding. During analysis, we noted how steadily the themes occurred not only within single sessions or a specific year but throughout the whole observation period. Accordingly, we built themes that are substantially grounded in various parts of the material to accurately describe the participants’ communicative actions and to assign meaning to their actions, constructing so-called “thick descriptions” (Ponterotto 2006). In contrast, for topics that occurred only within one year we often could not construct sufficiently thick descriptions, i.e., representing participants’ voice inadequately (Ponterotto 2006). Unless these themes were relevant in the next step of axial coding, we did not consider them in our analysis. Fourth, through axial coding across themes, aspects of editorial technologists’ professional imagination were identified, which additionally address the overall research question. Also, connections and overlaps between thick descriptions as well as contradictions were noted using axial coding. These processes were repeated with the extension of sessions until theoretical saturation was reached.

Findings

Capital Accumulation

Throughout the SRCCON sessions, editorial technologists refer to gaining symbolic, cultural, and social capital in their news organizations. After accumulating editorial capital through recognition of their skills and building endurable relationships, editorial technologists strive to augment their agency in the field. In a hierarchically higher position, editorial technologists will be able to implement their professional imagination for journalism.

First, regarding symbolic capital, editorial technologists describe being in a process of gaining recognition within editorial offices. Starting from being a service provider, editorial technologists want to become an integral part of multi-skilled editorial teams and gain agency in the newsroom. However, participants describe that they felt treated as “kind of servants that are just supposed to mindlessly recreate” (2018_techcomm) what has been asked for. Ideally, developers and designers would want journalists “to come [and] say ‘I want to tell a story and I want to show something really important about this data’” (2018_techcomm) and to be integrated into projects from the beginning. However, journalists “don’t necessarily see us the same way” (2018_whineshine), “aren’t really listening to the ideas” (2016_juggling), and “the rest of the newsroom doesn’t always know about” technologists’ work in a project (2019_reorg). Technologists note their deficiency of symbolic editorial capital: “[T]he journalists have instant credibility whereas a developer […] doesn’t have kind of that built-in credibility” (2018_whineshine). Nevertheless, technologists request recognition, for instance in the bylines: “We don’t necessarily get the same bylines and stuff like that but we all feel like we should be involved in that” (2018_whineshine).

Regarding cultural capital, technologists describe that their skills are strange to the newsroom. “I’ve spent most of my career working for people who usually […] react to something that me or my team does as ‘magic’” (2019_next), reports one participant. This indicates that the technologists’ skills are valued but also perceived as strange. Especially in smaller editorial teams, they are unique and thus technologists become “special unicorns in a department full of people who do journalism” (2016_juggling). Editorial technologists strive to demystify their abilities and make them accessible to everybody. One participant demands non-technological colleagues “don’t have to understand every line of code […] but to make it less magical, [they have] to have a little bit more of an understanding” (2019_next) of what editorial technologists do since “this is a discipline. This is a craft. Just like any other part of the industry” (2019_next). Moreover, a convergence of journalistic and technological abilities emerges and “bridge roles” have developed, who are hybrids between technologists and journalists and negotiate both domains. “I think a lot of us have a traditional journalism background[,] but we’ve adapted to the technology aspects in a way that we enjoy, and straddle the fence and use those two backgrounds” (2018_whineshine).

To alter their status of being overlooked and strange, participants attempt to communicate to others in the newsroom and normalize their abilities. This requires social capital indicated by building enduring relationships. Closing the gap between technologist's and editorial worlds can be achieved through close collaboration and frequent communication. Participants request working in cross-functional teams where “people are talking and communicating because now it is the team’s problem to solve not that [of the] designer or engineer over there” (2018_techcomm). Technologists have started to actively report product updates in meetings with other newsroom members to increase the visibility of their work. Technologists attempt to understand the editorial team better and “take a really strong interest in the journalism itself, and understand the journalism itself” (2019_next).

Through accumulating symbolic, cultural, and social capital, technologists aim at gaining editorial capital. Technologists hope that “eventually [journalists] start to understand that there’s depth to the things we do” (2016_juggling) and to recognize their journalistic expertise. Then, one may be regarded as a journalist “and they say… Whoa. I didn’t know you were actually a journalist” (2019_next), which would be a badge of honor for editorial technologists.

Collective Agency for Change

The SRCCON sessions reveal a community feeling and collective goals of participants to improve journalism. Statements across the sessions indicate that SRCCON has a community building capacity for participants. While some participants may be “unicorns” in their organizations, they feel to belong to one supportive community of people who have “each other’s backs” (2017_minds). The mission of SRCCON participants can be understood as collectively advancing journalism by implementing technology. One host states, “So we’re all here to help journalism get better, right? That’s what this community is about” (2019_next). Similarly, one participant summarizes their group discussion with, “[w]e’re motivated by empowering media. That’s it!” (2018_whineshine). Therefore, participants are “here to design the future together” (2019_next).

Community building and collective goals are means for agency regarding changing the news organizations according to the editorial technologists’ discretion. Participants describe their merit for journalism and are convinced to improve journalism. Without technologists, not all solutions to a problem can be found: “[I]t’s just very clear to me when [technologists] are in the room and not. When the solutions come out. They’re not necessarily bad solutions. […] They don’t include what all the options really could be” (2019_next). Hence, the capacity of technology and those understanding it is an amplification of solutions, enlarging the set of solutions to choose from. Therefore, “[t]he first challenge is getting buy in from the stakeholders in the newsroom” (2018_usetools) to apply new technology. Technologists strive to renegotiate plans of other silos of the news organization according to the technologists’ conception:

[W]e managed to get the stakeholders, the heads for each of those silos, in a room every Monday to talk through their priorities, to argue about their priorities, and hopefully – indeed, over the course of the last year – I think align their priorities. So that was an added bonus for us. Aligning stakeholders in a way we hadn’t seen before. (2019_reorg)

SRCCON participants strive to implement learnings in their newsrooms and ask to “bring all the wonderful learning here back to your newsrooms and make changes” (2019_buck). One session host suggests finding like-minded “allies” in newsrooms to augment agency:

[I]f you can find traditional journalists who really recognize you, in your bridge role as being a journalist, and you, as a developer as being a journalist, I think, that can help proliferate in our organizations and can help us move towards a stage where we are on the same page. (2018_whineshine)

One participant indicates that socializing more editorial technologists into newsrooms increases agency: “we need to move toward building internship or apprenticeship type things in our newsrooms and basically home-grow our data people, right there in the newsrooms” (2017_local).

Ultimately, agency in management positions is regarded as effective: “[W]e need more people at the top […]. More people who think like we do. Who want to push technology forward” (2019_next). Because traditional managers are usually resistant to “changing […] the practices of leadership and the way that we interact with each other professionally” (2019_next) and they either do not prioritize technology (2019_reorg) or have unrealistic expectations towards technology (2019_next). The intended final stage of emancipation represents “moving up through the ranks as a technologist” and gaining “real power in their organizations” (2019_next). Editorial technologists argue that involving them in management positions would enable an optimal exploitation of the capacity of technology and implementation of their professional imagination.

Editorial-Technological Doxa

Participants acknowledge their responsibility regarding technology implementation throughout the SRCCON sessions. They regard themselves as agents of technology enactment for the news organization as well as for society. Four stakeholder groups are discussed who require responsible decisions, i.e., democratic society, audiences, the news organization, and the editorial team. These responsibility themes reveal how journalism and news organizations ought to be and function from the editorial technologist perspective and thus can be understood as doxic imagination.

Regarding responsibility towards democratic society, problematic issues regarding algorithmic design and the use of data are discussed. Participants express a normative understanding of journalism enhancing democratic societies: “[J]ournalism [is] a facilitator for the conversation in which we create the space for people to change each other’s minds. And that’s kind of beautiful to me” (2017_minds). For instance, as a data journalist, one could “make a chart pretty much say anything you want,” which is why it is “our responsibility to go forth and to make sure that we’re presenting the clearest picture possible and that we’re presenting it fairly” (2018_community). Another example is the goal to improve public discourse. One participant describes a method to identify trolls to reduce their visibility and the ethical dilemma regarding the cut-off point between troll and non-troll behavior:

[A]nd this all seemed great and really necessary until I started thinking about what it meant for me to be thinking about defining what—how to detect a troll, basically and the ways in which that might limit somebody’s participation in an important online space. (2016_algorithm)

Consequently, participants urge to teach members of society about the capacity of technology, and how “these programs are changing the world, how they’re shaping the world” (2016_algorithm).

Regarding responsibility towards audiences, editorial technologists strive to understand audience needs and act in their interest. Analytics can reveal “fault lines in coverage” (2018_community), revealing a systematic bias in reporting that reinforces stereotypes instead of embracing cultural diversity and attending to underserved audiences. Moreover, due to a focus on audience metrics, the direct exchange with individual audience members has suffered: “[We forgot] to get behind[,] look behind the numbers to actually talk to and understand the people that are behind those numbers” (2018_pay). Another example is giving the audience greater autonomy regarding individualized news recommendations:

I think the big thing is some sort of interface to allow you to change what’s being recommended to you, whether it’s being able to widen your algorithm to include more things or just being like [able] to change the mix of different content pieces. (2016_algorithm)

Moreover, technologists regard it as important to apply technology in a way that adds value for audiences. Implementing unnecessary design changes should be avoided (e.g., implementing a two-column layout despite predominant mobile use which collapses the layout to one column (2018_techcomm)): “putting the user first and really focusing on why what you’re doing is important and that usually resolves to an understanding of either your thing isn’t important or there’s another issue that you should be solving” (2016_juggling).

Regarding the news organization, editorial technologists take responsibility for understanding strategy and products holistically. Participants urge to prioritize simple over complex designs, because “in an industry that’s hurting financially, we are saddling our organizations with more technical debt for our successors” (2019_next). In this regard, editorial technologists criticize the workplace culture lacking product thinking. One participant, for example, accuses the management level of building “exploitative practices” into the structure of news organizations as a reaction to increasing economic pressure on the journalism industry, leading to an “insidious […] effect on the wider culture” (2019_next). They unpack how the upper management of news organizations is usually lost in “traditional silos” where actors are “strictly focused” on revenue, consumer, and advertising (2019_next). To re-define the journalistic product, editorial technologists propose to consider “not just print” but “all of our content”, “all of our distribution channels”, “advertising units” as well as “internal platforms” (2019_reorg). The traditional presupposition of the print article and the journalist being the flagship of a news organization, while other elements and colleagues are only in service of it, is ultimately challenged here by a more holistic approach. To foster this cultural change, editorial technologists introduce terms that are known from project management such as “sprint”, “stakeholder” or “product owner” (2019_reorg). Moreover, editorial technologists struggle with the internalized logic that editorial requests prevail, while other perspectives are subordinated automatically (2019_reorg). That is why they question the hegemony of editorial perspectives (2019_reorg).

Participants also critically assess the lack of diversity in the journalistic field that they, at least partly, see as their own responsibility within the news organization: Assuming that the quality of news work will improve if the diversity of society is mirrored in newsrooms’ staff, they claim that technologists should be more considerate about practices of “promoting” to “make sure we’re giving those resources to people who are going to help us be inclusive” (2019_next).

For the editorial team, technologists discuss deepening the understanding of as well as appreciation for technology and their responsibility regarding a healthy culture, especially in the 2019 “Designing the next phase for newsroom technologists” session. In this manner, mutual understanding is a precondition for exchange and collaboration: “just laying everything out on the table and having everyone kind of talk together would really help have some transparency” (2019_next). Participants propose various ways of how internalized logics of hierarchy, competition and reluctance towards technology can be changed towards a more “positive culture,” which is “key to developing sustainable newsrooms” (2019_next). As proposed by one participant, a positive culture would benefit diversity, make communication more efficient and lead to “stronger storytelling” because people feel comfortable to express “weird, quirky, [and] different idea[s]” (2019_next). One concrete proposal was overthinking the ways success is measured: Instead of only evaluating, which editor got “the most video views” (2019_next), directors should judge their employees’ work in terms of quality – not quantity. This would ultimately “[i]nspire people to do better, versus just pitting them against each other” (2019_next). In a collaborative culture, better solutions will be developed. Moreover, the effect of technology on working procedures should be more strongly considered, as one participant points out:

[B]ut we don’t think about the impact on internal processes and people’s day-to-day. So when we talk about inclusion, we should also think about early and late adopters on our own team and that we need to bring these people along, keep them on the bus with us. (2019_next)

Hence, technology should be inclusive and thus accessible to all members of the newsroom. Editorial technologists want to make other members of the editorial staff feel less “powerless when there’s a technical problem and they don’t know how to handle it” (2019_next). Moreover, they aim to empower the workers in their newsrooms by transferring their technology skills: “we want to teach you how to fish” (2018_whineshine). Lastly, editorial technologists want to support the agency of the editorial team and develop tools supporting their working procedures. For instance, one participant reports that their team developed a way to measure that “savings [were] a reduction in workflow time” (2018_usetool).

Discussion

The analysis of SRCCON sessions suggests that editorial technologists form an interpretive community (Carlson 2016) and develop professional imaginations of three decisive aspects: their capital accumulation, collective agency inside the field, and the unique doxa relating to the broader responsibility of their professional community for journalism (see overview in Table 1).

Table 1. Editorial technologists’ status quo conception and professional imagination (exemplary quotes).

Theme	Status Quo	Professional Imagination
Capital accumulation
Symbolic capital	Service provider: “[We are] servants that are just supposed to mindlessly recreate.” (2018_techcomm)	Recognition: “[E]ventually [journalists] start to understand that there’s depth to the things we do.” (2016_juggling)
Cultural capital	Uniqueness: “[Journalists] react to something that me or my team does as ‘magic’.” (2019_next)	Normalization: “This is a craft. Just like any other part of the industry.” (2019_next)
Social capital	Lack of comprehension: “[We need to] understand the journalism itself.” (2019_next)	Teamwork: “[I]t is the team’s problem to solve not that [of the] designer or engineer over there.” (2018_techcomm)
Agency for change	Newsroom level: “[T]he first challenge is getting buy-in from […] the newsroom.” (2018_usetools)	C-level: “[W]e need more people at the top. […] Who want to push technology forward.” (2019_next)
Doxa
Responsibility for society	Impact: “We really need to be teaching [students] how these programs are changing the world.” (2016_algorithm)	Equality: “[O]ur responsibility to go forth and to make sure that we’re presenting the clearest picture possible and that we’re presenting it fairly.” (2018_community)
Responsibility for audiences	Focus: “putting the user first” (2016_juggling)	Insight: “[U]nderstand the people that are behind those numbers.” (2018_pay)
Responsibility for the news organization	Hegemony: “[O]ther [than editorial] perspectives are subordinated automatically.” (2019_reorg)	Convergence: “not just print” but “all of our distribution channels […] also our advertising units” (2019_reorg)
Responsibility for the editorial team	Care: “[B]ut we don’t think about the impact on internal processes.” (2019_next)	Culture: “[I]nspire people to do better, versus just pitting them against each other.” (2019_next)

Analyzing SRCCON sessions over four years allowed identifying a narrated capital accumulation process of editorial technologists of skill-related cultural capital, the symbolic capital of recognition, and the social capital of building enduring relationships in newsrooms. Capital accumulation manifests itself in greater integration of technologists into newsrooms and in receiving greater appreciation from journalists. These findings confirm an increasing professional legitimacy of editorial technologists as suggested by Kosterich (2020) and Usher (2016). Gaining social capital is especially valuable to editorial technologists as it enables these news workers to gain agency over change in the newsroom, the news organization, and journalism according to their professional doxa. To respond to cultural and managerial shortcomings in news organizations, editorial technologists request “real power” (2019_next) by filling executive positions. Their goal to take on top management responsibilities in news organizations indicates a perception of an organizational elite who aims at transforming news organizations structurally, which represent characteristics of proactively orchestrating change agents (Meyer 2000), architects with definitional powers (Bélair-Gagnon 2013), or reengineering institutional entrepreneurs (Kosterich 2021). Editorial technologists identify power in a high-ranking position as necessary for transformative agency. This enables technologists to become architects that effectively navigate change through organizational political processes.

At the same time, editorial technologists face struggles to receive appropriate recognition, and therefore sufficient symbolic capital, in their newsrooms. Accordingly, they still work on demystifying their profession and normalizing their skills. According to Kosterich (2020), these struggles are necessary within the process of institutional change. While these struggles might partly vanish if even greater capital is accumulated by editorial technologists, they might never be resolved fully since constant struggle over authority is a key characteristic of a field (Carlson 2016). Against this background, the SRCCON meetings have an important community-building capacity to reassure each other and discuss experiences, difficulties, and solutions. Accordingly, SRCCON meetings can be understood as ritualized moments of reflection where editorial technologists jointly react to their changing environment, reconsider autonomy and agency, and thereby create unique ideas as a community of practice (Hepp and Loosen 2021; Kunelius and Ruusunoksa 2008). This is illustrated in editorial technologists’ agreement on a collective mission to improve journalism and their overarching goal to empower journalists with technological means and skills.

Editorial technologists’ professional imagination consists of three aspects: First, ongoing improvisation of information technology (Orlikowski 1996), such as spontaneous reactions to problems they encounter in their everyday news work. Second, findings indicate a shared mindset with data journalists regarding societal responsibilities (Stalph 2020). Third, editorial technologists’ professional imagination is not only rooted in specific sub-branches of journalism but also inspired by a Silicon Valley techno-centric culture as suggested by Wu, Tandoc, and Salmon (2019). Yet, techno-centrism is critically reflected and discussed regarding the importance of audience needs, indicating that audience focus also represents a doxic element for editorial technologists as for the entire field (Costera Meijer 2020). This creation of joint professional imagination according to Kunelius and Ruusunoksa (2008) is a way for editorial technologists to define their agency in the field, and thereby, to develop a shared vision to reengineer the journalistic field. Their willingness to co-design the future of journalism indicates a central characteristic of pioneer communities (Hepp and Loosen 2021).

Editorial technologists strive for independence from the prevalent community of journalists by developing a specific sub-culture, while negotiating traditional journalistic norms and conventions, indicating a struggle between the old and the new (Benson 1999). Their hybrid nature, marrying journalistic with computational skills, situates editorial technologists between adherence and challenge of traditional journalistic doxa (Wu, Tandoc, and Salmon 2019; Carlson and Usher 2016). While editorial technologists’ showcase adherence to norms that have a long tradition within the journalistic profession—such as acting socially responsible and in an ethically sensible manner (Deuze 2005)—they put forward their distinctive sense of responsibilities towards diverse stakeholder groups of colleagues, the organization, audiences, and society, which ultimately shapes their doxa. The self-reflective discussions among editorial technologists are dedicated to advancing the field through socially responsible technological practices to benefit society, audiences, the news organization, and the editorial team. The responsibility themes lie at the core of editorial-technological doxa that enable editorial technologists to bring together different aspects of their professional imagination (Kunelius and Ruusunoksa 2008) and anchor them within their community. Through their doxa, editorial technologists can create novel visions for the field centered on computational practices.

This qualitative analysis of peer discussions has various limitations. First, while our goal is to understand the professional community of editorial technologists, the participants’ job titles are diverse ranging from reporter to software engineer (Owens 2017). These job titles may not always reveal the actual tasks editorial technologists perform in news organizations. It remains unclear whether a participant regards oneself at the center or the periphery of the community of editorial technologists. Thus, results represent discussions of professionals working at the intersection of technology and journalism—either as technologists entering the newsroom or as established news workers starting to acquire and apply computational skills. In addition, some participants indicated not to work in news organizations but for technology companies being suppliers for newsrooms. Second, although striving for sampling a comprehensive set of conference sessions, the material represents a cutout in which individual participants share their views on selected experiences with peers. While the content analysis is non-responsive as compared to interviews, expressions are shaped by what is sayable within a community (Carlson 2016). The statements represent narrated roles as opposed to practiced roles or role orientations according to Hanitzsch and Vos (2017). Following Carlson (2016), narrations of SRCCON participants as discourse of an interpretive community will result in epistemological understandings that guide practice. In this regard, present findings indicate that editorial technologists attempt to implement ideas from SRCCON in their home organizations. Yet, future research is needed to follow up on present findings and include practiced roles. Third, a survey of participants conducted by the conference organizers indicates that the majority of participants works in the U.S. often at large and resource-rich news organizations (Owens 2017). Hence, these voices potentially dominate SRCCON discussions. Thus, to conduct comparisons across types of news organizations (e.g., regarding revenue models, legacy, size, or periphery) and across different media systems and geographic regions allows comprehensive insights as conducted for data journalism by Appelgren, Lindén, and van Dalen (2019).

Conclusion

This study explores the character of editorial technologists who represent a novel interdisciplinary professional group positioned within newsrooms or facing newsrooms, who obtain a computational skill set. We analyzed the discussions of the professional community over four years in a conference that brings together developers, designers, journalists, and editors, as an example of meta-journalistic discourse (Carlson 2016) held by peers.

Findings indicate that editorial technologists are a professional community with a hybrid set of doxa who strive for a greater transformative agency in journalism. Editorial technologists are not only individual change agents in a news organization but can be regarded as a change agent community. They do not only enact new technology for the field in Orlikowski’s (1996) sense of continuous improvisation, but they want to manage the change of organizational structure, processes, and culture. According to their professional imagination, editorial technologists strive to apply technology in an ethically responsible way for journalism. They largely support the audience focus in journalism (Costera Meijer 2020) and feel responsibility for society at large. On an organizational level, they envision an equal distribution of agency across various subgroups in news organizations, at the costs of the hegemony of editorial views. Editorial technologists criticize the inert culture in news organizations and want to responsibly exploit the potential of technology. Based on their capital and doxa, they strive to become powerful orchestrators of change (Kosterich 2021; Meyer 2000). Therefore, we regard editorial technologists as a community of accountable engineers of sociotechnical change in journalism.

The SRCCON conference represents a community-building institution for editorial technologists and space to discuss their profession. In this way, the conference serves as a collective actor defining and communicating standards for the professional community of editorial technologists. Following Wenger (1999), the conference represents a means of professional socialization of a community of practice. Considering their activist-like impulse to “bring all the wonderful learning” from the conference “back to [the] newsrooms and [to] make changes” (2019_buck), editorial technologists strive to transform how newsrooms work through technological applications, as suggested by Wu, Tandoc, and Salmon (2019). Moreover, they possess the capacity to reflect their core competency critically, i.e., the application of technology for journalism. Editorial technologists, therefore, “struggle about the meaning and role of [information technology for] journalism in society” (Hanitzsch and Vos 2017, 122, emphasis in original). That is, editorial technologists have taken on the social responsibility of information technology within news organizations.

Lastly, editorial technologists meet many aspects of pioneer communities according to Hepp and Loosen (2021), i.e., acting as intermediaries between information technology and journalism, having a collective sense of a mission for journalism as well as ideas of change, and aiming at reengineering processes, structures, and culture. Concerning editorial technologists’ aim to gain more agency in news organizations, future research about their roles, values, and practices is required. Future research is also needed to evaluate in what ways editorial technologists can enhance the field for news organisations and their audiences alike, and how their vision for change in journalism is lived out in practice.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 https://source.opennews.org/

2 https://2019.srccon.org/

Appendix 1:

Sample of SRCCON Sessions

Table

Source	Year and short name	Title	Scheduled duration	Transcript length (words)
[1]	2016_juggling	Every day I'm juggling: Managing managers, peer expectations, and your own project ideas	60 min	2,570
[2]	2016_data	You’re The Reason My Name Is On Google: The Ethics Of Publishing Public Data	60 min	8,522
[3]	2016_algorithm	Designing participatory algorithmic decisionmaking processes	60 min	5,450
[4]	2017_minds	How do we change our minds anyway?	75 min	8,113
[5]	2017_bubble	Why you are part of the filter bubble problem and what you can do about it	75 min	7,217
[6]	2017_local	Local data journalism still matters (and we can make it better!)	75 min	10,955
[7]	2018_pay	Without Free or Favor: Compelling readers to pay for news (tote bags not included)	75 min	6,035
[8]	2018_community	Managing the blind spots in community news coverage	75 min	6,291
[9]	2018_techcomm	Navigating technical communication with journalists	75 min	7,648
[10]	2018_whineshine	Whine & Shine: A support group for nerds, journalists and those who bridge the gap	75 min	4,655
[11]	2018_tools	Sure, You’re Making Tools. But Do People Use Them?	75 min	5,050
[12]	2019_impact	Why it matters — Designing stories for impact	75 min	7,499
[13]	2019_buck	Bang for your buck: how to help your newsroom get the most out of SRCCON (or any journalism event)	75 min	4,789
[14]	2019_next	Designing the next phase for newsroom technologists	75 min	7,020
[15]	2019_reorg	How to re-org your newsroom around product without breaking it	75 min	8,186

Transcript sources:

[1] https://2016.srccon.org/schedule/#_session-juggling-expectations. .

[2] https://2016.srccon.org/schedule/#_session-ethics-public-data. .

[3] https://2016.srccon.org/schedule/#_session-participatory-algorithms. .

[4] https://2017.srccon.org/schedule/#_session-change-our-minds. .

[5] https://2017.srccon.org/schedule/#_session-filter-bubbles. .

[6] https://2017.srccon.org/schedule/#_session-local-data-journalism. .

[7] https://2018.srccon.org/schedule/#_session-readers-pay-news. .

[8] https://2018.srccon.org/schedule/#_session-blind-spots-coverage. .

[9] https://2018.srccon.org/schedule/#_session-navigating-technical-communication. .

[10] https://2018.srccon.org/schedule/#_session-bridging-gaps. .

[11] https://2018.srccon.org/schedule/#_session-using-tools. .

[12] https://2019.srccon.org/schedule/#_session-designing-stories-impact. .

[13] https://2019.srccon.org/schedule/#_session-events-teaching-toolkit. .

[14] https://2019.srccon.org/schedule/#_session-next-phase-news-nerds. .

[15] https://2019.srccon.org/schedule/#_session-newsroom-reorg-product. . .