‘We have never been part of the journalistic profession’

Abstract

This paper is an examination of the self-perceptions and professionalization of online journalists who worked for the first two Hungarian content-providing ventures, Internetto and the Content Project, and their successors, Index.hu and Origo.hu, respectively, between 1995 and 1999. I have analyzed how organizational cultures and values attached to technology interacted with the process of professionalization. The evolution of Hungarian online journalism exhibits three chief characteristics. First, the earliest online news sites were online-first and online-only. Second, the organizational contexts of the outlets were radically different. Though both outlets had publishers with international backgrounds, the journalists at Internetto operated as a kind of experimental community, while the Origo-team had to adjust to the organizational culture of a telecommunications monopoly. Third, the participants were simultaneously learning and formulating the rules of the then new profession called online journalism.

KEYWORDS:

• online journalism
• professionalization
• social history
• Hungary
• self-perception

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 All the in-depth interviews cited in this paper are part of an oral history project known as the Hungarian Digital and Online Media History (Magyar Online és Digitális Médiatörténet, or MODEM-projekt, available at http://mediatortenet.hu). All these interviews were conducted in Hungarian and all the excerpts presented here were translated by the author. Bodoky, “Interview.”

2 Simó, “Interview.”

3 Bødker and Brügger, “Shifting Temporalities”; Cawley, “Locating Online News”; Boczkowski, “Digitizing the News”. Some of the first significant online publications (with the year they were launched and their industry background), are as follows: Wired (Wired News), USA (1994, Magazine / Print publishing); Telegraph, UK (1994, Daily newspaper / Print publishing); Guardian technology section OnLine, UK (1995, Daily newspaper / Print publishing); CNN.com (initially CNN Interactive), USA (1995, Television-news channel / Broadcasting); New York Times, USA (1996, Daily newspaper / Print publishing); Guardian, UK (1999, Daily newspaper / Print publishing); Times Online, UK (1999, Daily newspaper / Print publishing); Le Monde, France (1995, Daily newspaper / Print publishing); see Shedden, “New Media Timeline”; Meek, “The Online Journalism Timeline”; Díaz Noci, “A History of Journalism”; Deuze, “Journalism and the Web.”

4 Nguyen, “Facing ‘the Fabulous Monster’.”

5 Vobič, “From One-Man Band.”

6 Anderson, “Expertise, Authority, and Power”; Deuze, “What Is Journalism”

7 Aldridge and Evetts, “Concept of Professionalism”; Etzioni “Semi-Professions”, Waisbord, “Reinventing Professionalism.”

8 Høyer and Lauk, “Journalistic Profession.”

9 Witschge and Nygren, “Profession Under Pressure.”

10 Lewis, “Journalism and Its Boundaries.”

11 Mancini, “Crisis of Journalism”; De Burgh, “Making Journalists.”

12 Arcenaux and Schmitz Weiss, “Press Coverage of Twitter.”

13 Jackaway, “Media at War.”

14 Blaagaard, “Shifting Boundaries”; O’Sullivan and Heinonen, “Old Values, New Media.”

15 Jones and Himelboim, “Framing the Blogs”; Lowrey and Burleson Mackay “Journalism and Blogging”; Örnebring, “Two Professionalisms of Journalism”, “Professional Journalists on Citizen Journalism.”

16 Bruns, “Blogs, Wikipedia.”

17 Digital Riptide, “A Project of the Shorenstein Center.”

18 Grueskin, Seave and Graves, “Business of Digital Journalism”; Bødker and Brügger, “Shifting Temporalities”; Cawley, “Locating Online News”; Boczkowski, “Digitizing the News.”

Blaagaard, “Shifting Boundaries”; O’Sullivan and Heinonen, “Old Values, New Media.”

19 Vobič, “From One-Man Band”; Vobič, “Slovenian Online Journalists”; Vobič and Milojević, “Role Negotiations in Online Departments.”

20 Turner, “Cultural History of the Internet,” 45.

21 Gitelman, “Always Already New”; Marvin, “When Old Technologies Were New”; Pingree and Gitelman, “What’s New About New Media?”; Sterne, “The Meaning of a Format”; Balbi and Magaudda, “A History of Digital Media”; Turner, “Cultural history of the Internet”; Jackaway, “Media at War.”

22 Lewis, “Journalism and Its Boundaries.”

23 De Maeyer and Le Cam, “The Material Traces of Journalism.”

24 Chalaby, “The Invention of Journalism.”

25 Anderson, “Professionalization of Journalism”; Banning, “The Professionalization of Journalism”; Høyer and Lauk, “The Paradoxes of the Journalistic Profession”; Ornebring, “Journalistic Profession”; Schudson, “Discovering the News”; Schudson and Tifft, “American Journalism in Historical Perspective.”

26 Mancini, “Crisis of Journalism”; De Burgh, “Making Journalists.”

27 Schudson and Tifft, “American Journalism in Historical Perspective”; Banning, “The Professionalization of Journalism.”

28 Anderson, “Professionalization of Journalism.”

29 Hallin and Mancini, “Comparing Media Systems.”

30 Buzinkay, “The History of Hungarian Press”; Sipos, “Journalistic Society.”

31 Sipos, “Literature and Journalism.”

32 In the Western world too; see Anderson, “Professionalization of Journalism.”

33 Buzinkay, “The History of Hungarian Press.”

34 Singer, “Online Journalists”; Singer, “Who Are These Guys?”; Fortunati, “Influence of the Internet”; Deuze and Dimoudi, “Online Journalists in the Netherlands”; Deuze, “Journalism and the Web”; Scott, “Contemporary History of Digital Journalism”; Vobič, “From One-Man Band”; Vobič, “Slovenian Online Journalists”; Vobič and Milojević, “Role Negotiations in Online Departments.”

35 The only Hungarian department of journalism in operation between 1953 and 1960 was part of the Faculty of Linguistics and Literature at ELTE University in Budapest (see Borsodi and Tüskés, “History of ELTE”). Since the regime change of 1989, several media and communications programs have begun to offer courses or degrees in journalism.

36 See Table 2.

37 Ahva, “Public Journalism.”

38 Internetlive, “Total number of Websites.”

39 Fox and Rainie, “How the Internet Has Woven.”

40 ISZT, “The Number of Domains.”

41 Bakonyi, “The Internet Phenomenon.”

42 KSH, “Hungary 1989–2009.”

43 Nyírő, “Interview.”

44 Spirk, “Prime Ministerial Computers.”

45 Bodoky, “Interview.”

46 Nádori, “Interview.”

47 Uj, “Interview.”

48 Vobič, “From One-Man Band.”

49 see Baym, “Personal Connections.”

50 Pohly, “Interview.”

51 Nádori et al., “MATÁV Content Provision.”

52 Uj, “Interview.”

53 Szakadát, “ABCD.”

54 Barczi, “Interview.”

55 Uj, “Interview.”

56 By analyzing industry sources, Deuze (“Journalism and the Web”) differentiated and described five online journalism skills: 1, The application of storyboarding; 2, Non-linear writing; 3, Journalistic taboos such as writing questions, quoting dialect; 4, Using interactive tools; 5, Layering of content. Based on the oral history data available and on archived versions of the sites, it can be stated that skills 2 and 4 were the most commonly applied strategies in early Hungarian online journalism.

57 György, “Interview.”

58 Örnebring, “Two Professionalisms of Journalism”, “Professional Journalists on Citizen Journalism.”

59 Bodoky, “Interview.”

60 Kiss, “Interview.”

61 Uj, “Interview.”

62 György, “Interview.”

63 Simó, “Interview.”

64 Nyírő, “Interview.”

Additional information

Funding

This paper was supported by the János Bolyai Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

Notes on contributors

Tamas Tofalvy

Tamas Tofalvy, Sociology and Communications, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Egry J. u. 1., Budapest 1111, Hungary.