Abstract
The field of Journalism Studies has generally overlooked the issue of “space” in news work, which is a significant shortcoming. This study contributes to addressing this by examining how news workers describe the newsroom as a prime space of their work. It is informed by interviews with journalists and other news workers from the Sydney newsroom of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The study uses Lefebvre's idea of continual production and reproduction of the real and ideal spaces, Harvey's dialectical tensions between the absolute, relative and relational space, and Massey's notion of relational space to suggest that the journalists' descriptions of newsrooms allude to conflict and contestation themes, and make the metaphor of “battleground” a fitting characterisation of it.