Journalistic Product Personnel as Cultural Entrepreneurs: An Exploration of Background, Tenureship, and Knowledge Skills

ABSTRACT

Product innovation within institutional journalism has become an increasingly apparent strategy for news organizations to form and maintain audience interest and economic stability. The common desire for product innovation to be a fiscal savior ultimately challenges internal boundaries of professions. This is particularly apparent as the product innovation field within the news industry expands and blurs institutional logics. To explore the ways product personnel challenge and contribute to the shifting boundaries of journalism, this research draws on content analysis data from top national U.S. print newspaper organizations’ LinkedIn member profiles. The research provides a more nuanced understanding of the shifting and conflicting logics of journalism through laborer backgrounds and experiences regarding product and innovation. It applies cultural entrepreneurship and conflicting institutional logic concepts to argue these news workers introduce knowledge skillsets and are reshaping the profession of journalism.

KEYWORDS:

• Product
• journalism
• conflicting institutional logics
• cultural entrepreneurship
• labor
• skills

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Christina Harisiadis, Andrew Locke, Trevor Zaucha, and Nicole Zhang who made insightful comments at the design stage of this project. We are also very grateful for Damon Kiesow, who contributed insightful comments on the previous draft of the manuscript.

Disclosure Statement

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