The Cyber-Newsroom: A Case Study of the Journalistic Paradigm in a News Narrative's Journey from a Newspaper to Cyberspace

Abstract

This narrative and discourse analysis documents the multi-year news coverage of a scandalous mayoral investigation in The Spokesman-Review as it moved from a printed version to an online one. The article sought to determine how multimedia and interactivity changed the essential news' web of facticity (a Gaye Tuchman term). A traditional understanding of the news paradigm informed this case analysis. The most significant finding was that the news story of Spokane, Washington, Mayor Jim West in the newspaper transformed into a story about the process of newsgathering on the Internet. A new, second-order newsroom – a cyber-newsroom – was created where readers and journalists jointly disseminated and repaired the news. In the process, the traditional journalistic paradigm shifted, and a new more layered, more complex news narrative resulted. A new model, called the “Cyber-Newsroom,” is proposed.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I extend my gratitude to the journal editors and anonymous reviewers, as well as Dr. Carolyn Kitch, Dr. Andrew Mendelson, and Dr. Jan Fernback—all of Temple—for their input on this piece.

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Notes on contributors

Sue Robinson

Sue Robinson (Ph.D., Temple University, 2007) is an assistant professor in the School of Journalism & Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her research interests include press theory, online journalism, narrative, and collective memory.