Rethinking Constructive Journalism by Means of Service Journalism

Abstract

This article argues that constructive journalism scholarship should look to service journalism and its subfields, cultural journalism and lifestyle journalism, to understand the key characteristics of this newer type of journalism. Though constructive journalism is typically associated with the reporting of political and social issues, it is also seen to challenge the traditional ways of writing about such hard news topics due to its positive and solution-oriented approach. In this respect, constructive journalism seems to reuse some of the approaches known from service journalism, especially in terms of audience address and an expanded social role for journalists. However, service journalism emerged in the increasingly commercialized and globalized media landscape of the post-World War II period, whereas constructive journalism has emerged in the digital media landscape of the 2010s. These historical contexts provide particular circumstances for both types of journalism.

KEYWORDS:

• Constructive journalism
• cultural journalism
• hard news
• lifestyle journalism
• service journalism
• soft news

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 In brief, the social function of journalism refers to the idea that journalists’ perceptions of their roles in society, and the role of journalism as such, will shape the way they report news and, thus, the way they perform their role. The debates about the role of service journalists link to broader scholarly discussions on the changed role of journalists (e.g. Hellmueller and Mellado 2015). Studies have pointed to journalistic roles, such as “populist disseminators”, “detached watchdogs”, “critical change agents” and “opportunist facilitators” (e.g. Hanitzsch 2011), while Hanitzsch and Vos (2016) have outlined no less than 18 different roles for journalists in the domain of political life.

2 From 2016, Ulrik Haagerup has been director of Constructive Institute, an independent organization, established with the aim of helping “journalists and news organisations to apply constructive reporting in their daily work through providing access to an inspiring best practices portal, a world-class fellowship programme, relevant training curricula, and initiating rigorous independent academic research” (https://constructiveinstitute.org, accessed March 11, 2018). A similar initiative is the London-based Constructive Journalism Project which, also building on a positive approach to the production of journalism, “aims to innovate and strengthen journalism by developing methods for journalists to bring more positive and solution-focused elements into conventional reporting” (constructivejournalism.org, accessed March 11, 2018). A third example of an institutional framework for the development of constructive journalism is the Open Eyes Institute in Amsterdam, focusing on constructive journalism, investigative journalism and data-driven journalism (http://www.openeyesinstitute.org/home, accessed March 11, 2018) and co-founded by Cathrine Gyldensted, Geesje van Haren and Paul van der Cingel.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Independent Research Fund Denmark [grant DFF-4180-00082].

Notes on contributors

Unni From

Aarhus University, ARTS, Aarhus, Denmark. E-mail: [email protected]

Nete Nørgaard Kristensen

(author to whom correspondence should be addressed), Department of Media, Cognition and Communication, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark.