Conditional Autonomy

Abstract

Current developments in the Swedish news business have resulted in clashes between the professional stands of journalists and the incentives of their managers, or—from a theoretical perspective—a confrontation between discourses of journalistic professionalism and managerialism. While professionalism includes values of autonomy, self-regulation and public interest, managerialism on the other hand promotes business ideals, standardisation and organisational efficiency. Above all, it promotes a centralised management model of line control at the cost of collegial decision-making and peer review. But what does this mean in practice? In what situations does the negotiation between those discourses arise in everyday news work and how does it affect the autonomy of journalists?

This paper aims to answer those questions by focusing on the experiences of Swedish journalists working in the tension field between professional and managerial discourses. This empirical study includes observation studies as well as interviews with journalists and their managers in four Swedish daily newspapers.

The results clearly reveal a conditioned journalistic autonomy, and shows how professional ideals are tarnished. The economistic view of journalistic activities is forcefully and successfully implemented by management.

KEYWORDS:

• autonomy
• journalism
• journalistic practice
• management
• managerialism
• professionalism

Introduction

Professions do not exist in a vacuum, on the contrary; professional activity and its ideals take place in the complex and changing context of a society. Societal movements and tendencies today are definitely causing a rapid and dramatic change for journalists. According to Mellado (2014), journalistic practice should be considered an empirical construction; a consequence of dynamic negotiation. The journalist collective, socialised into the gut feeling of self-evident and self-explanatory ideas (Schultz 2007), and with the normative ideal of working independently in the public interest, is now being challenged by an increasingly influential top-down management approach; a logic of linear control, business ideals, standardisation and organisational efficiency. This development has affected the Western news industry, and has been verified by several studies in a Swedish context (Andersson and Wiik 2013; Wiik and Andersson 2016). Scholars have predominantly drawn on statistical surveys, but this study aims to deepen our knowledge of this constant negotiation of ideological influences by investigating the practice of journalism. How does the clash of professional and managerial discourses dictate practice; who decides what, how and why? And how does the current development affect the autonomy of journalists?

The notion of journalistic professionalism is often described as an umbrella collecting the normative ideas defining journalistic work, legitimising journalists as an autonomous and self-regulating group (Aldridge and Evetts 2003; Evetts 2003, 2006). Professional discourse implies ideas of collegial decision-making and collective norms developed over time. It entails ideals of public interest, objectivity and ethical codes as the professional basis of journalistic work (Deuze 2005). Today the discourse of professionalism is seriously challenged by the often-contrasting discourse of managerialism, which promotes centralised leadership, organisational efficiency and control. Managerialism situates leadership above all other governance (Le Grand and Bartlett 1993) and draws on views of economy and work from the manufacturing industry and scientific management theory (Enteman 1993). According to managerial ideology, leadership is an expertise in itself, irrespective of the area of business. The central conflict of interest here is thus the self-governance of journalistic professionalism, which may be considered oppositional to the centralised leadership model of managerialism.

In recent decades we have seen Swedish newspapers, and the Western media in general, striving to adapt to the digitalising media landscape where competition for audiences and advertisers, as well as socio-economic changes in news behaviour, have forced the news media into action (McChesney and Nichols 2010). Newspapers have changed accordingly in terms of mergers, downsizing, cooperation, company purchases and other business initiatives (Ohlsson 2015). For example, between 2004 and 2014, a quarter of the editorial staff in Swedish newspapers were dismissed (Nygren and Althén 2014). Journalism is a flexible profession and its members have been successful in adapting to new techniques and working routines. Nevertheless, the existing ideological ambivalence of commercial and democratic incentives in news production (Croteau and Hoynes 2006) is now being accentuated (Schnell 2016). Following Couldry (2017), one cannot assume that the internal forces within journalism are, and will be, strong enough to resist external challenging forces, instead we need to ask who actually controls the work, and in what ways? By applying a qualitative approach, interviewing and observing journalists, we aim to determine what stems from newly implemented managerial mind-sets stretching beyond the contextual factors of current market challenges.

Whilst research reveals an increasingly top-down management discourse in the newsroom, we argue for the importance of creating a deeper understanding of how it all takes place. The purpose of our study is, therefore, to examine the practical negotiation between journalistic professionalism and managerialism in the newsroom, and the consequences of this to journalistic work. Such consequences may be found in professional practice as well as in the identity formations of journalists. This leads us to raise the following research questions:

RQ1: In relation to managerial influence, how is the meaning of journalistic professionalism negotiated in everyday news work?

RQ2: Following RQ1, to what extent is journalistic autonomy affected by increasing managerial influence in the newsroom?

Through in-depth interviews with journalists and their managers, and observing various editorial meetings in Swedish local newspapers, we strive to deepen knowledge of how the meeting of discourses plays out in Swedish newsrooms.

The Autonomy of Journalists

The role of a journalist is often described as that of a watchdog protecting our democratic garden, or as a necessity for flourishing democracies. Following the critique of Hanitzsch and Tim Vos (2017), however, scholars need to be delicate in addressing the role of the journalist, especially in these times of a convulsing media landscape, experiencing extensive digitalisation and all the challenges it brings. When addressing the concern for the autonomy of journalists, we clearly distinguish between different dimensions; between the normative role and the role in practice. This allows us to speak both about what journalists want to be, and how they have to be, as a result of external factors. By separating the normative ideals of journalistic professionalism from descriptive practice, research can explore the bearing of those ideals in journalism. As Broersma and Peters (2017, 3) put it: “For all its seeming self-evidence, how much affinity does this talk [about normative ideals] share with the concrete functions journalism performs […] in the digital age?” We apply this analytical distinction here in terms of how the (normative) professional autonomy of journalists is being employed (in practice) in the news room, challenged by an increasingly influential managerial discourse.

The profession of journalism is ascribed its freedom and legitimacy through a social contract, in exchange for acting in the public interest towards societal and political elites (Sjøvaag 2010, 878). In Swedish news culture the mission of monitoring those in power is considered central (Wiik 2010). Swedish journalism enjoys a high degree of independence and self-regulation. This independence allows the journalistic profession freedom from involuntary external or internal influence (Schnell 2016, 375). The firmly established notion of autonomously working for the common good is the very cornerstone of the long-term journalistic professionalisation process. Moreover, because of journalism’s lack of exclusive knowledge and professional authorisation, the act of public service can be seen as the legitimising basis for journalistic autonomy (Hallin and Mancini 2004; Deuze 2005). Autonomy refers essentially to the question of who is in charge of controlling a journalist’s work; is it a peer or someone considered external to the profession (cf. Goode 1969)? Objectivity, ethics and speed are other key ideals shaping the normative identity of journalists (Deuze 2005, 447; Schnell 2016; Wiik 2010; cf. Djerf-Pierre and Wiik 2012, 182–183).

From a sociological perspective, Evetts (2003) separates professionalism into two parallel expressions. Firstly, occupational professionalism is a discourse involving internal definitions of what, in this case, journalism is and should be, according to the broader professional collective. Secondly, organisational professionalism is constituted as a discourse of control directed towards organisational goals. This could, for instance, mean referring to professionalism as a managerial tool when implementing necessary organisational changes—changes suitable to organisational logics but perhaps not to professional values (Evetts 2003). Evetts’ two professionalisms are theoretically distinctive, but are in practice likely to overlap and converge. Research tells us that journalists may incorporate new values into their professional identity; for instance by adapting to commercially oriented goals (Wiik 2010).

Journalistic professionalism can, therefore, be described as a set of normative ideals and practices developed over decades (Shoemaker and Reese 1996; McQuail 2010; cf. Torstendahl 1989). Those achievements are the results of collective occupational striving, supported by the social agreement of journalism as a fundamental democratic institution, however, external and internal factors affect that possibility. We are interested in how the practice of professional journalistic autonomy is affected by the increase in top-down management in newsrooms. According to Deuze and Witschge (2017), the challenge of journalism studies is to grasp how journalism is not something that is but what it becomes: “It is important to let go of the desire to make claims about ‘the’ profession, what it is (or what it should be) and what it means to a working journalist” (122).

Managerial Influence

Depending on the ideological direction of organisational professionalism, the outcome of journalistic work will vary. In this study we are interested in the increasing managerial discourse, applying the logic of top-down-decision-making, individual measuring and business values. Managerialism is an ideology following the liberal economic strand once developed in the manufacturing industries (Enteman 1993). Centring on the professionalised manager as a key factor for organisational success, managerialism is expanding in news work as well as in the public and private sectors generally (Pollitt 1993; Clarke and Newman 1997; Clarke, Gewirtz, and McLaughlin 2000; Cutler and Waine 2000; Deem and Brehony 2007). Most professionals, including, for instance, journalists, engineers and the police, are finding it increasingly harder to maintain discretionary decision-making in their work (Evetts 2016). Some researchers even say that the managerial perspective has become so prevalent that it penetrates all areas of human existence (Klikauer 2015, 1109). It is said to have its roots in the growth of neoliberalism, conceived by the economistic approach to the world as a market place where free market principles are fundamental (Maringe 2010). Shepherd (2017) points out some main features of the managerialism. She includes the adoption of a more business-like approach and practices, as well as the establishment of a management culture. This implies a rational approach to management, for example, strategic planning and objective setting, and means the adoption of human resource management techniques to secure employment commitment. Furthermore, it shifts focus from input and processes, to output and outcomes through the increased measurement and quantification of that output, especially in terms of performance indicators (Shepherd 2017, 2). To put it simply, managerialism does not take an interest in the kind of journalism that is produced, as long as it corresponds well to the general demand and is produced in accordance with optimised organisational efficiency. This is challenging to the professional norms and autonomy of journalists.

Journalism as a profession has been described as situated in the tension field between the sometimes contradictory interests of the free market and the ideals of democracy (McManus 1994; McQuail 2010), being governed by a combination of public and market logics (Croteau and Hoynes 2006). This conflict of interests has traditionally been solved through the division of the editorial and market-oriented activities of the newspaper into different departments (McManus 1994; McQuail 2010). Over time, however, this division has eroded. As a consequence of increasing managerialism in the news room, the line between “the words and the money” is becoming blurred (Wiik 2010; Andersson and Wiik 2013). Research indicates that editorial leadership is adapting to a more commercialised media landscape, such that editors today, compared to two or three decades ago, need new professional skills such as in market theory and economy (Andersson and Wiik 2014). Editorial leadership is today tinged with a more articulated focus on business (Andersson 2009; McChesney and Nichols 2010; Andersson and Wiik 2013). As managers from different parts of the enterprise—including editorial leaders—increasingly team up in various projects and collaborations, organisational goals and values seem to percolate from administrational/economical units out to the news desks (Andersson and Wiik 2013, 2014). The previously clear boundaries between journalism and management that emerged during the early days of journalistic professionalisation are certainly much less palpable today (Djerf Pierre and Lennart 2009). Of course these changes are related to the challenging economic situation for the Swedish news business; however, we argue that the way leaders and owners meet these challenges is not predetermined, but based on active choices. This is where managerialism may enter as the chosen solution to the crisis of journalism.

Research also reveals an obvious difference regarding the driving-forces and ideals of journalism, in how journalists and editors-in-chief perceive journalistic quality in relation to audience demands, in that editors-in-chief perceive audience adaptation to a much higher degree to make journalism better (Andersson and Wiik 2013, 715). In accordance with the increased focus on audience adaptation there are also indications of an ongoing renegotiation of the professional terminology (Andersson 2009; Andersson and Wiik 2013). Where journalists choose to talk about readers, managers use the term “customer” to describe their audience. This rhetorical shift is no coincidence; instead, it is a conscious strategy implemented by management where the rhetorical conceptualisation of news work is led into a more business-like fashion (Andersson 2009; Andersson and Wiik 2014). It also serves to imply rationality and efficiency, neutral values which give management the discretion to plan and make strategic decisions. This discretion often appears to be natural, but is built on a philosophy of separating the conception and execution of tasks (Broadbent, Dietrich, and Roberts 1997), a separation that contradicts the actual essence of professionalism where the two entities are entwined.

Editorial managers in the news media have, however, not (yet?) abandoned the inherent journalistic influence on decisions concerning the newsroom for commercial considerations. Research indicates that journalistic and managerial logics may co-exist in situations when capturing readers and investors is crucial (Saldaña, Sylvie, and McGregor 2016). Despite an increasingly difficult and transitional period in journalism, a news editor’s decision-making process is informed by a delicate balance between the core values of professional journalism and values of commercialisation (Raviola 2012; Saldaña, Sylvie, and McGregor 2016). Raviola (2017) showed how negotiations between different driving-forces in the newsroom take different shapes in different situations, and thus lead to various outcomes in terms of what is being done and what is not. She describes how news media founders and news managers appeal to both financial and traditional editorial values in everyday work by bringing them together under the overarching principle of independence. This process has led researchers to characterise complex organisations as “compromising devices” (Thévenot 2001). Although managerial driving-forces in the newsroom may not have overtaken all parts of decision-making and professional practice, it is obvious that values of managerialism have increased their impact on editorial work. This actualises the question of what implications these changes in leadership have for the professional role of journalists, in practice.

Methodology

Our study is empirically supported by field work conducted at four local morning papers in Sweden. The field work includes semi-structured in-depth interviews with reporters and their managers, as well as observations of various editorial meetings at the newspapers.

Focusing on local quality newspapers enabled us to capture changes derived from the ongoing structural transformation of the newspaper industry. Local dailies have for a long time been the anchor of public news consumption in Sweden (Wadbring and Bergström 2017). While still playing an important role in society, Swedish newspapers have been severely affected by current developments in the media market. Struggling for survival, while simultaneously trying to adapt to the transition from print to online platforms, many newspapers have experienced redundancies, reorganisation, merges and acquisitions (Ohlsson 2015). Such changes have unconditionally contributed to a ubiquitous reorientation of newsrooms, affecting professional news work. Journalism practice at local newspapers is therefore a particularly relevant study object for the purpose of this article.

The respondents all worked on newspapers selected with reference to differences in sizes of edition and the cities where they are situated, as well as the form of ownership. All newspapers in the sample are high frequency subscription rates and are published six or seven days a week, selling between 20,000 and 38,000 copies each day. They are all edited as both printed newspapers and online news sites. Most news sites include both written news articles and web TV spots, and unique visitors range from 50,000 to 125,000 per week. The different forms of ownership are corporate group-, family- or foundation-owned or owned by an economic association. Their distribution stretches from the north to the south of Sweden. Although the selected newspapers cannot be described as representative of the Swedish newspaper business as such, they do provide insight into the terms and conditions of the industry.

Nineteen journalists and managing editors were interviewed in our study. The semi-structured in-depth interviews lasted from 35 minutes up to 70 minutes, with an average length of about 60 minutes. The staff categories found among the interviewees were: publishers, editors-in-chief, news managers and managers with corporate responsibilities for live journalism, web reporters, municipality reporters, reporters covering trade and industry and general reporters. The interview study was conducted between May 2015 and December 2016.

As interviewers we posed questions within three overarching themes deriving from the theoretical framework of professionalism and managerialism; autonomy, driving-forces and conflict in driving-forces. Illustrative examples of questions are: How do you experience your own opportunity to decide what to cover and how to frame it? When choosing what about, and how to produce an article, what are the most relevant factors that you consider? In what situations do conflicts concerning the basic values of journalism occur in your organisation? Every interview was recorded, transcribed and further analysed in accordance with the thematic analysis.

In addition to the interviews, we also observed a total of 11 editorial meetings, during the time span May 2015 and December 2016, including ordinary morning meetings, transfer meetings, follow-up-meetings and strategy meetings. We applied passive observation and made structured field notes relevant to the explicit research problem, this adding to the overall thematic analysis.

The analysis was made according to two dimensions of the journalism-managerialism relationship: the ways in which the meaning of journalism is negotiated in everyday news work (i.e. driving-forces in news-selecting and decision-making processes); and how journalistic autonomy is affected by increasing managerial influence. Some of the responses from reporters and their managers will be quoted in the results in order to highlight the main findings of our study.

Results

All journalists interviewed clearly demonstrated loyal endorsement of journalistic ideals; for example, that journalism should provide news important for people as the citizens of local democracy, as well as things that are socially interesting to them as city residents. The independent monitoring of power elites is one of the cores of professional journalism highlighted both by reporters and managers in our study. In this sense, the occupational professionalism of journalism seems intact. Simultaneously, responses from news reporters and managers indicated a discrepancy between professional ideals and newsroom practice. The image that appeared when the employees were asked to more specifically clarify how they work and with what, how decisions are made and how strategies are being created, and how newsroom control is perceived, was significantly more nuanced and complex. By observing various editorial meetings and considering information and reflections shared by journalists and their managers at the local dailies, the essential theme that in various ways dominates our results is that commercial incentives are imperative in newsroom practice. These incentives are introduced by management to staff as a matter of course, despite creating alienation among many journalists.

The contradictive stands are in fact telling a story about journalists feeling autonomous in most work-related decisions, but on the condition that they are operating within the framework of managerial and organisational goals. In this way professionalism and managerialism may co-exist under the same roof. However, it also actualises negotiations both between journalists and their leaders, as well as within each individual.

The following themes spell out these stories, illustrating how the meaning of journalistic professionalism is negotiated in daily news work at the newspapers (RQ1), and to what extent journalistic autonomy is affected by increased managerial influence in the newsroom (RQ2).

News Criteria 2.0—Explicit Commercial Driving-forces

The fierce competition for readers has led to two, conflated, tendencies clearly relating to the logic of managerialism. First, most of the dailies that we studied focus on click-statistics in their everyday work. This is demonstrated in the way that editors begin every morning meeting by presenting the ranking list from the previous day’s published articles, how every employee receives personal statistics concerning their own articles’ clicks, and how records in terms of quantitative goals are celebrated with rewards such as cakes. The second and intertwined tendency is how the information gained from click statistics is used by management to adjust both the content and framing of online articles in order to maximise the click numbers. This way of quantifying journalism in Swedish news organisations was identified by von Krogh and Andersson (2016). Journalists demonstrated this in our interviews by describing how central issues such as news valuation and journalistic credit have changed due to an increased focus on audience adaptation among their news managers. Respondents saw this enforced move to market incentives as problematic, as it loses the nuance in journalistic content. A reporter described the implications of click hunting:

We start every morning meeting with a report on how many clicks different articles have had, and it is a demoralising start to the day as if we are working for the click. Because then the message is that this category gets so and so many [clicks] and these categories get so and so few. The implication is: “do not write about it”. (Reporter)

Other journalists told us how editors-in-chief and news editors had systemised rewards such as celebrating click records with cake, or sending out newsletters featuring the most popular articles of the week. By constantly focusing on the quantification of digital footprints this way, and noting and celebrate success in this way, management is creating new systems for rewards and new norms in the newsroom. This is something that disturbed the journalists that we interviewed, although it is considered both necessary and inevitable. Whilst they do not have a choice as part of the organisational culture, however, they are free to make adjustments to their own professional identity. These adjustments are supported by management, claiming the crucial relevance of those new journalistic practices. An editor-in-chief illustrates the connection between the old and the new:

We must remain that [credible] even if we are click-friendly. To me, every click represents a reader. We have always attracted readers with headlines and high profile pictures in the printed newspaper. We do this online too. But somehow it is not as fancy with clicks, and that is  …  That is what Ím trying to polish away. Because it is not like that. It's our readers, our audience. (Editor-in-chief)

The practices of news valuation are changing in the newspapers, in a commercial direction through working towards quantitative organisational goals such as numbers of clicks, TV broadcasts, or through increasing cooperation with the advertising department. Journalists are explicitly instructed that they should leave their gut feelings in the past. A news editor says:

So this is also a whole new way of working. Previously we used to … we talked a lot about this gut feeling. That we used our gut feeling to decide what people find interesting. And this [gut feeling] is the one we are trying to let …  to let go. (News editor)

The focus on click-statistics in a local daily is in tune with the way that managerial discourse underlines individual performance indicators. According to what the interviewed journalists themselves say, there is a clash between these quantitative evaluations and the professional ideals of quality. By simplifying the definition of quality to a supply-and-demand logic, audience demand becomes imperative. If the customers—that is the audience—seem to appreciate articles and live TV about a new local clothes store and other business establishments, then these topics will be covered to a greater extent. Regarding such uncritical reporting about the local business sector, a news editor says:

Then it's a lot, I mean, like this with restaurants and so on  …  We did not report on it before, because then it was advertising  …  And now we report on these kinds of events. This has been a huge change since we started looking at numbers. Really huge. (News editor)

From this perspective, the professional judgement and expertise of journalists seems to have lost some of its authority in the newsroom. But what is the role of management in this? We sense from the interviews that the new online evaluation systems entwine with a strengthened managerial discourse. Quantification and evaluation are important aspects of this discursive approach, disqualifying many other arguments. The journalists in the study are somewhat sceptical, but still accept the concept as a necessity, something that needs to be done. This deterministic attitude is shared by reporters and their managers. The renegotiation of news valuation criteria, such as the click statistics or the quantitative goal for TV broadcasts as a basis for professional development, appears as something given—a development without alternative paths.

The journalists also describe how the coverage of local politics has come to change. Aiming for high standards in the quality reporting of local politics, the journalists reported that they sometimes find it hard to meet those standards in everyday work. Constant demands to update web sites, social media and apps, combined with demands on audio-visual elements that attract an audience, create a difficult reality for many journalists. These demands not only call for strict prioritising, they also increase the value of the topics that include these elements. This criterion in news valuation, an adaptation towards access to pictures and videos, further challenges the ideals of news valuation developed internally in the journalistic profession.

The ways in which the boundaries between advertising and news material are disintegrating also illustrates the negotiation of journalistic professionalism and managerialism. This happens in various ways in the newsroom, and is more or less voluntary. This movement—implemented by the management—and its resulting changes to editorial content prompt discussions and dissatisfaction at times. It is indeed nothing new for reporters working at a local newspaper to cover new local establishments, however it is clear that the interests of those actors have converged over time, and that these kind of articles now tend to appear more often. The legitimacy of the local daily is still attractive to market actors, but the substantial difference, as pointed out by our interviewees, is how it today seems not only to be as an advertising forum but as business partner. The study reveals that newspaper management appears willing to negotiate new ways of approaching commercial actors locally, balancing delicately on the fine line of collaboration and dependence. In practice this is often about reporting on new restaurants or new shops, but also about more developed collaborations where, for example, a news organisation creates websites in which local enterprises can be gathered and presented. Such web sites provide a trustworthy forum for local customers—good for the enterprises, and an attractive forum for advertisers and readers—good for the newspaper. These new forms of collaboration do not seem to cause as many questions as they have traditionally—at least not from the management. From the journalist’s perspective, however, this new direction is more difficult to accept. A reporter says:

Somehow you feel like, as a reporter, that there is a downhill slope where the management  …  I don’t know what they themselves say, but you feel like they are constantly moving positions. You really feel a strong concern  …  I mean, I cover trade and business on a daily basis, and you get this creepy feeling that soon you should start to work in private business yourself because, at least, there it is clear what interests you really represent. (Reporter)

The movement towards closer and more developed collaborations results in multiple negotiations between journalists and management. Some journalists show dissatisfaction because they feel that their professional ideals are being marginalised. Interestingly, the negotiations occur not only internally in an organisation, but also between the newspaper and the external actors. The reason for this is that there are strong expectations from society, in terms of newspapers representing enterprises and organisations in a positive way. When this is at stake it may cause conflicts, and it is important to solve these conflicts due to the mutual dependency. These relationships are central for both parties, and especially for a newspaper tinged with economic challenges. The interviews revealed disappointed journalists criticising their managers because they, for instance, have accepted meetings with upset external actors:

There was such a meeting held last week, for example. [---] These meetings are attended by the editorial board  …  and I see this as a sign of interdependency, because they want to appease in this case a merchants union and then you have the advertisers on the other side and you have to stay well with them. So they think that we report too negatively on them, they call and want to have a meeting with [the management]. And then they [the management] will show up. (Reporter)

Naturally, the managers have more insights into economic prerequisites and, to a larger extent, a responsibility when it comes to sustaining the newspaper business. Their relationship with advertisers—as well as with the audience—is inevitably important in keeping a newspaper’s economy in balance; perhaps more important today than ever before. The interviewed journalists describe a feeling of alienation in these matters, however, and experience the tendency as being forced by top-down decisions. A reporter illustrates an experience of how editorial leaders, at different levels, are increasingly embracing a market-oriented way of thinking about news content:

But this management culture I am even more allergic to. At this site meeting, this development manager, he began talking about how we must think in terms of B2B [business to business]. Already there I started to object: B2B, but what? And the agenda editor—and I dońt know if it’s just an old habit, he used to be a journalist too—but the words they were using when they talked about doing a supplement  …  I mean, it’s readers we have and not  …  Well, the meaning was that we should consider writing more FOR the companies. (Reporter)

An analogous discussion is actualised by so-called native advertising, which is an advertisement format very (and intentionally) similar to that of a journalistic news story but distinguished by diverse colours and labels (cf. Truedson 2017). Journalists particularly mention the imposition of these solutions as problematic, claiming that audience trust in the newspaper may erode as a result of difficulties differentiating between editorial and commercial content. Here too, managers are operating strategies that seem to be based on organisational profit goals rather than professional standards.

Conditional Autonomy

While the strivings of journalists for decades have meant implementation of professional values such as ethics, autonomy and jurisdiction, the logic of managerialism has recently brought other directions and values to the table. Our second research question focuses on the extent to which the autonomy of the profession is affected by the increasingly influential managerialism in the newsroom. Autonomy is a core value, and the precondition for exercising other professional attributes as well as maintaining jurisdiction on the whole. The journalists in our study all describe what we have called “news criteria 2.0”, a clearly renegotiated news valuation in a commercial direction, but at the same time an independent approach to daily work; a contrast that in itself reveals a story about changing practices. It appears that journalistic autonomy exists, but is highly conditional and constrained by the strong managerialism discourse. A reporter says:

One [manager] is more absent, one is less in the daily conversation. We don’t often have discussions about how we did things afterwards anymore, or talk to the editor at the time. At the same time they are managing daily work very much by setting up many and exact goals for what we are going to achieve. And then that’s always in the background, we check it every day. It always controls you, as you check it several times a day. (Reporter)

Based on our interviews with journalists and their managers, as well as the observations of their work, we can identify situations where the professional values of journalism are at stake. As outlined above, the results clearly reveal an explicit step towards a more commercial basis for activities; to get to know the audience in order to satisfy them with the right article in the right format and on time (so that they will read it), to cooperate with the marketing department when selecting the news, and adjusting the selection of news to what is media-online-appropriate. These dimensions of news work are in a sense normatively opposing the professional gut feeling, which basically aims to address what does the audience need as citizens? The journalists in our study pose this question, however it is not as influential in daily practice.

Having studied both how the journalists experience their everyday work in practice, and how they experience their ability to control it, we have been able to discover clear dissonances regarding autonomy. The individual journalist perceives having influence over what jobs are to be undertaken, and is indeed welcome to come up with ideas, however this freedom exists within quite strict limits. Some describe how they do not experience it difficult to work autonomously, but at the same time identifies challenging new incentives in the newsroom affecting the journalistic product, and thus also journalistic autonomy. The new discourse centres on the resources available, and the most popular platforms for content. Demands from news editors to use exciting pictures and videos on the news website are influencing news evaluation to a large extent, and the managerial focus on audience behaviour has a big impact on everyday news work. Audience taste is immediately captured and converted into criteria for news valuation. In all these respects, the editorial freedom of journalists seems to be much more limited in practice than they themselves express when asked directly.

Taken together, our findings indicate an ongoing revision of the meaning of journalistic professionalism, focusing on the dismantling of autonomy in practice. The ideal of autonomy has, under the influence of the managerial discourse, been translated into a different, more limited understanding. By continuing to permit some journalistic freedom, however, the newspaper setting remains familiar, at least on the surface.

Conclusions

Conditions for professional journalism in Sweden have undergone extensive changes in the twenty-first century. One striking feature of this development has been the rapid professionalisation of newsroom management. News management is no longer focused solely on editorial content; it equally involves responsibility for strategic, financial and technical decisions. Studies have showed that adaptation to new business demands by many editors-in chiefs are considered key to surviving in the harsh media climate (Andersson and Wiik 2013, 2014). Nevertheless, from a journalistic perspective this development tends to be problematic. Concerns have been expressed within academia that leadership characterised by a management culture contributes to the eradication of journalistic work (Franklin 2012).

In our study we have focused on the negotiation between journalistic professionalism and managerial influences in news work practice and the consequences for journalistic work. More specific, we have examined the ways in which professional journalism is negotiated in the newsroom, and the extent to which journalistic autonomy is affected by increasing managerial control.

We have found that commercial driving-forces, strongly emphasised by the management, have a high impact on professional journalism, especially with regard to news evaluation. Digital footprints from news audiences are clearly more important points of departure than the journalistic gut feeling. Click statistics and demands for audio-visual elements have become imperative criteria for news selection.

Commercial requirements in news production, audience adaptation and dominant managers are hardly new phenomena to the industry, but there is clearly a sense of loss among journalists. They believe that the economic driving-forces have become so comprehensive, and that the lack of resources has become so concrete, that it has changed the business fundamentally. In some cases, journalists describe positive consequences from this development, such as making newspaper content better and sharper, or that news becomes more relevant to the audience, however, the transition has also led to drastic deteriorations from a journalistic perspective. Examples given by journalists, for instance, include an increasing acceptance of so-called native advertising, a growing focus on local business actors—and not necessarily as a watchdog, and a tougher screening of municipal political news.

When analysing the voices and actions of journalists and their managers in our study, we can see a movement towards a diminished journalistic autonomy in the newsroom. But what is the main explanation for this development? External factors, of course, largely determine the terms and conditions of the newspaper market. However, it is not self-evident which organisational strategies should be applied to address these challenges. According to the managerial discourse, the influence of managers should increase at the expense of the collegial dimension in the newsroom; achieving a rational organisation with a clear direction forward. Our findings show that this has already happened in Swedish newsrooms. The professionalism of reporters is being challenged, and to some extent even marginalised, by strong managerial incentives. There are many indications of this development. As already mentioned, Shepherd (2017) has pointed out some stereotypical features of managerialism, and we can easily identify those in the everyday news work.

A managerial feature is the shift from input and processes to output and outcomes (Shepherd 2017), something that is visible in our results. It is clear that the newspapers tend to focus on output rather than the processes getting them there. To journalists, the process is crucial because that is what secures their professional standards and autonomy. The focus on measurable output has moved the scope a long way from the goals of the journalistic professionalisation process. This discrepancy creates a cognitive dissonance for journalistic staff, and they are testing various tactics to cope in their new environment. Many choose to leave journalism completely, others stay and fight for professional pride, but the majority find themselves in recurrent situations of renegotiation about what professionalism really means.

One of the most noticeable differences between professionalism and managerialism is the idea of collegial control versus management control. The natural discretion of management, giving them the right to lead, is underpinned by the professionalisation of the leadership role. The leaders build their legitimacy largely on the possession of exclusive management skills (Shepherd 2017). Within journalism, leaders are still mostly recruited from the staff. The managers of the newspapers in our study all had some form of experience in a reporting role before entering management. This experience is a highly legitimising factor in the eyes of the journalistic staff in the newsroom, and is therefore considered an advantage. On the other hand, a managerial role in itself means a separation and a distancing from some of the values of journalistic professionalism, causing intense negotiations on individual level. In reading the quotes from editors in our study, we note their efforts to balance different interests all the time. It is a difficult task and they sometimes have to reason extensively with themselves to find a reasonable approach.

We found that journalists do not really object to their manager’s right to lead. They may even find it necessary for organisational survival. However, they often disagree about strategic decisions, and they often have to face unchangeable facts. They claim a sense of freedom in their work, but we find that freedom is only available within the managerial framework of top-down decisions and quantitative evaluations. Changes in the Swedish media market have led to a strained situation for local newspapers, and based on our results we can see that ideas for possible solutions are rarely drawn from colleagues on the floor, but from management. The suggested strategies are also clearly in line with managerial discourse as it has been outlined in a large number of studies. Can these ideas provide sustainable paths to the future? Perhaps. Will it affect the autonomy of professional journalism? Most definitely.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This study has been funded by the Swedish Research Foundation Carl-Olof and Jenz Hamrin Foundation for Media Research. It is part of an overarching project studying how media workers at different levels (reporters and their managers) in Swedish media organisations define their driving-forces and the mission of journalism and further how these ideas meet and are negotiated in the newsroom. The research project, entitled Professionalism Meets Management (PMM), has been carried out during October 2014 to September 2017 at the Department of Journalism, Media and Communication, University of Gothenburg, Sweden.