News Work: The Impact of Corporate-implemented Technology on Local Television Newsroom Labor

ABSTRACT

By virtue of their licenses, local television stations in the United States must serve in the public interest of their communities. Because many stations’ ownership is by corporate conglomerates, however, that public interest is often considered secondary to revenue maximization. Labor is exploited to meet this goal, with technology deployed in newsrooms to consolidate job descriptions, replace human labor with computers, and add sales-ready content platforms, while drawing as much surplus value from workers as possible. This study sought out newsroom employees, including rarely-studied behind the scenes personnel, in the 25 largest metropolitan areas of the country to find out how this utilization of technology affected their journalistic work routines and output. Their responses via online surveys and semi-structured interviews highlight the challenges of juggling ever-increasing tech-enabled job responsibilities while still providing quality reports for their audiences in a corporate ownership environment focused on profits.

KEYWORDS:

• Broadcasting
• corporate ownership
• journalism
• labor
• local television news
• MMJs
• newsrooms
• technology

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank her colleagues at California State University, Fresno and Portland State University for their support, help, and guidance at various stages of this project. Thank you, also, to the editor and anonymous reviewers who gave their time and expertise to make this a better paper.

Disclosure Statement

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

Notes

1 These included New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas-Fort Worth, San Francisco, Boston, Washington, DC, Atlanta, Houston, Phoenix, Detroit, Tampa-St. Pete, Seattle-Tacoma, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Miami-Ft. Lauderdale, Denver, Orlando, Cleveland, Sacramento, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Portland (OR), Charlotte, and Raleigh-Durham (Nielsen 2015, 2018).

2 Following completion of the survey questions, participants were asked if they would be interested in interviewing with the researcher. The responses were not linked to data in the survey, and could not be traced back to those who indicated they would be willing to interview.

3 Chyron is a brand of graphic system used in many newsrooms. Graphics that run along the bottom of the screen during a newscast are often referred to as “chyrons.”