Notes for "The Impact of New Technologies on Journalistic Routines"

¹David L. Altheide, Creating Reality: How TV Distorts Events, (CA: Sage Publications, 1976); Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality (NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1966); Mark Fishman, Manufacturing the News, (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1980); Mark Fishman, "News and Nonevents: Making the Visible Invisible," in Social Meaning of News: A Text Reader, ed. Daniel. Berkowitz (CA: Sage Publications, 1997), 210-229; Gans, Deciding What's News: A Case Study of CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, Newsweek, and Time, (New York: Vintage Books, 1979); Darnell Hunt, O.J. Simpson Facts & Fictions: News Rituals in the Construction of Reality (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Harvey Molotch and Marilyn Lester, "News as Purposive Behavior: On the Strategic Use of Routine Events, Accidents and Scandals," in Berkowiz, op.cit., 93-209; Julianne Newton, "The Burden of Visual Truth: The Role of Photojournalism Mediating Reality," Visual Communication Quarterly 5 (Fall 1998): 4-9; Michael Schudson, "The Sociology of News Production," in Berkowitz, op. cit., 7-22; Robert P. Snow, Creating Media Culture (CA: Sage Publications, Inc., 1983);Gaye Tuchman, Making News: A Study in the Construction of Reality (New York: The Free Press, 1978); Gaye Tuchman, "Making news by doing work," in Berkowitz, op. cit., 173-192.

²Berkowitz, op. cit.; Wilson Lowrey, "Routine News: The Power of the Organization in Visual Journalism," Visual Communication Quarterly 6 (Spring 1999): 10-15.

³Fishman, Manufacturing the News; Fishman, "News and Nonevents: Making the Visible Invisible;" in Gans, op. cit; Hunt, O.J. Simpson Facts & Fictions; Lowrey, "Routine News"; Molotch and Lester, "News as Purposive Behavior"; Pamela J. Shoemaker, "A New Gatekeeping Model," in Berkowitz, op. cit., 57-62; Tuchman, Making News; Tuchman, "Making News by Doing Work."

⁴Tuchman, ibid.

⁵Gans, Deciding What's News.

⁶Fishman, Manufacturing the News.

⁷Newton, "The Burden of Visual Truth."

⁸Kim Bissell, "A Return to Mr. Gates: Photography and Objectivity," Newspaper Research Journal 21 (Fall 2000): 81-93.

⁹Kim Bissell, "Culture and Gender as Factors in Photojournalism Gatekeeping," Visual Communication Quarterly 7 (Spring 2000): 9-12.

¹⁰Lowrey, "Routine News," p. 10.

¹¹Harold Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnomethodology (NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1967).

¹²Ibid., 33.

¹³Philadelphia is the fourth-largest media market in population and households, including five counties in Pennsylvania and three across the Delaware River in southern New Jersey. The city population is roughly 4,900,000. The ethnic makeup is approximately 77% white, 20% African-American, and 3% other. The Inquirer also has a unique location in that it is about two hours from New York and about two-and-a-half hours from Washington D.C. according to Our market - Philadelphia and the Surrounding Communities,http://home.phillynews.com/pni/philadelphia/index.html (Philadelphia Newspapers Inc., 1996).

¹⁴See Facts About PNI, http://home.phillynews.com/pni/pni_facts/index.html (Philadelphia Newspapers Inc.,1997).

¹⁵The Inquirer is also part of the corporate chain Knight-Ridder, Inc. and has no direct, print media competition in the greater Philadelphia Region. In recent years, Knight-Ridder, Inc. has been involved in many technological advances in newspaper production and realized the potential new technology can offer in disseminating the news. See Facts About PNI.

¹⁶See Facts About PNI.

¹⁷See Facts About PNI.

¹⁸For example, the St. Louis Post Dispatchand the Miami Herald.

¹⁹Starting spring 1999, the Inquirer implemented the first of several changes in the newsroom. Because studyfocused on the news-making process, and in a larger sense, the photo-editorial decision process, the director of photography and I agreed that data collection should occur after the final phase of implementation-Winter 1999-2000.

²⁰The Inquirer has a main newsroom in Center City, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; plus two bureaus in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania and Cherry Hill, New Jersey. All have a separate staff of photographers and photo editors. This study, focused only on the staff in the main newsroom, Center City, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

²¹Observations and informal interviews included 20 news editors; however, only seven were willing to be formally interviewed.

²²Anselm Strauss and Juliet Corbin, Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory, (CA: Sage Publications, Inc., 1998).

²³News editors were classified into two categories-news editors and assigning news editors. Assigning news editors were responsible more for assigning reporters to stories and working with photo Editors coordinating photo coverage; whereas, news editors were responsible for the design and layout of pages. Page designers' were responsible for the design and layout of features pages and all other pages not covered by news editors.

²⁴Story type refers to the news story-regional, local, government, entertainment, arts and literature, national and international interests, human-interest etc.

²⁵Fishman, Manufacturing the News; Gans, Deciding What's News; Molotch and Lester, "News as Purposive Behavior"; Tuchman, Making News: A Study in the Construction of Reality; Tuchman, "Making news by doing work;" Sheila Reaves, "Magazines vs. Newspapers: Editors Have Different Ethical Standards on the Digital Manipulation of Photographs," Visual Communication Quarterly, 2 (Winter, 1995): 4-7.

²⁶Or more commonly known as WYSIWYG-a computer term pronounced "whizzi-wig"-or, What You See Is What You get.

²⁷See A Concise History of the Philadelphia Inquirer, http://home.phillynews.com/pni/inquirer/inq_history.html (Philadelphia Newspapers Inc., 1997).

²⁸Newton, "The Burden of Visual Truth."

²⁹Training started with about 10 trainers from Unisys (the developers of the system) as well as in-house tech staff, and systems people, along with independent training sessions for those interested in extra one-on-one training. A technology hotline was also available for help. Further, whenever someone discovered something, they passed it along; or, when someone had a problem, people helped each other out. So, a lot of training was also trial and error.

³⁰An Intranet is a local network similar to the structure of the Internet. Information is transmitted via computer over network within a single location such as the Inquirer. Further, the Intranet is mainly used to share information and computer resources among employees within an organization.

³¹Fishman, Manufacturing the News; Gans, Deciding What's News; Lowrey, "Routine News"; Molotch and Lester, "News as Purposive Behavior"; Newton, "The Burden of Visual Truth;" Tuchman, Making News; Tuchman, "Making news by doing work."