Social Construction and News Work

News workers are at the center of change. They are asked to adhere to policy, reflect the community, and uphold journalistic norms. Journalism has always been a high-pressure profession, so how, considering this history, are news workers tackling more responsibilities with fewer staff? What mechanisms have been put into place to produce content across multiple platforms, and what has been sacrificed in this effort? There is a false impression of the journalist and the reporters being the lowest rung on the ladder of influence when it comes to content. This book corrects this misperception and situates news workers in sphere that includes new platforms and the changing landscape of the newsroom itself. This ethnography identifies and explores several means of control among organizations, explores the mechanics of daily news work at print organizations, and explores the clever ways news workers resist policy detrimental to journalisms' civic function. This book demonstrates the limits on organizations to completely control news work and looks at the ways autonomy has been lost and rediscovered by the modern news worker.
This study takes participant observation in the newsroom and creates a unique model for qualitative work in the future. Author William Schulte, an assistant professor of mass communication at Winthrop University, uses a conversational style to provide detailed understanding of modern news work, its struggles, and its changes. The work also adds to the understanding of the way reality is socially constructed in the newsroom. He looks at three newsrooms with a broad range of circulations to identify common issues and conducts interviews with news workers in varying jobs and with many responsibilities. Overall the book brings to light to the irreconcilable friction in creating a product to sell and a product to serve.
This is an important text for all journalism and mass communication collections. It has broad utility for scholars interested in news workers, cultural dynamics, and the digital paradigm.