News Without Journalism: Changing Definitions of Professional News Production in American Online News Sites

• In Event: A New Chapter in the Life of Local Journalism: Changing Conceptions of Journalists and Journalism in Local News

Abstract

Dozens and in some cases hundreds of online news sites are popping up in most every region of the United States. A great number of these sites are owned by non-news organizations (by civic and political groups, for-profit businesses and government agencies), and managed by non-journalists. This raises a question of professional identity: if they do not understand themselves as journalists, then how do these news producers imagine themselves and their role in the community? I address this question drawing on interviews with over two dozen managers of such sites. I find that professional identity is strongly shaped by the cultural logic of the different arenas (e.g., economic, political, civic and governmental) of public life. This is to say, as local and regional news production takes place across more of the terrain of public life, the professional identity of news production expands and diffuses.

Author

• David M. Ryfe, University of Iowa