Points of general interest

Before going to the field later on this morning, I elaborated this list of points that can be of general interest to me. It is short, which I think is a good thing, since each of these points can originate a paper of its own. I am sure, though, that it will be changed and expanded with time and as I get to know the business better.

• Process: how is a story born and how is the path it follows in the newsroom? What goals people have individually and how to they compare with the goals of the organization?
• Sources of news: original material x newswire material. Who produces them, how do they do that, why do they do that, what are the differences?
• Destination of news: online x paper for deadlines (time), formats, requirements, planning, editorial meetings, interactions with the readers, multimedia, people involved, production involved.
• Organization of the newsroom: how are desks distributed, “themed” x “un-themed desks”, hierarchies, flows of interactions
• Flows of interactions: communications, duplications, disposition, rules, means, “outlouds”…)
• Jobs: as they are described x reality, what each “type of job” does (editor, writer, subeditor, head of desk, etc)
• Routines: what are the routines people have in the newsroom, how were they created (may be impossible to find out), what purposes do they serve, how do they change?
• Added value: how does a story get “The Newspaper" value? How do the people involved in its production make it unique, how do they communicate about it. Novices x experienced journalists.
• Software: how does it support what they need to do? Different softwares for different activities?
• Documents: how are they used and produced. Tangibility, hierarchy, meanings, format (printed, screen, PDFs, available, not available, public, restricted, etc).


I believe that I will have to choose one of these to follow, instead of trying to understand them all. A good hint of that is Macaulay's theses, which is entirely focused on origin of news. My main flaw, so far, is that in the proposal for this project I didn't limit this focus, and offered a quite wide one ("how do journalists gather, process and convey information").

As for today, I need to talk to my gatekeepers and find out where I can start talking to people. An internal change in the company will make my life more difficult today (or not, because people love to criticize internal changes). It might not be a very productive day, but it is important that I leave the newsroom today with a sense of its dynamics, who is who, who seats where. According to Hammersley, I hope not to feel comfortable, because when one feels comfortable in the field it is a sign either that things are not going well or that they are finished.

Let's see what the day reserves