Operationalising Hybrid Newsroom Ethnography: Observing Amidst a Pandemic

ABSTRACT

This paper presents an ethnographic case study of a private television newsroom owned by a newly merged and dominant media company in the small and highly concentrated media market of Flanders (Belgium). Through ethnographic observations and interviews along with desk research and surveys, carried out throughout 2020 both physically and virtually, we operationalise a previously developed model for pinpointing changes inside newsrooms. Our study shows once more that when newsrooms are confronted with changing circumstances, in this case, due to a merger, contemplation about how to address these changes happens largely behind closed doors on the management level, in the meantime leading to frustration amongst employees fearing that their professional identities and practices will be absolved in the newly to be created company structure. Involuntarily, our field study was affected by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, which we turned into an opportunity to explore the methodological consequences for ethnographic observations that in the future are bound to be taking place in increasingly hybrid newsrooms and other work settings. Finally, we highlight the importance of studying both physical and virtual spaces in which journalists produce news content.

KEYWORDS:

• Newsroom ethnography
• field study
• media concentration
• media management
• newsroom studies
• COVID-19
• pandemic
• hybrid ethnography

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thank all employees of VTM NIEUWS and DPG Media for collaborating with us throughout the crazy year 2020, with particular gratitude for Nicholas Lataire and Sofie Hoogewijs.

Disclosure Statement

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

Notes

1 The brand name is all capitalised and thus also used the same in this paper. VTM is the name of the Flemish private television channel where the daily telecasts air. Nieuws is the Dutch word for news.

2 HLN is a commonly used abbreviation for Het Laatste Nieuws or The Latest News in English.

3 We systematically refer to ‘we’ throughout the entire paper for the sake of readability.