ABSTRACT
Newswork in the early 21st century is not just changing. It is changing with unrelenting speed, unprecedented scope, and unforeseeable consequences. This chapter focuses on what sort of methodical inquiry might best inform scholarly assessment of journalistic role performance amid this turbulence. The proposition here is that just as the optimal performance of contemporary journalism involves a holistic amalgamation of inward-facing professional sensibilities and outward-facing social ones, the optimal conduct of contemporary journalism research is similarly holistic. It addresses questions that can best be answered quantitatively-questions such as who is performing which tasks, and what the results look like-and also, crucially, the “how” and “why” questions at which qualitative scholars excel. Those questions typically are dealt with in separate studies, but the suggestion here is that the segmentation is not only unnecessary but also diminishes our ability to understand what’s really going on. Although there are innumerable ethnographic studies of newsrooms, their focus tends to be on journalistic activities and practitioners’ understanding or interpretation of those activities, with little attempt to explore broader social or civic roles or the ways in which journalists perform them. There are even more surveys and content analyses, but most are also narrowly focused.
