ABSTRACT
Journalists enjoy autonomy, yet that freedom takes place within the constraints of an organizational culture and structure. To understand how and why certain content does or does not end up on the air in a particular local station's newscasts, it is important to understand the process and structure that govern news decision making. In most local television newsrooms, the news process begins in the morning. Assignment editors arrive and begin setting the news agenda for the day. At some operations, the day's activities are planned out the night before. Most local news operations have a news agenda for each day. The items for that agenda are gathered from a number of different sources and are usually compiled by an assignment editor. According to critiques of news coverage from inside and outside of the two newsrooms, having White men at the top contributes to a lack of coverage of people of color.
