ABSTRACT

Media Management and Digital Transformation provides novel and empirically rich insights into the tensions, struggles and innovations of news making and managing in media organizations.

From an empirically grounded perspective this book investigates how the 'buzz' of new technology tends to prevent management from seeing which changes are needed and indeed possible to make in the newsroom. It presents ground-breaking research showing that fostering ingenious, innovative solutions can be created from within organizations by engaging and allowing employees to recognize problems, reflect and experiment with new ways of working, using technology as support for change. The research presented arises from a four-year action research project in collaboration with three small and medium-sized Norwegian newspapers, in addition to ethnographic research in newsrooms and on media organizations and phenomena in the USA and Europe. It includes among other empirical examples of newsrooms transitioning from a deadline-controlled workflow to an open-ended flowline production, and provides new tools and methods for fostering collaborative creativity and co-creative innovation practices. It also looks into newsrooms’ attempts to strengthen their audience engagement, metrics performance and external collaborations with technology providers, journalism education and action researchers.

With theoretical chapters, methodological insights and qualitative case studies of contemporary practices, this book is essential reading for students and practitioners involved with media management globally.

chapter 1|14 pages

Introduction

Why is innovation needed in organizational media managing?

part I|2 pages

Ethnographing the newsroom

chapter 2|10 pages

Print and digital

17Synchronizing discrepant temporal regimes in the newsroom

chapter 3|13 pages

From deadline to flowline

Managing paradoxical demands in news organizations through metaphor

chapter 4|11 pages

Local journalism seen through the numbers

Interpreting metrics through quantitative and qualitative methods

chapter 5|12 pages

Projects as containers of future hopes and dreams

Organizing innovation projects in the newspaper field

part II|2 pages

Interventions: changing practices in the newsroom

chapter 6|12 pages

Creating the new while producing the news

65Managing media innovation in times of uncertainty

chapter 7|13 pages

The Idea Propeller

Managing for collective creativity in newsrooms

chapter 8|13 pages

Managing for audience engagement

Taking steps towards a ‘glowline’ co-production in the newsroom

chapter 9|14 pages

Challenging digital utopianism

Electronic imaginaries and the second century of radio

part III|2 pages

Openings and collaborations: renewing the newsroom

chapter 11|11 pages

Teaming up with technology

Socio-material managerial approaches for digital transformation

chapter 12|11 pages

Education as innovation

Exploring the synergy of student-journalist collaboration

chapter 13|11 pages

Context and continuities

A plea for media research in medias res