ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the fourth influencing factor of journalism: the production of journalism. In this context, production refers to those potentials and problems that journalists encounter when journalistic work makes them dependent on forces outside their immediate control, in particular those communication technologies and techniques that can affect the relationship between journalists and their news sources. The chapter opens with a review of some of the most important ways researchers in the past have attempted to model journalistic production, and these attempts roughly fall into two categories. The first has to do with the technological factors that can affect actions of journalists, and in the minds of some researchers, old and new technologies have not only affected journalists but also been constitutive of what journalism is altogether. The second category has to with the techniques that journalists use when getting in contact with the outside world – and the techniques used by news sources and others from the world outside the newsroom. The final part of the chapter develops a model that attempts to take some of the shortcomings of past models into account. This model is based on the work of the previous chapters – including the journalistic compass – and it shows how factors and forces outside the control of journalists can affect the way journalists navigate between different principles and how this can affect their actions.
