ABSTRACT
Analysts increasingly suggest that much has changed in journalism in the past couple of decades, partly in relation to technological developments that have taken place during this period.2 This article focuses on one phenomenon – journalists’ tendency to mimic their competitors and other media – to examine the difference that technology makes and to think about the more general role of materiality in journalistic practice. Mimicry in news production can shed light on how materiality matters in contemporary journalistic practice because it has long been recognized as a staple of editorial routines and because technology has been largely overlooked as a relevant factor in scholarly analyses of imitation in the news.3
