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Novel organizational forms in journalism

Applicant Professor Dr. Juergen Rösch, since 1/2024
Subject Area Communication Sciences
Term from 2021 to 2024
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 462081165
 
Final Report Year 2025

Final Report Abstract

News production studies have traditionally focused on established newsrooms of publishers and broadcasters. However, newly founded journalistic organizations offer significant potential for innovative forms of collaboration, as they are often smaller, more flexible, and more diverse than traditional newsrooms. Against this background, this research project examined eleven journalistic startups in German-speaking countries concerning their organizational structures, processes, and work practices. An exploratory case study approach combined three data sources: qualitative observations, semi-structured interviews, and the analysis of internal and external documents. While the study connects to the ethnographic roots of news production studies, the organizational diversity of startups required a broad, maximally contrasting case selection. Whereas traditional newsrooms are perceived as having formalized structures, rigid boundaries between beats, power concentration, and a lack of transparency in decisionmaking, the investigated startups operated with flatter organizational structures. Flexible thematic focuses, highly specialized sub-editorial teams instead of classic beats, as well as models such as “competence hierarchies” or “forum structures” highlight alternatives to the dominant 20th-century newsroom model. Ethnographies of conventional newsrooms have primarily described journalistic work as uniform, structured by routines and standards. In contrast, the production processes of the analyzed startups are still emerging, with few established routines, allowing for greater openness and continuous adaptation. The collaboration between full-time and volunteer staff, organizational innovations such as “writing tandems” and “sparring sessions”, as well as software-supported process transparency, illustrate how journalistic workflows are structured under the conditions of digital media and the rise of hybrid or remote work models. These approaches also emphasize how professional training increasingly happens “on the job”. In the past, research assumed that journalistic work was structured similarly across the population of newsrooms. In contrast, startups exhibit a high degree of differentiation and specialization. Some focus on specific parts of the journalistic production process only, such as topic identification, investigation, or data processing, while others have reconfigured individual work practices or created entirely new ones (e.g., providing “research recipes” or implementing a “diversity review”). The results shed light on different forms of structural and procedural organization as well as journalistic work practices, which can be seen as a window into potential future models of work, organization, and employment in journalism. Thus, the study also provides insights into broader transformations of digital journalism.

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