Abstract
One of the questions dominating discourse on the changing face of the news industry and the future of journalism concerns the extent to which professional news reporters may be replaced by a series of new human and technological agents, such as bloggers, citizen journalists, user-generated content, offshore reporters and news-story composing algorithms. This article addresses a ‘quasi-experimental’ case study in which a group of international and Israeli book authors reported the news for two special issues of an elite Israeli daily, replacing the regular reporting staff. It maps authors’ weaknesses as news gatherers, describes the means the newspaper employed to mitigate these weaknesses and stipulates the challenges the paper faced nonetheless. Findings suggest that professional reporters remain largely irreplaceable, although for less predictable and less ‘heroic’ assignments.
The growing capacity of non-professionals to carry out certain professional assignments, partly facilitated by technological, cultural and economic changes, has become characteristic of various contemporary domains, such as sports, software programming, medicine, astronomy and journalism (Benkler, 2006; Fox et al., 2005; Kannappan, 2001). In western journalism, a series of new human and technological contenders has been attempting to replace news reporters over the past decade, including bloggers (Lowrey, 2006; Reese et al., 2007), citizen journalists (Allan, 2006; Reich, 2008; Singer et al., 2011; Zelizer, 2007), automatic news-authoring algorithms (Bunz, 2010; Pavlik, 1998) and even overseas agents, such as the Indians in Bangalore to whom assignments were outsourced by one US news organization (Dowd, 2008). The involvement of these and other outside agents in news production is among the issues that dominate discourse on the changing face of the news industry and the future of journalism (Compton and Benedetti, 2010; Downie and Schudson, 2009; Hermida, 2010; Rosen, 2005; Zelizer, 2007, 2009).
The areas in which reporters are actually replaceable – and no less important, those in which they are not – have hardly been mapped to date, as the replaceability trend is relatively recent and news organizations tend to limit outsider involvement in news production (Domingo et al., 2008; Singer et al., 2011). Hence studies of this type are limited to isolated environments, such as citizen websites or blogs (Lenhart and Fox, 2006; Lowrey, 2006; Reese et al., 2007; Reich, 2008; Schaffer, 2007), in which ‘the people formerly known as the audience’ (Rosen, 2005) may state unidirectional claims regarding their ability to replace mainstream media. These claims remain largely unexamined, especially under the microscope of mainstream journalism, which will be shown to play a possibly critical role in elucidating its own replacement conditions and standards, even if it does not necessarily embody exclusive criteria for successful contributions by outsiders (Reich, 2008).
A rare research opportunity to study whether news reporters can – or cannot – be replaced inside a mainstream news organization occurred when the elite Israeli daily Haaretz published two special issues marking Hebrew Book Week in which the entire news section was produced by leading book authors instead of their regular reporters, one published on 10 June 2009 with the participation of 33 authors and the second on 2 June 2010 with 34 authors participating. The idea for the project was inspired by the French daily newspaper Libération, which has published five special issues of this kind since 1997 (the project was halted after the first and resumed in 2007). From a sociology of news perspective, these issues embody a fascinating and a valuable case study for four principal reasons:
Illuminating [ir]replaceability: While the extraordinarily friendly conditions of the current case study may be conducive to rather speculative conclusions regarding the replaceability of reporters, they allow for robust conclusions in the opposite direction, determining the areas in which reporters are irreplaceable. One may safely assume that assignments that authors could not perform or had difficulty performing – despite the extraordinary willingness of the news organization to replace its own reporting staff and despite the comprehensive assistance offered to the authors – were probably beyond the reach of less skilled outsiders who wish to contribute original news reporting. Mapping these assignments may help delineate the ‘exclusive jurisdiction’ of professional news reporters and their core capacities. Furthermore, the special issues may be seen as a methodological Trojan horse that facilitates delineation of compromises regarding routines and editorial policies that mainstream news organizations may adopt if and when they become more willing – or more compelled – to invite outsider contributions to news production.
Mainstream perspective with minimal bias: This case study not only incorporates the important perspective of the candidates for replacement – that is, the journalists – but also uses their knowhow, criteria and experience regarding the production of news ‘that’s fit to print’. Furthermore, it minimizes the conventional reservations of mainstream journalists concerning the capacities and contributions of non-journalists (Singer, 2003), as the organization was highly committed to the success of these outsiders and thus had to develop a realistic picture of their strengths and weaknesses as news gatherers that was put to an immediate and practical test.
No routine perspective on routines: Routines showed a dramatic shift here, contrary to the legacy of case studies in which news organizations tried to minimize routine coverage (Ryfe, 2009), replace the news beat system (Hansen et al., 1998), emphasize the quality of writing (Campbell, 2006) or cover ‘what-a-story’ events (Berkowitz, 1992). In normal times, news organizations tend to regularize their news production (Lowrey, 2006, 2008) and limit outsider access to the core of their news activities (Domingo et al., 2008; Singer et al., 2011). In this case, however, Haaretz decided to release its regular reporters and become totally dependent on a collection of unskilled and un-networked outsiders, with unknown capacity and commitment to finalization of their assignments. Beyond its unpredictability, the authors’ output couldn’t be substantially improved post facto, as the entire ‘blue pencil’ system was immobilized to address the enhanced authorship of these guest writers.
Quasi-experimental conditions: Methodologically, the special issues created a quasi-experimental environment (Berelson, 1949: 112) in which interviewees often become more conscious, reflexive and articulate about their conduct. This might be especially beneficial in the case of journalists, who tend to take their routines and practices for granted (Goldenberg, 1975; Reich, 2009; Ryfe, 2009; Schultz, 2007).
Data were gleaned using a variety of methods, including assignment-by-assignment analysis to detect how authors obtained their stories, as well as a study of how the entire project unfolded, based on interviews with authors, editors and producers and a survey of Haaretz journalists. These findings may help support or refute the concepts prevailing in professional literature regarding journalism, professionalism and replaceability of news reporters.
The nature of journalistic competences
Scholars not only differ as to whether or not journalism constitutes a profession (Delano, 2000; Tunstall, 1971; Zelizer, 2004) but also inquire whether the entire concept of professionalism is applicable to journalism (Zelizer, 2004). Among the professional frailties of journalism are its lack of systematic theory, professional authority, community sanctions, ethical codes and professional culture, training and unionization (Tunstall, 1971; Zelizer, 2004). Some of these attributes reflect on another question that concerns professionalism: whether journalists can perform tasks that others cannot – an issue that divides scholars into two opposing schools of thought.
The exclusive school argues that journalists possess virtually inalienable competences. According to Ettema and Glasser (1998: 22), ‘reporting anything beyond the simplest events calls upon knowledge and methods that are not easily analyzed and taught’. Proponents of this outlook further insist that good journalism cannot be delegated to outsiders, as they are unqualified to produce original news content (Lemann, 2006; Lenhart and Fox, 2006; Reese et al., 2007). ‘It sounds obvious,’ wrote Nick Lemann, Dean of the Columbia School of Journalism, ‘but reporting requires reporters’ (2006). Singer (2003: 149) argued that ‘traditional journalists’ reportorial skills – negotiating with and interviewing sources, witnessing and recording events, and turning what had been learned into a cogent, original story – remain largely unthreatened’. This view is rooted in the sociology of professions, in which professionalism, according to the attribution approach, involves provision of unstandardized products and services as well as a tendency to be well versed in an exclusive body of theoretical knowledge and techniques (Stebbins, 1992). According to reflective practice theory, important aspects of professional knowledge derive from experience and cannot be reduced to clearly formulated theoretical principles (Schön, 1983).
On the opposite side of the debate, the delegators school perceives journalists as replaceable workers whose skills may be acquired easily, as ‘the inference process for journalists is often routine and not highly difficult for outsiders to learn’ (Lowrey, 2006: 492). Far from the ‘unstandardized products and services’ mentioned above, ‘factory-like practices and processes’ are employed to standardize, naturalize and streamline newswork, thereby rendering it more predictable (Lowrey, 2008: 3271). Underpinning this trend are such processes as the fragmentation of newswork (Ursell, 2004), multi-skilling, de-skilling and de-professionalization of journalists (Cottle and Ashton, 1999; Nygren, 2008). Furthermore, the technologization of news production is said to reduce the individual journalist to ‘just a cog in an ever widening “communication machine”’ (Bardoel, 1996: 382) and cogs are interchangeable (Salcetti, 1995). As Örnebring (2009: 571) points out, ‘For those journalists without permanent employment, the distinctness of occupation is eroding – if it was ever there to begin with.’
According to the literature, however, technologies not only erode the reporters’ role but also empower former audiences to play an increasing role in content production using ‘commons-based peer production’ (Benkler, 2006: 62). Advocates of citizen journalism contend that citizens not only can and should produce news (Allan, 2006; Gillmor, 2006; Kim and Hamilton, 2006), but also that the ‘audience is learning how to get a better, timelier news report … in some cases, doing a better job than the professionals’ (Gillmor, 2006: XXV). This school of thought may also be grounded in the sociology of professions, in which professionals’ claims to exclusivity may be challenged by outside infringement on their domains of expert knowledge (Abbot, 1988).
Although most western press reporters are assigned to specific newsbeats, they usually remain ‘generalists’ in terms of their expertise regarding the subject matter covered (Gans, 1979: 143). According to Robert E. Park (who used the categories originated by William James), reporters employ a limited type of knowledge called ‘acquaintance with’, which tends to be intuitive, commonsensical, unconscious and untested, whereas commentators are characterized by ‘knowledge about’, a more systematic, formal and rational epistemology based on evidence that was put into perspective (Park, 1940: 669). According to Carey (1997[1969]: 137), reporters do not rely on intellectual skills and neglect the tasks of critique and interpretation. Instead, they employ strictly technical skills such as writing or translation of government, science, art, medicine and finance jargon into an idiom understandable by less educated audiences. Their intuitive forms of knowledge may be grounded in the experience of communicating with sources and in the selection of topics for coverage, forming a perspective that furnishes the reporter with a ‘map of relevant knowers’ (Allan, 2004: 62), shaped by their awareness of organizational constraints and by a ‘vocabulary of precedents’ (Ericson et. al., 1989, quoted in Allan, 2004: 72).
First and foremost, these precedents involve orientation regarding where to expect what kind of information and from which news sources, which not only supply virtually all the news (Reich, 2009) but also develop complex relationships based on efficient and recurrent exchanges. This turns reporting into a matter of acquaintance, mutual trust and access to news sources (Gans, 1979; McManus, 1994; Reich, 2009; Tuchman, 1978). They also involve matters of news judgment or ‘typification’ of news (Tuchman, 1978: 50) as well as the broader ‘media logic’ (Altheide and Snow, 1979; Deuze, 2008) that reporters learn over time through negotiations with their sources and by ‘osmosis’ (Breed, 1955: 328). As news journalism embodies two major functions – reporting and writing (Örnebring, 2009; Salcetti, 1995) – the writers that substituted for the reporters may be perceived as masters of at least the second half of the equation, possessing literary skills and a strong personal voice (Aucoin, 2001), unlike citizen journalists, for example, who were described as ‘prose-shy’ (Schaffer, 2007: 6).
The study focuses on three research questions:
RQ1: Did the authors obtain the raw information for their news stories in a manner different from that of regular reporters at the same newspaper?
RQ2: What are the weaknesses of authors as news gatherers (as perceived directly by the authors themselves, the editors who ran the project, regular journalists – and indirectly, as reflected in practical news decisions and specific measures taken to compensate for these weaknesses)?
RQ3: What major challenges or mishaps, if any, were encountered during production as a result of the authors’ limitations as news gatherers, despite measures taken to minimize them?
Method
As an opportunistic study seeking to exploit quasi-experimental conditions orchestrated by a third party, this research was arranged at very short notice, with some unavoidable constraints of expediency, in an attempt to capitalize on the fresh recall of the parties involved. Data collection began 24 hours after the publication of the first special issue in June 2009 and concluded a month later (except for the survey, as detailed hereinafter). Data were gleaned using a mix of the following methods:
Assignment-by-assignment analysis: Every story that contained original news reporting was analyzed regarding origin, information gathering and assistance requested or received from the newspaper (including how information was obtained and subsequently canceled assignments). The analysis was based on interviews with the producers of the special issues (see Method 2) and – for the first year – on interviews with 22 of the authors. According to information regarding assignments and final news stories, two former assignment editors were asked to code which party initiated each story and whether it involved any firsthand witnessing or face-to-face encounter between an author and a ‘source’. Coders disagreed on initiative for only 8 percent of the stories in the first year and 9 percent in the second, yielding Krippendorff’s alphas of 0.71 and 0.75, respectively. Regarding witnessing, coders agreed on all stories in the first year and disagreed on only 5 percent in the second (Krippendorff’s alphas of 1 and 0.82, respectively). The data concerning these practices not only reveal substantial professional, ethical and epistemological qualities of newswork (Frank, 1999), but also enable comparison to the frequencies with which these practices were employed by regular Haaretz reporters, as studied in another research project that was conducted in 2007.
In-depth interviews with the editors in charge of the special issues: During the first year, we conducted face-to-face interviews with Haaretz chief editor Dov Alfon, the project’s executive editor Shai Golden, production manager Maya Zinshtein and producer Nitza Bergman. In the second year, we interviewed only the executive editor and production manager.
Structured interviews with 22 authors: Telephone interviews were conducted with 22 out of 33 authors who participated in the first year’s issue (one wrote two items), using a mix of open and closed questionnaires (we did not interview two foreign authors and two writers of opinion pieces, nor two additional authors whose articles we did not consider newsworthy; five authors refused to be interviewed or did not reply to our repeated emails). Authors were asked to describe the entire editorial process from the moment they were invited to join the project through to its completion and then to comment on the published news items, with emphasis on news gathering and insights regarding journalism and literary work. Each interview extended over about 30 minutes and the total interview transcriptions (authors and editors) came to some 350 pages.
Online survey among Haaretz journalists: To obtain a broader journalistic perspective on the project, we distributed an anonymous electronic questionnaire among Haaretz journalists (slightly fewer than 300 people). While the initial request to participate in the survey was sent to each of the journalists using the internal newspaper mail system, the questionnaire itself was posted and managed at an independent website accessible only by the research team. The survey was open from 17 June to 6 September during which time we placed 180 reminder telephone calls to increase the response rate. Sixty-two journalists were unreachable; 27 refused to participate, primarily because they had not read the authors’ issue or felt unqualified to judge it. Other reasons for refusal were leaving the newspaper, maternity leave and ideological opposition to surveys. Following the reminders, 63 journalists filled out the questionnaire – a response rate of over 20 percent. In addition, 20 percent of the respondents had a specific role in the special issue.
Semi-structured interview with the literary editor of Libération: To extend beyond the Israeli experience and learn about the common features of and differences from the French antecedent that that inspired Haaretz authors’ Edition, we conducted a face-to-face interview with Claire Devarrieux, literary editor of Libération, who was in charge of four authors’ issues for her paper.
Taken together, these five methods equipped us with multifaceted and triangulated data regarding production of the special issue, based not only on general observations but also on the particular actions and news decisions that concerned specific items.
Results
For an elite daily with an established reputation like Haaretz, the special authors’ issues were an experiment that had to have been successful. Hence the paper set up a dedicated support system accompanying the project for one month during the first year and for somewhat less time during the second, consisting primarily of a production manager supported and coordinated by a team of four senior editors, including the editor-in-chief, who met periodically to assess the project’s progress. Preparations were handled confidentially to avoid internal and external leaks. The support system had four principal roles: (a) To build a work force of potential authors (mixing literary styles, generations, Israeli and international authors, etc.) and secure their consent to participate in the special issues (that was positive, immediate and extensive); (b) to assign each author a specific newsbeat and mission (according to tendencies, interests and geographic location at the relevant time); (c) to coordinate assignments, arrange author access and open source organization doors; and (d) to supervise implementation of assignments and solve unfolding problems.
Among the Haaretz journalists who responded to the survey, some 87 percent ranked the special issue ‘more interesting’ or ‘much more interesting’ than a regular issue of the paper (standard error = 4%). On a 1–10 scale, their average grade for the authors was 7.65 (standard error = 0.27). Specific reactions ranged from enthusiasm to disappointment. Many journalists used words such as ‘fascinating’, ‘brilliant’, ‘moving’. ‘I kept the issue as a souvenir’, wrote one and another added ‘it’s the first time that I read the entire newspaper’. A third noted that ‘they [the authors] coped with it better than I thought’. Many others, however, were critical. ‘Most of the authors documented the “magic event” during which they left their room and wandered around the country,’ wrote one respondent and another added: ‘They did not fulfill their role of journalist for a day honestly and modestly. They perceived themselves as celebrities and most of them wrote… narcissistic and indulging texts.’ It was a ‘quasi-newspaper’, summarized another.
Most of the content of both issues involved original news gathering – 76 percent of the 34 items in 2009 and 66 percent of the 35 in 2010. We focus on these items, ignoring the others that were either opinion and analysis pieces written mostly by such household names such as Umberto Eco, Margaret Atwood, Amos Oz, Jonathan Safran Foer and Bernard-Henri Lévy, or columns dedicated to horoscope, letters to the editor, weather, etc.
How items were obtained
Findings show that while, ordinarily, only 33 percent of the stories are initiated by editorial factors (in this case the reporters themselves), in the special authors’ issue no fewer than 74 percent of the news stories were initiated by the editorial department, in both years. The difference between initiatives is significant (
Initiatives included assignments designed especially for coverage, such as interviews with political figures, a get-together of high school students who just finished their matriculation examinations, or trips to a natural resource damaged by fire, the graves of [Jewish] saints or the hotels of Akaba, Jordan. Another type of initiative included events considered too routine and technical to be covered regularly, such as deliberations of a welfare committee or a routine legal procedure at the Supreme Court.
Another interesting difference was evident regarding fieldwork. While regular Haaretz reporters used firsthand witnessing and face-to-face meetings in only 29 percent of their stories, the authors used it in no fewer than 69 percent of their stories in both years. This difference, too, is significant (
At first glance, the extended initiative and legwork among the authors may seem to conform to higher journalistic standards, as journalists themselves praise these news-gathering methods. A journalist who takes the initiative can shape the news agenda, choose the other party, play an interventionist role and increase the likelihood of representing the public interest rather than any particular source interest (Reich, 2006, 2009). Journalists who use their legs, which some consider more important than their brains (Alsop and Alsop, 1958: 5), minimize dependence on a third party and its unavoidable biases (Fishman, 1980: 144; Frank, 1999; Zelizer, 1990). As noted below, however, these superior methods were instituted to compensate for the inferiority of authors as news gatherers.
Weaknesses of authors as news gatherers
The special issues expose five major weaknesses of authors as news gatherers that may well be characteristic of less qualified outsiders who contribute original news to mainstream news organizations. These weaknesses are detailed below, together with the measures the newspaper applied to mitigate them:
1 Timeliness resistance
Most authors refused to work within a single-day deadline, whereas regular reporters are often given only a few hours per story (Dunwoody, 1997; Fishman, 1980: 34). One author claimed that deadlines constrain the depth of journalistic reports, a second said that he would not want to be in the shoes of traditional journalists in all that concerns competition and alertness, two others remarked that they would not be able to function under journalistic deadlines and a fifth said that had she not been writing under time constraints, the result would have been better. This may suggest that, although under special circumstances such as terror attacks outsiders (in this case ordinary citizens) are ready to submit (mostly photos and fragments of firsthand witnessing) within a few hours (Allan, 2004; Zelizer, 2007), their reaction time may slow down to several days under more ‘normal’ circumstances and when entire stories are concerned.
Attempted solutions
Most authors were given at least 2–3 days to gather information and write their stories. The time period was both enabled and enhanced by initiated, ‘evergreen’ assignments, as one editor called them, that have less rigid timing of publication than regular news. As indicated below, timeliness constraints concerning unscheduled events were addressed by reassigning authors to new stories using the venue in which they were already located.
2 Limitation to the overt and the observable
Editors assumed that the authors would not be able to cover assignments in which the chief journalistic challenge transcends the observable and the clearly stated, such as those typical of political news beats. This assumption corresponds to proposals in the literature regarding the rising analytical and interpretive roles of journalists (Hallin et al., 1992; Schudson, 1982: 105), which require an insider’s understanding of the subtext, the context and the historical antecedents for exposure of hidden intentions and agendas and vested interests of the parties involved. Referring to one author, an editor remarked that ‘[he] was not expected to provide in-depth political insights’:
Even if the author spends three whole days reading all there is on Google about George Mitchell [the American Middle East envoy] … he will not be able to match the level of expertise [… that the diplomatic affairs reporter] has accumulated … and the knowledge to extract deeper meanings beyond those stated explicitly.
Attempted solutions
Many of the ‘political’ assignments were reduced to witnessing a news scene or meeting face to face with a public figure in an attempt to enable authors to compensate for their limitations by exercising their superior writing skills and receiving close attention and support. Some of the most sensitive assignments, such as the interview with Defense Minister Ehud Barak, parliamentary proceedings or the reactions of the Israeli Arabs to the flotilla affair were either accompanied by the reporter who covers the relevant beat (a method also employed by Libération) or were given background, tips and evaluations by those same journalists or others. Interviews with top officials such as Barak, President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Netanyahu (who subsequently canceled in both years), were assigned to boost newsworthiness, as detailed in the following paragraph.
3 Falling short of newsworthiness
During negotiations with authors, the editors and producers realized that meeting the traditional criteria of newsworthiness may be too ambitious if they intended to focus on feasible assignments that fit the authors’ news-gathering capacities and interests. Obviously, newsworthiness is a journalistic artifact and – like other aspects of journalistic judgment – tends to be vague, intuitive and often arbitrary, ignoring alternative criteria (Shultz, 2007). Yet many of the assignments eventually allocated would not have passed muster in a regular news edition. One author, for example, visited the Ramat Gan Zoo, another the traffic light monitoring facility in Tel Aviv, a third described the cultural life of Israelis in Berlin and a fourth covered a technical procedure in the Israeli Supreme Court. Interestingly, when the author covering this last topic called the legal correspondent for background, he wondered why she was assigned such a tedious story in the first place. ‘I almost wanted to kill him’, recalls the production manager, who worked hard to find the assignment and ‘sell’ it to the author. Even assignments that look more newsworthy, such as coverage of a military maneuver or of demonstrations against the expropriation of lands in the Palestinian village of Bil’in, would probably have been ignored in a regular issue, as the former was a routine maneuver and the latter is covered only post facto, when fatalities occur. In Tuchman’s terms (1978: X), less newsworthy assignments allow authors to use a net with smaller holes, which in turn means willingness to accept small fry and forget about the big fish.
Attempted solutions
According to one editor, the audience was expected to tolerate the reduced newsworthiness – just as the public tolerates traffic jams during a visit of the US President, but not a day after – primarily because of the authors’ superior writing skills:
It’s a sort of compensation for a very serious deficit from which we suffer … There’s no way to count how many stories this year [2009] were lost … because we simply said: ‘there’s no one who can write them,’ simple as that.
To boost newsworthiness, editors not only pushed for initiated interviews with senior officials but also suggested tips and news angles. The author sent to the zoo, for example, was advised to ask the managers why they rent space for nighttime parties that disturb the animals’ peaceful rest.
4 Unpredictable output
The authors’ output, unlike that of regular reporters, was unpredictable for three reasons:
Non-committed work force: Although paid about US$100 per assignment, the authors remained a voluntary work force and hence less susceptible to coercive relations with their editors. ‘I couldn’t call them and start yelling at them,’ said the production manager. When one author disappeared at a crucial moment, she expressed her regret that she could not fire him.
Lack of news access: The authors, like citizen journalists (Reich, 2008), had highly limited access to news sources because of their inability to identify relevant sources and determine practical ways of contacting them and especially because of the lack of ongoing reporter–source relationships that are translated, in turn, into acquaintance, rapport and mutual trust.
Lack of self-confidence: Many of the authors needed constant encouragement and calming from the newsroom, as evidenced by numerous calls to the production team expressing insecurity. These were answered with what the production manager calls ‘mental work’; that is, placating authors so they can accomplish their mission successfully, knowing the news organization stands behind them. In these conversations, as in her broader role, the production manager actually turned the semi-automatic and mechanized news assembly-line into a friendly and personal interface for outsiders.
Attempted solutions
Guidance: The authors were given guidelines, background information, close consultancy and in several cases also a professional ‘ghost’, including not only the relevant beat reporter but also photographers or even the spokesperson of the organization involved.
Access: In most cases, access was arranged by the producers and relevant reporters. The latter sometimes unwillingly contacted sources, requested ‘accreditation’ for the author-reporter, asked for permission to access specific events or persons, negotiated the conditions for their access and tried to make sources react accountably. In this respect, the producers served as a flexible transmission belt along three axes: the authors, the newsroom and potential news sources, enabling the three to coordinate and operate relatively smoothly.
Commitment and motivation: Instead of giving orders, the producers were ‘selling’ the authors story ideas and arousing their interest and enthusiasm. Nevertheless, the production team controlled the choice of assignments and most authors tended to obey without arguing. The authors were given extended authorship, with full authorial rights (Goldstein, 1989: 628), including the right of integrity (the prevention of editing) while regular reporters have only the right of paternity (bylines). In addition, authors were invited to use their personal voice and their items were accompanied by super-bylines, their photo or portrait and a note regarding their most recent or forthcoming books, provoking considerable envy among regular reporters.
Safety net: To limit dependence on unpredictable output, the editors organized spare materials, primarily including non-news items and columns of international and local authors. Other fallback positions developed included a plan to dedicate the leading headline to the opening of Israel Book Week, should the original assignment fail.
5 Difficulties in covering large-scale non-scheduled events
Editors anticipated that the authors would encounter special difficulties covering this type of event. ‘What happens if there’s an earthquake, what happens if a minister resigns, what happens if the coalition is threatened …?’ said editor-in-chief Dov Alfon, expressing typical doubts. Editors were afraid that, under such circumstances, readers tend to develop high expectations for immediate, comprehensive and in-depth coverage combining information and analysis, whereas an authors’ issue would not satisfy these expectations and would demonstrate how out of touch the paper is to continue this project under such serious circumstances.
Attempted Solutions
The editors discussed fallback plans and scenarios in which they could cancel or postpone the entire project if something of critical magnitude occurs and summon regular reporters back to their beats at once.
Against all odds
Despite measures taken to compensate for the authors’ weaknesses as news gatherers, the production of both issues was replete with obstacles, problems, challenges and mishaps, including canceled and unaccomplished assignments, unsuccessful negotiations over news access or output deemed disappointing by editors and/or authors. As many of these problems might affect regular reporters as well (even if less frequently) – except for typical first encounter difficulties, such as the source that asked the newsroom for the CV of one author before considering her request for access – we focus on two major illustrative hurdles that not only characterize the entire production but also cut across the authors’ weaknesses and epitomize the dilemmas between the commitment to a work force of outsider reporters and to the tenets of traditional news reporting.
The heaviest burden, characteristic of the first year, was increased uncertainty throughout the production process. The first reaction among editors regarding the idea of an authors’ issue, according to one of them, was: ‘It’s unworkable; there is no way to produce a 12- or 16-page product entirely written by authors.’ ‘These psychos have no idea what they’re doing,’ said the production manager, quoting the reaction of senior news desk personnel shortly before the materials arrived during the first year. ‘[I]t’s going to be a disaster. There will be no newspaper tomorrow.’
In the first year, editors feared that something ‘really big’ would happen, while in the second, the chief challenge proved to be materialization of this apprehension. Several days before the issue date, a Turkish flotilla of six ships set out for the Palestinian port of Gaza, seeking to break the blockade that Israel imposed on the Gaza Strip to prevent arms and ammunition smuggling to the Hamas regime. Two days before the scheduled publication of the authors’ issue, Israeli commandos took over five of the ships without any casualties, but the takeover of the sixth, Mavi Marmara, involved a battle between commando soldiers and dozens of Turkish passengers who attacked them with cold weapons. Nine passengers were killed by the commandos. Within a few hours, the controversial takeover developed into an international scandal, involving a mixture of newsworthy issues: national security, military and counter-terrorism affairs, the decision-making leading to the takeover, politics, diplomacy and foreign affairs, reactions in Turkey and in the Arab world – including Israeli Arabs, international law, media relations, etc.
That year, unlike the previous year, no advertisement announced the forthcoming issue the morning before, as the editors were not certain it would be forthcoming. In the final consultation, at noon on the eve of publication, when most authors were already on their beats, Haaretz officials discussed whether to cancel the entire project, postpone it, restrict it to inside pages with the front pages devoted to the aftermath of the flotilla affair and covered by regular reporters or continue according to plan. After realizing that the magnitude of the event was extensive but not apocalyptic, the editor-in-chief decided to stick to the original plan. Some editors thought this was a crazy idea and others feared the paper was doomed to be scooped by rivals. All editors, however, exerted substantial efforts to have the authors cover the flotilla affair, applying four measures: arranging the basic information gathered by regular journalists into infographic elements; asking the regular reporting staff to continue conventional coverage at the paper’s website; having reporters and authors share information, story ideas and news angles regarding the flotilla; and reassigning authors already in strategic political locations –the Knesset and Washington – to cover the aftermath.
The Washington assignment will be discussed here in some detail, as it embodies the entire set of reporters’ weaknesses as news gatherers. It was also the most expensive assignment, as the author was sent almost 10,000 kilometers away to cover the Obama-Netanyahu summit (which was subsequently canceled). In addition, enormous production efforts were invested in this assignment to allow the author into the daily White House press conference and other Washington corridors, accompanied throughout by the regular Washington correspondent. The assignment was designated as the leading story. The editor in charge recalled that when the text arrived, ‘we turned white’. He referred to the item as a total disaster with ‘no journalistic value whatsoever’, indicating that out of some 2,000 words, about 1,500 were devoted to an interview with a Palestinian intellectual that the author happened to meet, who supplied ‘the standard clichés regarding the Israeli-Palestinian struggle’, while the remainder focused on the right person (the White House Spokesperson) but contained the wrong citations. After a few editors skimmed the text, they decided to carry out a ‘vulgar and violent’ rewrite, as one editor called it, in violation of the paper’s non-editing policy, incorporating wire copy, text from the Washington correspondent and other materials, ending up with a traditional news item whose most recognizable part was the author’s byline.
‘We ended [this shift] exhausted,’ says the production manager. ‘Tensions ran wild, without confidence that we are doing the right thing.’ At the end of the shift, she recalls sending an SMS to a senior editor: ‘I am not sure whether we are crazy or hallucinating.’ ‘Both,’ was his reply.
Discussion
This quasi-experimental case study suggests that the exclusive camp was at least partially right: professional reporters remain irreplaceable in at least a considerable part of their assignments and roles, even when their substitutes have superior skills compared to the squads of other outsiders that seek to replace them and despite the enormous assistance they received behind the scenes from the paper that invited them to produce its news for the special authors’ issues. Findings also hint that the delegators camp was not totally wrong, as dozens of original news stories were deemed ‘fit to print’ by the editors of this elite newspaper, although the characteristics of the current case study, as indicated, render such conclusions rather speculative.
Journalists encouraged the authors to use legwork and initiate assignments – practices that they extol (Alsop and Alsop, 1958; Fishman, 1980; Zelizer, 1990) but use quite rarely in their own stories, suggesting that the core competences of professional reporters need not conform with skills that journalists tend to uphold. The exclusive jurisdiction of professional reporters, which was not contested even by superior outsiders such as the authors, comprises reactive rather than proactive coverage, especially of non-scheduled events that require immediate response and management, with minimal external guidance. While outsiders may witness and report events – often with no less impressive output than that of professional reporters – it takes professionals to cover them without being there, thanks to their established bonds with news sources; only professionals can handle cases in which the observable and the clearly stated are considered a smokescreen hiding ‘the real thing’.
Based on this case study, we may draw a cautious initial map of potential obstacles that may impede outsiders seeking to contribute original news to a mainstream media organization or replace professional reporters in the long run. These outsiders, whose news-gathering skills are not necessarily inferior to those of the authors, may also find it difficult to meet standard timeliness and newsworthiness criteria; working with them may be a challenge for news organizations, as they constitute a non-committed work force with unpredictable output, constrained access to news sources and problems of self-confidence; their coverage is limited to the overt and the observable; and they find it difficult to contend with large-scale non-scheduled events.
The evidence found in this case study strengthens the journalistic claim to a body of knowledge that was often contested in scholarly literature (Lowrey, 2006; Örnebring, 2009; Salcetti, 1995). Findings suggest that the knowledge that outsiders lack when they replace political or business reporters, for example, is less involved with the specific subject matter of politics or business, which tends to be weak and ‘generalistic’ even among professional reporters, and more with the all-purpose, abstract reportorial knowhow that a political reporter may have or may acquire promptly even when ‘parachuted in’ to cover a business issue. Although editorial guidance can fill these knowhow lacunae to a certain extent, enabling outsiders to cover initiated and pre-scheduled assignments rather successfully, unscheduled events expose its limits in bridging these knowledge gaps.
Two necessary caveats should be borne in mind. First, although mainstream bias against the involvement of outsiders in core function news production was minimized in this case, it was not eliminated entirely. There is probably no simple way to maintain the essential perspective of journalists regarding their [ir]replaceability and keep it entirely free of their biases, which unavoidably infiltrate their basic concepts as well as specific news decisions. Second, some of these weaknesses, such as timeliness and mutual acquaintance, may be mitigated substantially if the respective outsiders play the game repeatedly – especially in the same news domain, although this type of learning is impeded by the reluctance of non-mainstream reporters to confine themselves to specific newsbeats, as well as by their accelerated burnout (Kim and Hamilton, 2006; Reich, 2008).
The Israeli press system, which hosted that case study, embodies some undeniable peculiarities, such as its small-scale readership, geographic concentration and relatively serious news agenda (Reich, 2009). Even if we assume that the conclusions of this case study are applicable to other western, private and highly competitive newspapers, it still demands additional evidence from other news cultures regarding the [ir]replaceability of professional reporters, focusing, for example, on citizen reporters, bloggers, ordinary citizens and the like. Other studies may examine the experience of Libération, which appears similar to the subject of the present study, according to our interview with its literary editor. The authors’ work at Libération was based primarily on fieldwork, with several nuances. The authors at Libération appear to play a greater role in negotiations over their assignments and all were accompanied throughout their assignments by regular reporters, who helped them with background, access and other matters. Furthermore, coverage in Libération appears more timely: in the 2009 issue, for example, assignments were allocated to the authors only on the same day or one evening before.
As experiments in journalism flourish during periods of crisis (Ryfe, 2009), the coming years will probably give rise to more research opportunities of the type examined in this study. Scholars seeking to take advantage of these opportunities should adopt an alert state of mind, preparing themselves methodologically and mentally to address the typically uncontrollable, occasional, transient nature of these case studies, which require research response at short notice.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The authors thank Oded Jackman, Igal Godler, Amit Roffe, Lilly Boxman, Tomer Brand and Ruth Margolin for their help in compiling the data for this study and Tali Avishay-Arbel for her statistical advice. Special gratitude is due Maya Zinshtein of Haaretz daily for the long hours of interviews. Research was supported by Sapir College.