The dominance of institutional sources and the establishment of non-elite ones: The case of Italian online local journalism

Abstract

This article presents findings from a 1-year-long ‘online news ethnography’ and 20 semi-structured interviews conducted in Italian local newsrooms. It explores journalists’ practices in their relations with sources throughout the entire process of news production: discovering, gathering, and writing news. The relation between institutional sources and journalists sees the former acquiring increasing importance for the latter. At the same time, journalists guarantee access also to a limited array of non-elite sources. The result is what can be called the ‘pluralization’ of primary definers: the extensive and unframed use of a wide range of sources (mainly institutional, but also non-elite). Whether this asymmetrical coverage reinforces or weakens conceptions of political, social, and cultural power should be investigated further, but the work of journalists as watchdogs appears to be in danger.

Keywords

Ethnography institutional sources news sources online news production primary definers

This study explores journalists’ work in their relations with sources. As Kleemans et al. (2017: 5) point out, research on the use of news sources usually draws a dichotomous distinction between elite and official/institutional sources (e.g. politicians, officials, governments), on one hand, and citizens and basically non-elite sources, on the other. The former are generally the sources connected to society’s central institutions, mainly political and economic power elites. They are, therefore, the elite members who cover political and government roles or represent preeminent interest groups (industry trade groups, business associations, labor unions). Non-elite sources are prospective ones that generally do not possess the authority to attract media attention (Manning, 2001: 150–151) and have little influence on policies and public debate (Kleemans et al., 2017: 471): in sum, they are not the power elite. Within this category of non-elite sources, this article considers mainly citizens, small associations, local single-issue groups, and larger groups formally or informally organized by social media. Moreover, it considers the group of non-elite sources particularly when they behave as active agents. It avoids discussion of their role when they are only eyewitnesses or vox pop (Kleemans et al., 2017).¹

As Soloski (1989) asserts, studying the news that journalists gather is important because ‘they determine not only what information is presented to the public, but what image of society is presented’ (p. 864). When a wider range of sources is considered (and therefore including non-elite ones), it is crucial to investigate whether ‘the virtual monopoly of elite sources on defining events is gradually broken, giving way to a more heterogeneous chorus of voices in public debate’ (Kleemans et al., 2017: 466). The contemporary fragmentation of media decisively enhances a flow of communication more complex than in the past. Accordingly, McNair (2006) speaks of cultural chaos and urges interpretation of new media dynamics in terms of both control and chaos, closeness and openness, exclusivity and accessibility. An environment such as this calls into question the most traditional views about the use of sources in making news. Diverse scholars (Ahva, 2012; Canter, 2013; Jönsson and Örnebring, 2011; Kleemans et al., 2017; Kurpius, 2002; Lewis, 2006; Reich, 2015; Robinson and DeShano, 2011; Thorbjørnsrud and Figenschou, 2016) have investigated whether and how journalists include, in their daily routines, non-elite sources rather than members of the elite (Berkowitz, 2009; Carlson, 2009; Manning, 2001).

The discussion of sources is contextualized here in the local journalism and online environment (Anderson, 2013; Franklin and Murphy, 1998; Franklin, 2006; Harnischmacher, 2015; Nielsen, 2015; Rouger, 2008). The setting of the research is Italian online local journalism.

Local journalism creates interesting areas of analysis for communication and journalism studies, although – as Jane Singer (2011) writes in her work on local news websites – ‘[i]nfluences on local news decisions have been less thoroughly explored than the negotiations among high-power elites at a national level’ (p. 627). Local journalism is important not only because it performs a crucial role by providing information about local public affairs, holding local elites accountable, and tying communities together but also because almost half of journalists work for media outlets that have a local or regional reach, as shown by the new wave of The Worlds of Journalism Study (2012–2016).² According to these data, in 17 Western European countries the percentage of journalists who work for local media is the highest (more than 45%) in Norway, Spain, Sweden, and Italy. Although this percentage is far from the US news market (where 87% of journalists work for local media outlets), it is nevertheless an indicator that proves the importance of local journalists in shaping professional roles and practices in different European journalism cultures. Today, studying the local news environment and its repercussion on journalism is even more interesting since the reconfiguration of the media market, the decline of newspapers, and the rise of digital media (Nielsen, 2015).

Nevertheless, in Italy, within the spectrum of social sciences, there is a small amount of research devoted to online local journalism although it is growing at an astonishing pace. The ANSO (National Association of Local Online Press) includes 155 websites and counts almost 15 million users every month overall (one-fourth of the entire population; see Mazzoleni et al., 2012).

By contrast, studying precisely the context of the Italian journalism that represents the best example of the (in)famous Mediterranean model as sketched by Hallin and Mancini (2004), especially in relation to the use of sources, is particularly significant. If the contemporary fragmentation of media is giving rise to a more heterogeneous chorus of voices in public debate even in a country where political parallelism is considered to be at its highest level – and therefore where the relation between journalists and institutional sources is very close – it urges further reassessment of assumptions on the relation between journalists and sources (Berkowitz, 2009; Carlson, 2009; Manning, 2001) and generally evaluations of journalism cultures (Hallin and Mancini, 2004; Hanitzsch, 2007).

Therefore, this article analyses whether institutional sources are reinforced or whether non-elite sources have become more prominent as sources in an environment like that of Italian journalism, where institutional sources usually predominate. More precisely, this article analyses the role of institutional and non-elite sources in terms of discovering (which sources reveal occurrences³ that eventually become news), gathering (which sources are asked to compose the news), and writing (do journalists engage in rephrasing work according to the kind of sources that they use). Therefore, it considers whether non-elite sources as active agents rather than vox pop are taken in consideration (see Kleemans et al., 2017; Thorbjørnsrud and Figenschou, 2016), whether journalists combine different kinds of sources in a single article or use the practice of a single-sourced item also for non-elite sources (O’Neill and O’Connor, 2008), and, finally, whether non-elite sources may be regarded as a challenge to institutional primary definitions.

The role of institutional sources

Official sources and experts connected to society’s central institutions have ever greater bargaining power in their negotiations with journalists to gain coverage (Ericson, 1999), especially in the local context (O’Neill and O’Connor, 2008). Reporters are therefore dependent on the regular supply of information furnished by institutional sources. In this regard, as Oscar Gandy (1981) maintains, the ability of the most powerful sources to provide ‘information subsidies’ – public relations (PR) material that fits the news – strengthens their influence. Lewis et al. (2008) show that 70 percent of the articles published in UK print journalism rely on press releases and press agency copy. Davies (2008) describes journalists as the processors of second-hand material generated by wire agencies and the PR industry.

In the Italian context, the sources located within a power structure, and which have both authority of knowledge and autonomy to speak about that knowledge, have traditionally tended to be the most influential on journalists’ work. In Italy, political journalism plays a central role in the journalistic culture, and news coverage focuses closely on politics, and particularly on politicians and political parties. Italian journalism usually assigns a central role to politicians’ statements: ‘Italian journalism is opinionated […] the opinions of political sources’ (Cornia, 2014: 54). A comparative content analysis involving 11 countries (Tiffen et al., 2014) shows that the Italian news media system has approximately 7 in 10 news stories where just one source is used; in regard to official sources in the news, ‘Italy has the single most dramatic result’ (Tiffen et al., 2014: 383), government sources enjoy a considerable majority and they are over-represented.

In their 1978 book Policing the Crisis, Stuart Hall et al. (1978) investigated the structurally limited organization of news production, asserting that ‘[t]he media do not themselves autonomously create news items; rather they are “cued in” to specific new topics by regular and reliable institutional sources’ (p. 57). They term these sources primary definers, in contrast to the news media, which they call secondary definers. The former are the actual definers of the epistemic reality which bestows a ‘patina of truth’ on their points of view (Reich, 2015: 776). Their interpretation has been variously criticized by different authors (Cottle, 2000; Miller, 1993; Schlesinger, 1990). The most consistent criticism concerns the existence of numerous potential sources that compete to access as well as to frame the news (Carlson, 2009: 535). Moreover, Schlesinger and Tumber (1994) criticize also the general passivity attributed to journalists. News production is a site of struggle between competing positions, where also journalists’ professional ideology plays a role. This source approach is more optimistic, and stresses that also subordinate political actors can influence the public debate (McNair, 2009: 59).

As Berkowitz (2009) explains, the relation between institutional sources and journalists may enable the former to shape the outcomes of specific issues and policies (Berkowitz, 2009: 107). When sources exert influence on journalistic practices, they are able to set the agenda, to put the issues of their interest among those debated by the news media. When high-prestige official sources appear in the news, the reporter/source relationship legitimates the power structure of society and those culturally authorized to speak about events (Berkowitz and Terkeurst, 1999; Manning, 2001; Soloski, 1989). The definitional control of meanings is therefore assigned to those in the highest echelons who are assumed to possess a better understanding of whatever is going on (Carlson, 2009: 532). Therefore, even in a context where a larger number of sources compete to gain access, if journalists are mainly regarded as using a narrow range of sources and favoring authoritative ones, the ‘primary defining thereby resurfaces in a different guise’ (Tiffen et al., 2014: 376).

The role of non-elite sources

The contemporary media environment, and particularly the context of online local news, raises the issue of the role of non-elite sources in news production practices (Ahva, 2012; Canter, 2013; Chen et al., 2017; Kleemans et al., 2017; Robinson and DeShano, 2011). These authors agree that non-elite sources can serve as complements to the production of news, but they are not substitutes for either institutional sources or journalism itself, because generally they are regarded as less credible and accessible (Reich, 2008, 2015).

Studies on what is variously called ‘citizen’, ‘collaborative’, ‘participatory’, ‘open’ or ‘public’ journalism state that the new media environment has changed the terms of access (Ahva, 2012; Ahva et al., 2015; Canter, 2013; Singer et al., 2011; Thurman, 2008). This does not mean that citizens, small associations, or some single-issue groups have acquired a new agenda-setting power; rather, it means that there are more possibilities for non-elite sources to gain access to news media (see Heikkilä and Kunelius, 1998; Singer et al., 2011).

In her research on a local UK newspaper, the Leicester Mercury that offered to readers the chance to send in their news through the partnership with Citizens’ Eye Community News Agency, Canter (2013) identifies a typology with which to describe the roles of non-elite sources and particularly citizens. These can operate as (1) sources contacted by journalists for information, content or comment on a story; (2) resources that create their own content, independently and directly, asking journalists to report it (this recalls the concept of ‘information subsidy’ introduced by Gandy (1981); and (3) collaborators working alongside a journalist to provide complementary coverage of a story arranged in advance (Canter, 2013: 1102). Even within this frame intended to enhance the use of non-elite sources, the result was that the Leicester Mercury chose to view the project as separate from, or irrelevant to, the work of professional journalists (Canter, 2013: 1105).

Reich (2015) – dealing mainly with the first type discussed by Canter and therefore investigating whether journalists contact non-elite sources – states that there are three factors that hinder reliance on non-elite sources: circumstantial (they are granted voice mainly during infrequent and unscheduled events), logistical (they entail higher costs in terms of journalists’ energy), and evaluative (the information that they provide is less newsworthy).

Thorbjørnsrud and Figenschou’s (2016) quantitative content analysis of mainstream media coverage of irregular migration in the United States confirms that access to the news is unequal and dependent on position and status. Nevertheless, Thorbjørnsrud and Figenschou found a group – what they call marginalized sources – more diverse and more visible than anticipated in the established literature (pp. 350–351). Applying the same research method on longitudinal data, Kleemans et al. (2017) find that non-elite sources have a greater presence than ever in the news in terms of frequency. At the same time, they are rarely active agents of relevant content; and elite sources, most notably political sources, ‘remain the most dominant sources in the news and consequently remain the primary definers in mediated public debate’ (Kleemans et al., 2017: 479).

Methodology and context of the research

This study presents the results of a two-step research design. First, a year-long ethnography (see Cottle, 2007; Paterson and Domingo, 2008; Ryfe, 2013; Usher, 2014) was conducted in the newsroom of Genova24.it, an online-only local newspaper. Second, 20 semi-structured interviews were carried out with editors-in-chief (8) or journalists (12) of 20 local online newsrooms in Italy. One local newsroom in each Italian region was selected. I therefore decided to interview one journalist in each of the most preeminent online local newsrooms (in terms of daily unique visitors) in each of the 20 Italian regions. Each newsroom was staffed by three to six journalists (except for a well-established online news website in Varese, northern part of Italy, which included more than 20 journalists). Those newsrooms were selected within the ANSO network, which includes journalistic enterprises homogeneous in terms of organization, revenues, as well as unique visitors. Those newsrooms have moved beyond the phase of start-ups. They are well established and recognized within each local media system. The interviews were conducted via Skype (Hanna, 2012). The ethnography was mainly exploratory and sought to understand the newsroom organization and journalists’ practices. The focus on sources was developed gradually. The ethnography took place in the North of Italy, precisely in Genoa, which is the sixth largest Italian city, with 600,000 inhabitants and the first in Italy for newspaper circulation (according to 2012 data provided by Federazione Italiana Editori Giornali (FIEG), every day 137 daily newspapers per 1000 inhabitants are sold in the city, the national average being 79). Like many other newsrooms involved in this research, Genova24.it is the first online-only newspaper in the city. At the time of the research, the Genoa media landscape comprised three daily newspapers, several national newspapers had a local newsroom and published around six pages about the city, and four local television channels provided daily TV news broadcasts and two radio stations. The newspapers, television channels, and radio stations had also online counterparts.

The research began following the process whereby the publisher hired two journalists and included myself as participant-observer. I attended their (and my) training period. The publisher knew that I was a researcher, but he always related to me as a mix between an ‘expert’ which whom he could share decisions and an ‘external’ collaborator who would help run the newspaper. The other journalists of Genova24.it knew that I was a researcher. My role prompted the other journalists to give accounts of their work (and often to help me do the work assigned to me).

My position was mainly that of a complete participant-observer. I spent most of my time observing the journalists’ work, but often the editor-in-chief or journalists gave me minor roles in filming, editing, or writing news items. The length of the period spent on the observation, the mix between observation and participation, and the aim of the research (to understand practices inside and outside the newsroom) overall guaranteed the good quality of the data collected. I spent 3 days a week in the newsroom (usually Monday and Friday and during weekends). I usually took observation notes via computer (several computers were at the journalists’ disposal and writing at the computer did not affect the quality of the data collected in each setting observed). Observation notes were taken also vocally by mobile phone. Those notes were written and systematized whenever possible.

Outside the newsroom, it was not always possible to reveal my position as a researcher to all the participants, especially during major events. Ethical implications were taken into account. Four factors guaranteed the ethical validity of my participant observation: (1) the places where the observation took place were publicly accessible; (2) any participation of mine avoided harm to, and fully respected, the rights of the participants; (3) my main interest was practices more than actors; (4) this article focuses on the work of journalists who knew my position as a researcher (see O’Reilly, 2009).

This earlier phase of the research ended at the beginning of 2013. Then, I analyzed my observation field notes to highlight the recurrent practices at Genova24.it. I sorted those notes in terms of sources and production phases. Those notes helped to structure the template of the semi-structured interview with which I interviewed the 20 Italian local journalists. This procedure was useful for verifying the extent to which the results of the ethnography were common to Italian local online newsrooms. I opted for semi-structured interviews for two main reasons: (1) they were considered better able to acquire nuanced and new accounts that were not previously noticed; (2) it would have been harder both to estimate the population and to obtain the representative sample.

The second phase of the research project started some months after the end of the ethnography. The last interview was conducted 1 year later (July 2014). The outline of the semi-structured interview focused mainly on the relation between journalists and sources, both when journalists were outside (e.g. at press conferences) and at their desks. The starting point of the interview with the journalists was a general question about their daily routines. Then, I asked them to detail which sources they usually used and for each of them how they dealt with it in terms of both practices (detailing the discovering, gathering and writing phases) and their assessments.

Each interview was transcribed, analyzed according the main topics of the template, and compared to the results obtained by the participant observation. The answers were sorted mainly according to sources (institutional and non-elite sources), production phases, and general organization of the work. To gain easier access, I guaranteed to my interviewees that they would remain anonymous. Notes on interviews were distinguished by a number and the labels ‘editor-in-chief’ or ‘journalist’.

Discovering, gathering, and writing news

Overall organization

To convey the workflow in the newsroom, a description of its organization is necessary. At Genova24.it, five journalists worked shifts of 7 hours. The first began at 7.45 a.m.; the last one finished at 8 p.m. Those who worked the central shift (from 9 to 11 a.m.) covered also external press conferences or un(scheduled) events. Only-online local newspapers in Italy were generally produced by no more than six journalists (editor-in-chief included). Usually, the work organization was similar to Genova24.it and it aimed to cover 12 hours on average:

One journalist works with me during the morning, the other two work in the afternoon. Articles and videos from collaborators are usually planned in advance. (Editor-in-chief, 1)

To identify what happened in the different phases of news production (discovering, gathering, and writing), it is important to distinguish the work that the journalists did at their desks from the work that they performed when they were out of the newsroom covering events. In each newsroom observed, some journalists worked mostly at their desks, while others were also in charge of covering external events. While some discovering of occurrences to follow could occasionally happen during the work that journalists performed outside the newsrooms, the decisions about which sources to gather and how to write the piece of news were mainly taken within the newsroom.

Discovering phase

The journalists who remained at their desks cognized a large amount of happenings from which they discovered topics and gathered sources that eventually became news. At their desks, they received wire agency reports (Ansa and Adnkronos – Czarniawska, 2012) and press releases (from institutions, political parties, enterprises, associations). Press releases often included announcements of press conferences that the newsroom decided whether or not to follow. Press releases from non-elite sources underwent more selective screening and they were rarely regarded as valuable. When they seemed to reveal some interesting topics, they were certainly used at the discovering phase, but some other institutional sources were contacted to gain further information:

We received several e-mails or good (e.g. well manufactured) press releases from common citizens or associations. The e-mails usually told stories about malpractices, or something that did not work properly. On those occasions, we contacted public officials to have some more information, explanations or different frames. Simultaneously we also started to set value on some of those organizations. (Journalist, 9)

Journalists could also receive messages (normally via Twitter or Facebook) that suggested events to cover. Particularly when the flow of news appeared to be slow, journalists also checked the social media timelines to discover interesting topics.

Occasionally, also journalists working outside newsrooms could discover other topics, mainly by receiving messages or leaks from persons occupying informed but not prominent roles – politicians’ assistants or other kinds of spokespersons – as well as mere participants in the event that they were covering.

In sum, journalists generally discovered topics planned in advance by others. They were used to manage the unexpected in forms of wire agency reports and non-breaking news suggested by some minor institutional sources or non-elite sources when they covered events outside the newsroom.

Gathering phase

A fruitful way to understand what kinds of sources journalists select is to analyze the procedure through which journalists dealt with the announcements of press conferences.

The press conferences to attend were scheduled daily. PR officers were usually able to plan their events in order to facilitate attendance by journalists. It rarely happened that two scheduled events usually regarded as highly important in terms of newsworthiness were organized at the same time. Every day, the newsroom decided what events should be covered. Generally, the criteria used to select the press conferences were the traditional professional values (Brighton and Foy, 2008; Galtung and Ruge, 1965).

There were five main types of event usually attended by the online journalists. The following typology is based on a combination of perceived importance by journalists and pressures to publish rapidly: (A) political/institutional events – in particular when they foresaw the presence of the president of the regional council or the mayor of the city; (B) conferences or events organized by political parties; (C) events organized by the police force; (D) forms of industrial action organized by trade unions; and (E) a group of different events (from public demonstrations to book presentations) organized by non-elite actors, and among which the journalists selected in accordance with the agenda established by the newsroom and the number of scheduled events.

According to the definitions discussed in the first paragraph, ‘A’ to ‘D’ are sources that have to be regarded as institutional, and they usually made use of PR offices. Trade unions – which usually bring alternative or oppositional views – are also very well institutionalized and professionalized sources and are regarded as such by journalists. During the observation, those four sources were described by the journalists as the most important, reliable, and valuable in terms of news coverage. They revealed topics considered important to follow (discovering) and they were usually gathered.

If the selection of those sources is less critical and reflects the traditional habits of Italian journalism, the selection of the last one is more interesting in terms of non-elite sources. The fifth category includes non-elite sources that did not usually make use of professional public relation offices. Their initiatives ranged from showing evidence of government malpractices (e.g. public service transportation failures or road still impassable because of a landslide or flooding) to reporting good news (e.g. associations in which Italians and immigrants cooperate, fundraising for a sick child).

How some of those non-elite sources became newsworthy for the journalists and how they were able to become reliable and gain a frequent access to media can be explained by looking at the work that the journalists performed at their desks:

We were both intrigued and fascinated by ordinary people running some kind of organization, who spent their leisure time boosting different initiatives and who, for whatever reason, also started sending us well-packaged press releases, photos of their initiatives. We started to cover those initiatives. We have space on our website, and they certainly help to gain new users. And those stories are often interesting. (Editor-in-chief, 5)

With the passage of time, journalists were able to identify some non-elite sources – ones normally ignored by the legacy media – able to furnish newsworthy information. At the beginning, they provided interesting topics at the discovering phase; in general, those topics were further investigated using other sources as well. But they were also increasingly able to provide an ‘information subsidy’ (Gandy, 1981) by being published without looking for other sources. In the latter case, those sources therefore acquired significance throughout the entire process of production – discovering, gathering, and often writing:

[…] we receive very well packaged stories from some associations, both good or bad news, about abandoned dogs or Tunisian children playing with Italians, and we’ve started to pay growing attention to the associations or citizens that have provided us with those stories. (Editor-in-chief, 6)

In my lists [the reference here is to Twitter] I have several associations which organize events that are newsworthy according to the criteria we use. With some of them we have established an enduring and profitable relationship. (Journalist, 2)

The criteria we use meant mainly traditional news values like familiarity, personalization, and conflict balanced with features adapted to circulate among social media (e.g. news stories that, according the journalists’ experience, were shared and liked by users). Using Canter’s typology, when non-elite sources were effective in acting as resources – that is, were able to suggest interesting stories provided in valuable journalistic form – they eventually became also sources contacted directly by journalists themselves for information, content, or comment on a story.

Writing

Given the overall organization, at their desk journalists did not only cognize happenings to select, but they also received files from their colleagues who were attending press conferences. In fact, when the journalists covered external events, they usually produced audio files, photos, and videos that they sent to their colleagues working at their desks.

Before press conferences, the principal speakers gave interviews to television reporters. Only later did they hold extended press conferences full of details with press journalists. The online journalists usually filmed interviews by camera and recorded them by smartphone and then sent the files to the newsroom. Consequently, the news – packaged with the photographs also sent to the newsroom – was usually online before a press conference ended. Those were considered to be the most important files – in terms of pressure to publish:

We don’t use wire agencies. They’re expensive, you know. Sometime some colleagues of ours give us their passwords, but you know, they change frequently and it is not rare for us to work without them. Anyway, when I’m at my desk I have to put any event my colleague is covering outside on the website as soon as possible. If there aren’t any events, I usually use press releases. (Journalist, 4)

In the writing phase, their words (interviews as well as their press releases) were rarely re-phrased and their points of view rarely challenged.

‘I have to put any event’ meant transcribing the words used by the interviewees and packaging the stories. This organizational routine further strengthened the influence of sources and prevented any additional reframing work by journalists (e.g. journalists did not look for alternative sources or points of view to counterbalance those perspectives shaped by institutional sources). The sense of the extract below was repeated several times during the semi-structured interviews conducted for this research:

When I am at government press conferences, everything is so smooth. Issues and themes are widely anticipated. To be honest, we could even do the articles without attending the press conferences. Journalists at their desks just have to write the audio file that I attach them. When some Carabinieri or Polizia press conferences occur, things are different. They usually provide full details. In those cases it’s necessary to phone your journalist and provide some other details. Yes, in those cases, it is a bit more satisfying; you’re not just a sort of microphone. (Editor-in-chief, 1; emphasis added)

In terms of writing, the same microphone treatment was reserved also to stories produced by the wire agencies, which were usually copied and pasted after some minor rephrasing, as well as press releases from political parties and institutions, which were usually selected, copied, and pasted with some minor rephrasing. All those actors usually received coverage in one single-sourced item:

We usually copy and paste press releases, and frankly it sucks. It’s the level zero of being a journalist. Luckily enough, at least from an ethical point of view, in the system (i.e. the System Management Controller) the tag ‘press release’ has been included. This gives just a little bit more transparency. It should sound an ‘alarm bell’ for readers: ‘Beware this is a press release, it includes partisan content’. (Journalist, 2)

In general, the ‘press release’ tag was not common. This means that some institutional sources (the ones listed above from ‘A’ to ‘D’: local governments, political parties, police force, and trade unions) were usually the main sources of a ‘discovered’ occurrence in the form of both press releases and conferences. Nevertheless, the same procedure applied also some non-elite sources.

Determinants of news production

Various factors determined the kind of news production described thus far, which combined greater reliance on institutional sources throughout the entire production process (discovering, gathering, and writing phases) with a propensity to give voice to non-elite sources. The majority of studies on the making of online news (whether focused on local, regional or national news websites) cite factors such as the absence of a deadline and the abundance of space available (see, among others, Paterson and Domingo, 2008; Ryfe, 2013; Usher, 2104). In the context analyzed here, the major factor was the commercial need to have more and more users and viewed pages. This was pursued in two ways: speed and increasing the number of items covered. The former strengthened the institutional sources’ influence; the latter gave voice to non-elite sources.

The acceleration of each phase of the production process in order to meet the search engine optimization criteria (Dick, 2011; Tandoc, 2014)⁴ was frequently mentioned:

Copying and pasting press releases, or typing up a press conference as fast as possible and transforming it into a news item, are our most common everyday practices. (Journalist, 8)

Two methods were most frequently utilized to accelerate the phase of writing a news story. The first was the avoidance of opinions. By ‘avoiding opinions’ was essentially meant reporting the words of sources with the briefest reconstruction of the context. The second method was, whenever possible, to write items using one source:

Political pressures are everywhere, but they are more influential elsewhere. In the press you have to force frames or even express implicit or explicit opinions. Online you just have to give coverage. As soon as possible. As reliably as possible. And in the least opinionated way possible. (Editor-in-chief, 3)

At the same time, what the management and some journalists considered to be a ‘fact-oriented’ practice was instead a ‘source-oriented’ one. The editorial stance of the kind of news website analyzed did not comprise fact-checking and several other features usually regarded as essential in the journalistic profession.

For these reasons, institutional sources certainly increased their importance in terms of news gathering (there was enough space to transform their initiatives into news) and writing (their point of views expressed in interviews or press releases were not challenged but were usually reported only as quotes). This process was so smooth and routinized that it is even difficult to distinguish the discovering from the gathering phase. Institutional sources usually provided well-packaged items more than topics to investigate further.

The factor that explains the establishment of some non-elite sources instead related to the need to increase the number of news items (and consequently the number of users). In the field of local journalism, where the number of users is lower than that of national websites, non-elite sources can bring a relatively large user base. They have personal networks which they manage through blogs, Facebook, and Twitter accounts. They can comment and invite readers to click and access the website, post articles, and thereby increase the website’s visibility and improve the results of the search engine. This role, jointly with the worthiness and the quality of the stories that they provide, transforms them into influential sources in terms of newsmaking practice (e.g. their press releases or interviews were gathered by the journalists and often published without major framing and rephrasing work; moreover, they were also contacted by the journalists to obtain their comments or views on the range of topics that they dealt with):

At the very beginning it was difficult […] our Google analytics was also depressing. Something changed when we began to follow small civic associations and hyperlocal news. Our sources were so keen to spread articles on themselves via social media. You know, for a website like ours, 200 users for one article, 350 for another, etc. etc. make the difference. (Journalist, 8)

I usually ask myself and the journalists who work with me to be faster than our competitors, but also to be cleverer. There are dozens of sources out there, associations, citizens that do so many things and have so many stories to tell, even stories that usually work online and fit the social media needs perfectly. (Editor-in-chief, 4)

The result was that a range of non-elite sources had increased in importance in terms of discovering (they suggested diverse stories to the journalists, who whenever possible tried to investigate them), gathering (some of them were increasingly regarded as reliable and therefore collected), and writing (as for the official sources, the journalists wrote up their press releases or interviews with minor rephrasing work).

The main differences between institutional and the non-elite sources were as follows: (1) in the discovering phase, coverage was always guaranteed for the former, while it was guaranteed to only a limited range of non-elite sources, and especially the ones that had proved to be reliable and well received in terms of analytics; (2) at the gathering level, when the journalists decided to follow occurrences suggested by the latter, they often gathered institutional sources as well; (3) at the level of writing, non-elite sources were often covered with some contextualization work being done; they were not usually reported with direct quotes.

Conclusion

This article has discussed the role of sources in online local journalism in Italy. The relation between sources linked to society’s central institutions and journalists sees the former acquiring increasing importance for the latter. The structured over-accessing to the media of those in powerful and privileged institutional positions therefore appears further confirmed (Ericson, 1999; Hall et al., 1978: 58). The reporter’s routinization of journalistic work contributes to the prioritization of known safe sources, and the more professional and authoritative the sources are, the more likely they are to have an influential voice (Berkowitz, 2009). Those institutional sources that are usually seen as competitors in gaining access to and framing the news (Schlesinger and Tumber, 1994) in this environment gain access in the form of a single-sourced item (e.g. with reference to the single news story, their point of view is not challenged either by other sources or journalists themselves).

This study has also argued that a limited array of non-elite sources may influence journalists’ work in terms of discovering, gathering, and writing news, often in a single-sourced item. In the hybrid media system (Chadwick, 2013), the abundance of space and the need for fresh news stories has transformed the competition among sources (Schlesinger and Tumber, 1994) into what can be called the ‘pluralization’ of primary definers: the extensive and unframed use of a wider range of sources (mainly institutional, but also non-elite). This situation resembles the concept of cultural chaos that McNair (2006) investigated in the context of global journalism. This process does not mean that every source has the same power to influence journalists. It means that institutional sources, even when they compete with each other, have systematic access to the news media. At the same time, the chances of minor (in terms of power and influence), non-elite, and non-professionalized sources becoming reliable are greater than in the past or in different media environments. The result is that those websites are full of different and contradictory point of views, frequently expressed via single-sourced items.

The drivers of this process operate mainly at the organizational and economic levels. The interests of organizational and commercial news media therefore enhance the dominance of institutional sources as well as what can be identified as minimalist forms of participation (Carpentier, 2011) – forms of participation that generally work in the interests of the news media. Nonetheless, those forms of minimalist participation increase the visibility of sources that are outside the society’s central institutions and often introduce alternative issues and frames. To put it broadly, and again following Carpentier’s reasoning, those forms of participation extend news coverage to actors outside the realm of institutionalized politics (Carpentier, 2011: 39). Nevertheless, those forms of coverage are market-driven rather than civic-oriented (Banks and Humphreys, 2008), and paradoxically, they can sometimes be considered forms of exploitation to obtain free content (Ornebring, 2008).

In conclusion, the research question of the relationship between journalists and their sources is generally important because it is a relationship that concerns the role of journalism in democratic maintenance. Democratic normative theory underlines that the media should foster a wide-ranging debate among diverse kinds of individuals and organizations. But they should also function as watchdogs keeping power holders in check (Benson, 2009; Entman, 2006). In the context discussed here, it is hard to determine whether this asymmetrical coverage reinforces or weakens conceptions of political, social, and cultural power. This point needs further analysis. Given the consolidation of institutional sources and the fact that other sources are increasingly regarded as reliable, the work of journalists as watchdogs appears to be in danger. In regard to both kinds of source, journalists’ procedures support a journalism of attribution rather than a journalism of independent verification; journalists disseminate the perspectives of their sources rather than providing more accurate facets of reality. Nonetheless, recognizing non-elite players as news sources can mark the entrance of new topics and views. News is therefore still an instrument deployed by powerful elites, but it is also a site where the image of the society presented by those news media includes increasingly and routinely also voices outside the main power structures of society. Contrary to the conclusions of Kleemans et al. (2017), the same journalistic routines that reaffirm the traditional monopoly of elite sources are also allowing access to non-elite sources as active agent and not merely as vox pop. Nonetheless, most of the results of this kind of news production should be assessed according to the fragmentation of news consumption habits.

Two limitations of the study should be mentioned. First, it did not critically analyze the range of non-elite sources that were able to gain access: their expertise and expectations, their trajectories, as well as how they spent the visibility obtained – and most importantly, the topics and news that they promoted. Second, between institutional and non-elite sources (as they have been conceived here), there lies a range of actors that need to be addressed. The reference is to what other scholars call civil society sources (Kleemans et al., 2017: 475; Tiffen et al., 2014: 12): interest groups, international corporations that operate also locally, small businesses, external experts. Both the studies cited include also labor unions in this category, although this article analyses them as institutional, because both during observation and interviews unions (as well as trade groups) appeared to be taken for granted by journalists. This study cannot explain how sources like labor unions – generally challenging to institutional sources – became established.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author wish truthfully to thank the three anonymous referees for their helpful remarks.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author biography

Sergio Splendore is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Social and Political Sciences of the University of Milan (Italy) His research centers on media sociology with a deep interest in journalism studies and media production. He has authored or co-authored papers in these areas for International Journal of Public Opinion Research; New Media & Society; Media, Culture and Society; Journalism Practice; and Sociology Compass.

References

Ahva

(2012) Public journalism and professional reflexivity. Journalism 14(6): 790–806.

Ahva

Heikkilä

Kunelius

(2015) Civic participation and vocabularies for democratic journalism. In: Atton

(ed.) The Routledge Companion to Alternative and Community Media. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 155–164.

Anderson

(2013) Rebuilding the News: Metropolitan Journalism in the Digital Age. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.

Banks

Humphreys

(2008) The labour of user co-creators. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 14(4): 401–418.

Benson

(2009) What makes news more multiperspectival? A field analysis. Poetics 37(5–6): 402–418.

Berkowitz

Terkeurst

(1999) Community as interpretive community: Rethinking the journalist-source relationship. Journal of Communication 49(3): 125–136.

Berkowitz

(2009) Reporters and their sources. In: Wahl-Jorgensen

Hanitzsch

(eds) The Handbook of Journalism Studies. New York: Routledge, pp. 102–115.

Brighton

Foy

(2008) News Values. London: SAGE.

Canter

(2013) The source, the resource and the collaborator: The role of citizen journalism in local UK newspapers. Journalism 14(8): 1091–1109.

10.

Carlson

(2009) Duelling, dancing, or dominating? Journalists and their sources. Sociology Compass 3(4): 526–541.

11.

Carpentier

(2011) Media and Participation: A Site of Ideological-democratic Struggle. Chicago, IL: Intellect.

12.

Chadwick

(2013) The Hybrid Media System: Politics and Power. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

13.

Chen

NTN

Ognyanova

Zhang

, et al. (2017) Causing ripples in local power relations. Journalism Studies 18: 710–731.

14.

Cornia

(2014) Will Italian political journalism ever change? In: Kuhn

Nielsen

(eds) Political Journalism in Transition: Western Europe in a Comparative Perspective. London: Tauris, pp. 47–73.

15.

Cottle

(2000) Rethinking news access. Journalism Studies 1(3): 427–448.

16.

Cottle

(2007) Ethnography and news production: New(s) development in the field. Sociology Compass 1(1): 1–16.

17.

Czarniawska

(2012) Cyberfactories: How News Agencies Produce News. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.

18.

Davies

(2008) Flat Earth News. London: Chatto & Windus.

19.

Dick

(2011) Search engine optimisation in UK news production. Journalism Practice 5(4): 462–477.

20.

Entman

(2006) Punctuating the homogeneity of institutionalized news. Political Communication 23(2): 215–224.

21.

Ericson

(1999) How journalists visualize fact. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 56(1): 293–297.

22.

Franklin

Murphy

(eds) (1998) Making the Local News: Local Journalism in Context. London: Routledge.

23.

Franklin

(ed.) (2006) Local Journalism and Local Media: Making the Local News. London: Routledge.

24.

Galtung

Ruge

(1965) The structure of foreign news: The presentation of the Congo, Cuba and Cyprus crises in four Norwegian newspapers. Journal of Peace Research 2(1): 64–90.

25.

Gandy

(1981) Beyond Agenda Setting: Information Subsidiaries and Public Policy. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

26.

Hall

Crichtner

Jefferson

, et al. (1978) Policing the Crisis: Mugging, the State and Law and Order. London: Macmillan.

27.

Hallin

Mancini

(2004) Comparing Media Systems: Three Models of Media and Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

28.

Hanitzsch

(2007) Deconstructing journalism culture: Toward a universal theory. Communication Theory 17(4): 367–385.

29.

Hanna

(2012) Using Internet technologies (such as Skype) as a research media: A research note. Qualitative Research 12(2): 239–242.

30.

Harnischmacher

(2015) Journalism after all: Professionalism, content and performance – A comparison between alternative news websites and websites of traditional newspapers in German local media markets. Journalism 16(8): 1062–1084.

31.

Heikkilä

Kunelius

(1998) Access, dialogue, deliberation: Experimenting with three concepts of journalism criticism. Nordicom Review 19(1): 71–84.

32.

Jönsson

Örnebring

(2011) User-generated content and the news: Empowerment of citizens or interactive illusion? Journalism Practice 5(2): 127–144.

33.

Kleemans

Schaap

Hermans

(2017) Citizen sources in the news: Above and beyond the vox pop? Journalism 18(4): 464–481.

34.

Kurpius

(2002) Sources and civic journalism: Changing patterns of reporting? Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 79(4): 853–866.

35.

Lewis

(2006) News and the empowerment of citizens. European Journal of Cultural Studies 9(3): 303–319.

36.

Lewis

Williams

Franklin

(2008) A compromised fourth estate? UK new journalism, public relations and news sources. Journalism Studies 9(1)–: 120.

37.

McNair

(2006) Cultural Chaos: Journalism, News and Power in a Globalised World. London: Routledge.

38.

McNair

(2009) News and Journalism in UK, 5th edn. London: Routledge.

39.

Manning

(2001) News and News Sources: A Critical Introduction. London: SAGE.

40.

Mazzoleni

Vigevani

Splendore

(2012) Mapping Digital Media: Italy (a report by the Open Society Foundations). London: Open Society Foundation.

41.

Miller

(1993) Official sources and ‘primary definition’: The case of Northern Ireland. Media, Culture & Society 15(3): 385–406.

42.

Molotch

Lester

(1974) News as purposive behavior: On the strategic use of routine events, accidents, and scandals. American Sociological Review 39(1): 101–112.

43.

Nielsen

(ed.) (2015) Local Journalism: The Decline of Newspapers and the Rise of Digital Media. London: Tauris.

44.

O’Neill

O’Connor

(2008) The passive journalist: How sources dominate local news. Journalism Practice 2(3): 487–500.

45.

O’Reilly

(2009) Key Concepts in Ethnography. London: SAGE.

46.

Ornebring

(2008) The consumer as producer – Of what? Journalism Studies 9(5): 771–785.

47.

Paterson

Domingo

(eds) (2008) Making Online News: The Ethnography of New Media Production. New York: Peter Lang.

48.

Reich

(2008) How citizens create news stories. Journalism Studies 9(5): 739–758.

49.

Reich

(2015) Why citizens still rarely serves as news sources: Validating a tripartite model of circumstantial, logistical, and evaluative barriers. International Journal of Communication 9: 773–795.

50.

Robinson

DeShano

(2011) Citizen journalism as third places? What makes people contribute information online (or not). Journalism Studies 12(5): 1–16.

51.

Rouger

(2008) What future for local news? The crisis of French regional daily press. Journalism Studies 9(5): 822–831.

52.

Ryfe

(2013) Can Journalism Survive? An inside Look at American Newsrooms. Cambridge: Polity Press.

53.

Schlesinger

(1990) Rethinking the sociology of journalism. In: Ferguson

(ed.) Public Communication: The New Imperatives: Future Directions for Media Research. London: SAGE, pp. 61–83.

54.

Schlesinger

Tumber

(1994) Reporting Crime: The Media Politics of Criminal Justice. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

55.

Singer

(2011) Community service. Journalism Practice 5(6): 623–642.

56.

Singer

Hermida

Domingo

, et al. (2011) Participatory Journalism: Guarding Open Gates at Online Newspapers. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.

57.

Soloski

(1989) Sources and channels of local news. Journalism Quarterly 66: 864–870.

58.

Tandoc

Jr (2014) Journalism is twerking? How web analytics is changing the process of gatekeeping. New Media & Society 16(4): 559–575.

59.

Thorbjørnsrud

Figenschou

(2016) Do marginalized sources matter? Journalism Studies 17(3): 337–355.

60.

Thurman

(2008) Forms for citizen journalists? Adoption of user-generated content initiatives by online news media. New Media & Society 10(1): 139–157.

61.

Tiffen

Jones

Rowe

, et al. (2014) Sources in the news. Journalism Studies 15(3): 374–391.

62.

Usher

(2014) Making News at the New York Times. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.