A future of journalism beyond the objectivity–dialogue divide? Hybridity in the news of entrepreneurial journalists

Hybridity in journalism studies

The contemporary digital media ecology has developed into what Chadwick (2013) labelled a hybrid media system in which content is collectively produced, distributed and interpreted by journalists, citizens, bloggers, activists and other actors. Hybridity is an anticipatory concept that makes sense of the present in certain ways and orients the field of media towards its futures (Poli, 2010). The farther ahead journalism moves into the digital future, the more profoundly can hybridity be expected to manifest in journalism. Hybridity increasingly shapes journalism not only at the ‘peripheries’ of journalism, such as blogs or infotainment (Loosen, 2015), but also at its ‘core’, such as daily news.

Although the concept of hybridity has become established in journalism studies, its implications remain under-explored (Baym, 2017). Studies on hybridity tend to adopt a systemic view (Mellado et al., 2017), analyse hybrid values and conceptions (Ruotsalainen and Villi, 2018; Vos and Singer, 2016) or focus on hybrid ‘soft news’, such as celebrity journalism (Van Den Bulck et al., 2017). Empirical studies on hybrid ‘hard news’ are scarce (see Bødker, 2017; Hamilton, 2016). Witschge et al. (2019) criticised the concept of hybridity as a shortcut to denoting everything complex in the field of journalism as hybrid. They emphasised the need for journalism studies to describe complexity in non-binary ways instead of just naming fluid phenomena as hybrid, in effect reducing them into binary oppositions, like professional/amateur. As a solution, Witschge et al. (2019) offered a change of perspective from pre-fixed binary concepts to fluctuating situations and interactions within socio-technical networks. Following Latour (1993), hybridity can thus be conceived as a feature of socio-technical/material networks through which complex patterns – hybrids – are formed and reformed.

One way to situate hybridity in broader contexts and specify it as an anticipatory concept is to look at its socio-technical drivers. At least three such drivers can be identified in literature. First, hybridity is driven by new production and distribution platforms of news (Chadwick, 2013). Platforms bring forth a diverse set of producers with increasingly pluralised voices (Bødker, 2017; Ottovordemgentschenfelde, 2017). The variation that accompanies hybridity can help journalism adapt to the new platforms and the new practices, values and forms of interaction related to them (Mast et al., 2017).

Second, hybridity is driven by journalists’ need to connect and cooperate with their audiences. At its core, this need stems from the rise of interest-based networks of audience communities (Malmelin and Villi, 2016) on social media. Audiences are increasingly choosing content based on personal interest, importance and relevance (Ottovordemgentschenfelde, 2017). By tailoring hybrid news language to specific audiences, journalists seek to establish an emotional and engaged connection with them, to become a part of audiences’ peer networks and to address the interests of niche audiences (Baym, 2017; Bødker, 2017; Witschge et al., 2019).

Third, with hybridity, journalists seek to respond to the perceived limitations of legacy journalism in the digital era. Hybrid norms can allow the challenging of the powerful more boldly than legacy journalism often feels comfortable with (Bødker, 2017; Hamilton, 2016; Hutchby, 2017). Hybridity also covers the linguistic devices with which journalists make sense of events. By infusing journalism with the social, the personal and the literary, hybridity frees journalism from primarily describing the concrete, the particular and the denotative – to explore different connotations, values, relationships and concepts of the increasingly complex socio-political world (Baym, 2017).

Hybridity at the intersection of public and private

While going beyond binary concepts in theorising hybridity is a worthwhile pursuit, such concepts still offer a heuristic with which to make sense of hybridity and the complexity of contemporary journalism (Witschge et al., 2019). The three drivers of hybridity in the previous section describe in different ways how hybridity bridges the private–public binary. The public sphere refers to a reasoned discussion and civic involvement in representative democracy, while the private sphere is a space – physical or virtual – where the potentials of one’s being may be freely expressed and counter publics articulated (Papacharissi, 2010: 132).Thus, in the digital, hybrid media system, audiences consume and respond to the (public) news in a private, personal and affective manner: constructing reflexive identities, expressing themselves and seeking human connection (Kreiss, 2018).

Issues previously deemed as private, such as sexual identity, are increasingly understood as having public relevance (Hanitzsch and Vos, 2018). Furthermore, audiences are increasingly contributing to the news as sources of revenue and algorithmic insights about audience needs, identities, values and tastes (Anderson, 2011; Lehtisaari et al., 2018). Newsrooms have responded by employing subjective communicative registers that convey the private states of a journalist – opinions, emotions or views – such as writing about a ‘tragic accident’ instead of just an ‘accident’ (Welbers and Opgenhaffen, 2018: 7).

The eroding public–private divide in journalism is shifting the focus from a universal public space to many different public spheres that are not only rational but also affective (Papacharissi, 2015). This change necessitates increased diversity in news media. Fraser (1992) warns that if journalism is to address audiences in a multicultural society, it must be able to speak in the authentic voices of different audiences. Many entrepreneurial news organisations already seek journalists with aesthetic sensibilities which align with the tastes of younger audiences and correspond with personal and emotional news discourses (Stringer, 2018).

Digitally enhanced individuals articulate issues within their personal interests and tastes to be addressed publicly, fostering new political imaginations (Splichal, 2018). Papacharissi (2010: 19, 131) observes how the digitally enabled citizen is developing new civic habits: adopting a personally devised definition of the political, becoming politically emancipated through private reflection and expression, and developing new, affective civic vernaculars that mix private and public registers of communication. In journalism, such civic vernaculars can be found in the hybrids of the ideal and practices of journalistic objectivity and dialogue.

Hybrid journalism as the mixing of dialogue and objectivity

Within journalism, hybridity can be understood as the blending of the ‘competing’ journalistic ideals of dialogue and objectivity (Soffer, 2009). These two ideals have traditionally been regarded as mutually exclusive because they belong to distinct journalistic cultures with differing views about the epistemology, reporting styles and functions of journalism (Soffer, 2009). However, the distinction is beginning to blur. Hornmoen and Steensen (2014) note that digital journalism blends objectivity with emerging dialogical relationships, such as between text and audiences, journalist and audiences, and text and other texts. This is especially due to the blurring of borders between the public and private spheres in digital networks (Hornmoen and Steensen, 2014). In digital networks and related publics, the ideal often is the personal, authentic and private connections between individuals (Papacharissi, 2010). Dialogue fosters personal connections between texts, journalists and audiences (Hornmoen and Steensen, 2014), whereas objectivity belongs more to the impersonal public world (Kunelius, 2001).

The ideal of objectivity is to provide a balanced and impartial public presentation of the world – to ensure that different interests in society are covered equally (Raeijmaekers and Maeseele, 2017). An ‘objective’ reporter is seen as mediating a factual, single public reality on the basis of impartial observation and gathering of facts (Soffer, 2009). Fact-based reporting is believed to foster a truthful social and political consensus (Raeijmaekers and Maeseele, 2017). The dialogic ideal, in turn, is to present a pluralist polyphony of views of the world, encourage different interpretations instead of a unified message, stimulate non-consensual public discourse and inspire a communal political life (Soffer, 2009). Dialogic journalism speaks from an ‘I–thou’ relationship between private, subjective persons (Hornmoen and Steensen, 2014). A dialogic production of knowledge is a constantly evolving and interactive process including an independent assessment of issues and expert claims by journalists (Marchionni, 2013; Soffer, 2009). From a dialogic perspective, journalism is not seen as the mere transmission of information but as a ritualistic coming together, a creation and maintenance of meaningful cultural worlds and shared interpersonal meanings within society (Carey, 1992).

An ‘objective’ style refers to a distanced and impersonal voice describing facts and presenting supporting evidence including quotes from expert sources (Tuchman, 1972). The form of ‘objective’ news is structured in the inverted pyramid formula (Tuchman, 1972), which is aimed at providing exact information in a concise manner (Chalaby, 1996). By contrast, in terms of style, dialogic news texts are characterised by polyphonic registers (intertextuality) and an informal, conversational tone reflecting the interpersonality between journalists and audiences (Bakhtin, 1981; Hornmoen and Steensen, 2014). The purpose of a dialogic style is to make the tone of journalism more accessible, varied and entangled with the aesthetic and intellectual tastes of private individuals (Marchionni, 2013). This is reflected in the form of dialogic journalism, which is structured around the interpretations and impressions of a journalist rather than the formal inverted pyramid (Chalaby, 1996).

Despite its status as a foundational premise of journalism (St. John and Johnson, 2012), objectivity was born in a specific historical context to fulfil specific functions. First, the objectivity norm emerged as part of the professionalisation of journalism in the first half of the 20th century. It legitimised journalism as a distinct and respected occupation in an era where science and industrial efficiency were valorised against the partisan ‘tribality’ of the 19th century (Schudson, 2001: 162). Second, the norm of objectivity was motivated by a change in business models from subscriptions to advertising: detached objectivity provided an appropriate style of presenting news to a mass audience, which the ad model required (St. John and Johnson, 2012). Third, technology played a part. Carey (1992) argues that the telegraph freed communication from geographic proximity and encouraged a concise and standardised language that transmits information independent of any interpersonal relationship between the sender and receiver. Finally, ‘objective’ journalism and its rational and empirical ideals were part of the institutional structure of the liberal democratic market society and its reasoned, expert-led public discussion (Broersma, 2007).

What will happen to objectivity now that all its historical preconditions are undergoing fundamental changes? The positivist industrial approach and reliance on experts do not suffice to legitimise journalism (Broersma, 2007); business models are changing back to subscriptions and pay models, encouraging a focus on niche audiences (Lehtisaari et al., 2018); the public sphere has been hugely diversified by the spread of the Internet (Dahlberg, 2007) and the liberal, consensus-based democracy is becoming increasingly fragmented and polarised (Davies, 2018). In this context, adhering strictly to the norms and practices of objectivity can prove increasingly counterproductive. According to Waisbord (2019), the professional ideals of traditional journalism seek to reinforce boundaries, whereas blurred boundaries are intrinsic to digital journalism. Practising a strict form of boundary-drawing objectivity (Schudson, 2001) could leave journalism isolated from its audiences in an increasingly connected world. Furthermore, as Raeijmaekers and Maeseele (2017) argue, rather than reflecting the increasingly pluralistic voices in society, objectivity restrains journalism to being ‘balanced’ and ‘impartial’, within the limits of existing institutional politics and its communicative registers – in effect, excluding a wide range of voices, ideas and ideological positions.

All of these shifts challenge what objectivity is and should be, but do not necessarily make it obsolete. It is difficult to imagine professional journalism without any notion and ideal of objectivity (McNair, 2017). Provided that ‘objectivity’ still forms the basis for trust in journalism, McNair (2017) suggests more modest claims to truth, transparency about journalistic choices and an increasingly critical stance towards authoritative sources as a way forward for the ideal and practice of objectivity. According to Raeijmaekers and Maeseele (2017), in turn, the future practice of objectivity should benchmark ideological contestation rather than support social and political consensus. This type of professional journalism is presently practiced by a few rare pioneers, such as Vice Media’s hybridisation of alternative and legacy journalism (Hamilton, 2016).

Hybridising objectivity with journalistic dialogue could facilitate realising the above suggestions and adapt objectivity to contemporary contexts. As the ideal of dialogue does not call for detachment, drawing from dialogue could help journalists adopt a more independent and critical position towards sources. Practising journalistic dialogue alongside ‘objectivity’ can bring to the fore ideological contestation, a plurality of truths and a more nuanced treatment of issues rather than embracing consensus (Hornmoen and Steensen, 2014). Furthermore, dialogue may provide journalism with new, more diverse communicative registers. If objectivity draws boundaries around journalism, renders its style uniform and standardised, and confines journalism within established institutions, dialogue is by nature attuned to networks and capable of assimilating different expressive registers. Whereas the ideal of objectivity is to abstain from explicitly supporting social relationships other than rational public discussion, dialogue promotes the construction of private and social identities (Kunelius, 2001). It offers audiences a subjectively meaningful, intimate and interpersonal public connection by helping them orient towards intellectual or demographic communities – that is, publics in the plural (Fraser, 1992; Marchionni, 2013).

In practice, a hybrid of objectivity and dialogue could manifest in journalistic articles that seek to deliver facts in an economic manner while incorporating a wider range of voices and deploying diverse communicative registers. Such hybrid articles could be structured in an inverted pyramid and use expert sources, but would make the mediating subjectivity of a journalist present, however, subtly. This type of hybrid journalism would retain ‘objectivity’ as a professional norm, but would help journalism respond to diversifying and fragmenting audiences, politics and social relations – possibly re-acclaiming journalistic authority through more modest and diversified claims to truth.

Appreciations

Entrepreneurial outlets use appreciations – evaluations of things, issues and phenomena – first and foremost to build an extra layer of contextualised analysis and interpretation in the news. Appreciations describe things not directly perceivable in the news event, but which can be conceived through the journalist’s analytical prowess and affective, tacit knowledge. As an example, employer healthcare plans are contextualised as follows: ‘Corporate profits have dramatically outpaced wages and health benefits since the turn of the century’ (Axios). The reader not only receives factual information about employer healthcare plans but is also informed about broader socio-economic changes. The journalist assesses the changes affectively as dramatic, which invites readers in an imaginary dialogue to evaluate the issue from their own political and moral stances (Martin and White, 2005) or affective private states (Welbers and Opgenhaffen, 2018). As an issue of public relevance is signified as subjectively meaningful, the conjured relationship is a public–private hybrid.

Appreciations explain to the reader ‘Why it matters’ – an evaluative subtitle used by Axios and VoSD. MustRead, for instance, argues that decreases in national Finnish R&D funding matter, in part, because they may make it more difficult to obtain funding from the EU: ‘Domestic key projects do not weigh much when the EU allocates research funding’. This is in line with Baym’s (2017) suggestion that hybrid journalism is suitable for dealing with connotations of current events, whereas traditional news journalism is more comfortable with the denotative and the concrete. The connotative approach can potentially foster a political imagination and give rise to nascent political ideas within the private sphere and its different groups (Kunelius, 2001). In line with the ideal of dialogue, appreciations underline polyphonic views and interpretations of the truth. Appreciations reveal ‘hidden’ sides of a story, drawing attention to the complex nature of issues and processes. Such assessments can be marked explicitly with subtitles, such as ‘Reality check’, ‘Yes, but’ or ‘Tell me more’ (Axios, The Skimm). The passages following these kinds of subtitles offer extra information that sheds light on the different details, viewpoints and complexities regarding the issues at hand.

The use of appreciations to interpret and explain can be labelled as sense-making: journalists’ prior knowledge and re-procession of information – their entire mediating subjectivity (Chalaby, 1996) – provides readers with something ‘extra’ to help them make sense of the world. For instance, when a journalist portrays text messages between FBI agents as ‘genuinely troubling’ (Axios), the journalist is questioning a presumably common view that the FBI is a neutral organisation to be trusted while simultaneously pointing out that the text messages will likely be taken as further evidence of ‘a Deep State coup’ by the conservative right.

In accordance with the ideal of objectivity, appreciations employ the mediating subjectivity of the journalist for analytical, not opinionated, purposes. Intersubjective appreciations establish a public–private hybrid connection between audiences, journalists, events and issues. This potentially helps audience members not only understand the world more comprehensively but also make sense of themselves, seek human connection and construct reflexive identities as part of the socio-political world that they inhabit.

Vernacular language

Like appreciations, vernacular language – informal registers, the first and second person pronouns, and literary styles – is used as a vehicle for interpretation and sense-making. News is not presented as a neutral transmission from the outside world, but rather as explicitly processed and addressed through the mediating subjectivity of the journalist, by her or his knowledge and impressions of current affairs. The significance of a political decision can be emphasised, for instance, by calling it a ‘big deal’ (The Skimm). As another example, when a journalist ironically states that ‘Finnish municipalities are not necessarily known for their willingness to cooperate’ (MustRead), he reveals tacit, contextualising ‘backstage’ knowledge about Finnish municipalities.

The dialogic and private features are perhaps the most explicitly present in vernacular textual devices. The Skimm explains on its ‘About Us’ page that its goal is to integrate in ‘the routines of our target audience – female millennials’. Mimicking the vernacular language of an audience segment is one way to do so. A vernacular style presents the news with a laid-back, welcoming feel. It lends the outlets a distinct personality and gives an impression of a direct, intimate and private connection with the reader. The use of expressions, such as ‘screwed up’ (Axios) or ‘speaking of’ (VoSD) gives the impression that the journalist and the putative reader not only share manners of speaking but are almost having a friendly and involved face-to-face conversation. Thus, expressive vernacular language potentially helps in building value-related and aesthetically co-oriented relationships with audiences.

An imaginary, direct conversation with the audience can be made explicit by the use of the first and second person pronouns. Readers can be addressed in the second person: ‘Be smart: This strategy [of Trump] is working better than you think’ (Axios). Articles can even be structured in the form of a conversation: an imagined reader poses questions as subtitles (e.g. ‘What’s happening?’) or interrupts (‘Wait, back up’; The Skimm). The body text of the article then ‘responds’ to these questions. With the use of the first person, the journalists can make their subjectivity present in a news text, such as stating ‘we’d love [to ask a politician some questions]’ (VoSD). By writing in the first person, reporters come across as subjective human beings who are present in the news article as conversants, passionate about their jobs and open about where they stand on and how they perceive the world.

Besides informal and personalised language, conversational registers also incorporate literary and narrative styles. Such registers are used to convey connotative impressions from the news scene and about current politics, with an assumed goal of making them seem more alive and ‘real’, like in the following eloquent description of the upbeat feeling of the audience in a municipal meeting: ‘“Resist,” she said, as applause filled the night air’ (VoSD). Metaphors and idioms can also offer concise and holistic interpretations of issues, such as describing the current politics in the United States as a ‘great disorientation machine’ (Axios).

Engagement

Textual engagement places a text in a dialogic relationship with participants in an imaginary discussion. The writer can engage in an imaginary dialogue by either expanding or contracting possible meanings and interpretations. Dialogic expansion refers to a writer/speaker who allows and introduces alternative positions. This can take the form of entertaining speculative possibilities (perhaps, may be, it seems) or attributing external voices (X says, many believe, the report states). Dialogic contraction, in turn, means challenging, fending off or restricting other views. It is expressed in disclaims (denials, counterarguments) or proclaims (concurring, pronouncing or endorsing certain viewpoints; Martin and White, 2005).

The analysed entrepreneurial media outlets engage in this kind of textual dialogue more extensively than do their counterparts in legacy media. Entrepreneurial media outlets in the data both contract and expand meanings more often than do the legacy organisations (Table 2). Manifesting the ideal of journalistic dialogue, this suggests that the entrepreneurial outlets see their message not as simple objective facts to be received and accepted by audiences, but as information that remains open to discussion, promotion, counterarguments and polyphonic contributions. As with appreciations and vernacular language, the resources of engagement perform a sense-making function in the presentation of the news. These features promise to make the news more understandable, contextualised and closer to the private life spheres of audiences.

In the case of dialogic contraction, the use of disclaims and proclaims can help the reader navigate the news by pointing out what a journalist sees as especially important in an issue. In many cases, the outlets’ disclaims or proclaims present the journalist as having greater expertise than the reader. This positions the journalist as a ‘guide’ for the reader (Martin and White, 2005: 120), such as instructing a reader to ‘Forget the [Republican] memo’ (Axios). By proclaiming what aspects and interpretations of an issue matter the most, the outlets reject other possibilities, thus contracting interpretations. Disclaims, in turn, not only ward off opposing stances but also provide counterarguments in an imaginary discussion: ‘Even a great year of investment gains doesn’t solve the problem [of pension bills], because there is less money to reap the rewards when they come’ (VoSD). Such arguments converse with imaginary opponents. They can aid the reader in understanding the news better by considering possible counterarguments beforehand. Both proclaims and disclaims also build rapport with a putative reader (Martin and White, 2005: 129–130). When The Skimm, for instance, pronounces its support for a new legislation in France against gender pay gaps in companies by proclaiming ‘oui, oui’ to the legislation, it assumedly seeks to align with its core audience of millennial women. By building solidarity with a particular group in an informal manner, The Skimm operates in a zone between private and public.

Regarding dialogic expansion, with attributions through hyperlinks, the outlets direct the reader to outside sources for a fuller and broader understanding. By entertaining different possibilities – like rhetorically asking ‘what should be the long-term vision [of the Finnish agriculture policy]?’ (MustRead) – the outlets help clarify different potentials in the present and expand the time horizon of a news article into the future. That the entrepreneurial outlets entertain different possibilities three times as often as the legacy outlets do (see Table 2) suggests their readiness to expand the news into a speculative arena, possibly helping the audience to better grasp the context of the news and broaden the political horizon outside of the present consensus.