Abstract
This study sheds light on the increasingly important roles that meta-level organizations, a type of institutional actor, play in the processes of local journalism innovation. Examples of meta-level organizations in journalism include journalism professional associations, training and research centers, nonprofits, and trade publications. Definitionally, metalevel organizations embrace the functions of coordination, regulation, agenda-setting, information diffusion, and the boundary negotiation of an institutionalized space. This qualitative study uses in-depth interviews to explore the roles of meta-level organizations in relation to the troubles of local journalism, how these roles are enacted at professional association conferences, and how they are conceptualized by journalists and representatives of meta-level organizations. We found evidence of three traditional roles of meta-level organizations – information, interaction, existential roles – across different types of meta-level organizations. Respondents tended to view these roles through a lens of resource scarcity. We also found evidence of the role of self-maintenance—i.e., meta-level organizations have their own institutional spaces and an interest in self-preservation—as well as the role of conceptualization or theorization, of innovations, and an emergent role of translation. Translation involves adaptation of abstract ideas to local-level sites, as well as communication of results from local-level experimentation back to the field level, an increasingly important role in a resource-poor local journalism space that is inundated with a flood of new field-level initiatives.
Numerous innovation and support initiatives have emerged in response to the troubles of local journalism in the U.S. (Schmidt, 2018), and these initiatives involve a range of organizations, from news-producing organizations to journalism training and research centers, professional associations, university programs, and non-profits. The sheer number of these initiatives and the wide variety of organizations that participate in them demonstrate local journalism’s strong institutional pull. 1 In this study, we focus on the different institutional actors involved in maintaining and changing the institutional field of local journalism, and the varied, changing and emerging roles these actors play.
We focus especially on the roles that one kind of institutional actor, the meta-organization, plays in local journalism innovation efforts. In journalism, typical examples of meta-organizations include professional associations, training centers, research centers, and trade publications. 2 Meta-organizations “organize the organization’s environment” (Ahrne and Brunsson, 2008: 82). They help manage collective action among actors (often other organizations) within a meso-level institutional environment such as an industry or profession (Berkowitz and Dumez, 2016). We refer to such environments as institutional fields. These fields develop mutual awareness among participants in a set of organizations … involved in a common enterprise” (DiMaggio and Powell, 1991: 65). Literature suggests meta-organizations’ core functions include information diffusion, interaction and coordination, and the reaffirmation and negotiation of the boundaries of their institutional fields (Ahrne and Brunsson, 2008; Spillman, 2012).
The concept of the meta-organization comes from organization studies, where it often refers to umbrella organizations, or organizations of organizations (Ahrne and Brunsson, 2008). However, it also refers more broadly to organizations that have a core function of coordinating collective, field-level thinking (Gulati et al., 2012; Spillman, 2012). We adopt this broader second meaning, which dovetails with the concept of the “metajournalistic” environment from journalism studies (Carlson, 2016). Meta-organizations in journalism do meta-journalistic work. They enable and influence the field’s “institutional thinking” (Douglas, 1986: 128), shaping and maintaining the vision, logic and boundaries of journalism’s social space (Carlson, 2016; Ferrucci, 2018). By studying meta-organizations, we can learn more about the agency involved in changing and controlling journalism’s institutional field, especially important given the myriad journalism initiatives that promise help for the field.
This qualitative study uses in-depth interviews to explore meta-organizations and their roles, and how they are positioned to engage in field-level agency amid challenges to local journalism. We compare how traditional and emerging roles are conceptualized by both meta-organization personnel and by local journalists who participated in journalism association conferences, which are meta-organization events. Findings revealed differences between meta-organizations and local journalists in their views of meta-organization roles. Meta-organization respondents emphasized their roles in continually conceptualizing and promoting new ideas to a struggling local journalism field. However, journalists said they felt inundated by an overabundance of new ideas. They indicated that meta-organizations could assist them best by helping them make sense of new ideas and helping “translate” ideas to their resource-strapped newsrooms, in practical ways.
Meta-journalism and meta-organizations
The disrupted state of journalism has focused scholars’ attention on the journalism field and its proliferating, and varing agents, its contested boundaries, and its shifting logics (e.g., Carlson, 2016; Ferrucci, 2018; Lewis and Usher, 2013). Meso-level spatial frameworks such as social fields and ecologies have provided effective ways to conceptualize these changing agents and structures as a collective, bounded whole (Lowrey et al., 2019). Scholars have also conceptualized a meta-journalistic space that is structured by discourse—a “governing force” through which actors, sites and topics are linked and boundaries negotiated (Carlson, 2016: 353); however, these studies have focused more on discourse than on social agents.
When meta-organization agents have appeared in journalism scholarship, they have often served latent purposes. They are institutional “trappings of professionalism” (Zelizer, 1993: 222), appearing in survey items that ask about association membership or trade magazine consumption (e.g., McLeod and Hawley, 1964; Willnat et al., 2017). They have also been characterized as superfluous or dysfunctional, as members of the “future of news” crowd (Creech and Mendelson, 2015; Lowrey and Shan, 2016) that subject the journalism space “to a parade of reports,. . . trade press stories, conferences, roundtable discussions” (Carlson, 2016: 363). Yet there has been some direct scholarly focus on meta-organizations. Lewis (2011) examined the Knight Foundation’s influence on norms and practices in the journalism field, and more recently, scholars have included non-profits, foundations, media labs, and media think-tanks in studies of journalistic change: e.g., (Benson, 2018; Graves, 2016; Mills and Wagemans, 2021; Nielsen and Ganter, 2018).
While professional and trade associations have been studied most frequently in the organization studies scholarship (Aldrich, 2017; Bennett and Robson, 2011; Greenwood et al., 2002; Spillman, 2012), these are just one of many meta-organization types in the journalism space. Examples of meta-organizations in journalism include professional associations such as WAN-IFRA and the Society for Professional Journalists; networks for independent journalists such as the Institute for Nonprofit News; training/research centers such as the European Journalism Centre and the Poynter Institute; and numerous think-tank and research centers, often housed at universities. We also consider trade/professional publications such as Neiman Journalism Lab and journalism.co.uk to be meta-organizations, given their field-level focus on journalism.
Meta-organization characteristics, roles and functions
The work of meta-organizing has attracted recent attention in the sociology of organizations, headlining a number of books and journal issues (Ahrne and Brunsson, 2008; Berkowitz and Dumez, 2016; Gulati et al., 2012; Spillman, 2012). Industries and professions are becoming more diverse and fragmented, globally interconnected, disrupted, unpredictable, and ambiguously bounded, and so organizations that do the work of “meta-organizing” institutional fields are seen as increasingly important (Ahrne and Brunsson, 2008). As the perceived need for collective trust in an organizational environment grows, the perceived value of meta-organizations rises (Pfeffer and Salancik, 2003; Powell et al., 2012). According to this literature, meta-organizations 3 primarily play three roles in an institutional space:
An information role
They provide the space and its relevant environment with informational raw material, codes, instructions, and demonstrated practices, including information about market changes, public policy, new actors, and new practices and tools (Spillman, 2012).
An interaction role
They facilitate interaction and communication and decrease transaction costs associated with interaction. They reduce uncertainties about new ideas and new actors, aiding shared sense-making and growing social trust, which fosters both cohesion and change (Pfeffer and Salancik, 2003; Powell et al., 2012; Scott, 2014).
An existential role
They encourage identity and boundary maintenance, both internally and in relation to external systems. They help legitimize, reaffirm, sustain, support, defend (Frandsen and Johansen, 2015) and grow the social space, encouraging taken-for-granted unity (Lawton et al., 2018; Spillman, 2012).
Critical perspectives on meta-organizations
The literature also points to potential dysfunction in meta-organizations. For example, within the institutional field, meta-organizations are (variably) positioned apart from the field’s core producing actors—e.g., news outlets and journalists—and somewhat buffered from the daily experiences of a field’s problems (Hardy and Maguire, 2008; Spillman, 2012). Organizationally, they tend to have small staffs and low overhead (Bennett and Robson, 2011) and are therefore less affected by competition that could otherwise encourage targeted productivity and greater efficiency. Meta-organizations often rely on volunteers and low-paid workers such as association members, freelancers and students, and turnover is frequent. This encourages meta-organizations to seek stability and continuance. Rules and customs move to the foreground, encouraging support of the status quo (Fligstein and McAdam, 2012; Greenwood et al., 2002). In general, they tend to over-value stability in their own organizations and in their fields (Lowrey et al., 2019; Spillman, 2012).
According to Fligstein and McAdam (2012), meta-organizations generally “reinforce the dominant perspective and guard the interests of the [field’s] incumbents” and dominant actors (p. 14). Associations often serve as “mechanisms of reproduction rather than change” (Greenwood et al., 2002: 62), and they may focus on their own reproduction and growth at least as much as they focus on the fields they serve, e.g., journalism. Professional associations even have their own meta-organizations, which support the work of operating associations and conferences.
Meta-organizations increasingly rely on external entities such as foundations, non-profits and tech companies for funding of change efforts, and this is the case for journalism meta-organizations, which have become less reliant on news company resources (Lowrey et al., 2019). Research on the roles of nonprofits and foundations in funding educational programs suggests that non-profits’ missions may trump the goals of funding recipients, as funders’ own “narrow priorities” tend to “emphasize technocratic solutions” with “discrete measurable tasks” (Trujillo, 2014: 227). News organizations that accept nonprofit money may “remain vulnerable to the whims of philanthropic fashion” (Benson, 2018: 1072).
Research goals and questions
This study explores how both meta-organization personnel and local journalists differentially construct and categorize the roles of meta-organizations – particularly the roles they play in defining and reshaping journalism’s meta space, or institutional field, in relation to local journalism’s problems and innovations. We adopted Hanitzsch and Vos’ (2017) conceptualization of journalists’ roles, focusing especially on “normative orientations” or “what journalists should do” and on “cognitive orientations” or “what they want to do” (p. 118).
Deductively, we explored evidence of roles from the literature: the information, interaction and existential roles, as well as the less normative role of sustaining themselves and the status quo. Inductively, we looked for findings that fleshed out the meanings of these roles, and we looked for the emergence of other roles.
Methodology
The study uses qualitative data from in-depth interviews with participants of three journalism professional association conferences in the U.S. Observations of conferences supplemented interview findings. Following IRB approval, 27 semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with both meta-organization personnel and local journalists who attended the conferences. The conferences delimited the sampling choices as all interview participants were approached at the conferences about interviewing. Questions about conference experiences grounded respondents’ interviews in a recently lived meta-journalistic context and aided respondents’ recall.
Meta-organization respondents included: six professional association staff, four association board members, two industry trade-publication staff, three directors of university centers, three staff members with journalism research centers, one director of a journalism training center, two associate directors with non-profits, and one foundation associate director. These meta-organization types fit the definition of meta-organizations (organizations with a core function of coordinating collective, field-level thinking), and the chosen types also reflect the emphases on associations, trade publications and non-profits in organization studies literature (e.g., Fligstein and McAdam, 2012; Spillman, 2012), and on foundations, non-profits and research centers/think-tanks in journalism studies literature (e.g., Benson, 2018; Graves, 2016). 4 We used purposive theoretical sampling (Yin, 2013) rather than generalizable sampling. We expected our sampling of various meta-organization types to provide variable findings about the key theoretical concept of roles, enriching the analysis and aiding theoretical development (Eisenhardt and Graebner, 2007). For example, associations might be expected to embrace the interaction role (e.g., Spillman, 2012) more than research centers do.
Similarly, by sampling journalists as well as meta-organization respondents, we gain a wide, variable view of positions in this institutional field. As employees of the field’s core producing organizations (news outlets), journalists are influenced by the enactment of meta-organization roles, and they are therefore likely to perceive meta-organization roles differently than those enacting the roles. Interviewed journalists served as conference-session panelists and/or association board members, giving them meaningful involvement with meta-organizations and with the conference context. The 11 interviewed journalists included five print journalists, three TV journalists, one digital journalist, one public radio news director, and one wire service manager. There was some overlap: Among the 11 journalists were six meta-organization respondents: four association board members, one professional association staffer and one university program staffer.
Ten interview respondents were female, and 17 were male. All had professional journalism experience in the U.S., from three to 40 years. Names of respondents and organizations were kept confidential.
Interviewing and coding processes
Interviews each lasted 25–60 min, averaging around 45 min. They were conducted by phone after the conferences, and some questions drew on participants’ experiences at the conferences. Interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed for coding.
Interviews were semi-structured, guided by pre-planned questions that were informed by theory while allowing for unplanned follow-up questions: We assumed researchers “come to the field with presuppositions, questions and frameworks” (Burawoy, 1998) and with “theoretical backgrounds” (Timmermans and Tavory, 2012). Five meta-organization roles from the literature informed interview questions, and insights gained during the analysis also shaped questions. The coding process was both deductive and inductive. Insights emerged as our analysis moved back and forth across prior research and our interview and observation data (Locke, 2001). Following Creswell (2014), we created a codebook: Codes derived from theory and previous studies of meta-organizations and their roles (“provisional coding” [Saldaña, 2021: 216]), and we coded inductively as well, attentive to emerging themes.
The entire transcripts were read first, for holistic understanding, and transcripts were read again, noting passages relevant to the deductive themes and coding for inductively emergent themes by using in vivo (natural) coding – i.e., the research participants’ own words (Locke, 2001). Following Creswell (2014) and Guba (1981), a “peer debriefing” was conducted to check trustworthiness of coding. This involved two other researchers reading three of the annotated transcripts (one meta-organization representative, one print journalist, one broadcast journalist), and providing feedback. Minor changes were made to the coding.
Conference observations
Conference observations played a secondary role, helping to ensure trustworthiness of interviews. Professional journalism conferences were chosen as sites for analysis because they afforded interactivity among meta-organizations and journalists and because they helped focus interview respondents on a recently experienced meta-field context. Thus, the conferences served as “scaffolding” for fostering “commitment of the participants for the moment and to the scene” (p. 107), providing easy-to-recall “moments and memories” (Fine, 2012: 122). Conferences were national in scope. They addressed different types of media (print, broadcast, digital) and different types of journalists (legacy, independent), and they were hosted by different types of associations—some long-standing, some new. Two days were observed at each conference. The researcher observed interaction during and between sessions and took notes, reviewed notes and made margin comments. Notes were typed up each evening. During second reading (following a first sense-making reading), themes were coded, with an eye on relative alignment with interview findings, the study’s primary data source.
Findings
As interview participants discussed meta-organization roles in relation to local journalism, they also offered views on the problems of local journalism. This is well-traveled territory and will not be explored in-depth here, but not surprisingly, resource scarcity was the most often cited problem, followed closely by deteriorating relationships with audiences—"an acid drop on the profession,” a non-profit director said. The observed conferences were full of sessions that focused on reaching audiences and on doing more with less, and it was also apparent that conferences were resource-strapped themselves as the more traditional and longstanding conferences, in particular, suffered from poor attendance. “The pros are drifting away,” said an association’s regional division director, who estimated that around 10% of members attended. Respondents’ perspectives on innovation were also framed by resource problems, revealing wariness about change and the resources and time it demands. Meta-organization respondents emphasized collaboration and pooling resources for change efforts. As discussed below, journalist respondents urged meta-organizations to provide sense-making guidance through what they saw as a tangle of existing innovations, and to provide ideas that were easily adaptable and inexpensive.
Meta-organization roles
The study explores conceptions of meta-organization roles related to local news innovation, as well as how conceptions differ across meta-organization personnel and journalists. Findings revealed evidence of roles suggested by prior research, and two other roles emerged as well.
Information role
Multiple respondents described the information role as prominent and important for meta-organizations. This role was strongly identified with journalism training centers, professional associations, and trade publications, and numerous journalist respondents said meta-organizations were most successful in this role when their information was digestible and adaptable; this idea is discussed below in connection with a translation role.
A common concern was “too much information” from meta-organizations -- i.e., being overwhelmed and confused by a blizzard of new initiatives, technologies and business models aimed at supporting and changing local journalism. Conference agendas were consistent with these interview findings, with many sessions focused on new ideas and trends. Participants indicated that the confusion hindered sense-making about change and discouraged change efforts by news outlets. “It’s a huge landscape out there. . . it’s mind boggling, just loads [of initiatives].” There has been an “explosion” of innovation efforts, said a non-profit director. “All are well-meaning, but you can’t tell the players without a scorecard.” The decision to embrace a new initiative requires the “time, space and bandwidth [to] create a plan for the long term,” said a trade publication writer, and “to have faith” that the investment will pay off. This problem suggests a role for meta-organizations in helping local newsrooms make sense of change and reduce uncertainty about embracing innovations.
Unsurprisingly, trade publications were strongly identified with the information role. They are, according to respondents, “repositories for sharing ideas,” producing “ongoing information.” However, information overload was, again, perceived as a problem, especially by journalists. A typical response, from a TV news director: “I don’t have enough time to see all the trade [publication] stuff, and that’s a big problem.” At a session on journalism trust initiatives at one convention, a news manager expressed bewilderment at the sheer number of initiatives, as other attendees nodded in agreement: “I’m one of the good guys, tracking these trust initiatives, but we don’t know where to look – we need coordination, coordination!” The concern about “too much information” was also heard occasionally from meta-organization respondents, indicating that meta-organizations also provide information to one another: According to a nonprofit director, “we try to keep up with it, but it feels like a losing game.”
The internal routines and needs of meta-organizations, apart from any needs of the journalism field, may encourage this high volume of information. One trade publication writer said she followed a “rule of thumb” when seeking article ideas: “I try not to go to a session if they’re talking about something we already wrote about” – a routine that encourages information diversity, but also more abundance. The drive for variety in trade publication content is fueled by promotion they provide for other meta-organizations. Several meta-organization respondents spoke of trade publications as publicity vehicles for their projects. As one research center director said, “we pitched some stories [to the publication]” about the launch of a data journalism initiative, “and they ended up doing a really nice piece.”
There was concern about inequity in the dissemination of information, also a consequence of internal meta-organization needs. A number of respondents said training-center instruction could be impractical, given news outlets’ reduced training budgets: “The online resources are great, but it’s really expensive” said one news editor and association board member. Small, less wealthy outlets may be left out.
Interaction role
Respondents tended to mention the interaction role first when asked about the normative role of professional associations. Generally, journalist respondents assumed that interpersonal “networking” and “conversations with other journalists” at association conferences naturally led to benefits, and they said they found value in talking with diverse others—with “journalists around the country from a wide range of different media outlets.” One journalist/association board member said conference interaction made him more confident about seeking new collaboration: “The more people I get to know,” the more “comfortable [I am] talking to just about anybody, and that helps you work well with others.”
Several meta-organization respondents noted that conferences and training sessions grow confidence about innovating—for consumers of innovations, but also for meta-organizations, as generators and promoters of local news innovation. These respondents viewed their roles as generating the structures and resources that afford interaction, providing “crossroads for sharing” and ways to “bring people around the same topics.” One professional association director viewed conferences as providing raw material for interaction, assuming this leads to new ideas: I can’t push people into starting [ideas for new initiatives], but I can try to create the conditions under which that spark can flourish … gather as much dry material as possible and assemble it.
According to another association director, large professional conferences foster innovations by acting as “giant planets that attract resources and that funders orbit around … a source of gravity that gains resources [and “players”] from outside the space.” This gravitational pull also increases meta-organization confidence in the initiatives they promote. One research center analyst said conferences give him “validation … for new ideas and approaches.”
Interaction could be more transactional than inspirational, according to both journalists and meta-organization respondents. All three local TV news directors said a top purpose in attending conferences was “meeting potential job applicants,” and observations at conferences showed crowded job interview rooms. Both trade publication editors sought “potential writers” and “stories,” a research center director combed conferences for fellowship applicants, and conference observations revealed active efforts by foundations and non-profits to recruit applicants for their programs. Observations also revealed positioning for status and career advancement, with panelists frequently promoting their own achievements.
Existential role
Interview respondents viewed the “existential role” as important for professional associations: negotiating and/or reaffirming the local journalism space and its future, maintaining identity and legitimacy, and supporting camaraderie. This role was viewed partly as outward facing: Meta-organizations act as “a megaphone to make sure funders [and others] are aware of the importance of local news, allowing us to speak with a much more unified voice.” They create a “united front” they act as “a voice for explaining what we do,” and they enable “lobbying and pooling resources to drive something we need done as an industry.” One director of a large professional association said the association was “kind of slowly turning the ship” away from training journalists and toward “educating the public about the importance of journalism.”
The role was also seen as inward-facing, encouraging field-level motivation during challenging times. Both meta-organization respondents and journalists said they saw conferences as “revival meetings,” providing “a boost of confidence.” One non-profit regional director said the best conferences are revitalizing: “I want to leave inspired.” Meta-organization respondents also emphasized the role of sustaining local journalism across time—“developing the next generation of journalists,” as one association board member put it, and “long-term stable guidance” for the journalist’s “journey,” a professional association director said.
Trade publications were viewed as serving an inward-facing existential role, but in a unique way, helping the field “see itself,” as a trade publication editor said.
We have the ability to say [to the field] ‘are you feeling this too? Is this something you’re concerned about?’ And then provide an answer to the industry at large for that.”
Trade publications help the field see its faults, according to several journalists. “They report on us,” said one news editor and university program director,” providing “a critique of journalism overall.” They are “a valuable mirror that we hold up to ourselves,” said a local news editor and association staff member.
Foundations and nonprofits were viewed as serving important existential roles for the field, as sources of support during uncertain times. Meta-organization respondents especially embraced the role that foundations play in sustaining their work, calling their funding “critical” and “essential.” Foundations helped shape the field’s agenda, “identifying projects that show meaningful accomplishments around [an agenda],” an innovations center director said. Meta-organizations viewed existential support from nonprofits as highly practical, as they provide a “lifeline” based on ready-made practices and principles that can “be taken off the shelf and easily applied,” as one nonprofit director said. However, unlike meta-organization respondents, several journalist respondents expressed wariness about advocacy by non-profits and foundations.
Roles of self-maintenance and supporting dominant actors
Meta-organizations must sustain themselves, and when meta-organization respondents referred to this role, they often used an ecological context, expressing concern with the fit of their meta-organization within the overall ecosystem of meta-organizations. Meta-organization respondents referred to occupying the “same space” as other meta-organizations, a situation that fueled both competition and collaboration. “Our professional association is figuring out how we differentiate ourselves,” said one association director, and “we’re looking at our space in this ecosystem.” According to a trade publication editor, “It’s a matter of figuring out what our niche is” among other publications while dealing with limited resources. A University research center described his efforts to find the niche for his center: This whole general ecosystem … is what I want to try to figure out -- how I can have a path that is useful to the industry either because nobody else is doing it, or because it’s just something that’s needed and it’s a need that’s not being met.”
One association director noted that his organization had recently hired a consultant to help locate their association within the broader association ecosystem. He said relationships among professional associations were competitive, as they vied for “the same pool of candidates” from “newsrooms with a limited budget,” but also collaborative—“there’s no one in that space I wouldn’t call and ask for advice.” A training center director noted the center’s competitors tend to have a similar “breadth” of purpose, while the center collaborates with niche organizations “because it extends our reach.” A second training center director noted “competition in the same space… for attention of journalists” and in their coverage of media, but she called the competition friendly. Clearly, meta-organizations were focused on one another, and they populated one another’s networks; we note the numerous sessions at conferences hosted by meta-organizations and the many meta-organization panelists.
There was evidence that professional associations were struggling in the meta-organization ecosystem because of inadequate full-time resources, diminished support from news companies and an increasingly competitive ecosystem. “Professional associations have lost influence,” according to a journalism training center director, and corporate centralization has made it less necessary for journalists to attend conventions to keep in touch: “It used to be you would go to those conferences to catch up with people, but now you know [that] they’re all part of your organization.” A public radio director discussed the decline of one association for which he has been a board member.
There was a time when they would have a conference with 500 or 600 people. The problem is, I don’t think they have the staff. And I will tell you that could be a problem because who is going to oversee the store if it’s strictly done by volunteers?
Financial need can encourage dependence on a field’s dominant national actors, and this was viewed as especially true of training centers, seen as less supportive of “what some of us would consider local,” according to one journalist and university program director. One trade publication writer worried about smaller, poorer operations applying for training opportunities: “What happens to those who don’t get accepted?” We found mixed evidence of this perception about professional associations. Some journalist and meta-organization respondents viewed associations as levelers that offered training for organizations without wealthy parent companies. However, echoing other respondents, a trade publication writer said conferences emphasize big companies and have little “hands-on impact in smaller local communities.” Consistent with this finding, conference observations revealed a tendency to emphasize “wow-factor,” high-status panelists over locally applicable information.
Foundation and nonprofit support for other meta-organizations like professional associations and training centers has increased (Lowrey et al., 2019). Respondents across meta-organizations - but especially high-status associations, training centers and research centers - said foundations are “highly important” and are “playing a very large role” in sustaining their operations. However, there were also murmurings of discontent. Foundations “line up their support with their specific interests and missions” and avoid getting close to news outlets, said one research center employee. A nonprofit regional director imagined a foundation representative’s take: “Yeh, we’re not going to get too involved in media [because] that can get messy—we can’t control what they’re going to say.” In one conference session, attendees expressed vocal frustration over foundations’ hesitancy to help sustain local news outlets, particularly commercial outlets. Several respondents from less well-established meta-organizations viewed large foundations as risk averse. “They bet on winners,” said the director of a professional association, who offered this sarcastic take: Sometimes my first reaction to [a large national news organization] getting another grant is like, “well thank God someone finally gave them money, you know?” These places are the Death Star of sucking up funding at the expense of … new things getting started.
Numerous respondents bemoaned foundations’ tendency to fund short-term projects and out-of-the-ordinary innovations consistent with foundation missions. Wealthy, high-status organizations have the capacity to pursue such projects, but struggling smaller organizations often find such projects to be irrelevant luxuries. According to an association director, “if you’re just doing [or supporting] ‘old-fashioned journalism,’” rather than innovating, “then you’re not getting a lot of help from the larger foundations.”
Some meta-organization respondents, namely a non-profit director and independent research lab staffer, saw value in university research centers and collaborated with them. However, several journalist respondents viewed these centers as less than relevant and as inwardly focused—somewhat similar to opinions about foundations. University centers “play in their own space” and do not produce “day-to-day practical stuff for us,” said one news editor.
Theorization and translation roles
Findings on meta-organizations other than professional associations – particularly research centers, non-profits and trade publications – revealed two roles that do not fit cleanly with the three existing roles from the literature. These roles involve conceptualizing ways to change local news and communicating and adapting these to local levels. We adopted the labels theorization and translation for these roles—terms that are found in research on institutional fields (e.g., Thornton et al., 2012). Theorization is the process whereby a local change can “become abstracted ... and thus made available ... for wider adoption” in a social space (Greenwood et al., 2002: 60). This role is most relevant to research centers and non-profits. Translation involves adaptation of field-level theorization to particular local contexts, and this role applies more broadly across meta-organization types.
In our study, theorization was most evident at research centers, which “reimagine content” and generate broad ideas and practices with an eye on “strategies that could work for everybody,” as one university research director said.
[Our research center] provides space for people in the industry to think through and develop new ideas, and then bring them back to the industry. At conferences we hear from people struggling, and we say … "let’s see if we can amplify this idea that seems to be working.”
Respondents often linked the theorization and translation roles: “Reimagining” practices goes hand-in-hand with consulting and with testing new ideas across local newsrooms and communities: “We work with newsrooms and liaison with the local market to see what’s possible,” according to an independent research center analyst. A research center director said she focused most on the translation of new ideas: What are the characteristics that need to be in place at that local newsroom to get them to the point where they can conceive of doing automated stories or using algorithms to detect patterns and data? What are the particular conditions…required for that to happen?
The translation role is prominent at trade publications. A writer said her publication “picks up research and tries to help answer questions about it” for the field, providing models for new information “so people can think about examples.” According to both journalists and meta-organization respondents, this is content that describes “what’s worked,” providing “examples,” and explaining “how people might … adapt it to themselves.” Such information has a “digestible format,” said a research center staff member, that allows innovation-minded young journalists to “hold more sway” when proposing new ideas to their bosses. An innovations center director said easy translation of new ideas helps local news managers “have faith in the benefits from investing time and money into innovating.”
Respondents made a similar point about information from professional conferences, urging event programmers to emphasize curating, sense-making and practical application of new ideas. An editor and association board member said he favored conferences that are “hands on and real world.” A newspaper community engagement editor said she favored portable, digestible ideas that help her make the case to her boss for adoption: “If you want to try something new, [then] show how other people have done it.” One university research center director said that clear “modeling” of innovations is a particular strength of nonprofit initiatives: Their training is ‘plug and play’… Nonprofits have a very specific vision, and they advocate for it. It can be popular with busy editors and news directors, who can see clearly … how it can work.
Discussion
Both meta-organization and journalist respondents generally agreed that information, interaction and existential roles are appropriate for meta-organizations and should naturally lead to benefits. However, when these traditional roles were discussed in the granular context of everyday tasks and challenges, different conceptions between meta-organization and journalist respondents emerged. Interview responses revealed latent meta-organization functions and suggested a need for new meta-organization roles.
While both meta-organization and journalist respondents viewed the development and dissemination of new ideas as normal meta-organization work, and as consistent with traditional information and interaction roles, journalists often portrayed these new ideas as innumerable, unreachable and/or irrelevant. Some journalists despaired of keeping track of them, making sense of them, or of making practical use of them, especially with shrinking news staffs and training resources. Journalists favored ideas with evident track records and simple guidelines for putting ideas into practice. They emphasized “off-the-shelf” and “plug-and-play” ease of use. Findings suggested local journalism and journalists would benefit if meta-organizations did more to translate ideas for local news outlets by making sense of these ideas and curating them.
A number of factors likely contribute to this disconnect in perceived roles between meta-organizations and journalists. Meta-organizations are positioned apart from their field’s news producing organizations (Hardy and Maguire, 2008; Spillman, 2012), and they tend to focus on field-level work and the resources needed for this work (Greenwood et al., 2002). Meta-organizations also focus on the routines of their own reproduction: e.g., routines for producing variety and abundance in trade publications, conferences, and workshops, despite a glut of information and interactive events that journalists say they are unable to process or utilize. In addition, literature suggests meta-organizations are not strongly driven by a need for optimizing efficiency, as their resource needs are relatively low (Bennett and Robson, 2011). This may help explain overproduction of new ideas in a saturated journalism field.
Consistent with their focus on their own resources and work practices, meta-organization respondents were highly aware of their own meta-organization ecosystem, with its competitors, collaborators and shifting niche opportunities. Respondents said they seek resources and advantageous position relative to one another, motivated by their own sustainability needs. Meta-organizations also regularly transact and collaborate with one another: Trade publications promote other meta-organization initiatives, research centers assess new ideas, and professional association conferences promote non-profit initiatives. Findings suggest local journalists view this ecosystem as increasingly inaccessible and irrelevant: too expensive (training centers), too voluminous (trade publications and association conferences), too esoteric (university research centers), too focused on high-profile actors in the field (large national news outlets) and too focused on high-profile projects that serve non-profits and foundations. Findings indicate many journalists are “drifting away” from meta-organization involvement—a consequence of this disconnect as well as waning news company funding for training, travel and memberships.
Institutional theory offers possible explanation for these dynamics. Competition among meta-organizations is one explanation: Meta-organizations tend to continually produce and promote innovations and insights in order to gain resources and legitimacy and “improve their position” within their space (Fligstein and McAdam, 2012: 103). Consequently, journalists and news managers experience an unmanageable glut of innovations and insights. Differences in the governing logics of the meta-organization space and the journalistic field of news producers is another explanation. It appears that the behaviors and interactions of meta-organizations, as they produce and promote new ideas and initiatives within their own ecosystem, are somewhat “decoupled” from the journalistic field (Boxenbaum and Jonsson, 2017: 80; Scott, 2014: 185). Meta-organizations partly follow their own logic, with its own rewards and resources, transactions and routines, identities, norms, and sources of legitimacy (Thornton et al., 2012). The legitimacy of meta-organization behaviors may be “independent of their productive efficiency” (Meyer and Rowan, 1991: 53). Meta-organization success may therefore depend more on the ongoing production and promotion of high-profile new ideas than on the functionality and benefits of these ideas.
This disconnect suggests a need for a sense-making translation role for meta-organizations, which involves efforts to adapt wider field-level ideas to the local level of the journalism field so that ideas are locally relevant and helpful. Though there was only limited evidence that meta-organization respondents are actively enacting this role, a research center director noted that the role fits with innovation practices of nonprofits, which do relatively well in clarifying initiatives for adopters: Local news collaborations and local solutions journalism projects were mentioned as examples. In short, presenting new ideas in relevant, demonstrable, and easy-to-use ways, and providing adaptable support for local news outlets as they try to implement and maintain these ideas—these are meta-organization functions that journalists said they valued. Some meta-organization respondents agreed: Clear demonstration of workability and relevance can reduce transaction costs for everyone and help to link meta-organizations and news producers more meaningfully and logically.
Emphasis on the translation role could also encourage communication from varied local news sites back to the field’s meta-level. Lessons learned across diverse local “experiments” should inform theorizers at the field level, such as national-level research centers and non-profits. So, the theorization role can include rethinking ideas as well as producing them.
This disconnect between journalist and meta-organization respondents also suggests that the information and interaction roles may need rethinking. Conference interaction, for example, could encourage the field’s actors to share ideas about making existing initiatives work rather than sparking and promoting even more ideas. Findings suggest that meta-organizations should work closely with local news operations to ensure that meta-organization routines and resources are integrated meaningfully with the needs and capacities of understaffed, overwhelmed local news producers.
This study is an exploration into the roles, actions and spatial positions of these meta-organizations. Analysis is limited by a U.S. sample and a focus on local news. Analysis of other types of meta-organizations—e.g., media development organizations, more common outside the U.S.—would more fully flesh out meta-organization structures, dynamics and roles within the journalism space. Exploration of local-level meta-organizations such as state press and broadcast associations and city press clubs would also be a logical next step in future research on changes in local news.
Finally, it would be valuable to further explore the dynamics of theorization at the meta-level—for example, the development of field-wide innovations such as solutions journalism and local news collaborations—specifically, how and if meta-level actors help translate new ideas to particular news organization sites, and how and if local site-level results translate back to the meta-level. The introduction of meta-level actors to the study of these processes allows for more variable and thorough understanding of the journalism spaces’ actors and their multiplicity of roles, motivations and goals—whether normatively beneficial or dysfunctional and irrelevant—as changing boundaries are negotiated in the meta-journalistic space.
Footnotes
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
