Ajakirjandusžanrite muutumise tendentsid. Uudisžanri muutumine ajalehe Postimees näitel
Date
2010
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Tartu Ülikool
Abstract
Description
This Master’s thesis Changes in the Journalistic genres. Shift in News Genre – the
Example of Estonian Daily Postimees focuses on how the conventions of news paradigm
are changing. At the time when newspapers are in the state of flux (Steensen 2009) it is
crucial to study the practices how to create news stories that are attractive to readers. For
that reason we must first take a look into the journalists’ means on work and news room
practices.
Based on discourse analysis I looked three news texts that were by topic hard news but
differed from old news conventions by form. These texts are examples of textual
hybridization at the time when texts in conventional genres are not as popular among
media consumers.
So I analyzed what are the elements that these hybridized texts contain. Results showed
that the hybrid text, which I named feature news, contained not only borrowed elements
from different genres but also elements of different levels of news discourse.
Combining Bells (1991) hard news model and Steensen’s (2009) feature discourse
theory I worked out a model by which I analyzed news texts in four categories: 1)
authors visibility in the text, 2) narratives and stories, 3) details and descriptions and
4) emotions and opinions.
The results showed that texts’ author is more visible in feature news due to the fact
that he or she is often present at the scene of the event, which gives him the
opportunity to see and experience details, emotions and represent descriptions of
subjective selection. It also gives the opportunity to present news events from very
opinionated point of view.
Based on six formalized interviews I analyzed the change in newsroom practices as
well as in reader preferences for “old news genre “or “feature news-story”. Six
qualitative interviews with journalists were conducted in order to find out what are the
factors influence journalists to ignore the rules of conventional news genre and to
experiment with different journalistic formats combining news with feature.
All journalist questioned are employees Estonian daily newspaper Postimees which is
experimenting with news genre. Content analysis shows that of all news stories around
70 percent are feature news-stories. The reason for this shift to mixed genres is
conscious course of the paper in order to see whether feature style news attract readers
more, make them read hard news and also attract young readers who would stay loyal
to the newspaper.
The five factors that affect the reporter to choose the genre in which to write and
whether to write old news or feature news were: 1) education and experience, 2) topic,
3) time available for writing, 4) pros and cons of different genres, 5) individual
preferences.
Keywords
magistritööd, meedia, trükiajakirjandus, ajakirjandusžanrid, uudised, muutused, Postimees (ajaleht)