Eesti veebitoimetajate ajakirjanduslikud praktikad
Date
2011
Authors
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Journal ISSN
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Publisher
Tartu Ülikool
Abstract
This Master’s thesis concentrates on the journalistic practices of Estonian online news
editors, using qualitative and quantitative analysis of the news published in one day in
two major web portals in Estonia – Postimees.ee and Delfi – and the 182 press
releases tht were sent out during the same day. In addition, five interviews with
journalists and two observation days were conducted in the newsrooms of these news
portals.
As no previous study known to the author has mapped the work processes of online
news editors in Estonia, an important part of this thesis was providing an overview of
work processes and -tasks of online news editors, providing necessary insight into
their journalistic practices.
Generally, an important factor in journalistic practies of online news editors is the
need to produce as many news as possible, that would receive as many “clicks” from
the readers as possible, and the high working speed deriving from the previous
factors. On the average, an online news editor produces ten news a day, mostly
editing the PR information sent to the newsroom or referring the material of other
news publications. Considering the speed of work, there is not much time to delve
into each news item – mostly the news are edited based on pre-written text, a few
phone calls per day are made to gather more information. Online news editors very
rarely leave their workplace to gather more information.
The analysis of the news day showed that more than half of the news in Estonia’s two
biggest online news portals are based on referring the information of other news
sources, a quarter of one (Postimees) and third of the other (Delfi) portal’s news were
based on press releases and respectively 13 and 16% were the portals’ own
production. This is not coherent with the results of previous similar studies in other
news channels (Erjavec, 2005; Lewis, Williams and Franklin, 2008; Veiksaar-Kutti,
2005), according to which more than half of the news are based on PR material. This
result can be explained with the specifics of online news, where the larger volume of
information and great working speed cause the need to use news pre-produced by
other channels.
In the observed day, 182 press releases were sent to Estonian news organisations,
more than every fifth (41) of them became a news item. Public sector organisations
were most successful here – more than 30% of their press releases made it to the
news. The least newsworthy press releases (12%) were sent by the third sector,
disregarding the large number of press releases (75) sent out by third sector
organisations that day. Here, the difference is visible between the organisations that
can afford to hire professional PR people and the ones that can not. The first kind also
produce more press releases every day, however no correlation was found between
the number of press releases sent out in a day and their success in making it to the
news.
An online news editor makes the decision whether a press release will be news or not
mostly already when reading the heading and sender’s name – most PR material is
deleted at this level of selection. If the press release makes it through the first “sieve”,
the final decision is made during reading the first few paragraphs. All the interviewed
journalists said that when reading a particular press release, they instantly know
“whether this is newsworthy or not”, and they do not weigh the news value of press
information knowingly. This theory confirms the earleir studies (Schulz, 1996;
Eilders, 2007) which show that the newsworthiness of materials can be predicted,
since the journalists mostly perceive news values alike. Disregarding the automation
of news value evaluation processes the journalists still named classical news values
when they were asked to analyse the key reasons in their decision-making processes
of news selection.
Hence, the classic “gatekeeper” concept of journalistic data selection – the process
where the journalist makes constant selections, which information to publish and
which not – is still valid in the decision-making processes of online news editors. In
the same time, the role of the gatekeeper has shifted from an individual process into a
more collective form – instead of one person’s head, these selection processes are
now made collectively in the newsroom. During the process, all the journalists are
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trying to grab as attractive news item as possible (to produce more clicks and be more
effective), and the least attractive items will go unpublished. Undoubtedly, the amount
of effort spent on editing a news piece plays an important role in the selection process,
yet the journalists assured that no newsworthy subject will remain unpublished
because it needs a lot of editing.
The comparative text analysis of 41 press releases and the 49 news items based on
them showed that the press releases are not edited much – 67% of the press releases
were edited little (20) or almost not at all (13). A large part of the editing process is
linguistic, e.g. the press release’s synthax is edited into a more news-like style or long
and clumsy quotes are reworded. In five cases, the editor had called the source to
obtain additional information and in only one case, the opposing point of view had
been added to the press information. Thus, most online news are based on one source
only.
In the same time, the text analysis and interviews showed that rather the PR
information from the public sector and cultural organisations makes it to the news in
an unchanged form and that shameless advertorial text will not pass the editors’ sieve
– today, most PR people have learned to avoid this format as well. However, less
transparent methods are used for passing the news threshhold, e.g. sending the press
release outside the classik working hours or packaging the information of one’s
organisation as a general interest news item, taking over an expert role themselves.
This thesis can be viewed as the initial mapping of online news editors’ journalistic
practices and testing the combination of different methods in conducting this type of
research. Without a doubt, the author would see gladly that the research of this
interesting and largely unresearched topic would be continued in the scope of future
research projects.