Innovation Beyond the Buzzwords: The Rocky Road Towardsa Digital First-based Newsroom

In this paper, we report on an 18-month ethnographic field study inside the newsroom of a popular newspaper in Belgium, chronicling the endeavours of editors and journalists as they shift from a classic division between print and online beats to an integrated digital first-based newsroom. Throughout the paper, we stress the messiness and contingencies of changing the fixed structures of working journalists who are forced to undergo radical changes in their daily work, and how top-down communication affects their disposition towards, acceptance of and commitment or resistance towards the shift. We establish three types of newsroom tension (vertical, horizontal and diagonal), as well as five recurring steps faced by all hierarchical levels of the newsroom in its innovation attempts (contemplation, preparation, frustration, negotiation and adaptation). We conclude that flawed communication impacts dispositions towards innovation at various stages of the integration process and fuels tensions between various hierarchical levels. With journalistic practice in a constant state of flux, in-depth ethnography-based studies remain vital to analyse newsroom innovation and change.