The news organization in uncertain times: Business or institution?

Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly

Volumn 87, Issue 1, 2010, Pages 41-61

  Lowrey, Wilson ^a   Wan Woo, Chang ^b  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA   (United States)

^b UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN STEVENS POINT   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 77954514011     PISSN: 10776990     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/107769901008700103     Document Type: Article

References (130)

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44. American Press Institute, "The Learning Newsroom."
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48. Alchian Demsetz, "Production, Information Costs and Economic Organization," American Economic Review 62 (December 1972): 777-95;
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51. Pfeffer and Salancik, The External Control of Organizations.
52. Beam, "How Perceived Environmental Uncertainty Influences the Marketing Orientation of U.S. Daily Newspapers";
53. Gade, "Journalism Guardians in a Time of Great Change."
54. Singer, "The Political J-blogger;
55. Lowrey, "Commitment to Newspaper-TV Partnering."
56. George L. Daniels and C. Ann Hollifield, "Time of Turmoil: Short and Long-Term Effects of Organizational Change on Newsroom Employees," Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 79 (autumn 2002): 661-80;
57. Gade, "Newspapers and Organizational Development
58. Hansen, Neuzil, and Ward, "Newsroom Topic Teams."
59. Axel Bruns, "The Active Audience: Transforming Journalism from Gatekeeping to Gatewatching," in Making Online News: The Ethnography of New Media Production, ed. Chris Paterson and David Domingo (NY: Peter Lang, 2008), 171-84;
60. Lowrey, "Commitment to Newspaper-TV Partnering."
61. Domingo, "Interactivity in the Daily Routines of Online Newsrooms";
62. Thorsten Quandt, "(No) News on the World Wide Web?" Journalism Studies 9 (October 2008): 717-38;
63. Brad Schultz and Mary Lou Sheffer, "Blogging from the Labor Perspective: Lessons for Media Managers," The International Journal on Media Management 10 (1,2008): 1-9.
64. Daniels and Hollifield, "Time of Turmoil";
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66. Scott Shewfelt, "Disruption in the Desert," American Journalism Review 28 (January 2007): 14-15;
67. Smolkin, "Too Transparent?"
68. Russell Adams, "Big Daily's 'Hyperlocal' Flop: Loudounextra.com Fails to Give Lift to Washington Post," Washington Post, June 4, 2008, sec. B, p. 1;
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75. James March and Herbert Simon, Organizations (New York: Wiley, 1958).
76. Meyer and Rowan, "Institutionalized Organizations";
77. Walter W. Powell and Paul DiMaggio, The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1991);
78. Scott, Institutions and Organizations;
79. Pamela S. Tolbert and Lynne G. Zucker, "The Institutionalization of Institutional Theory," in Handbook of Organization Studies, ed. Stewart R. Clegg, Cynthia Hardy, Tom Lawrence, and Walter R. Nord (London: Sage, 2001), 175-90.
80. Powell and DiMaggio, The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis.
81. Meyer and Rowan, "Institutionalized Organizations";
82. Scott, Institutions and Organizations.
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85. DiMaggio and Powell, "The Iron Cage Revisited";
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87. DiMaggio and Powell, "The Iron Cage Revisited."
88. Denis McQuail, McQuail's Mass Communication Theory (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005), 219.
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95. Hallin, "Commercialism and Professionalism in the American News Media";
96. Tolbert and Zucker, "The Institutionalization of Institutional Theory."
97. Powell and DiMaggio, "Introduction."
98. Randal Beam, "How Perceived Environmental Uncertainty Influences Marketing Orientation of U.S. Daily Newspapers," Journalism &Mass Communication Quarterly 73 (summer 1996): 285-303;
99. Stephen Lacy and Alan Blanchard, "The Impact of Public Ownership, Profits, and Competition on Number of Newsroom Employees and Starting Salaries in Mid-sized Daily Newspapers," Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 80 (winter 2003): 949-68.
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101. Lacy and Blanchard, "The Impact of Public Ownership."
102. Pfeffer and Salancik, The External Control of Organizations.
103. Perrow, Complex Organization: A Critical Essay;
104. Williamson, "Organizational Innovation: The Transaction-Costs Approach."
105. Lindblom, "The Science of Muddling Through";
106. DiMaggio and Powell, "The Iron Cage Revisited";
107. Christopher C. Morphew and Jeroen Huisman, "Using Institutional Theory to Reframe Research on Academic Drift," Higher Education in Europe 27 (December 2002): 491-506.
108. Data from all 317 papers were used for a separate study, but only the papers for which completed surveys were received here (178) were used in the present study. Initially, the goal was to code 320 Web sites, with state-by-state stratified sampling ranging from 8 selected in larger states (with more papers) to 4 in smaller states. Several sites were not functional, leading to the final figure of 317. Papers were sampled by state to ensure non-flagship papers from each state were available to test effects of flagship papers.
109. "How often do editors monitor data on readers' use of your Web site? (page views, hits, etc.)"; "How often are data on readers' use of your Web site discussed in news meetings?"; "How influential are site-use data on news coverage decisions?"; "How frequently do editors monitor readers' online discussion forums?"
110. "In your news organization, how much emphasis is placed on trying to see connections between daily circulation patterns and the type of news content published?"; "How often does your paper's advertising or marketing department share reader research information with top newsroom editors?"; "How actively involved are top editors in meetings in which marketing plans or results are discussed?"
111. For example, a newspaper would be given a score of .50 (50%) on the "most popular story" feature if (a) this paper were coded "1" for having a most popular story list on its home page, and (b) 50% of the other papers in the state were also coded "1" for having this feature.
112. This technique was borrowed from studies of higher education examining mimicry of states' flagship universities (e.g., Morphew and Huisman, "Using Institutional Theory").
113. DiMaggio and Powell, "The Iron Cage Revisited."
114. Penetration increases (which were rare), were set at "0," as it was thought managers would respond more to decreases than increases.
115. These rates were obtained from the Standard Rate and Data Service Circulation 2008 book. An alternative measure of competition, which assessed the ratio between a paper's penetration and its rivals' penetration (a measure of "tightness" in competition) was also assessed, but differences in results were negligible.
116. These figures were obtained from the SRDS 2008 book. Print product circulation and penetration are used because the print product earns most of the ad revenue- more than 90% according to 2008 NAA figures- and so the financial environment for the print product should have a significant impact on decision making organization-wide. Also, a 2009 national study by the Reynolds Journalism Institute and ASNE shows that decisions about print and online are increasingly made on the same desk; 84% of editors said their Web sites and print products were integrated, and more than half of editors said the same staff made decisions about print and online content on their desks.
117. Lacy and Blanchard, "The Impact of Public Ownership."
118. Beam, "How Perceived Environmental Uncertainty Influences Marketing Orientation."
119. Pluralism was measured by summing per capita income, percent college graduates, county population, and percent working in non-agricultural fields in the paper's home county. Similar measures have been used in: Douglas B. Hindman, Stan Ernst, and Mavis Richardson, "The Rural-Urban Gap in Community Newspaper Editors' Use of Information Technologies," Mass Communication & Society 4 (spring 2001): 149-64;
120. David K. Demers, "Structural Pluralism, Corporate Newspaper Structure, and News Source Perceptions: Another Test of the Editorial Vigor Hypothesis," Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 75 (autumn 1998): 572-92;
121. George A. Donohue, Clarice Olien, and Philip J. Tichenor, "Structure and Constraints on Community Newspaper Gatekeepers," Journalism Quarterly 66 (winter 1989): 807-12, 845.
122. Before predictors and control variables were entered into regression models, data were examined to see if they fit assumptions of multiple regression. Standardized skewness scores for all but one of the variables were less than +/- 2. Durbin-Watson statistics for all regression models fell between 1.6 and 2.2. According to Ott, uncorrelated residuals are evidenced by a Durbin-Watson statistic between 1.5 and 2.5. Independent variables were not highly correlated with one another, with the only high bivariate correlation being a .58 between organizational size and structural pluralism.
123. Isomorphism across the corporate chain of a paper (for papers owned by corporations) was also included as a control variable in the isomorphism analyses because it was thought common corporate owner- ship could help explain commonalities across Web sites. However, differences in findings were negligible, and therefore they are not reported here.
124. A more in-depth look into influences from corporate chains could be helpful. Though the public ownership variable likely catches some effects from chain ownership, it may be that papers within the same states are also owned by similar corporations, which mandate or encourage particular features across Web sites.
125. Pablo J. Boczkowski, "When More Media Equals Less News: Patterns of Content Homogenization in Argentina's Leading Print and Online Newspapers," Political Communication 24 (April-June 2007): 167-80.
126. McQuail, McQuail's Mass Communication Theory;
127. Jeremy Tunstall, The Media Were American: U.S. Mass Media in Decline (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).
128. McQuail, McQuail's Mass Communication Theory.
129. Beam, "How Perceived Environmental Uncertainty Influences Marketing Orientation."
130. Rodney Benson, "News Media as a 'Journalistic Field': What Bourdieu Adds to New Institutionalism, and Vice Versa," Political Communication 23 (April-June 2006): 187-202.