News at Work

Imitation in an Age of Information Abundance

Pablo J. Boczkowski

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780226062808, 9780226062792
• eBook ISBN: 9780226062785
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Journalism
• Index: Social Sciences

Before news organizations began putting their content online, people got the news in print or on TV and almost always outside of the workplace. But nowadays, most of us keep an eye on the headlines from our desks at work, and we have become accustomed to instant access to a growing supply of constantly updated stories on the Web. This change in the amount of news available as well as how we consume it has been coupled with an unexpected development in editorial labor: rival news organizations can now keep tabs on the competition and imitate them, resulting in a decrease in the diversity of the news. Peeking inside the newsrooms where journalists create stories and the work settings where the public reads them, Pablo J. Boczkowski reveals why journalists contribute to the growing similarity of news—even though they dislike it—and why consumers acquiesce to a media system they find increasingly dissatisfying.

Comparing and contrasting two newspapers in Buenos Aires with similar developments in the United States, News at Work offers an enlightening perspective on living in a world with more information but less news.

Table of contents

• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Preface
• Introduction: When More Becomes Less
• 1. Studying Imitation in the South
• 2. The Divergent Logics of Hard- and Soft-News Production
• 3. Monitoring and Imitation in News Production
• 4. The Homogenization of News Products
• 5. The Consumption of Online News at Work
• 6. The Consumption of Increasingly Less Diverse News Content
• 7. The Work of News in an Age of Information Abundance
• Appendix A: Research Design
• Appendix B: Supplementary Studies
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index