The category of news as comprehended by representatives of the Tomsk media community

“News” is a complex category that can be studied from a variety of theoretical positions. In the research, “news” is regarded as a fundamental category of journalism, not as a specific journalistic genre. The research question is: How do representatives of Tomsk online news media evaluate the concept of news when thinking about their professional values? The aim, therefore, is to identify these representatives’ attitudes to the category of news. The research material was nine semistructured interviews with employees of Tomsk online news media. The article defines online news media as quite diverse types of Internet media: from news agencies to local websites with urban news feeds. The study found the following. The interviewed specialists believe that news has certain characteristics that distinguish it from other types of texts. The main features of the news category are: brevity, novelty, urgency, objectivity. The respondents also associate news with the ideas of standardization, mechanization, robotization, opposing them to the concepts “human”, “authorial”, “unique”. Thus, the respondents define the activity of news preparation as standardized, largely devoid of creativity. In this sense, the respondents contrast news with “big texts”, “storytelling”, and “analytics”. Discussing the problems of the regional media market, the informants agree that local news media have to compete. The news field in the region is very limited, so timeliness becomes the key to the competitiveness of Tomsk news media. According to the experts, it happens that some colleagues violate professional taboos in the pursuit of news. In general, when conceptualizing the category of news, the respondents also evaluate the issue of professionalism in news journalism. They believe that a professional must be at the core of events, must be able to see news even “where there is none”, and must have a wide network of social contacts. In addition, a professional must be aware of what is happening in the city, in the country and in the world, to see the whole information picture. In this sense, a professional journalist and a newsroom become “gatekeepers”. In this way, newsrooms control what events and facts will be covered and what agenda will be formed. The role of the “gatekeeper” is maximized when newsrooms begin to perform an expert function, thus strengthening the connection with other participants in the news discourse. Accordingly, by characterizing the abstract category of news, experts come up with ideas about their own professional values and criteria of professionalism in news journalism. The author expresses her gratitude to the specialists of the Tomsk media community who took part in the research project. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

Keywords

Authors

References