Reshaping the public radio newsroom for the digital future, by Nikki Usher – Annotation

Published in 2012 based on field research conducted by Nikki Usher from 2008 to 2010, this paper presents an account of NPR’s response to a rapidly changing digital media environment. As audiences increasingly looked to the web for news, management at NPR understood a need for fundamental change in its operations and identity, from an organization focused entirely on news production for radio broadcast, to a digital media company producing multimedia for online distribution along with traditional NPR broadcast content.

Autoethnography: An Overview – Annotation & Notes

It seems appropriate to use my first-person voice in this annotation. But let’s begin with the authors’ voice for context: “Autoethnography is an approach to research and writing that seeks to describe and systematically analyze (graphy) personal experience (auto) in order to understand cultural experience (ethno)” (p.273).

Newsrooms and the Disruption of the Internet: A Short History of Disruptive Technologies, 1990–2010 – Annotation & Notes

A view of news on a computer, a tablet, and a smart phone

This book is a detailed account of how news organizations in the U.S. and U.K responded to society-wide changes brought by internet technologies and the World Wide Web. The account is informative in many ways, recounting key events year-by-year and the discourse by news professionals and executives. Not surprisingly, the gist is that they couldn’t predict the future, responded the best they could, got some things right and some things wrong.

Going Web-First at The Christian Science Monitor: A Three-Part Study of Change, by Nikki Usher – Annotation & Notes

In 2009 the Christian Science Monitor was among the daily newspapers ceasing print publication in favor of web-only distribution. This paper presents ethnographic research on that transition by former journalist and current associate professor of Communication Studies at the University of San Diego Nikki Usher. Usher observed editorial operations and interviewed news staff at the Monitor during three periods between February 2009 and February 2010: before the transition to web-only, after the transition but before adopting a new content management system, and after CMS implementation. Their goal was to understand the meaning of the change to Monitor’s journalists and its impact on their organizational and journalistic values.