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Newsworkers. A comparative European perspective

While constant and accelerated technological evolution contributes to spreading the ideas of complexity and lack of definition in journalism, the intrinsic ability of this field to assimilate changes and adaptations is in fact one of its distinctive features. Professor Henrik Örnebring (Karlstad University, Sweden) reminds us of this on the first page of his book Newsworkers. A Comparative European Perspective, when he paraphrases the British journalists of the thirties decade, Carr and Stevens The need to work towards a precise and close-fitting characterization of journalism today is one of the main assertions and motivations of this book, which is an outstanding research contribution due to its usefulness for updating, with empirical data, the existing knowledge on the influence that institutional change in journalism has on the work and routines of newsrooms. Örnebring opts for a cross-national comparison of contemporary newswork in six European countries and media contexts—Britain, Estonia, Germany, Italy, Poland and Sweden. This book is the result of a multi-year research project developed at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism of the University of Oxford. It is presented with great soundness and clarity, organized into eight chapters that perfectly fit the empirical approach employed. The first chapter, which has an introductory character, provides numerous indications and reflections that acquaint the reader with the book’s intentions, while the second chapter provides the theoretical and contextual framework of the research. The third chapter offers a methodological discussion, and presents the structural and thematic axis of the work. Here, Örnebring details an analytical proposal he has proven valid for such studies, and which can be adapted to other case studies with similar aims. This is one of the main contributions of Örnebring’s work. This chapter also proves interesting for obtaining an up-to-date overview of the media landscape of each of the countries considered in the study, which is another of the book’s main contributions. The basic procedural information contained in this chapter is broadened with the inclusion of a methodological appendix where the author provides sampling and other significant analytical information. The following four chapters contain the abundant empirical evidence that Örnebring obtained on the basis of more than 2000 surveys with journalists and 63 qualitative interviews. These chapters are organized according to four interrelated dimensions that represent the main comparative axes of the study: Technology, Skill, Autonomy and Professionalism. This contributes to presenting the main content of the book in a clear and readable way. The inclusion of tables and graphs is also clarifying, bearing in mind the book’s comparative purpose. The first dimension considered by Örnebring, Technology, is without doubt one of the most significant, due to the influence that the introduction of new technologies has exerted on journalism as work and as an institution in a state of permanent adjustment and revision.