Abstract M A R K E T D E V E L O P M E N T T H R O U G H D I G I T I Z A T I O N 2

Transcription

1 ANDRII DEGELER Market Development Through Digitization: Newsroom Structures and Editorial Practices In Converged Online Media Cases of The Next Web, The Verge, and Engadget

2 M A R K E T D E V E L O P M E N T T H R O U G H D I G I T I Z A T I O N 2 Abstract Years of technological and professional development of media have created new kinds of online-only outlets that do not call themselves newspapers, magazines, or any other conventional names, but still provide news content to a large-scale audience. Despite having newsrooms, editors and other formal signs of a traditional media outlet, the websites in question refer to themselves as blogs. In this thesis, the newsrooms of three high-profile technology-related blogs The Next Web, The Verge, and Engadget are analyzed through a series of interviews with their editors. The newsrooms of these online-only media outlets are compared to those in traditional newspapers from Germany and the US, which leads to a conclusion that the practices seen in virtual newsrooms, which are largely induced by convergence processes, are rooted in newsrooms practices from both continental Europe and the Anglo-Saxon world, blurring borders and disregarding distances. In order to broaden the perspective of the thesis, the business models of online media are assessed in terms of aspects which influence editorial practices and newsroom structures, and the probability of the emergence of alternative revenue sources is analyzed. Technology-related blogs, despite having a significant audience and often employing complex newsroom structures, have rarely been researched by journalism scholars, therefore this thesis may serve as a basis for the future research and will show important points of difference between new and old media. Keywords: newsroom structure, convergence, digitization, business models, online newsroom, roles in the newsroom, newsroom history, blogs

3 M A R K E T D E V E L O P M E N T T H R O U G H D I G I T I Z A T I O N 3 Table of Contents Abstract... 2 Table of Illustrations... 4 Chapter 1. Introduction... 5 Chapter 2. Main concepts and definitions... 8 Faces of convergence... 8 Convergence: From a paradigm shift to a buzzword... 8 Reflections on media convergence... 9 Convergence meets journalism Convergence types Traditional newsroom structures and editorial practices The two histories of the print newsroom When the paths diverge Jacks-of-all-trades vs. niche specialists Between the extremes Editorial practices and newsroom structures: definitions and data for comparison Physical structure Roles in the newsroom Copy-flow Desk structure The search for new business models Chapter 3. Convergence, newsrooms, and business models: Finding interrelations Chapter 4. Research methodology Content analysis Limitations Chapter 5. The Next Web, The Verge, Engadget: A closer look Engadget The Next Web The Verge Similarities and differences The outlets as seen through Google Glass... 38

4 M A R K E T D E V E L O P M E N T T H R O U G H D I G I T I Z A T I O N 4 News coverage Numbers and multimedia Chapter 6. Discussion and insights Physical structure Roles in the newsroom Copy-flow Desk structure Convergence in the newsrooms Business models Chapter 7. Reflections on converging online journalistic practices Distinctive features of the online newsroom Comparison to traditional newspapers Convergence, newsroom practices and business models Chapter 8. Conclusion References Appendices Appendix I Questionnaire Appendix II Audio Appendix III Transcripts Appendix IV Coding book Table of Illustrations Illustration 1: List of the interviews conducted Illustration 2: Engadget.com, June Illustration 3: Engadget.com, March Illustration 4: Engadget.com, April Illustration 5: TheNextWeb.com, December Illustration 6: TheNextWeb.com, April Illustration 7: TheVerge.com, April Illustration 8: Google Glass coverage Illustration 9: Number of stories about Google Glass... 40

5 M A R K E T D E V E L O P M E N T T H R O U G H D I G I T I Z A T I O N 5 Chapter 1. Introduction Over the last 10 to 15 years, the Internet has been playing a major role in shaping the ever-changing media landscape around the world. Chasing technological progress, many newspapers, radio stations, and TV channels went online to be present in the brave new world of the Web. It is hard nowadays to find a media outlet that does not have a website and which does not distribute its content through online channels, such as social networks, YouTube, etc. Years of technological and professional development of online and traditional media have brought many changes to the way newsrooms work: journalists have become multi-skilled, or deskilled, as others might say (Erdal, 2007: 53), meaning that journalists master many skills, such as writing, shooting stills and video, and editing audio, without becoming really professional in any of them; also, newsrooms have become converged (Aviles and Carvajal, 2008; Quandt and Singer, 2009), and the people formerly known as audience (Rosen, 2006: 1) are nowadays considered an extremely important source of information. On the edge of the new century, a new type of media was brought to the market thanks to the Internet online-only publications that exist as websites but do not have any hard copies distributed in the real world. With the Internet steady growth in penetration from about 361 million users in 2000 to about 2.3 billion users in 2011 ( World Internet Users and Population Stats, 2012), this way of publishing grew more and more popular. Together with traditional newspapers' websites and online-only newspapers, a new kind of online media appeared that did not call themselves newspapers, or magazines, or any other conventional names, but still provided news content to a large-scale audience. Despite having newsrooms, editors and other formal signs of a traditional media outlet, the websites in question refer to themselves as blogs and are located at the bleeding edge of the process of digitization, or digitalization of journalism (Deuze, 2004), which means its conversion from analog to digital form ( Digitize Definition, n.d.). One of the distinctive and interesting observations about these blogs is that by the time of their appearance there was no such thing as traditional editorial practices (e.g. newsroom physical and hierarchical structure, and copy-flow) for this kind of media. Therefore, the blogs had to create them from scratch, orienting themselves on the online media landscape and using traditional practices as a basis only where necessary. In turn, traditional media (primarily newspapers) entered the online news market with a full set of longstanding ways of working (Deuze, 2004). In the beginning of the era of online news media, it was just about re-publishing content from a hard copy on the Internet. In the 2000s it became clear that the online audience requires tailor-made news content, and the ways of production used in newspapers do not necessarily work on the Internet (Boczkowski, 2004). Developments in online media in the 2000s also gave a second life to the concept of convergence, which has many meanings, one of which is the merger of media channels or even whole media organizations (for instance, newspapers and broadcasters). Later in this thesis, the major types of convergence will be examined, yet here it makes sense to note that the Internet is an initially converged

6 M A R K E T D E V E L O P M E N T T H R O U G H D I G I T I Z A T I O N 6 distribution channel, as it allows online publications to combine the text and multimedia seamlessly in journalistic products, such as articles with embedded video fragments and other rich media products. This thesis provides a closer look at converged online-only newsrooms and the ways in which convergence influences their day-to-day editorial practices. There are two main research questions addressed by the thesis: 1. What are the main distinctive features of editorial practices used in particular online-only media outlets? 2. How do these distinctive features differ from those of traditional outlets, many of which have also entered the digital era with their websites? The information about the ways of working in traditional Anglo-American and European newsrooms is taken from the body of previous research that includes the works of Esser (1998), Aviles and Carvajal (2008), Boczkowski (2004), Meier (2007), and others. As the editorial practices and structures of modern online-only newsrooms have scarcely been researched yet, the information about them for comparison is collected by interviewing their staff members, particularly journalists and managing editors. Three online-only media outlets have been chosen for this research: The Next Web ( Engadget ( and The Verge ( All three are covering Internet and technology, as well as tech business issues. Apparently these media entities are created by experts in Internet communications and multimedia technologies, so their way of using these technologies is likely to be a conscious decision with clear reasons; in other words, tech blogs do not use multimedia technologies because it is fashionable or everyone else does it, as may happen with traditional media going online (Deuze, 2003). All three websites were created in the last 10 years and are among the top 20 technology publications in the world ( Techmeme Leaderboard, n.d.; Technology Blogs Technorati, n.d.) as of the first half of The main step in the process of shedding light on the research questions is to learn what editorial practices are being used currently at Engadget, The Verge, and The Next Web, and how did they change over the last several years, evolving from text-and-stills-only news weblogs to fully converged online media. It is nearly impossible to answer such questions from outside the outlets, so the data was obtained from five interviews conducted via VoIP services with editors from the three publications. The interviews were held following a pre-defined semi-structured questionnaire, with questions dealing with day-to-day editorial routines, newsroom structure, multimedia news production, and the financial aspects of running a media outlet online. In addition to the interviews, detailed descriptions of the researched outlets are provided in this thesis together with a quantitative analysis of their content based on the way how Engadget, The Verge, and The Next Web reported news related to Google Glass, an innovative wearable computer, in the second half of February By choosing three websites to be analyzed here that work largely in the same niche and cover similar topics, the researcher makes sure that they are comparable not only to other types of media, but also

7 M A R K E T D E V E L O P M E N T T H R O U G H D I G I T I Z A T I O N 7 to each other. As the result of the interviews, a list of distinctive features is compiled that are common to the outlets. To determine whether there are significant differences between editorial practices in The Next Web, The Verge, and Engadget and traditional media, sets of their similar editorial practices have been compared to those typically seen in conventional Western newspapers. The latter are derived from previous research conducted by media scholars such as Jurgen Wilke (2002), José Alberto García Aviles and Miguel Carvajal (2008), Amy Schmitz Weiss and David Domingo (2010), and others. They include the newsroom organization, role distribution, copy-flow, and desk structure. To add an extra dimension to the research and to see the roots of some editorial practices that may be found beyond convergence itself, this thesis also examines the financial side of new media outlets' existence. While the newspapers that pioneered the age of the Internet in media (e.g., Weekend City Press Review in 1991) went online first of all to reach a larger audience, nowadays media outlets are sometimes forced to abandon or significantly reduce their offline activities and focus on the Internet on practical grounds, such as to cut expenses on production and distribution (Devyatkin, 2001; Singer, 2004). This is mostly the case for print media, whose circulation and revenue figures are in decline worldwide (Macnamara, 2010). The business models that are used or may be used in the online media are an important part of this thesis, because knowing them enables a better understanding of the reasons behind adopting certain editorial practices. During the interviews, the editors of The Next Web, The Verge, and Engadget were asked about the influence of financial aspects on editorial practices and structure, and how profitable some of widely used business models are, and which revenue streams really matter for online-only news media. This research is thus aimed at determining distinctive editorial practices that are being employed in particular online-only media, connecting them to the concept of convergence, finding the interrelations between convergence, editorial practices and business models in innovative media, and comparing routines of online-only news outlets to their traditional counterparts, i.e. newspapers. This thesis consists of several components that are aimed at the analysis of different aspects of the questions raised and elaboration on possible answers and suggestions. In chapters 2 and 3, the theoretical framework for the research is established with a discussion on the topics of standard editorial practices that are being used in conventional Western newsrooms, as well as definitions of and reflections on convergence in media. Further on, the studied websites are described in detail, including their history, position on the market, and screenshots of front pages, so that readers can familiarize themselves with the additional factors that could influence editorial practices there. Chapter 6 is devoted to the insights gained in the interviews with editors of the three online-only media outlets, while in Chapter 7 the research questions are assessed again using the data obtained from the interviews.

8 M A R K E T D E V E L O P M E N T T H R O U G H D I G I T I Z A T I O N 8 Chapter 2. Main concepts and definitions There are many aspects of new and traditional media that need to be discussed in order to comprehensively assess the research questions raised in this thesis i.e. to determine the distinctive features of the editorial practices in online-only newsrooms and compare them to those in traditional media and there is a solid body of research conducted on convergence, editorial practices, and business models employed by conventional newspapers. As the focus of this thesis lies at the intersection of the three, the theoretical framework of the approach needs to be outlined. The aim of this chapter is to bring up some important findings from previous research, elaborate on relevant theories, and define essential concepts that will be used in the following chapters. In particular, the different understandings of convergence are closely examined, a definition of newsroom practices is formulated, and the interrelations between the two are explained. Faces of convergence To properly understand and assess the research questions of this thesis, the concept of convergence first needs to be explained and narrowed down to be applicable to modern news media. Later, the concept of convergence in journalism will be used in connection to newsroom practices, as well as in interviews with editors of online news platforms. The concept of convergence is extremely broad and stretches from telecommunications to media, with the latter including movies, books, and journalism, and many other things. Even in journalism studies, there are several types and understandings of convergence. The following sections will elaborate the main approaches to and implications of convergence, outline its main aspects from a journalistic perspective (which are strongly connected to each other), and define what is meant by convergence in the context of this thesis. Convergence: From a paradigm shift to a buzzword Being a word that is extremely rich of meanings, convergence can be applied to pretty much any occurrence of anything merging with anything else. The word's usage ranges from telecommunication companies creating converged packages including TV, Internet and cellular service, to economics, where it means a process in which economies of different countries become more similar to each other (Cambridge Business English Dictionary, 2011). This thesis is focused on convergence in journalism, which is a part of the realm of media convergence, i.e. the occurrences of convergence that manifest in the media environment. Although narrower than the general convergence definition, media convergence is also a huge field where various trends have been developing since the first half of the 20th century (Cassidy, 2009; Serna, 2009). This ancient history of media convergence is usually being studied by scholars who specialize in non-journalistic media products, like commercials, cinema, pop culture etc., such as Kathryn Fuller-Seeley (2009) or Marsha Cassidy (2009). Indeed, at that time there were many more manifestations of media convergence in entertainment media than in journalism.

9 M A R K E T D E V E L O P M E N T T H R O U G H D I G I T I Z A T I O N 9 But of course the processes of convergence are much broader than just cross-ownership of media outlets of different kinds, and convergence of media outlets cannot be fully blocked by any governmental regulations. In the middle of the 20th century, the first manifestations of a demand for multi-skilled journalists emerged (Deuze, 2004; Winseck, 1998), which can be considered a sign of media convergence in journalism (e.g. a newspaper reporter taking photos). Since then, the process of transfusion between broadcast and print media was never slowing down, only speeding up, and the rise of the Internet in the 1990s catalyzed it significantly. Reflections on media convergence Before proceeding to the definition of convergence in journalism and its types that are used in this thesis, it is necessary to outline several concepts and trends that characterize the modern approach in media convergence research. Although studies of general media convergence and convergence in journalism may seem to be of different kinds (e.g. media convergence studies may be devoted to commercials, video games, etc.), they have many points of contact, and theories of general media studies make perfect sense when applied to journalism. One of the important trends in the state-of-the-art of convergence research, which is also fully applicable to its journalism part, assumes that today's audience is playing a role that is no less important than media themselves. Convergence in this case is defined as something that characterizes today's world and creates a "culture, where old and new media collide, where grassroots and corporate media intersect, where the power of the media producer and the power of the media consumer interact in unpredictable ways" (Jenkins, 2006:11). In the beginning of the 21st century, convergence scholars' attention has partially shifted to the interaction between media producers and media consumers (Jenkins, 2004; Quandt & Singer, 2009). Henry Jenkins, one of the most important thinkers in the realm of media convergence studies, in his book Convergence Culture speaks of the participatory culture that has come to replace passive media spectatorship (2006: 3). The importance of this aspect is also connected to the nature of the Internet, as it is the first fully interactive medium, where the boundaries between the audience and the media producers are sometimes indistinguishable. However, when speaking about convergence, it is important to understand that convergence itself is not a stance, but a process (Jenkins, 2006); convergence does not mean ultimate stability or unity. It operates as a constant force for unification but always in dynamic tension with change (Pool, 1983: 53 in Jenkins, 2006: 11). Therefore, a newspaper reporter with a notebook and camera from the 1950s (Winseck, 1998), a franchise that includes comics, movies and video games from the 1990s and 2000s, and any of today's online-only news platforms are manifestations of the same processes and should be assessed as parts of a whole. This is, again, a reason why historical aspects of both convergence and newsroom practices need to be elaborated and closely examined in this thesis. There is another important point that has to be made when speaking about convergence and so-called transmedia storytelling. (Coined by Marsha Kinder, the latter term means coordinated storytelling with pieces of content being dispersed between distribution channels (Kinder, 1991); in journalism, transmedia storytelling is what many online news platforms do when complementing traditional

10 M A R K E T D E V E L O P M E N T T H R O U G H D I G I T I Z A T I O N 10 textual reports with multimedia content, be it audio, video, or even just still photos.) Despite widespread talk about the death of the old media and the rise of the new, the point is that the media do not go anywhere; what dies are simply the tools we use to access media content These are what media scholars call delivery technologies (Jenkins, 2006: 13). What Jenkins means in his Convergence Culture research is that real media are the written text, the recorded voice, the still or moving pictures, and so on. It is also worth noting that Jenkins' book has nothing in particular to do with journalism, which proves the point I made above about the application of general theories of convergence to news media. Jenkins' arguments go along with research done by Lev Manovich, who calls the personal computer (apparently meaning not the hardware itself, but the digital representation of the information that it provides) a meta-medium (2001: 33), i.e. something that is a medium by itself and also consists of other media that have melted down into it. When speaking about the computer as a meta-medium, Manovich refers first of all to the field of cinema and visual culture, though his definition fits perfectly into the journalistic perception of convergence, where the role of computers in terms of media production is at least not smaller than of invention of the printing press or telegraph. Taking Manovich's definition further, one can say that the Internet is even more of a meta-medium than a computer, as it is not only a medium, but also a delivery technology. Convergence meets journalism Usually by convergence in the field of journalism one would mean some combination of technologies, products, staffs and geography among the previously distinct provinces of print, television and online media (Singer, 2004: 3). The word had become very popular in journalism studies way before the expansion of the Internet in people's day-to-day life began. In the past, the term convergence would mean much less than it does now; for instance, newspaper journalists wielding a photo camera (Winseck, 1998) are also considered a manifestation of convergence and cross-media journalism. Such cases of convergence mean that, as Deuze argued in his analysis (2004: 143), multimedia adoption process is not something uniquely caused by internet [sic], and the contemporary developments of convergence should be seen as accelerators and amplifiers of changes rooted in the middle of the 20th century. This means that the interrelations between convergence and newsroom practices, such as merging of production of different media products (video, audio, photos, text), are catalyzed rather than induced by digitization, and the historical aspect needs to be looked at closely. Despite the fact that most of the historical research of convergence has been done on its general manifestations, there are also journalism studies scholars like Dwayne Winseck digging deep into the 19th century and outlining the possibilities of media convergence from that time to the second half of the 20th century (Winseck, 1998). According to Winseck, although media convergence in journalism was always a possibility since the telegraph met the telephone, numerous governmental regulations and restrictions in cross-media ownership led to slowing down the process of merger of different media, starting with newspapers, telegraph, and radio.

11 M A R K E T D E V E L O P M E N T T H R O U G H D I G I T I Z A T I O N 11 Studying the history of media development in the 20th century, a researcher can say that the convergence processes both in general and in journalism were rapidly accelerated by the emergence of computers (Manovich, 2001; Quandt and Singer, 2009) and the Internet in the second half of the century, and were further catalyzed by connected mobile devices that mushroomed around the 2000s (Jenkins, 2006), such as PDAs, smartphones, tablets, etc. With the Internet becoming an integral part of people's lives, the influence of the technological aspect of convergence has become most visible in newsroom processes as well as in the online content that the newsrooms generate. Technological convergence refers primarily to the process of digitalization of journalism (Deuze, 2003; Deuze, 2004) over the past decades, computers have become the main tools in both the creation and distribution of content in mass media, from newspapers and broadcasters to online news platforms. This is why on the edge of this century journalism scholars did a lot of research on the changes that appeared in traditional newsrooms that try to find their way onto the Web (Boczkowski, 2004; Domingo, 2008; Aviles and Carvajal, 2008; and others). The research in this field has revealed, among other things, certain patterns and routines of converged newsrooms which will be the focus of the next chapter. Similarly to most of the research on the topic of newsroom practices to date, this thesis is devoted to the production side of converged media, i.e. the main focus is on the newsroom (not the content or the audience), and specifically focuses on how the interaction between journalists is happening and how the workflows are shaped. The main difference between this thesis and most of the similar research conducted in this field is that the newsrooms looked at here have never been working with conventional delivery technologies, such as paper or TV broadcast, but were instead born online and developed their ways of working independently of any traditional print or broadcast mother ships. These newsrooms are looked at through the lens of convergence in journalism, which has several distinctive manifestations described in the next section. Convergence types With the first part of the theoretical framework of this thesis outlined, it is possible to proceed to defining the main types of convergence in journalism. The basis for division used in this thesis is largely based on the work of Rich Gordon (2003), where he suggested a way to comprehensively assess convergence from different points of view. Clearly dividing the concept of convergence in journalism into several distinctive types helps to structure the thesis and make it easily readable and understandable not only to media research scholars, but also to industry professionals. Gordon's work has provided a strong basis for the division, while this thesis has changed and narrowed several definitions and added a few important points relevant to the main research questions. The different types of convergence examined in this thesis are structural convergence, technological convergence, ownership convergence, and tactical convergence. Each reflects a distinctive aspect of what being merged, or converged. In the case of structural convergence, the object is normally a

12 M A R K E T D E V E L O P M E N T T H R O U G H D I G I T I Z A T I O N 12 newsroom that is merged with another one; technological convergence is all about distribution channels and multimedia; ownership convergence can be seen in corporate mergers among media companies; and tactical convergence appears when media outlets of different types undertake efforts to cross-promote each other. Structural convergence This aspect of convergence means the changes inside media outlets, in their newsrooms' organization and in journalists' job descriptions induced by the appearance of new distribution platforms and channels, be it TV, print, or the Internet. Therefore, this type of convergence is very relevant to the topic of this thesis, as it describes what happens on the borderlands between convergence and newsroom practices. In its pure state, structural convergence appears when previously distinct newsrooms are merged, leading to the creation of new, previously nonexistent positions (for instance, multimedia journalists who need to produce written pieces, shoot video and take photos, or newspaper partnerships managers who work on the coordination of different media within the newsroom), and organizational changes, from the physical plan of a newsroom to new hierarchical structures. For many newspaper journalists and editors, entering the digital era meant a lot of changes in their day-to-day routines and work procedures (Aviles and Carvajal, 2008; Meier, 2007; Thurman and Myllylahti, 2009; Schmitz Weiss and Domingo, 2010). These changes may occur when newspapers' websites are created and journalists have to cater both online and offline audiences, but they can also occur when newspapers cease their offline activities and go online-only, as the working paradigm of a news website differs significantly from that of a print newspaper. Differences manifest themselves, for instance, in deadlines (there is usually no firm deadline for stories created for a website) (Thurman and Myllylahti, 2009), in multimedia bites (an online news platform always needs at least a photo, or preferably a video, to accompany the text), etc. At the same time, structural convergence may also be present in the news websites which were born as online-only outlets. In the cases of The Next Web and Engadget, it is safe to say that, with an embracing new ways of presenting information (such as video or podcasts), the media companies had changed significantly in terms of structure. The situation with The Verge is different, as it is the youngest outlet of the three and it has been focusing on diverse distribution channels since it was launched in Technological convergence As follows from the name, technological convergence means the melting together of media production and media distribution channels (or, as in the case with the Internet, into a separate one), and it can also be called multimedia convergence (Garnham, 1996 cited in Deuze, 2004: 143). This aspect of convergence became relevant when the rise of the World Wide Web began, and different media went online to stream their content through the new channel the Internet. As Aviles and Carvajal emphasize, the technological foundation of newsroom convergence lies in the digitization of production (2008: 222), meaning that these days the center of creation of any kind

13 M A R K E T D E V E L O P M E N T T H R O U G H D I G I T I Z A T I O N 13 of content is a computer. Distributed via the Internet, this content is being consumed by the audience using connected devices, such as desktop PCs, laptops, tablets, smartphones, Smart TVs, etc. Therefore, the technological aspect of convergence is based on digitization of production and seeing the Internet as one of the major multimedia content distribution channels. In this thesis, technological convergence appears as one of the main drivers and accelerators of the changes that occur between online-only media outlets and their traditional counterparts in terms of their workflow and structure. The main trends and tendencies that influence both types of media platforms might be the same. The online-only ones, however, tend to introduce more technologically advanced ways of working faster (Deuze, 2004). Actually, the very fact of the existence of online-only media platforms is a manifestation of technological convergence, which allows journalists to distribute their product, be it text, photos, or videos, to Internet users all over the world. Ownership convergence This is probably the oldest aspect of convergence, which is also called media cross-ownership (Obar, 2009) or synergy (Gordon, 2003b). As follows from its many names, ownership convergence means situations when one company/person owns several media outlets of different types; the traditional combination would be a TV station and a newspaper. This type of convergence was illegal in the US since the 1940s (Gordon, 2003a), as it was perceived as a factor that would stifle diversity of voices and have a negative impact of journalistic objectivity. This regulation was eliminated by FCC in (Obar, 2009), though cross-ownership of a TV station and a newspaper is still prohibited in many other countries, such as Germany (Meier, 2007). Good examples of synergy may be the merger of AOL and Time Warner in 2000 or the acquisition of the Wall Street Journal by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. in For the online media outlets analyzed in this research, the concept of cross-media ownership is partially relevant, as in 2005 Engadget was acquired by AOL, which also owns other popular online media outlets, such as the Huffington Post, TechCrunch, AutoBlog, and AOL.com itself; another researched outlet, The Verge, is owned by Vox Media. The Next Web, in its turn, includes, among other entities, The Next Web Magazine for tablets (as of February 2013 only for the ipad), which can be considered a separate content distribution platform. As Gordon (2003a: 64) points out, ownership convergence does not necessarily require shared editorial decision making or other kinds of collaboration across distribution platforms. From the interviews conducted with journalists and editors, it will be seen if there are any issues induced by cross-media ownership present in The Next Web, Engadget, and The Verge. Tactical convergence The term tactical convergence was coined by Rich Gordon and means a variety of activities that [fall] into three general areas: content, marketing, and revenue enhancement (Gordon, 2003a: 65). 1 This decision was partially reversed in 2004 by United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, but in 2007 the FCC voted for relaxation of the restrictions again (Obar, 2009).

14 M A R K E T D E V E L O P M E N T T H R O U G H D I G I T I Z A T I O N 14 Under this category fall all the cross-promotional activities performed by media of different types that do not necessarily require cross-ownership of the outlets involved. A common example of tactical convergence is cross-promotional agreements between various TV stations and newspapers in the late 1990s (Gordon, 2003a). Following these agreements, newspapers would promote TV meteorologists on their weather pages, while in TV programs viewers would hear about the headlines from tomorrow's newspaper. Another manifestation of tactical convergence is the so-called talkbacks when print journalists would appear on the air to discuss stories they were covering. Tactical convergence is less relevant for this research than technological and structural, though it does come in play, for instance, in The Next Web's promotional activities for its The Next Web Magazine for ipad (a case of combination of tactical convergence and cross-media ownership). Convergence today Back in 2003, Rich Gordon in his study The Meanings and Implications of Convergence concluded that technological convergence was barely present in the media market at that point. He also predicted its development together with improvements in Internet connection speed, which nowadays allows users to stream multimedia content in real time. Today, all the aspects of convergence in media are about equally important and connected to each other for instance, technological, structural and ownership convergence oftentimes occur together when media outlets merge. This research defines convergence as the variety of ways in which text and multimedia content are melted together by using computers and the Internet for both production and distribution, as well as consequences of these processes (e.g. structural convergence). This definition includes the types of convergence mentioned above, and particularly the aspects of them that are connected directly to what is happening in newsrooms i.e. to what is called newsroom structure and editorial practices. Traditional newsroom structures and editorial practices After about two hundred years of journalism's existence as a separate profession, one can speak of certain traditions and common features of newsrooms that started to form in the 19th century. Even in modern newsrooms, researchers can still see the familiar shapes of reporters, editors and their German counterparts called redakteurs (Esser, 1998) who pioneered the news work in the Anglo- Saxon world and in continental Europe. 2 The way the newsroom is organized and how working processes are shaped has been a research topic for many a media scholar for a long time. This thesis relies on a body of works that describe newsrooms in the US and UK on the one side, and in Germany on the other. The US, the UK, and Germany have been chosen to represent the evolution of the newsroom because from their example one can see the fundamental differences (Esser, 1998: 376) of the ways a newsroom can be structured in terms of both physical layout and workflow. Newsroom structures and editorial practices 2 This thesis consciously employs a Western perspective, thus it does not discuss newsrooms in Asia, as they are not relevant for this research and may differ significantly from their European and American counterparts.

15 M A R K E T D E V E L O P M E N T T H R O U G H D I G I T I Z A T I O N 15 in German and Anglo-Saxon newspapers are seen in this thesis as two extreme points, in terms of which it is possible to express less extreme ones, such as those researched. The history of the newsroom in the United States was analyzed by John Nerone and Kevin Barnhurst (2003), who described in great detail the roots of today's newspapers and the way their editorial structures have been changing since the 18th century. Another prominent researcher of the Anglo- Saxon newsroom is Frank Esser, whose comparative study of British and German newsrooms (1998) forms an important part the basis of this thesis. Apart from Esser, the evolution of the newsroom in Germany was described by Jurgen Wilke (2003); in his works he also cites important scholars whose works are written in German and could not be accessed directly. The newsroom is a very important place, or rather a concept of a locus where journalists interact with each other and create the media product for any publication. The way journalists and editors communicate and collaborate with each other in the newsroom inevitably leaves tracks on the output both on the form in which content is presented to the audience and on the content itself. Therefore, one may assume that a smartly and efficiently organized newsroom can nowadays be a competitive advantage; this assumption finds proof in one of the interviews done for this thesis, where The Verge's editor Dieter Bohn cited the company's workflow as one of the reasons for the website's success. One of the main topics of this thesis is the way in which modern online newsrooms work; but before going straight to the interviews and outlets' descriptions, the stage needs to be set with a short retrospective journey into the history of the print newsroom, and the conditions of its development must be outlined. Today's newsroom structures and processes have their roots deep in a time when what we call the traditional newsroom was taking shape, and it is therefore still possible to see where many features of today's online newsrooms come from but only while keeping in mind the history of newsroom development on both sides of the Atlantic. As the websites analyzed in this research The Next Web, Engadget, and The Verge specialize first of all in production of text pieces, while multimedia materials may be seen as a complement, it makes sense to speak of standards developed in print (and then later converged) newsrooms, while omitting broadcast-only newsrooms. As the basis of this chapter, a definition of editorial practices and newsroom structures needs to be introduced. In assessing editorial practices and newsroom structures, this thesis describes a part of the realm of working processes implemented in a newsroom, including how the day-to-day interaction between staffers (and sometimes freelance contributors as well) is built, how the working space is organized, how labor is divided, and how strictly the quality of the copy is controlled. The two histories of the print newsroom This thesis examines two histories of the print newsroom which also have common parts. The first is the history of European (and particularly German) newspapers, and the second is the history of print mass media in the United States (and the UK, which is similar (Esser, 1998)). Separated by thousands of kilometers, these regions have shaped two kinds of newsroom culture that differ in many aspects, from physical newsroom organization to division of labor and journalists' self-perceptions.

16 M A R K E T D E V E L O P M E N T T H R O U G H D I G I T I Z A T I O N 16 The huge difference between the German and Anglo-American newsroom models is convenient for researchers, as any other model can generally be placed somewhere in between these two extremes and described according to the features it takes from each. This is also the case with the newsrooms analyzed in this thesis; later on, there will be an elaboration on their features using the historical points explained in this chapter. However different German and American print newsrooms may have become, the starting point in their development was the same, even though the time frames for the main periods in their history are different. In Germany, the first printed newspapers appeared in the beginning of the 17th century (Wilke, 2000 in Wilke, 2003), while the history of print news media in the US is traditionally counted from the early 18th century (Nerone and Barnhurst, 2003), when colonial newspapers began to appear. According to the classification proposed by Nerone and Barnhurst (2003: 436), the first newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic ocean were the Printer's papers, i.e. the person operating the printing press did not only produce the physical product, but also chose articles to print from other papers and/or from correspondents all over the world (Wilke, 2003). At that point, the newsroom as such did not exist, as all the work was done in the room with the printing equipment. The first organizational shapes of American newspapers can be seen as early as the 1820s, when many papers were taken over by editors, mostly representing political parties. These partisan news media were labeled by Nerone and Barnhurst as "the Editor's" papers and were replaced by the Publisher's ones three decades later (2003: 436). In the middle of the 19th century, an important change occurred in large newspapers in the US: the room where editors and reporters worked was finally separated from the room with the printing press as well as from the counting room. Smaller papers adopted this division gradually over the next several decades. In Germany, on the other hand, similar processes were already happening in the middle of the 18th century and were connected to the consolidation of newspapers: by this time the biggest newspapers were employing editors to manage the journalistic part of the business (Wilke, 2003). However, there is no data available about the spatial organization of newsrooms in Europe at that point. One of the first examples of dedicated newsrooms in Germany is the one of the Allgemeine Zeitung in Augsburg. It was located in a new building erected in According to Wilke's research: the living room and the work-room of the editors were directly next to each other, one of the editors even living in one of the newsrooms: a discovery that gives new meaning to the term in-house editorial staff. (2003: 467) To sum up the first era of the parallel development of the print newsroom in the US and in Germany, one can say that by the second half of the 19th century the two found themselves at about the same point, even though the US newspapers arrived at that point twice as fast as their German counterparts.

17 M A R K E T D E V E L O P M E N T T H R O U G H D I G I T I Z A T I O N 17 When the paths diverge The beginning of the 20th century marked significant changes in newspapers' way of producing the news. In the United States, the open-plan newsroom had become a de facto standard mainly due to adoption of typewriters as the reporter's main instrument of labor. If with a pencil and paper news reporters could have been seen working anywhere, the typewriter anchored news workers to table space (Nerone and Barnhurst, 2003: 440). At the same time, American newsrooms saw the first signs of the shift in the newsroom organization from a mechanical one to a topical one (Nerone and Barnhurst, 2003: 444), i.e. the organization into departments that are usually called desks in modern newspapers. By 1920, there would be editors assigned to work with correspondence (copy sent in by mail), with news from remote places (initially this person was called telegraph editor, which reflected the mechanical aspect of his work), and also with local news. The latter desk at bigger dailies could have been divided still further into sections writing about local markets, the courts, and city hall (Nerone and Barnhurst, 2003). In the meantime, German newspapers also adopted the division into independent desks. The process was catalyzed by the passage of the free press law in 1874, after which the number of newspapers in the country increased rapidly (Wilke, 2003). As is the case with newspapers in the US, large publishing houses were the pioneers in the innovation of newsroom structure. One example of the new spatial layout of the newsroom was Kolnische Zeitung (DuMont Schauberg, 1902 in Wilke, 2003: 468). As distinct from the American example, the workers of each desk at Kolnische Zeitung were working in separate rooms located next to each other along a hallway, while the editor-in-chief had a room of his own. Eventually, this layout became typical for German print news media (Wilke, 2003; Esser, 1998). Jacks-of-all-trades vs. niche specialists Over the course of the 20th century, German and American newsroom structures and editorial practices developed mostly along the tracks defined in the early 1900s. An important and noteworthy aspect of this development is how differently the division of labor was organized, and how different journalists perceived themselves and their functions. Staffers in Anglo-American print newsroom had become narrowly focused specialists with relatively limited duties (Esser, 1998), while German redakteurs became almost fully autonomous in their work. As Esser explains, while copy written by a reporter of a US newspaper in the second half of the 20th century was more often than not edited almost beyond recognition by the army of editors, their counterparts in Germany could count on the unaltered publication of their articles. Another important point of difference is the idea of objectivity and strict separation of facts from comments and opinions, adopted by the American press at the end of the 19th century. As Wilke (2003) explains, for the German press, this was a strange idea, as papers were mostly the carriers of a certain set of creeds and were read by like-minded people. The concept of objectivity was forced upon the German press after the World War II, when the Allied forces effectively took charge of the country's newspapers:

18 M A R K E T D E V E L O P M E N T T H R O U G H D I G I T I Z A T I O N 18 the military government in the US Zone emphasized the introduction of the principles of American journalism in Germany. This included the norm of separation of news from comment (opinion), and the organization of news texts into a lead and body (Wilke, 2002a). The press, moreover, was to try to be more objective. Sporadic American efforts to introduce the American copy desk system into German editorial offices were in vain. It was impossible to prevail over the division of departments, which was so common in Germany (Hurwitz, 1972). (Wilke, 2003: 472) Therefore, even though in the middle of the 20th century there were attempts to forcibly cross the separate paths that German and American newsrooms had taken, it didn't happen until several decades later. Between the extremes Closer to our own period, many media companies on either side of the Atlantic showed signs of drifting away from the two extremes described above. As such, several German press agencies introduced open-plan newsrooms, while at certain newspapers some of the separate rooms housing desks were also changed into open-space structures (Wilke, 2003). Having outlined the history of the development of newsroom structures and editorial practices in its extreme manifestations, it is easier to assess and describe the model that has emerged in the borderless online-only newsrooms. Later on in this thesis, the research will show how certain features that historically belong to either German or American newsroom are intertwined in onlineonly media outlets on the Internet the space, where national borders are erased and the thousands of kilometers that may lie between countries do not matter. In order to make the assessment more structured and ordered, the next subchapter will elaborate the four aspects, which will be examined in the case studies. Editorial practices and newsroom structures: definitions and data for comparison Further on in this thesis, the newsroom structures and editorial practices employed in online-only media outlets will be examined and compared to those employed in traditional publications. This chapter contains data from previous research about newsroom structures and editorial practices in traditional newspapers, which will be used for the comparison. To make the comparison more transparent and comprehensive, the aspects to be looked at are divided into four categories, which also appeared in the questionnaire that was used for interviewing (see the Appendix I). Physical structure When speaking of the physical structure of a newsroom, the researcher means first of all how the space of the newsroom is organized (of course, if there is any place that medium's staff is sharing to

19 M A R K E T D E V E L O P M E N T T H R O U G H D I G I T I Z A T I O N 19 work together), e.g. whether it is an open-space office or a number of smaller rooms, whether the journalists are mostly working together in the newsroom or sending their copy from other locations, etc. This topic was researched by Frank Esser (1998), Klaus Meier (2007), J. Aviles and M. Carvajal (2008), J. Nerone and K. Barnhurst (2003), and others. The main characteristics of this aspect of newsroom structure are the general planning of the newsroom and the principles employed to divide groups of journalists, editors and other staff members; the same goes for an online-only newsroom: the general question is if particular groups of staff members are isolated from others in any way (e.g., given a separate online chat room). Starting with the basics of traditional newsroom organization, it should be said that any newsroom is in most cases presumed to be a physical location a building, a floor or just a big open-plan room (Esser, 1998; Meier, 2007; Aviles and Carvajal, 2008) where the core team of journalists and editors is supposed to be working. The particular organization of space in such a location may vary depending on journalism culture, which in its turn heavily depends on geography of the medium (Esser, 1998). In the US and the UK the standard physical structure of a print newsroom would be a centralized open-plan newsroom, which the district reporters send their copy to (Esser, 1998) with provisional division between sections where journalists and editors sit. One of the implications of this structure is editorial control. As Esser mentions, it is just much easier for the British editor to supervise each step of the operation. In contrast to Anglo-Saxon newsrooms, those in Central Europe, particularly in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, prefer not to have open spaces, putting their redakteurs (more about the roles in the newsroom follows in the next section) in separate rooms grouped by desk (Esser, 1998; Meier, 2007; Wilke, 2003). With this system editorial control is less strict, but all the core team members are still lumped in one building in a relatively compact manner. Yet another kind of newsroom structure can be observed in converged media outlets in Spain, such as Novotecnica and La Verdad Multimedia (Aviles and Carvajal, 2008). Both of them own a print title as well as radio and TV stations, whose newsrooms have been put together into a converged one in In Novotecnica, for example, journalists of all media are concentrated in one huge open-plan room without separating screens, so they all have eye contact with each other. As put by one of the editors, It is very useful for us to see each other all the time and to work side by side with our companions (Aviles and Carvajal, 2008:228). La Verdad Multimedia, in its turn, has two separate newsrooms for broadcast journalists and those who work on print and web sections, while each of the newsrooms is still basically a room where journalists and editors work altogether. Another way of dividing journalists in the converged (print and online) newsroom, described by Schmitz Weiss and Domingo (2010), is the division based on tech-savviness. It basically means that a group of journalists who have a technological background serve as translators between their technologically unskilled colleagues and the software developers responsible for the medium's website. In the case of Catalan El Periodico de Catalunya newspaper (Schmitz Weiss and Domingo, 2010), the

20 M A R K E T D E V E L O P M E N T T H R O U G H D I G I T I Z A T I O N 20 group of tech-savvy journalists was even physically isolated from other journalists working for the print and online versions of the news outlet. To sum up this subsection, it is safe to say that the basic common feature of the traditional newsroom is that full-time journalists and editors spend most of their working hours in an office with each other, either sitting in an open-plan room or being grouped by desk and put into smaller rooms. As Meier (2007: 6) puts it, in Central Europe emphasis is placed on departmentalizing the newsroom, while in contrast, the Anglo-American newsroom is more process-oriented. Converged traditional newsrooms, however, are often characterized by openness in terms of room organization, even in regions where open-plan newsrooms have never been popular, such as Central Europe. At the same time, these converged centralized newsrooms may be divided by media (Aviles and Carvajal, 2008; Meier, 2007) or by the level of tech-savviness of their journalists (Schmitz Weiss and Domingo, 2010). In this case, journalists from different groups would be put into different places even if they work on similar topics. Roles in the newsroom The distribution of roles, or hierarchical structure, is also one of the main characteristics of any newsroom. It determines journalists' roles, subordination and responsibilities in the medium, and often depends on different external factors, such as convergence processes (Schmitz Weiss and Domingo, 2010). From this point of view, a newsroom can be characterized by the number of superiors that a journalist has, by the responsibilities of journalists and editors, and by the way the labor is divided in the newsroom (Esser, 1998; Meier, 2007). There are two most obvious approaches to journalists' roles in a newsroom that are peculiar to either Anglo-Saxon or Western European newspapers (Esser, 1998; Meier, 2007). Both of them have deep roots in the history of the respective states, and each has its own pros and cons. The Anglo-Saxon approach that Esser (1998) saw in British print newsrooms is characterized by a high degree of division of labor. Tasks like gathering and reporting news, editing copy, writing editorials and designing page layouts are divided between respective professionals: reporters, subeditors, leader writers, and page planners. The core concept of this approach is the division of those who gather information and those who process it, where the gatherers include general reporters and specialists while the processors include copy and design subeditors (Esser, 1998:381). One of consequences of this clear distinction is the fundamental conflict between reporters and editors that is common in Anglo-Saxon media and totally unimaginable in newsrooms that have structures similar to those in Germany or Austria. The conflict between news gatherers and news processors described by Esser has much to do with copy-flow in Anglo-Saxon newsrooms that will be elaborated on in the Copy-flow subsection. To sketch it briefly, reporter's copy in a British or American newsroom may go through more than five iterations of editing by processors, who would rarely ask the reporter for an opinion on how it should be done. In such a manner, the resulting piece may differ significantly from what has been written initially by the gatherer.

21 M A R K E T D E V E L O P M E N T T H R O U G H D I G I T I Z A T I O N 21 In newsrooms in German-speaking countries researched by Esser (1998) and Meier (2007), a different, more holistic, approach is employed. Most of employees in the newsroom have the same position called redakteur (German for editor, desk worker ) and are responsible for virtually everything. As described by the German national daily newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau: They not only edit the accounts of correspondents and wire services, they also write their own articles. [ ] All of them deal with several specialist areas: regions and topics they work on regularly that is examining developments, establishing contacts, analysing special information and specialist journals, attending press conferences, reporting and writing editorials (Neumann, 1995 in Esser, 1998: ). As Esser points out, the closest resemblance of a pure news gatherer in the German newspaper tradition would be a freelance contributor, who is not considered as a part of the newsroom. With such a division of labor (or virtually with no division at all) in Central European newspapers, the degree of journalistic autonomy is higher than in Anglo-Saxon newsrooms, as what is written by a redakteur will usually get in paper without any changes. When speaking about roles in the newsroom, it is worth noting that in converged ones (print and online) new positions may appear that have not been even thought about before as a manifestation of structural convergence. Schmitz Weiss and Domingo (2010) have described the case of El Periodico de Catalunya newspaper, where a so-called production team is working along other journalists. Staffers of this team are basically tech-savvy young journalists who serve as a buffer between their less technologically educated colleagues and front-end developers responsible for the newspaper's website. Wrapping up this subsection, there are ultimately two main types of role distribution in a newsroom. The first one is to clearly divide news gatherers (reporters on the ground ) and news processors (editors and subeditors) who edit all the pieces; the second one is having in a newsroom universal soldiers rather than focused specialists who are responsible for gathering and editing the news, as well as for writing editorials and planning page layout. Also, some of converged newsrooms may need to appoint tech-savvy people to work as a buffer between the new technologies and journalists not used to them. Copy-flow The process a story (be it a news piece, a feature story, or a round-up article) has to go through after it is written and until it is published (Esser, 1998) is called copy-flow. For traditional newspapers, especially in Anglo-American newsrooms, copy might need to be read, edited, and re-written several times. Possible difference in complexity of the copy-flow may be determined by convergence processes (such as structural convergence) and specifics of news work in online environment (no fixed deadlines, news has to get published as early as possible). This type of editorial practice can be characterized by the number of people who read and edit a story, the severity of editing of the texts that usually occurs, and the existence of any rules about whose call is to decide if a story can be published. Regarding the way in which journalist's copy makes it to the newspaper's pages, one can identify two approaches that are opposite to each other. Both of them are described by Esser (1998); they are

22 M A R K E T D E V E L O P M E N T T H R O U G H D I G I T I Z A T I O N 22 peculiar to either Anglo-American or German print newsrooms and have their roots in the traditional roles distribution. The approach in Anglo-Saxon newsrooms, where editorial control is more significant and news processing is done by several people, is that all the copy that comes from different sources goes through several steps of editing, most of which are the same for every source of copy. Depending on where the copy comes from, it is being read and edited at least 6 to 7 times (moreover, at some points copy may be returned to the author, for instance, for re-writing or adding extra information). Pieces written by the newspaper's reporters go through city or district editors, then come to the copy taster's desk to go forward to production table, or to copy subeditors and other editors before they are printed. In German newsrooms researched by Esser, copy from different sources also comes to one place, but is being read and (seldom) edited only once or twice, if one does not count proofreaders. For example, redakteurs' copy in the main newsroom of the German daily newspaper Koblenz Rhein-Zeitung is only being proofread in the proof-reading department, and after that it goes directly to the printing press (Esser, 1998). In case of the newspaper's district offices, the copy needs to pass one more check on its way, a producer whose position is filled by a different redakteur each day and whose responsibilities include reading the copy, editing it and sending it back to the author if necessary, and page planning. Therefore, a common thing for copy-flow of traditional newspapers is that the copy comes from different sources to one desk, from where its journey to the pages of a newspaper may take from one to seven steps. In a German newsroom, a piece usually makes its way without significant changes, which is not the case for British (and American) ones, where news processors may transform it beyond recognition. Desk structure The desk structure goes along with physical and editorial structures and determines how the medium's staff is divided based on topics (or regions) they cover (Esser, 1998; Nerone and Barnhurst, 2003), and to what extent different desks interact with each other. This aspect is characterized, first of all, by the actual existence of desks in a medium, by the number of desks, by the categories used for the division, and also by how strict the division is and how transparent are the borders between the desks, i.e. to what extent the desks interact and collaborate with each other. Esser points out that the German newspapers in the 19th century developed a similar kind of desk structure to the Anglo-Saxon countries (1998: 380). Desks in a newsroom can be determined by topic (Politics, Business, Sports, National, Foreign, Arts, Culture, etc.) and by region (especially when speaking of a national newspaper in a big country). Later in this thesis, these four aspects of the newsroom are used to describe the structure and workflow of the researched outlets and compare them to each other and to traditional newspapers (using the data from this subchapter). In addition to these, there is the fifth point of comparison the business

23 M A R K E T D E V E L O P M E N T T H R O U G H D I G I T I Z A T I O N 23 models employed by the outlets. The various business models are described below, including how each model is influenced by and can influence editorial practices, newsroom structures, and convergence processes. The search for new business models In the literature devoted to the traditional newspapers and other media that fully or partially went online, there are numerous pieces of evidence that the reason for moving online and creating modern converged newsrooms is often not a desire to reach new audiences or innovate in the journalistic field, but the pursuit of cutting expenses and downsizing staff (Devyatkin, 2001; Singer, 2004). Therefore, this thesis, in addition to discussing editorial practices, also looks closely at business models employed in The Verge, Engadget, and The Next Web to analyze if they are determined by convergence processes, and also to see if they coincide with those suggested by researchers such as Macnamara (2010), O'Grady (2009), and Sullivan (2006). The thesis will elaborate the researchers ideas, and then uses them as a point of comparison with the information retrieved from interviews with editors of The Verge, Engadget, and The Next Web. In his study, Jim Macnamara (2010) references a huge body of previous research and names several sources of revenue that might, in his opinion, be part of a viable business model for an online medium. They are charging for content (creating so-called paywalls), new generation of targeted advertising, public funding, sales commissions on products sold via advertising, foundation grants, memberships and syndication (which can be also considered as charging for content), diversification into consumer products, and re-using archives. Candice O'Grady (2009: 8) proposes such a potentially profitable business model as citizen journalism, where anyone can contribute content generally on an unpaid basis, with or without editing of those contributions by professional journalists or editors. The other O'Grady's ideas are pretty much the same as Macnamara's, including non-profit investigative journalism taking money from different foundations and reader-funded media. Another view on business models in media was presented by Daniel Sullivan (2006). In his research, he advocates the shift from the manufacturing model presumably employed by media nowadays to the service model, which basically lies in focusing on community building, more precise targeting of audience, and creating value through their distribution systems and their pricing systems (Sullivan, 2006: 71). The latter notion means particularly embracing a policy of media flexibility (2006: 71), catering different audiences via their favorite distribution channels. Summing up this section, it is clearly evident that scholars who work on the borderlands between media and economy studies admit the need for alternative revenue sources for online media, and have several suggestions on this matter. An analysis of the real state of affairs with business models in online-only media and their connection to editorial practices can help to broaden the approach to the research questions and to better understand possible reasons of the difference between editorial practices and newsroom structures of online-only newsrooms and their traditional counterparts.

24 M A R K E T D E V E L O P M E N T T H R O U G H D I G I T I Z A T I O N 24 To analyze the production side of media is a very complex task, and it needs to be assessed from several angles in order to paint a comprehensive picture of what is going on beyond the front pages of popular tech media. The next chapter will explain how the different aspects of the newsroom functioning looked upon in this thesis convergence processes, newsroom structures, editorial practices, and business models, are connected to each other.

25 M A R K E T D E V E L O P M E N T T H R O U G H D I G I T I Z A T I O N 25 Chapter 3. Convergence, newsrooms, and business models: Finding interrelations The connection between editorial practices, day-to-day work in the newsroom and the concept of convergence is not deeply hidden. The process of convergence naturally leads to the creation of new roles and subsequent changes in the newsroom structure, while business models employed by the media, on the one hand, limit the development of a newsroom in many ways, but on the other hand, are being changed and shaped by this development. Also, when speaking about converged newsrooms, one should not omit such a thing as multi-skilling. This aspect of newsroom convergence means that journalists in such a newsroom need to develop skills that would allow them to elaborate news stories for the print, radio, television, the internet [sic] and other platforms (Aviles and Carvajal, 2008: 229). However, according to research done in converged newsrooms of traditional media outlets around the world, it is not a rare thing that journalists are far from being fond of cross-mediality and the possibility of using so many ways to bring the story to the reader, watcher, or listener. According to Deuze (2004: 143), many if not most journalists tend to complain that convergence means more work for them, even while they get the same salary as before. On the other hand, for employees of media that were born online this might not be the case, as working beyond boundaries of a particular genre or medium is what they were hired to do. It is also worth mentioning that, together with the trend of converging newsrooms of print, broadcast and online realms into one, there appears to be an opposite trend called de-convergence (Tameling and Broersma, 2013: 20 21). The ethnographic research of a Dutch media giant de Volkskrant has shown that the ways of working of a traditional newspaper can be so persistent that it makes more sense to separate the online and offline staff. The hypothesis in this thesis is that this difference in attitude must also have created a significant difference in editorial practices in the newsrooms of traditional media versus online-only newsrooms. Deuze (2004: 149), speaking about traditional outlets going online with their websites, argues that any new converged news operation also takes on the well-established roles, rituals, and cultures of doing things. This means that even if traditional media outlets go online, there is always an influence from the paper past in their day-to-day work. Another possible implication of the analog past on editorial practices in news media is that multimedia possibilities are used in those outlets less often than they could be (Boczkowski, 2004; Domingo, 2008; Deuze, 2004), and that in daily routines, there was a tendency towards reproducing mass media models, in which... users were regarded as a rather passive audience, consumers of the stories (Domingo, 2008 in Boczkowski, 2009: 573). When summing up previous research on the topic, Deuze also underscores that this is a tendency around the world that the contemporary use of multimedia projects and processes in news organizations tends to reproduce existing (or old school ) journalistic practices and culture (2004: 141).

26 M A R K E T D E V E L O P M E N T T H R O U G H D I G I T I Z A T I O N 26 Thus, this study takes the institutional approach, researching particular news outlets, their structure and practices through the lens of convergence and comparing them to the structure and practices of traditional media outlets, as described in the previous work of different media researchers. This thesis aims to cover the gap mentioned by Erdal (2007: 58), that is changing professional practices and genre development in relation to changes in the organization and practices of news journalism for multiple media platforms in an integrated or converged organization, by providing valuable insights and research data on these topics.

27 M A R K E T D E V E L O P M E N T T H R O U G H D I G I T I Z A T I O N 27 Chapter 4. Research methodology To find the answers for the first research question raised in this thesis, i.e. to determine the main features of editorial practices and newsroom structures in the three online publications, the researcher conducted a total of five interviews with editors of The Next Web, The Verge, and Engadget, who agreed that their names be used in the thesis. In addition, there is a brief content analysis to illustrate the outlets' approach to reporting news. The interviewees were Martin Bryant (Managing Editor at The Next Web), Alex Wilhelm (at the time of interview Business and Political Editor at The Next Web), Dieter Bohn (Senior Editor at The Verge), Darren Murph (Managing Editor at Engadget), and Michael Gorman (Senior Associate Editor at Engadget). All the interviews were conducted via the VoIP service Skype and can be found in the Appendices as audio recordings and transcripts. Interviewee Name Position Media outlet Time (H:M:S) Date Martin Bryant Managing Editor The Next Web 0:56:40 14-Feb-13 Alex Wilhelm Business and Political Editor The Next Web 0:33:59 14-Feb-13 Dieter Bohn Senior Editor The Verge 0:41:45 8-Mar-13 Darren Murph Managing Editor Engadget 1:09:10 15-Mar-13 Michael Gorman Senior Associate Editor Engadget 0:33:53 22-Mar-13 Illustration 1: List of the interviews conducted Semi-structured interviewing was chosen as the main research method of this thesis as the most appropriate methodology for qualitative research, because it allows a much broader perspective than quantitative methods and it receives first-hand information right from the sources (editors and journalists) rather than from the analysis of content produced by them. To achieve the goals set by the researcher, either semi-structured interviewing or ethnographic observations could have been used; the latter gives more insight into how the newsroom work is carried out on a daily basis. However, it was not an option because of the very nature of observed online newsrooms, outlets' general reluctance to allow a stranger into their sacrosanct workspace, and also because of the extreme time commitment this method would require. In the process of choosing the main research method, the researcher mostly relied on Alan Bryman's work Social research methods (2001). In accordance with the methods described in the chapter on interviewing in qualitative research (Bryman, 2001: ), the researcher prepared an interview guide (see the Appendix I) consisting of several general groups of questions, related to different parts of the newsroom structures and editorial practices.

28 M A R K E T D E V E L O P M E N T T H R O U G H D I G I T I Z A T I O N 28 In the interview guide, apart from the basic set of questions, there is an optional block of questions devoted to the topic of business models. These questions were asked only in conversations with Dieter Bohn, Martin Bryant, and Darren Murph, who are either Managing or Senior editors at their publications and are able to discuss such matters. To carry out the interviews, the popular VoIP service Skype was chosen, as interviewees are based on two continents, and an in-person interview was unrealistic. This VoIP service allows video calls, which initially was considered. However, video-based interviewing was abandoned due to bandwidth issues. Unfortunately, bandwidth issues were not the only problem that emerged during the interviews. The interview with Darren Murph from Engadget initially consisted of three separate consequent recordings, because the Skype client crashed twice during the conversation for no apparent reason. Another problem observed during the interviews was inconsistent sound quality; at some points it is very difficult to hear the exact words used by interviewees, which resulted in a less accurate transcription. Semi-structured interviewing proved to be a very convenient way to carry out conversations with the online media editors. The interviews were provisionally divided into several blocks; however, often interviewees switched between topics from different blocks (e.g., between newsroom structure and copy-flow) while answering questions, which is actually encouraged in semi-structured interviews (Brayman, 2001: 313), and the interviewees also jumped from one topic to another. In such cases, they were allowed to finish and then asked additional questions if necessary, and after that the conversation was switched back to the topic of the initial question. The very first interview with Martin Bryant also proved that even though questions in semi-structured interviews should be quite generally formulated (Brayman, 2001: 313), it is better to describe to interviewees what is meant by the concept of (multimedia) convergence when asking them about its manifestations in the newsroom. This was the only refinement that had to be done in the course of interviews, and it proved to be very useful, as some of the interviewees did not have a media studies background and simply would not understand the word's meaning in this context. Thanks to the interviews, an elaborate body of data was collected, which shed light on the research questions raised in this thesis after its analysis. Content analysis As a secondary research method, quantitative content analysis was used, i.e. counting the appearances of certain embedded (multimedia) pieces in the stories published by the researched outlets during a certain period of time and about a certain topic. The studied time frame is the second half of February, and the topic is Google Glass, a wearable computer that generated quite a number of news stories in To conduct the content analysis, the researcher used guidelines provided by Klaus Krippendorff (2004), who divided the process into several parts: unitizing, sampling, recording/coding, reducing

29 M A R K E T D E V E L O P M E N T T H R O U G H D I G I T I Z A T I O N 29 data, inferring, and narrating. As the sample size was very small just 20 stories with a total of 8,432 words the data did not need to be reduced, while some of the steps were merged into one. During unitizing and sampling, all 20 articles were downloaded, and coded according to the occurrences that interested the researcher using a short coding book (see Appendix IV), which consisted of several content types photos, videos, and audio fragments. Additionally, it was determined whether the multimedia pieces had been produced by the outlet itself or obtained from a third-party source. The inferring and narrating steps consisted of presenting the coded data and explaining the practical applications. At this stage the researcher is also supposed to answer the research questions, however in this thesis the research questions are addressed in the appropriate chapter, and the data obtained by content analysis serves as a supplement which serves mostly to raise readers' awareness of the approaches media outlets take to reporting. Limitations Both the content analysis and interviewing methodologies employed in this thesis have their limitations. First of all, in both cases the sample size is fairly small three outlets, five interviews, and 20 news stories. Some may imply that samples of these sizes are not enough to paint a comprehensive picture of how online-only newsrooms work. However, one could argue that the chosen outlets at least represent the segment of popular tech blogs. The sample of 20 stories, in turn, could have been insufficient if it was the main source of data for the thesis, but this is not the case, and it serves well for illustrative purposes. Another limitation of this research is related to interviewing. Information on how the newsrooms work is crucial to answer the research questions of this thesis, however it is obtained not by the personal observations of the researcher, but rather by interviewing editors from the chosen outlets. Therefore, the real situation in the newsroom inevitably gets distorted by the interviewee's own views and thoughts. In the cases of Engadget and The Next Web, this problem is partially solved by interviewing two people, while with The Verge all information has been obtained from one person. On the other hand, the interviewees, who have worked in their respective outlets for several years, can often tell things that could not be observed during a short visit, such as long-term trends and changes in editorial practices or newsroom structure; moreover, the beliefs and expectations of the interviewees relating to convergence and business models have significant value for this thesis. For a larger-scale research on a similar topic, a combination of ethnographic observation and interviews can be the perfect way to create a comprehensive description of the newsroom structure and editorial practices in an outlet. It is worth noting, however, that it may be extremely hard to receive permission to observe the work of an online-only newsroom; even in interviews conducted for this thesis, I could not obtain certain information about The Verge's editorial practices as it was considered by the company as a competitive advantage.

30 M A R K E T D E V E L O P M E N T T H R O U G H D I G I T I Z A T I O N 30 Chapter 5. The Next Web, The Verge, Engadget: A closer look This chapter will describe the three websites that are being analyzed in the thesis: The Next Web, The Verge, and Engadget. All three of them are covering the news about technology and the Internet, with Engadget leaning a bit towards the hardware part and The Next Web being one of the main information sources for the stories about Internet business. The three websites presented in this thesis generally work in the same niche and cover similar topics; in addition to that, they are not tied to any traditional media such as broadcasters or newspapers. These similarities make them suitable for the analysis necessary to determine the distinctive editorial practices employed in online-only media, which is the first research question of this thesis. There are, however, certain differences between The Next Web, The Verge, and Engadget. They are different in size and ownership structure, and they also produce different amounts of multimedia content on a daily basis. This allows the demonstration of a variety of approaches taken by onlineonly media in developing editorial structures, copy-flow processes, and multimedia strategy. Moreover, websites covering technology news are perfectly suitable for a research project that involves technological convergence: the initial hypothesis here is that editors of such outlets are not only aware of all the technological possibilities in media (this is their job), but are also able to make conscious decisions about introducing or passing on them. The descriptions below allow readers to familiarize themselves with the outlets, and also contain several comparison points, which add more depth to the analysis. These points include the role of multimedia content at the website, the number of staff writers and editors, and the websites' ownership structure. In addition, screenshots of the websites' front pages from different years help illustrate their development. The end of the chapter will show how each of the outlets covered a single topic in a specific time frame to create awareness of distinctive approaches to content production employed at the outlets. Engadget One of the oldest technology-focused blogs that has survived and become popular, Engadget was founded in 2004 ( About Engadget, n.d.). It was launched as a part of the blog network Weblogs, Inc. by Peter Rojas, who is also known by co-founding another famous gadget-focused content project Gizmodo.com. Later on, 2005 Weblogs, Inc. was purchased by America Online (known as AOL since 2006) (Rosmarin, 2007). At the moment of writing, Engadget is still a part of AOL Tech ( AOL Tech, n.d.) a network of technology blogs that includes TechCrunch, HuffPost Tech, Joystiq, and others. As of March 2013, there were 38 editors at Engadget located all over the world ( Editors - Engadget, n.d.), including the editor-in-chief Tim Stevens. The publication has three offices, all in the US in

31 M A R K E T D E V E L O P M E N T T H R O U G H D I G I T I Z A T I O N 31 New York, Palo Alto, and San Francisco, however the editorial staff is usually working only at the New York office. Illustration 2: Engadget.com, June 2004 Under the Engadget brand, several blogs have been functioning since There are six blogs in different languages with separate editorial staff English, German, Spanish, Chinese (traditional and simplified), Japanese, and Korean; up until 2010, there was also an Engadget blog in Polish. The English language Engadget also used to be divided into four sub-blogs Classic (the original Engadget blog), Mobile (covering mobile devices of all kinds), HD (devoted to gaming, media, HiFi audio, HD video, etc.) and Alt (for alternative content that is a little outside of the norm for [Engadget] (Topolsky, 2010)). As of 2013, these divisions are integrated into the main structure of Engadget and do not have subdomains of their own anymore. Functioning in the format of a blog, Engadget is updated 24/7 with news stories, features and reviews of hardware and software products. Historically, the blog leans towards gadgets and consumer electronics in its coverage, although the most important news on related topics, like tech business, the Internet as both medium and technology, governmental affairs etc., can also be found there.

32 M A R K E T D E V E L O P M E N T T H R O U G H D I G I T I Z A T I O N 32 Apart from text pieces and hands-on videos, Engadget produces a fair amount of multimedia content. Since 2004, the blog's team members host the Engadget podcast (Rosmarin, 2007), which usually airs weekly; it is recorded in the format of a talk show on topics connected to important tech news stories of the week. There are three other, more narrowly focused weekly podcasts Mobile, HD, and The Engadget Eurocast for the European audience. Illustration 3: Engadget.com, March 2009 Another popular media product of Engadget is the Engadget Show, a video show that usually is taped once per month. It was launched in September 2009 by Joshua Topolsky, who was the editor-in-chief at that time, and consists of discussions, interviews, pre-recorded short video pieces, and live music. There is one more media activity of Engadget worth mentioning. It is the Distro tablet magazine, the first issue of which was published in September 2011 (Stevens, 2011). It is available for free as a standalone app for ios and Android tablets, as well as a PDF document. As Engadget puts it, Distro contains the best reviews and features curated from the website along with a weekly editorial to bring you up to speed on any news you might have missed ( Engadget Distro App, n.d.) In 2013, Engadget held the first Engadget Expand conference in San Francisco attended by about 2,000 people. This marked the blog's jump into event organizing, which is not uncommon for tech media outlets like The Next Web or TechCrunch have been holding major events of their own since 2006.

33 M A R K E T D E V E L O P M E N T T H R O U G H D I G I T I Z A T I O N 33 Illustration 4: Engadget.com, April 2013 As of May 2013, the blog at Engadget.com had a monthly audience of 11.5 million unique visitors ( Top 15 Most Popular Blogs May 2013, 2013) and ranked 8th in the Technorati top technology blogs rating ( Technology blogs Technorati, n.d.) and 10th in a similar rating at TechMeme.com ( Techmeme Leaderboard, n.d.). The Next Web The name The Next Web initially had nothing to do with media. Under this name, Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Patrick de Laive, and Arjen Schat from the Netherlands organized a relatively small conference in Amsterdam in 2006 ( About Us, n.d.). Since it turned out to be a success, the team made it a yearly event, and in 2008 launched a blog of the same name. In just a few years, the blog had become one of the most popular online media outlets covering news related to technology and Internet business, venture capital, etc. As of January 2013, TheNextWeb.com attracted 9 million monthly visits and 14 million monthly page views ( Advertise on The Next Web, n.d.). As of March 2013, it holds the 20th position in the Technorati ranking ( Technology blogs Technorati, n.d.) and the 2nd place at the TechMeme leaderboard ( Techmeme Leaderboard, n.d.).

34 M A R K E T D E V E L O P M E N T T H R O U G H D I G I T I Z A T I O N 34 Illustration 5: TheNextWeb.com, December 2008 As of March 2013, The Next Web's team consists of 15 editors located in the US, the UK, Europe and Asia ( Team, n.d.). The publication's Editor-in-Chief (and, since 2011, the CEO) is Ziad Muhmood Kane (Veldhuijzen van Zanten, 2011). The media outlet has no physical newsroom (and some of its staff journalists had worked together for a few years without meeting in person), although there is an office in Amsterdam where web developers and non-editorial employees (see the list of non-media businesses of The Next Web below) are located. The website TheNextWeb.com is updated 24/7 with short and long form content, with the latter being published mostly over the weekends. All the blog posts can be read as a timeline, but there are also so-called channels where users can read only the stories they are interested in, grouped by topic, by content type or by region. Unlike Engadget and The Verge, The Next Web pays significant attention to all kinds of Internet business, including startups and venture investment news, and it normally publishes fewer consumer electronics and gadget-related stories. (It has to be noted however, that at the time of writing The Next Web is looking for Gadget editors, which means its focus may soon expand.) Although, officially, there is a dedicated staff member focused on video production at The Next Web ( Team, n.d.), as of the beginning of 2013, the publication was not producing as much multimedia content as the two other websites studied in this thesis, though it did publish some through media partnerships. The main recurrent multimedia activity for The Next Web is apparently the Daily Dose

35 M A R K E T D E V E L O P M E N T T H R O U G H D I G I T I Z A T I O N 35 podcast ( TNW Daily Dose, n.d.), a brief wrap-up of the tech news of the day. Of no less importance is its free The Next Web monthly magazine for ios tablets. It features unique content packaged for the ipad; before the end of 2012 it was also available on tablets running Android, though at the end of December 2012 Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten announced that from 2013 on the magazine will be ios-only (Veldhuijzen van Zanten, 2012). Illustration 6: TheNextWeb.com, April 2013 Being an independent outlet not affiliated with any blog networks or media holdings, The Next Web is an extremely diverse business. Since it was held for the first time, The Next Web Conference has become one of the biggest and most respected events in the Internet business industry. It is held yearly in Amsterdam (as The Next Web Conference Europe) and in São Paulo (as The Next Web Conference Latin America). Also, 2013 is to be the first year of The Next Web Conference USA, which will be held in New York in October. There are other notable business activities that can be found at The Next Web website. The Next Web hosts a job board with paid postings, as well as the Academy project, which offers a wide variety of tech and startup-related online classes taught by industry professionals. Apart from the activities mentioned above, The Next Web has a strartup-growing greenhouse of its own called The Next Web Labs. The companies functioning as a part of the Labs include online ticketing and payment system Paydro, a platform for the creation of press releases called PressDoc, the social service Spread.us, and more.

36 M A R K E T D E V E L O P M E N T T H R O U G H D I G I T I Z A T I O N 36 The Verge The youngest of the three, The Verge was launched in November 2011 by a team of former Engadget journalists and editors led by the former Engadget Editor-in-Chief Joshua Topolsky. The website was co-founded and is owned by Vox Media, a global American media company that also operates sports network SB Nation and Polygon, a popular blog devoted to gaming. The Verge's content strategy was explained shortly before its launch in 2011 by Vox Media's Marty Moe (Edelman, 2011: 1): We want to be on the cutting edge, The Verge, and always explaining to a broader and broader audience how technology is itself changing, and how technology is changing our culture and economy now and looking ahead It is clearly visible at the website that The Verge is paying a lot of attention to the layout of long form stories, such as features and reviews. The website also consists of a comprehensive product database that consists of specifications and reviews of computers, and mobile devices, as well as televisions, input devices, and so on. Illustration 7: TheVerge.com, April 2013 As of March 2013, the editorial part of The Verge's staff consisted of 41 editors, reporters, and contributing writers ( About The Verge, n.d.). As is the case with The Next Web and Engadget, The