INTERVIEW SERIES: Media and Alternative Journalism in the Digital Age INTERVIEWER: Gökhan Çolak & Marie Green INTERVIEWEE: Line Hassall Thomsen

In your book, you describe journalism as a profession under pressure. In your view, which force is transforming journalism most profoundly today: economic pressures, technological change, or shifts in journalists’ own professional values?

Through my studies of journalists at work I have found that the professional values of good journalism have not changed much, but the pressure has drastically changed. The force that plays the biggest role in transforming journalism is no doubt the economic pressures, which brings with it a great rush to be faster and constantly be at the forefront of technology.

During your ethnographic observations in newsrooms, what kinds of tensions did you observe between journalists’ ideals of public service and the performance expectations imposed by media organizations? How do these tensions shape professional identity?

I have seen the best journalists give up hope of doing good journalism. I have been in newsrooms where journalists argue using values of good journalism and public service, while editors argue with the logic of a market economy, where faster, shorter and simpler is better. Often this means that journalists have become disillusioned with their job. Also, I have seen a tendency of older journalists being less technologically minded, thus being forced out of the newsroom.

The notion of a “crisis of objectivity” is frequently discussed in journalism studies. Do you believe journalists are moving away from the ideal of objectivity, or are societal expectations regarding objectivity simply changing?

Objective reporting never did exist. But good journalists can, and still do, strive to be pragmatically objective. I see it as a positive sign that the society is discussing objectivity and realising that the very notion is impossible. This can make a more critical audience, which is much-needed today.

Having studied organizations such as BBC, ITV, DR, and TV2, how would you assess the influence of newsroom culture on journalistic output? To what extent does institutional culture shape the news itself?

What a brilliant question! I have seen that the culture of the newsroom, including the layout and social design of the room is key for constantly validating and creating a similar and unified news product. One part of institutional culture is the room layout, another is leadership and thirdly the shared values and norms and habits of the newsroom are key. I expected there to be a lot of differences between the four different institutions and newsrooms, and I did find differences, but was surprised by the similarity in culture inside the four different newsrooms. The public service broadcasters have a slightly different, more hierarchical structure compared to the part-commercial broadcasters I studied. This can be seen in the layout of the room, the structure of meetings, the jargon, and the decision-making among others.

In the age of social media, journalists are expected not only to produce news but also to cultivate their personal brands. How is this development transforming journalism as a collective profession?

I was in the newsrooms of ITV News and Channel4 News when this was first presented to news journalists back in about 2007. Journalists were asked to do a blog of anything related to the news story they were working on. They were welcomed to share personal stories and make a brand of themselves. I remember Jon Snow at Channel 4 News saying “I am too busy in the real life to spend time in a virtual life”. The idea of blogging was seen as a running joke, and those who spent most time on their online personas were laughed at. Today this has entirely changed, and in order to be a better paid journalist, being active online is crucial. This no doubt moves focus away from news reporting. On a positive note, the social media fame of some journalists have helped younger audiences be interested in the world around them. Getting the attention of young audiences have always been a struggle for public service broadcasting.

What were the most significant ethical dilemmas you observed journalists facing during your fieldwork? Have these dilemmas become more complex compared to previous generations of journalists?

Over the last hundred years of journalism studies, researchers declare a state of crisis. No doubt there were ethical dilemmas in the past, but it does appear that the ethical dilemmas facing journalists today is critical and more complex than ever before. As a journalist you have to satisfy you editor, be faster than anyone else on social media, be sure to report the truth and meanwhile you must get followers, likes and shares and be better than an artificial intelligence everyone accesses freely.

One of the biggest dilemmas I observed where those of whether to run with a story faster and beat the competitor, or double check all sources better. Another dilemma was that of how to ‘dumb down’ (as the reporter would call it) a story enough for all audiences to watch it, thereby often missing important facts. I am certain this kind of dilemma has only become more complex since the time of my fieldroom studies.

What defines journalistic success today: creating public impact, reaching large audiences, or adapting effectively to the demands of algorithms?

Well, one may study to be a journalist with an idealistic dream of informing the people and being a fourth estate, but in order to stay afloat in the job a journalist has to adapt to all the expectations – including creating a public impact, reaching large audiences and adapting to algorithms. Often this means that the personal success conflicts with journalistic success.

Many young journalists enter the profession under conditions of precarity, accelerated production cycles, and intense digital competition. Under such circumstances, can journalism still fulfill its democratic function?

Yes, I am certain that good journalism is needed like never before. It is perhaps harder than ever, but journalism can fulfill its democratic function, by insisting on the values of good journalism even in an AI- and economic-driven society.

During your research, was there a particular observation that challenged your own assumptions about journalism? If so, what was it, and how did it influence your understanding of the profession?

I assumed a lot of differences between the organisations, and was baffled by the similarities in structure and culture among four different newsrooms in two countries. Since then I have visited many other newsrooms in other countries too, and still found similarities. This has made me see journalists not as competing, but as a practice-community of journalists with a similar goal. This observation taught me that good journalism does not have bias, and that even staff at more commercially funded organisations also have idealistic visions of being objective, factually correct and educational while being entertaining to all audiences.

If you had to identify one defining question that will shape journalism over the next twenty years, what would that question be, and why?

How can journalism stay trustworthy in a climate of bias, algorithms and AI? When I lecture on journalism today, this is the key question I ask my students. And I am happy to report that we see ways of staying trustworthy still. Being a journalist may not be as easy a job as it has been, but it is even more important.