Multiple Media, Convergent Processes, and Divergent Products: Organizational Innovation in Digital Media Production at a European Firm

This article addresses the intersection of two underexplored themes in studies of cultural production in traditional and digital media: the role of technology in news work and the processes that shape media convergence. The authors analyze organizational innovation in digital media production at GMS, a European firm that operates print and broadcast outlets in several specialized news markets. Between 1994 and 2003, GMS went from a phase of digital media experimentation under-taken by teams located within each existing newsroom, to the creation of a separate unit handling the online content of all print and broadcast newsrooms, to the ongoing integration of news production into a single newsroom per specialized market that generates different products for the various outlets in each market. This analysis illuminates how adopting online technologies has involved shifts in the locus of content creation in a path of increasing convergence in production processes but continued divergence of media products.

[1]  Martin Higgins.  Divergent Messages in a Converging World , 2000, Inf. Soc..

[2]  M. Ruffin.  On being digital. , 1995, Physician executive.

[3]  P. Kaniss.  Making local news , 1994 .

[4]  Richard Gordon,et al.  The Meanings and Implications of Convergence , 2003 .

[5]  Pablo J. Boczkowski,et al.  Digitizing the News: Innovation in Online Newspapers , 2004 .

[6]  D. Hindman.  Going Live: Getting the News Right in a Real-Time, Online World , 2002 .

[7]  John R. Bender,et al.  The Newspaper Publishing Industry , 1997 .

[8]  B. Bagdikian,et al.  The Media Monopoly , 1984 .

[9]  G. E. Lang,et al.  People, society, and mass communications , 1964 .

[10]  Anita Elberse.  Consumer Acceptance of Interactive News in the Netherlands , 1998 .

[11]  Aphra Kerr,et al.  Digital media, nation-states and local cultures: the case of multimedia `content' production , 2001 .

[12]  Dan Schiller,et al.  Digital Capitalism: Networking the Global Market System , 1999 .

[13]  M. Poster,et al.  What's the Matter with the Internet? , 2001 .

[14]  James W. Cortada,et al.  A Nation Transformed by Information: How It Has Shaped the United States from Colonial Times to the Present , 2000 .

[15]  Liisa H. Malkki.  News From Nowhere , 2002 .

[16]  M. Gurevitch,et al.  Mass Media and Society , 1992 .

[17]  John V. Pavlik,et al.  Journalism and new media , 2001 .

[18]  Y. Benkler.  Communications infrastructure regulation and the distribution of control over content , 1998 .

[19]  M. Deuze.  What is multimedia journalism1? , 2004 .

[20]  David B. Yoffie,et al.  Competing in the Age of Digital Convergence , 1997 .

[21]  Carolyn Marvin,et al.  Delivering the News of the Future , 1980 .

[22]  Benjamin M. Compaine,et al.  Who Owns the Media? : Competition and Concentration in the Mass Media industry , 2000 .

[23]  Daily newspaper editors' audience construction routines: A case study , 2000 .

[24]  Bruce M. Owen,et al.  The Internet Challenge to Television , 1999 .

[25]  Jim Hall,et al.  Online Journalism: A Critical Primer , 2001 .

[26]  J. Durlak.  The Language of New Media , 2002 .

[27]  Todd Gitlin,et al.  Inside Prime Time , 1983 .

[28]  David A. Black.  Internet radio: a case study in medium specificity , 2001 .

[29]  Carolyn A. Lin,et al.  Factors Influencing the Adoption of Multimedia Cable Technology , 1998 .

[30]  G. Dunn,et al.  Goodbye to Gutenberg? , 1993, Nature.

[31]  Philip Seib.  Going Live: Getting the News Right in a Real-Time, Online World , 2000 .

[32]  Media Convergence/Management Change: The Evolving Workflow for Visual Journalists , 2000 .

[33]  P. Delache,et al.  Making news , 1983, Nature.