Blackwell Reference Online

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News routines are repeated practices and forms that make it easier for journalists to accomplish tasks and ensure immediacy in an uncertain world while working within production constraints. Studying newsmaking from the perspective of “routines” suggests that routines structure or construct the reality within which journalists make decisions, but journalists may also employ routines. Routines serve functional ends for journalists, news organizations, and audiences, and they may also result in dysfunction. All work relies on routines, but tasks become more routine in organizations that produce on a mass scale, that experience little environmental uncertainty, and that do not prioritize innovation. Though the news-gathering environment is uncertain, journalists traditionally have managed and buffered uncertainty, ensuring a predictable flow of incoming information by adopting factory-like practices and processes ( Berkowitz 1997 ; → Organizational Communication ). News routines emerged where the organization and a changing social environment intersect, say journalism historians. The development of western democratic market societies and the rationalization of economic life in the 1800s led to the pursuit of wide audiences, increased scale of production, and larger news organizations ( Schudson 2003 ). As staffs increased, management attempted to control production bureaucratically. ... log in or subscribe to read full text