Are reporters replaceable? Literary authors produce a daily newspaper

Zvi Reich, Hagar Lahav

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

One of the questions dominating discourse on the changing face of the news industry and the future of journalism concerns the extent to which professional news reporters may be replaced by a series of new human and technological agents, such as bloggers, citizen journalists, user-generated content, offshore reporters and news-story composing algorithms. This article addresses a 'quasi-experimental' case study in which a group of international and Israeli book authors reported the news for two special issues of an elite Israeli daily, replacing the regular reporting staff. It maps authors' weaknesses as news gatherers, describes the means the newspaper employed to mitigate these weaknesses and stipulates the challenges the paper faced nonetheless. Findings suggest that professional reporters remain largely irreplaceable, although for less predictable and less 'heroic' assignments.

Original languageAmerican English
Pages (from-to)417-434
Number of pages18
JournalJournalism
Volume13
Issue number4
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 May 2012

Keywords

  • Israel
  • authors
  • news production
  • news reporters
  • professionalism
  • replaceability

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Communication
  • Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous)

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Are reporters replaceable? Literary authors produce a daily newspaper'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this