Jacques Mick

The article supports the hypothesis that contemporary journalism is facing a crisis of governance, derived from the fraying of social relations between the media enterprises and their audiences (readers, sources, stakeholders, advertisers, subscribers). In contrast to the interpretations that limit the crisis to the funding issue or the business model, we argue that such difficulties are apparent manifestations of structural changes in relations between journalism and the public, affecting both production and circulation of journalistic information processes, particularly concerning its corporate organizational form. Each of these dimensions is affected by actions and representations of the audiences, heavily modified in just over a decade in response to the changes in technology and communication. The article demonstrates how the concept of governance gives a better understanding of the dimensions of the crisis and a glimpse into the possible solutions.

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O artigo sustenta a hipótese de que o jornalismo contemporâneo atravessa uma crise em sua governança, derivada do esgarçamento das relações sociais entre as empresas jornalísticas e seus públicos (audiências, fontes, stakeholders, anunciantes, assinantes). Contra as interpretações da crise que a circunscrevem ao financiamento ou ao modelo de negócio, argumenta-se que tais dificuldades são manifestações aparentes de transformações estruturais nas relações com os públicos, que afetam tanto os processos de produção e circulação da informação jornalística, quanto sua forma organizacional predominantemente empresarial. Sobre cada uma dessas dimensões incidem ações e representações dos públicos, fortemente modificadas num intervalo de pouco mais de uma década como reação às transformações tecnológicas e de comunicação. O artigo demonstra como o conceito de governança permite compreender melhor as dimensões da crise e vislumbrar possibilidades de saída.

Comparative research across the world has shown that nation-level variables are strong predictors of professional roles in journalism. There is, however, still insufficient comparative research about three key issues: cross-national comparison of journalistic role performance, exploration of how – or whether – organizational variables account for variation in role performance across countries, and the performance of specific journalistic roles that prevail in regions with post-authoritarian political trajectories. This article tackles these three issues by comparatively measuring journalistic performance

This study proposes the interventionist and the detached orientations to watchdog journalism through the conceptual lens of journalistic role performance. Based on a content analysis of 33,640 news stories from sixty-four media outlets in eighteen countries, we measure and compare both orientations across different countries using three performative aspects of monitoring: intensity of scrutiny, voice of the scrutiny, and source of the event. Our findings show that the interventionist approach of watchdog journalism is more likely to be found in democracies with traditionally partisan and opinion-oriented journalistic cultures or experiencing sociopolitical crises. In turn, the detached orientation predominates in democracies with journalistic traditions associated to objectivity. Although both orientations have a lower presence in transitional democracies, the detached watchdog prevails, while in non-democratic countries the watchdog role is almost absent. Our results also reveal that structural contexts of undemocratic political regimes and restricted press freedom are key definers of watchdog role performance overall. However, the type of political regime is actually more important-and in fact the most important predictor-for detached than for interventionist reporting.

Comparative research across the world has shown that nation-level variables are strong predictors of professional roles in journalism. There is, however, still insufficient comparative research about three key issues: cross-national comparison of journalistic role performance, exploration of how – or whether – organizational variables account for variation in role performance across countries, and the performance of specific journalistic roles that prevail in regions with post-authoritarian political trajectories. This article tackles these three issues by comparatively measuring journalistic performance