Routines and Practices: Studying the Making of News

This chapter explores established and emerging routines and practices of news production to consider how they shape news content and to ask what these practices mean for who has power over what becomes news. Formative studies and concepts such as gatekeeping and news values are introduced. Several newly evolving routines and practices of digital journalism—including aggregation, curation, and the use of audience analytics and algorithms—are explored to consider the role of digital technology in shaping news production. Findings from a range of studies are synthesised to evaluate the extent to which these practices replace or supplement existing practices, what distinguishes the routines and practices of today from the past, and what implications these distinctions have for news quality now and in the future.