Media Management and Digital Transformation

Book excerpt: Media Management and Digital Transformation provides novel and empirically rich insights into the tensions, struggles and innovations of news making and managing in media organizations. From an empirically grounded perspective this book investigates how the 'buzz' of new technology tends to prevent management from seeing which changes are needed and indeed possible to make in the newsroom. It presents ground-breaking research showing that fostering ingenious, innovative solutions can be created from within organizations by engaging and allowing employees to recognize problems, reflect and experiment with new ways of working, using technology as support for change. The research presented arises from a four-year action research project in collaboration with three small and medium-sized Norwegian newspapers, in addition to ethnographic research in newsrooms and on media organizations and phenomena in the USA and Europe. It includes among other empirical examples of newsrooms transitioning from a deadline-controlled workflow to an open-ended flowline production, and provides new tools and methods for fostering collaborative creativity and co-creative innovation practices. It also looks into newsrooms’ attempts to strengthen their audience engagement, metrics performance and external collaborations with technology providers, journalism education and action researchers. With theoretical chapters, methodological insights and qualitative case studies of contemporary practices, this book is essential reading for students and practitioners involved with media management globally.