Journalistic “Innovation” Is Hard to Hate, but Actual Change Is Just Hard

Abstract

Who is opposed to “innovation”? For most newsroom publishers, managers, editors, and reporters, the word connotes progress; it implies a strategy for achieving success—and dodging failure. But innovation inescapably entails change: Doing and thinking about things differently means giving up the old as well as embracing the new. This commentary recaps journalists’ response over 30 years of digital news. It suggests that calls for change meet with initial resistance, typically on normative grounds; only over time do practitioners normalise the innovation, incorporating it into their perceptions and routines.

Keywords

• change
• digital news
• innovation
• journalism ethics
• normalisation