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This paper explores the proximity of local media to audiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is based on a case study of Italian daily L'Eco di Bergamo combining two sets of data: a list of initiatives the newspaper took in 2019 and 2020 to be closer to audiences, and interviews shedding light on how staff viewed the paper's relationship with audiences during that time. An analysis of these two datasets shows that the pandemic increased the newspaper's proximity to audiences but did not fundamentally change the way in which it related with audiences, despite significant changes in journalists' work routines. Based on these findings, the paper proposes a conceptualization of proximity as a dynamic balance between three structuring dimensions (gatekeeping, social and commercial), with a focus on audiences as a plural figure determined by news organizations' strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic was a major challenge for journalism. In the case of Germany, critics very early on voiced concerns over the quality of mainstream media coverage. Mainstream media were attacked for the intensity of their coverage, for reporting too much and unnecessarily frightening audiences, for not presenting a diversity of viewpoints on the pandemic and the measures taken to mitigate it, and for being one-sided and too close to the government. Against this background, this paper examines the intensity and viewpoint diversity of the coverage of 13 mainstream and two alternative media in Germany in 2020 and 2021. Based on a comprehensive manual content analysis of almost 9000 news stories, we conclude that the mainstream media did not cover the pandemic in a fundamentally exaggerated or one-sided way. However, they did not always report intensively when the pandemic was particularly severe, and they tended to warn against the pandemic rather than criticize the measures taken. In contrast, alternative media coverage tended to be more one-sided and generally biased against government measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines journalistic role performance in coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic, based on a content analysis of newspaper, television, radio and online news in 37 countries. We test a set of hypotheses derived from two perspectives on the role of journalism in health crises. Mediatization theories assume that news media tend to sensationalize or to politicize health crises. A contrasting perspective holds that journalists shift toward more deferential and cooperative stances toward health and political authorities in a health crisis, attempting to mobilize the public to act according to the best science. Hypotheses derived from these perspectives are tested using the standard measures of journalistic roles developed by the Journalistic Role Performance Project. Results show that the deference/cooperation/consensus perspective is better supported, with media moving away from the Watchdog and Infotainment, and toward performance of the Service and Civic roles. We also explore differences in the pattern by country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Journalism innovation, according to service innovation theory, is about providing new journalistic services that create value for audiences, society, and the news organisation itself. This study explores how local news media responded to the Coronavirus crisis in terms of service innovation. Based on interviews with editors and top management representatives at two local newspaper groups in Norway (N = 20), we show how local newspapers developed new digital services in response to audiences' need for guidance, overview, and a sense of togetherness, and how the media operations generated revenues in the process. Theoretically, the study identifies two key innovation dynamics in local journalism during a crisis: A social-economic value creation dynamic which captures how local newspapers appropriate their business model to accommodate new service offerings and balance social and economic value creation considerations; and a service system-audience experience dynamic which captures how innovation in journalistic offerings are linked to concurrent innovations in journalistic production processes. This research enhances the understanding of journalism innovation as a value-creating phenomenon and the factors that stimulate such value creation during crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explored emotional distress and organizational support in the context of covering the COVID-19 pandemic. A survey of 222 local journalists in the US revealed covering the story was both stressful and emotionally difficult. Females and those who were younger and less experienced perceived higher levels of stress and felt the story was more emotionally difficult than their counterparts. Females also felt their supervisors were less emotionally supportive and less supportive of their attempts to balance home and work. Supervisor support of home/work balance was associated with less overall emotional stress from the story. The repetitive nature of the coverage, interacting with victims, and public backlash for their reporting were among the top stressors. Nearly 60% of participants indicated they received no stress management resources from their news organizations. Of those that did, most did not take advantage. Implications for organizational support and journalism and trauma research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Arts journalism, journalism on the arts and entertainment industries, has been primarily defined in a Western European context within Journalism Studies. Yet this neglects the globalised nature of arts and entertainment production and consumption and the mobile reporters who cover it, and the nationally contingent challenges and opportunities they face. In a world still grappling with the Covid-19 pandemic, arts reporters face a triple threat: the precarity of what is often a freelance career, the financial disruption of the global media and entertainment industries, and the biases of a media ecosystem that favours reporters from the Global North. Drawing on 24 interviews with arts journalists from 12 different countries in four continents in 2020–2021, we explore how such journalists are increasingly subsidising their work with employment beyond the media sector. Arts journalists from Europe grapple with complex issues relating to their professional and personal identities, in contrast to journalists from the Global South, where questions relate primarily to economic and structural challenges. Journalists from West Africa interviewed face increasing if sporadic interest from media organisations in global economic centres, and the emerging content possibilities of internationally funded digital and streaming platforms, mirroring broader economic flows of capital and labour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigating experience is becoming a greater concern in Journalism Studies. However, while "experience" is often mentioned, it is either never fully discussed or it is approached in terms of mere sensory or emotional response. Experience, instead, involves additionally (and simultaneously) situatedness, embodiment, and continuous re-processing over time, most of which lies beyond consciousness and is not easily articulated by words. Drawing on Whitehead's processual philosophy and Gendlin's philosophy of the implicit, this article addresses the calls in the field for "taking experience seriously." Theoretically, it tackles the ontological leap required to be able to conceive experience. Methodologically and empirically it demonstrates the potential for applying creative techniques to retrieve and express the knowledge beyond words that is not captured by established methods. It does so by sharing the author's reflection matured through long-term experimentation with creative practices in research and the creation of an embroidered collage inspired by the project "Being a foreigner at the time of the COVID-19 pandemic: The impact of news consumption on the everyday life of migrants in Norway." The article takes the form, in itself, of a collage and invites the reader to join into an experiential taster of its arguments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The coronavirus pandemic has cast a shadow over the lives of everyone in the world during the past two years. It has brought about dramatic and sudden changes in the ways we live and work across all realms of society, including in journalism. In this introductory article, we contextualise the special issue on "Global perspectives on journalism and the coronavirus pandemic." The special issue reflects the rich global diversity of responses and experiences of journalism to the coronavirus pandemic. It encompasses contributions reflecting journalists' and audiences' experiences in Belgium, Eastern Europe, Germany, Indonesia, the Netherlands, Russia, Slovenia, Sweden, and the UK. Taken together, the contributions published in this special issue demonstrate the resilience of journalism and its adaptability to change. Yet they also show that if the pandemic constituted a critical moment, it was one which amplified threats to journalism that were already present. But the pandemic also showed the continued importance of journalism, as news organisations furnished audiences with vital information and helped to facilitate cohesion and solidarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]