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This paper presents an ethnographic case study of a private television newsroom owned by a newly merged and dominant media company in the small and highly concentrated media market of Flanders (Belgium). Through ethnographic observations and interviews along with desk research and surveys, carried out throughout 2020 both physically and virtually, we operationalise a previously developed model for pinpointing changes inside newsrooms. Our study shows once more that when newsrooms are confronted with changing circumstances, in this case, due to a merger, contemplation about how to address these changes happens largely behind closed doors on the management level, in the meantime leading to frustration amongst employees fearing that their professional identities and practices will be absolved in the newly to be created company structure. Involuntarily, our field study was affected by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, which we turned into an opportunity to explore the methodological consequences for ethnographic observations that in the future are bound to be taking place in increasingly hybrid newsrooms and other work settings. Finally, we highlight the importance of studying both physical and virtual spaces in which journalists produce news content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The coronavirus pandemic sent tremors throughout the news landscape. While the onset of the pandemic appeared to significantly increase news hunger, soon after, studies reported an uptick in what they termed "coronablocking": the conscious avoidance of coronavirus related news. Younger age groups in particular appeared more likely to engage in coronablocking. This article seeks to contribute to extant research by providing a textured account of how and why young news users avoid the news. To explore these questions, we conducted 25 in-depth interviews with Belgian news users under the age of 35. We propose that news avoidance practices are fluid, as news avoidance was often preceded by moments of increased news consumption, and inherently connected to the specific spatiotemporal context of users and enacted within their broader media repertoire. In our analysis, we discuss the user-identified characteristics which lead users to a 'tipping point', at which point they avoided the news to varying degrees by reconfiguring their media repertoire. Three types of reconfigurations are identified: tuning out news content, regulating the flow of information, and controlling the tone of voice, all of which underline users' agency in shaping their repertoires to avoid the news. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• The initial surge in news consumption during the pandemic caused some users to expand their news repertoires. • Three archetypical Flemish news repertoires are identified: a Limited, Casual, and Panoramic repertoire. • News users exhibit significantly higher odds in 2021 of adopting a Casual rather than a Limited news repertoire compared to 2020. • The Panoramic news repertoire becomes less socially stratified in 2021, potentially caused by an influx of news users that have expanded their news routines during the pandemic As we are now rounding up our second year with COVID-19, studies have provided insight into the pandemic's impact on news practices around the world. However, most of these accounts describe data from the early months of the outbreak. Further research is needed to explore the shapes that news repertoires might have settled into in the wake of the pandemic. By comparing data from a Latent Class Analysis of news repertoires using the Digital News Report 2020 and 2021, this paper contributes to extant knowledge of the pandemic's impact on news use in Flanders. We find that users were significantly more likely to adopt Casual rather than Limited news repertoires in 2021, pointing to a potential growth in news habits of users with a previously limited repertoire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]