Valica Boudry

Date of Award

8-11-2008

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Communication

First Advisor

Lana Rakow

Abstract

This research's purpose is twofold: to study a newsroom culture to see how news is constructed and to change the approach reporters take to constructing news using ethnojournalism, a hybrid model of ethnography and journalism. The core part of this research focuses on the training of reporters in the use of ethnographic techniques to use in newsgathering. The underlying reason was to see if the ethnojournalism approach would promote culturally diverse story selection and content in newspaper stories. This research addresses the issue that the dominant paradigm in journalism is not objective in the scientific sense of objectivity. It is rather an ideology that promotes certain values and a certain worldview. Once that understanding is revealed and acknowledged, the research shows how current news routines cannot support diversity. Culture is subjective and interpretive; thus to support diversity in a newsroom, new approaches that are not ideologically limiting must be used. The ethnojournalism model teaches reporters ethnographic research methods that get to the culturally subjective, while taking into account the ethical concerns and work habits of journalists that are different from other social researchers using ethnography. The research found that journalists felt tension having to operate between two different systems, particularly when it came to ethical standards. While the issues were satisfactorily worked through as the training continued, they did not ever disappear entirely. The ethnojournalism model worked well under certain circumstances and resulted in coverage that was culturally diverse in story selection and in the integration of cultural values into the news stories.

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