ANDRII DEGELER

Market Development Through Digitization: Newsroom Structures and Editorial Practices In Converged Online Media — Cases of The Next Web, The Verge, and Engadget

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Abstract Years of technological and professional development of media have created new kinds of online-only outlets that do not call themselves newspapers, magazines, or any other conventional names, but still provide news content to a large-scale audience. Despite having newsrooms, editors and other formal signs of a traditional media outlet, the websites in question refer to themselves as “blogs.” In this thesis, the newsrooms of three high-profile technology-related blogs — The Next Web, The Verge, and Engadget — are analyzed through a series of interviews with their editors. The newsrooms of these online-only media outlets are compared to those in traditional newspapers from Germany and the US, which leads to a conclusion that the practices seen in virtual newsrooms, which are largely induced by convergence processes, are rooted in newsrooms practices from both continental Europe and the Anglo-Saxon world, blurring borders and disregarding distances. In order to broaden the perspective of the thesis, the business models of online media are assessed in terms of aspects which influence editorial practices and newsroom structures, and the probability of the emergence of alternative revenue sources is analyzed. Technology-related blogs, despite having a significant audience and often employing complex newsroom structures, have rarely been researched by journalism scholars, therefore this thesis may serve as a basis for the future research and will show important points of difference between “new” and “old” media.

Keywords: newsroom structure, convergence, digitization, business models, online newsroom, roles in the newsroom, newsroom history, blogs

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Table of Contents Abstract ...... 2 Table of Illustrations ...... 4 Chapter 1. Introduction ...... 5 Chapter 2. Main concepts and definitions ...... 8 Faces of convergence ...... 8 Convergence: From a paradigm shift to a buzzword ...... 8 Reflections on media convergence ...... 9 Convergence meets journalism ...... 10 Convergence types ...... 11 Traditional newsroom structures and editorial practices ...... 14 The two histories of the print newsroom ...... 15 When the paths diverge ...... 17 Jacks-of-all-trades vs. niche specialists ...... 17 Between the extremes ...... 18 Editorial practices and newsroom structures: definitions and data for comparison ...... 18 Physical structure ...... 18 Roles in the newsroom...... 20 Copy-flow ...... 21 Desk structure ...... 22 The search for new business models ...... 23 Chapter 3. Convergence, newsrooms, and business models: Finding interrelations ...... 25 Chapter 4. Research methodology...... 27 Content analysis ...... 28 Limitations ...... 29 Chapter 5. The Next Web, The Verge, Engadget: A closer look ...... 30 Engadget ...... 30 The Next Web ...... 33 The Verge ...... 36 Similarities and differences ...... 37 The outlets as seen through Google Glass ...... 38 M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 4

News coverage ...... 38 Numbers and multimedia ...... 40 Chapter 6. Discussion and insights ...... 42 Physical structure ...... 43 Roles in the newsroom ...... 45 Copy-flow ...... 48 Desk structure ...... 51 Convergence in the newsrooms ...... 52 Business models ...... 57 Chapter 7. Reflections on converging online journalistic practices...... 61 Distinctive features of the online newsroom ...... 61 Comparison to traditional newspapers ...... 63 Convergence, newsroom practices and business models ...... 64 Chapter 8. Conclusion ...... 66 References ...... 68 Appendices ...... 74 Appendix I — Questionnaire ...... 74 Appendix II — Audio ...... 75 Appendix III — Transcripts ...... 75 Appendix IV — Coding book ...... 75

Table of Illustrations Illustration 1: List of the interviews conducted ...... 27 Illustration 2: Engadget.com, June 2004 ...... 31 Illustration 3: Engadget.com, March 2009 ...... 32 Illustration 4: Engadget.com, April 2013 ...... 33 Illustration 5: TheNextWeb.com, December 2008 ...... 34 Illustration 6: TheNextWeb.com, April 2013 ...... 35 Illustration 7: TheVerge.com, April 2013 ...... 36 Illustration 8: Google Glass coverage ...... 39 Illustration 9: Number of stories about Google Glass ...... 40

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Chapter 1. Introduction Over the last 10 to 15 years, the Internet has been playing a major role in shaping the ever-changing media landscape around the world. Chasing technological progress, many newspapers, radio stations, and TV channels went online to be present in the brave new world of the Web. It is hard nowadays to find a media outlet that does not have a website and which does not distribute its content through online channels, such as social networks, YouTube, etc. Years of technological and professional development of online and traditional media have brought many changes to the way newsrooms work: journalists have become multi-skilled, or “deskilled,” as others might say (Erdal, 2007: 53), meaning that journalists master many skills, such as writing, shooting stills and video, and editing audio, without becoming really professional in any of them; also, newsrooms have become converged (Aviles and Carvajal, 2008; Quandt and Singer, 2009), and the “people formerly known as audience” (Rosen, 2006: 1) are nowadays considered an extremely important source of information. On the edge of the new century, a new type of media was brought to the market thanks to the Internet — online-only publications that exist as websites but do not have any hard copies distributed “in the real world.” With the Internet steady growth in penetration from about 361 million users in 2000 to about 2.3 billion users in 2011 (“World Internet Users and Population Stats,” 2012), this way of publishing grew more and more popular. Together with traditional newspapers' websites and online-only newspapers, a new kind of online media appeared that did not call themselves newspapers, or magazines, or any other conventional names, but still provided news content to a large-scale audience. Despite having newsrooms, editors and other formal signs of a traditional media outlet, the websites in question refer to themselves as “blogs” and are located at the bleeding edge of the process of digitization, or digitalization of journalism (Deuze, 2004), which means its conversion from analog to digital form (“Digitize – Definition,” n.d.). One of the distinctive and interesting observations about these blogs is that by the time of their appearance there was no such thing as traditional editorial practices (e.g. newsroom physical and hierarchical structure, and copy-flow) for this kind of media. Therefore, the blogs had to create them from scratch, orienting themselves on the online media landscape and using traditional practices as a basis only where necessary. In turn, traditional media (primarily newspapers) entered the online news market with a full set of longstanding ways of working (Deuze, 2004). In the beginning of the era of online news media, it was just about re-publishing content from a hard copy on the Internet. In the 2000s it became clear that the online audience requires tailor-made news content, and the ways of production used in newspapers do not necessarily work on the Internet (Boczkowski, 2004). Developments in online media in the 2000s also gave a second life to the concept of convergence, which has many meanings, one of which is the merger of media channels or even whole media organizations (for instance, newspapers and broadcasters). Later in this thesis, the major types of convergence will be examined, yet here it makes sense to note that the Internet is an initially converged M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 6 distribution channel, as it allows online publications to combine the text and multimedia seamlessly in journalistic products, such as articles with embedded video fragments and other rich media products. This thesis provides a closer look at converged online-only newsrooms and the ways in which convergence influences their day-to-day editorial practices. There are two main research questions addressed by the thesis: 1. What are the main distinctive features of editorial practices used in particular online-only media outlets? 2. How do these distinctive features differ from those of traditional outlets, many of which have also entered the digital era with their websites? The information about the ways of working in traditional Anglo-American and European newsrooms is taken from the body of previous research that includes the works of Esser (1998), Aviles and Carvajal (2008), Boczkowski (2004), Meier (2007), and others. As the editorial practices and structures of modern online-only newsrooms have scarcely been researched yet, the information about them for comparison is collected by interviewing their staff members, particularly journalists and managing editors. Three online-only media outlets have been chosen for this research: The Next Web (http://thenextweb.com), Engadget (http://engadget.com), and The Verge (http://theverge.com). All three are covering Internet and technology, as well as tech business issues. Apparently these media entities are created by experts in Internet communications and multimedia technologies, so their way of using these technologies is likely to be a conscious decision with clear reasons; in other words, tech blogs do not use multimedia technologies because it is fashionable or everyone else does it, as may happen with traditional media going online (Deuze, 2003). All three websites were created in the last 10 years and are among the top 20 technology publications in the world (“Techmeme Leaderboard,” n.d.; “Technology Blogs – Technorati,” n.d.) as of the first half of 2013. The main step in the process of shedding light on the research questions is to learn what editorial practices are being used currently at Engadget, The Verge, and The Next Web, and how did they change over the last several years, evolving from text-and-stills-only news weblogs to fully converged online media. It is nearly impossible to answer such questions from outside the outlets, so the data was obtained from five interviews conducted via VoIP services with editors from the three publications. The interviews were held following a pre-defined semi-structured questionnaire, with questions dealing with day-to-day editorial routines, newsroom structure, multimedia news production, and the financial aspects of running a media outlet online. In addition to the interviews, detailed descriptions of the researched outlets are provided in this thesis together with a quantitative analysis of their content based on the way how Engadget, The Verge, and The Next Web reported news related to Google Glass, an innovative wearable computer, in the second half of February 2013. By choosing three websites to be analyzed here that work largely in the same niche and cover similar topics, the researcher makes sure that they are comparable not only to other types of media, but also M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 7 to each other. As the result of the interviews, a list of distinctive features is compiled that are common to the outlets. To determine whether there are significant differences between editorial practices in The Next Web, The Verge, and Engadget and traditional media, sets of their similar editorial practices have been compared to those typically seen in conventional Western newspapers. The latter are derived from previous research conducted by media scholars such as Jurgen Wilke (2002), José Alberto García Aviles and Miguel Carvajal (2008), Amy Schmitz Weiss and David Domingo (2010), and others. They include the newsroom organization, role distribution, copy-flow, and desk structure. To add an extra dimension to the research and to see the roots of some editorial practices that may be found beyond convergence itself, this thesis also examines the financial side of new media outlets' existence. While the newspapers that pioneered the age of the Internet in media (e.g., Weekend City Press Review in 1991) went online first of all to reach a larger audience, nowadays media outlets are sometimes forced to abandon or significantly reduce their offline activities and focus on the Internet on practical grounds, such as to cut expenses on production and distribution (Devyatkin, 2001; Singer, 2004). This is mostly the case for print media, whose circulation and revenue figures are in decline worldwide (Macnamara, 2010). The business models that are used or may be used in the online media are an important part of this thesis, because knowing them enables a better understanding of the reasons behind adopting certain editorial practices. During the interviews, the editors of The Next Web, The Verge, and Engadget were asked about the influence of financial aspects on editorial practices and structure, and how profitable some of widely used business models are, and which revenue streams really matter for online-only news media. This research is thus aimed at determining distinctive editorial practices that are being employed in particular online-only media, connecting them to the concept of convergence, finding the interrelations between convergence, editorial practices and business models in innovative media, and comparing routines of online-only news outlets to their traditional counterparts, i.e. newspapers. This thesis consists of several components that are aimed at the analysis of different aspects of the questions raised and elaboration on possible answers and suggestions. In chapters 2 and 3, the theoretical framework for the research is established with a discussion on the topics of “standard” editorial practices that are being used in conventional Western newsrooms, as well as definitions of and reflections on convergence in media. Further on, the studied websites are described in detail, including their history, position on the market, and screenshots of front pages, so that readers can familiarize themselves with the additional factors that could influence editorial practices there. Chapter 6 is devoted to the insights gained in the interviews with editors of the three online-only media outlets, while in Chapter 7 the research questions are assessed again using the data obtained from the interviews.

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Chapter 2. Main concepts and definitions There are many aspects of new and traditional media that need to be discussed in order to comprehensively assess the research questions raised in this thesis — i.e. to determine the distinctive features of the editorial practices in online-only newsrooms and compare them to those in traditional media — and there is a solid body of research conducted on convergence, editorial practices, and business models employed by conventional newspapers. As the focus of this thesis lies at the intersection of the three, the theoretical framework of the approach needs to be outlined. The aim of this chapter is to bring up some important findings from previous research, elaborate on relevant theories, and define essential concepts that will be used in the following chapters. In particular, the different understandings of “convergence” are closely examined, a definition of newsroom practices is formulated, and the interrelations between the two are explained. Faces of convergence To properly understand and assess the research questions of this thesis, the concept of convergence first needs to be explained and narrowed down to be applicable to modern news media. Later, the concept of convergence in journalism will be used in connection to newsroom practices, as well as in interviews with editors of online news platforms. The concept of convergence is extremely broad and stretches from telecommunications to media, with the latter including movies, books, and journalism, and many other things. Even in journalism studies, there are several types and understandings of convergence. The following sections will elaborate the main approaches to and implications of convergence, outline its main aspects from a journalistic perspective (which are strongly connected to each other), and define what is meant by convergence in the context of this thesis. Convergence: From a paradigm shift to a buzzword Being a word that is extremely rich of meanings, convergence can be applied to pretty much any occurrence of anything merging with anything else. The word's usage ranges from telecommunication companies creating “converged” packages including TV, Internet and cellular service, to economics, where it means “a process in which economies of different countries become more similar to each other” (Cambridge Business English Dictionary, 2011). This thesis is focused on convergence in journalism, which is a part of the realm of media convergence, i.e. the occurrences of convergence that manifest in the media environment. Although narrower than the general convergence definition, media convergence is also a huge field where various trends have been developing since the first half of the 20th century (Cassidy, 2009; Serna, 2009). This “ancient” history of media convergence is usually being studied by scholars who specialize in non-journalistic media products, like commercials, cinema, pop culture etc., such as Kathryn Fuller-Seeley (2009) or Marsha Cassidy (2009). Indeed, at that time there were many more manifestations of media convergence in entertainment media than in journalism. M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 9

But of course the processes of convergence are much broader than just cross-ownership of media outlets of different kinds, and convergence of media outlets cannot be fully blocked by any governmental regulations. In the middle of the 20th century, the first manifestations of a demand for multi-skilled journalists emerged (Deuze, 2004; Winseck, 1998), which can be considered a sign of media convergence in journalism (e.g. a newspaper reporter taking photos). Since then, the process of transfusion between broadcast and print media was never slowing down, only speeding up, and the rise of the Internet in the 1990s catalyzed it significantly. Reflections on media convergence Before proceeding to the definition of convergence in journalism and its types that are used in this thesis, it is necessary to outline several concepts and trends that characterize the modern approach in media convergence research. Although studies of general media convergence and convergence in journalism may seem to be of different kinds (e.g. media convergence studies may be devoted to commercials, video games, etc.), they have many points of contact, and theories of general media studies make perfect sense when applied to journalism. One of the important trends in the state-of-the-art of convergence research, which is also fully applicable to its journalism part, assumes that today's audience is playing a role that is no less important than media themselves. Convergence in this case is defined as something that characterizes today's world and creates a "culture, where old and new media collide, where grassroots and corporate media intersect, where the power of the media producer and the power of the media consumer interact in unpredictable ways" (Jenkins, 2006:11). In the beginning of the 21st century, convergence scholars' attention has partially shifted to the interaction between media producers and media consumers (Jenkins, 2004; Quandt & Singer, 2009). Henry Jenkins, one of the most important thinkers in the realm of media convergence studies, in his book “Convergence Culture” speaks of the “participatory culture” that has come to replace “passive media spectatorship” (2006: 3). The importance of this aspect is also connected to the nature of the Internet, as it is the first fully interactive medium, where the boundaries between the audience and the media producers are sometimes indistinguishable. However, when speaking about convergence, it is important to understand that convergence itself is not a stance, but a process (Jenkins, 2006); convergence “does not mean ultimate stability or unity. It operates as a constant force for unification but always in dynamic tension with change” (Pool, 1983: 53 in Jenkins, 2006: 11). Therefore, a newspaper reporter with a notebook and camera from the 1950s (Winseck, 1998), a franchise that includes comics, movies and video games from the 1990s and 2000s, and any of today's online-only news platforms are manifestations of the same processes and should be assessed as parts of a whole. This is, again, a reason why historical aspects of both convergence and newsroom practices need to be elaborated and closely examined in this thesis. There is another important point that has to be made when speaking about convergence and so-called “transmedia storytelling.” (Coined by Marsha Kinder, the latter term means coordinated storytelling with pieces of content being dispersed between distribution channels (Kinder, 1991); in journalism, transmedia storytelling is what many online news platforms do when complementing traditional M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 10 textual reports with multimedia content, be it audio, video, or even just still photos.) Despite widespread talk about the death of the old media and the rise of the new, the point is that the media do not go anywhere; “what dies are simply the tools we use to access media content …These are what media scholars call delivery technologies” (Jenkins, 2006: 13). What Jenkins means in his “Convergence Culture” research is that real media are the written text, the recorded voice, the still or moving pictures, and so on. It is also worth noting that Jenkins' book has nothing in particular to do with journalism, which proves the point I made above about the application of general theories of convergence to news media. Jenkins' arguments go along with research done by Lev Manovich, who calls the personal computer (apparently meaning not the hardware itself, but the digital representation of the information that it provides) a “meta-medium” (2001: 33), i.e. something that is a medium by itself and also consists of other media that have melted down into it. When speaking about the computer as a meta-medium, Manovich refers first of all to the field of cinema and visual culture, though his definition fits perfectly into the journalistic perception of convergence, where the role of computers in terms of media production is at least not smaller than of invention of the printing press or telegraph. Taking Manovich's definition further, one can say that the Internet is even more of a meta-medium than a computer, as it is not only a medium, but also a delivery technology. Convergence meets journalism Usually by convergence in the field of journalism one would mean “some combination of technologies, products, staffs and geography among the previously distinct provinces of print, television and online media” (Singer, 2004: 3). The word had become very popular in journalism studies way before the expansion of the Internet in people's day-to-day life began. In the past, the term convergence would mean much less than it does now; for instance, newspaper journalists wielding a photo camera (Winseck, 1998) are also considered a manifestation of convergence and cross-media journalism. Such cases of convergence mean that, as Deuze argued in his analysis (2004: 143), “multimedia adoption process is not something uniquely caused by internet [sic],” and the contemporary developments of convergence “should be seen as accelerators and amplifiers” of changes rooted in the middle of the 20th century. This means that the interrelations between convergence and newsroom practices, such as merging of production of different media products (video, audio, photos, text), are catalyzed rather than induced by digitization, and the historical aspect needs to be looked at closely. Despite the fact that most of the historical research of convergence has been done on its general manifestations, there are also journalism studies scholars like Dwayne Winseck digging deep into the 19th century and outlining the possibilities of media convergence from that time to the second half of the 20th century (Winseck, 1998). According to Winseck, although media convergence in journalism was always a possibility since the telegraph met the telephone, numerous governmental regulations and restrictions in cross-media ownership led to slowing down the process of merger of different media, starting with newspapers, telegraph, and radio. M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 11

Studying the history of media development in the 20th century, a researcher can say that the convergence processes both in general and in journalism were rapidly accelerated by the emergence of computers (Manovich, 2001; Quandt and Singer, 2009) and the Internet in the second half of the century, and were further catalyzed by connected mobile devices that mushroomed around the 2000s (Jenkins, 2006), such as PDAs, smartphones, tablets, etc. With the Internet becoming an integral part of people's lives, the influence of the technological aspect of convergence has become most visible in newsroom processes as well as in the online content that the newsrooms generate. Technological convergence refers primarily to the process of digitalization of journalism (Deuze, 2003; Deuze, 2004) — over the past decades, computers have become the main tools in both the creation and distribution of content in mass media, from newspapers and broadcasters to online news platforms. This is why on the edge of this century journalism scholars did a lot of research on the changes that appeared in traditional newsrooms that try to find their way onto the Web (Boczkowski, 2004; Domingo, 2008; Aviles and Carvajal, 2008; and others). The research in this field has revealed, among other things, certain patterns and routines of converged newsrooms which will be the focus of the next chapter. Similarly to most of the research on the topic of newsroom practices to date, this thesis is devoted to the production side of converged media, i.e. the main focus is on the newsroom (not the content or the audience), and specifically focuses on how the interaction between journalists is happening and how the workflows are shaped. The main difference between this thesis and most of the similar research conducted in this field is that the newsrooms looked at here have never been working with conventional delivery technologies, such as paper or TV broadcast, but were instead born online and developed their ways of working independently of any traditional print or broadcast “mother ships.” These newsrooms are looked at through the lens of convergence in journalism, which has several distinctive manifestations described in the next section. Convergence types With the first part of the theoretical framework of this thesis outlined, it is possible to proceed to defining the main types of convergence in journalism. The basis for division used in this thesis is largely based on the work of Rich Gordon (2003), where he suggested a way to comprehensively assess convergence from different points of view. Clearly dividing the concept of convergence in journalism into several distinctive types helps to structure the thesis and make it easily readable and understandable not only to media research scholars, but also to industry professionals. Gordon's work has provided a strong basis for the division, while this thesis has changed and narrowed several definitions and added a few important points relevant to the main research questions. The different types of convergence examined in this thesis are structural convergence, technological convergence, ownership convergence, and tactical convergence. Each reflects a distinctive aspect of what being merged, or converged. In the case of structural convergence, the object is normally a M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 12 newsroom that is merged with another one; technological convergence is all about distribution channels and multimedia; ownership convergence can be seen in corporate mergers among media companies; and tactical convergence appears when media outlets of different types undertake efforts to cross-promote each other. Structural convergence This aspect of convergence means the changes inside media outlets, in their newsrooms' organization and in journalists' job descriptions induced by the appearance of new distribution platforms and channels, be it TV, print, or the Internet. Therefore, this type of convergence is very relevant to the topic of this thesis, as it describes what happens on the borderlands between convergence and newsroom practices. In its pure state, structural convergence appears when previously distinct newsrooms are merged, leading to the creation of new, previously nonexistent positions (for instance, multimedia journalists who need to produce written pieces, shoot video and take photos, or newspaper partnerships managers who work on the coordination of different media within the newsroom), and organizational changes, from the physical plan of a newsroom to new hierarchical structures. For many newspaper journalists and editors, entering the digital era meant a lot of changes in their day-to-day routines and work procedures (Aviles and Carvajal, 2008; Meier, 2007; Thurman and Myllylahti, 2009; Schmitz Weiss and Domingo, 2010). These changes may occur when newspapers' websites are created and journalists have to cater both online and offline audiences, but they can also occur when newspapers cease their offline activities and go online-only, as the working paradigm of a news website differs significantly from that of a print newspaper. Differences manifest themselves, for instance, in deadlines (there is usually no firm deadline for stories created for a website) (Thurman and Myllylahti, 2009), in multimedia bites (an online news platform always needs at least a photo, or preferably a video, to accompany the text), etc. At the same time, structural convergence may also be present in the news websites which were born as online-only outlets. In the cases of The Next Web and Engadget, it is safe to say that, with an embracing new ways of presenting information (such as video or podcasts), the media companies had changed significantly in terms of structure. The situation with The Verge is different, as it is the youngest outlet of the three and it has been focusing on diverse distribution channels since it was launched in 2011. Technological convergence As follows from the name, technological convergence means the melting together of media production and media distribution channels (or, as in the case with the Internet, into a separate one), and it can also be called “multimedia convergence” (Garnham, 1996 cited in Deuze, 2004: 143). This aspect of convergence became relevant when the rise of the World Wide Web began, and different media went online to stream their content through the new channel — the Internet. As Aviles and Carvajal emphasize, “the technological foundation of newsroom convergence lies in the digitization of production” (2008: 222), meaning that these days the center of creation of any kind M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 13 of content is a computer. Distributed via the Internet, this content is being consumed by the audience using connected devices, such as desktop PCs, laptops, tablets, smartphones, Smart TVs, etc. Therefore, the technological aspect of convergence is based on digitization of production and seeing the Internet as one of the major multimedia content distribution channels. In this thesis, technological convergence appears as one of the main drivers and accelerators of the changes that occur between online-only media outlets and their traditional counterparts in terms of their workflow and structure. The main trends and tendencies that influence both types of media platforms might be the same. The online-only ones, however, tend to introduce more technologically advanced ways of working faster (Deuze, 2004). Actually, the very fact of the existence of online-only media platforms is a manifestation of technological convergence, which allows journalists to distribute their product, be it text, photos, or videos, to Internet users all over the world. Ownership convergence This is probably the oldest aspect of convergence, which is also called media cross-ownership (Obar, 2009) or synergy (Gordon, 2003b). As follows from its many names, ownership convergence means situations when one company/person owns several media outlets of different types; the traditional combination would be a TV station and a newspaper. This type of convergence was illegal in the US since the 1940s (Gordon, 2003a), as it was perceived as a factor that would stifle diversity of voices and have a negative impact of journalistic objectivity. This regulation was eliminated by FCC in 20031 (Obar, 2009), though cross-ownership of a TV station and a newspaper is still prohibited in many other countries, such as Germany (Meier, 2007). Good examples of synergy may be the merger of AOL and Time Warner in 2000 or the acquisition of the Wall Street Journal by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. in 2007. For the online media outlets analyzed in this research, the concept of cross-media ownership is partially relevant, as in 2005 Engadget was acquired by AOL, which also owns other popular online media outlets, such as the Huffington Post, TechCrunch, AutoBlog, and AOL.com itself; another researched outlet, The Verge, is owned by Vox Media. The Next Web, in its turn, includes, among other entities, The Next Web Magazine for tablets (as of February 2013—only for the iPad), which can be considered a separate content distribution platform. As Gordon (2003a: 64) points out, “ownership convergence does not necessarily require shared editorial decision making or other kinds of collaboration across distribution platforms.” From the interviews conducted with journalists and editors, it will be seen if there are any issues induced by cross-media ownership present in The Next Web, Engadget, and The Verge. Tactical convergence The term “tactical convergence” was coined by Rich Gordon and means “a variety of activities that… [fall] into three general areas: content, marketing, and revenue enhancement” (Gordon, 2003a: 65).

1 This decision was partially reversed in 2004 by United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, but in 2007 the FCC voted for relaxation of the restrictions again (Obar, 2009). M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 14

Under this category fall all the cross-promotional activities performed by media of different types that do not necessarily require cross-ownership of the outlets involved. A common example of tactical convergence is cross-promotional agreements between various TV stations and newspapers in the late 1990s (Gordon, 2003a). Following these agreements, newspapers would promote TV meteorologists on their weather pages, while in TV programs viewers would hear about the headlines from tomorrow's newspaper. Another manifestation of tactical convergence is the so-called “talkbacks” when print journalists would appear on the air to discuss stories they were covering. Tactical convergence is less relevant for this research than technological and structural, though it does come in play, for instance, in The Next Web's promotional activities for its The Next Web Magazine for iPad (a case of combination of tactical convergence and cross-media ownership). Convergence today Back in 2003, Rich Gordon in his study “The Meanings and Implications of Convergence” concluded that technological convergence was barely present in the media market at that point. He also predicted its development together with improvements in Internet connection speed, which nowadays allows users to stream multimedia content in real time. Today, all the aspects of convergence in media are about equally important and connected to each other — for instance, technological, structural and ownership convergence oftentimes occur together when media outlets merge. This research defines convergence as the variety of ways in which text and multimedia content are melted together by using computers and the Internet for both production and distribution, as well as consequences of these processes (e.g. structural convergence). This definition includes the types of convergence mentioned above, and particularly the aspects of them that are connected directly to what is happening in newsrooms — i.e. to what is called newsroom structure and editorial practices. Traditional newsroom structures and editorial practices After about two hundred years of journalism's existence as a separate profession, one can speak of certain traditions and common features of newsrooms that started to form in the 19th century. Even in modern newsrooms, researchers can still see the familiar shapes of reporters, editors and their German counterparts called “redakteurs” (Esser, 1998) who pioneered the news work in the Anglo- Saxon world and in continental Europe.2 The way the newsroom is organized and how working processes are shaped has been a research topic for many a media scholar for a long time. This thesis relies on a body of works that describe newsrooms in the US and UK on the one side, and in Germany on the other. The US, the UK, and Germany have been chosen to represent the evolution of the newsroom because from their example one can see the “fundamental differences” (Esser, 1998: 376) of the ways a newsroom can be structured in terms of both physical layout and workflow. Newsroom structures and editorial practices

2 This thesis consciously employs a Western perspective, thus it does not discuss newsrooms in Asia, as they are not relevant for this research and may differ significantly from their European and American counterparts. M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 15 in German and Anglo-Saxon newspapers are seen in this thesis as two extreme points, in terms of which it is possible to express less extreme ones, such as those researched. The history of the newsroom in the United States was analyzed by John Nerone and Kevin Barnhurst (2003), who described in great detail the roots of today's newspapers and the way their editorial structures have been changing since the 18th century. Another prominent researcher of the Anglo- Saxon newsroom is Frank Esser, whose comparative study of British and German newsrooms (1998) forms an important part the basis of this thesis. Apart from Esser, the evolution of the newsroom in Germany was described by Jurgen Wilke (2003); in his works he also cites important scholars whose works are written in German and could not be accessed directly. The newsroom is a very important place, or rather a concept of a locus where journalists interact with each other and create the media product for any publication. The way journalists and editors communicate and collaborate with each other in the newsroom inevitably leaves tracks on the output — both on the form in which content is presented to the audience and on the content itself. Therefore, one may assume that a smartly and efficiently organized newsroom can nowadays be a competitive advantage; this assumption finds proof in one of the interviews done for this thesis, where The Verge's editor Dieter Bohn cited the company's workflow as one of the reasons for the website's success. One of the main topics of this thesis is the way in which modern online newsrooms work; but before going straight to the interviews and outlets' descriptions, the stage needs to be set with a short retrospective journey into the history of the print newsroom, and the conditions of its development must be outlined. Today's newsroom structures and processes have their roots deep in a time when what we call the “traditional” newsroom was taking shape, and it is therefore still possible to see where many features of today's online newsrooms come from — but only while keeping in mind the history of newsroom development on both sides of the Atlantic. As the websites analyzed in this research — The Next Web, Engadget, and The Verge — specialize first of all in production of text pieces, while multimedia materials may be seen as a complement, it makes sense to speak of standards developed in print (and then later converged) newsrooms, while omitting broadcast-only newsrooms. As the basis of this chapter, a definition of editorial practices and newsroom structures needs to be introduced. In assessing editorial practices and newsroom structures, this thesis describes a part of the realm of working processes implemented in a newsroom, including how the day-to-day interaction between staffers (and sometimes freelance contributors as well) is built, how the working space is organized, how labor is divided, and how strictly the quality of the copy is controlled. The two histories of the print newsroom This thesis examines two histories of the print newsroom which also have common parts. The first is the history of European (and particularly German) newspapers, and the second is the history of print mass media in the United States (and the UK, which is similar (Esser, 1998)). Separated by thousands of kilometers, these regions have shaped two kinds of newsroom culture that differ in many aspects, from physical newsroom organization to division of labor and journalists' self-perceptions. M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 16

The huge difference between the German and Anglo-American newsroom models is convenient for researchers, as any other model can generally be placed somewhere in between these two extremes and described according to the features it takes from each. This is also the case with the newsrooms analyzed in this thesis; later on, there will be an elaboration on their features using the historical points explained in this chapter. However different German and American print newsrooms may have become, the starting point in their development was the same, even though the time frames for the main periods in their history are different. In Germany, the first printed newspapers appeared in the beginning of the 17th century (Wilke, 2000 in Wilke, 2003), while the history of print news media in the US is traditionally counted from the early 18th century (Nerone and Barnhurst, 2003), when colonial newspapers began to appear. According to the classification proposed by Nerone and Barnhurst (2003: 436), the first newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic ocean were “the Printer's” papers, i.e. the person operating the printing press did not only produce the physical product, but also chose articles to print from other papers and/or from correspondents all over the world (Wilke, 2003). At that point, the newsroom as such did not exist, as all the work was done in the room with the printing equipment. The first organizational shapes of American newspapers can be seen as early as the 1820s, when many papers were taken over by editors, mostly representing political parties. These partisan news media were labeled by Nerone and Barnhurst as "the Editor's" papers and were replaced by “the Publisher's” ones three decades later (2003: 436). In the middle of the 19th century, an important change occurred in large newspapers in the US: the room where editors and reporters worked was finally separated from the room with the printing press as well as from the counting room. Smaller papers adopted this division gradually over the next several decades. In Germany, on the other hand, similar processes were already happening in the middle of the 18th century and were connected to the consolidation of newspapers: by this time the biggest newspapers were employing editors to manage the journalistic part of the business (Wilke, 2003). However, there is no data available about the spatial organization of newsrooms in Europe at that point. One of the first examples of dedicated newsrooms in Germany is the one of the Allgemeine Zeitung in Augsburg. It was located in a new building erected in 1823. According to Wilke's research:

…the living room and the work-room of the editors were directly next to each other, one of the editors even living in one of the newsrooms: a discovery that gives new meaning to the term “in-house editorial staff.” (2003: 467) To sum up the first “era” of the parallel development of the print newsroom in the US and in Germany, one can say that by the second half of the 19th century the two found themselves at about the same point, even though the US newspapers arrived at that point twice as fast as their German counterparts. M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 17

When the paths diverge The beginning of the 20th century marked significant changes in newspapers' way of producing the news. In the United States, the open-plan newsroom had become a de facto standard — mainly due to adoption of typewriters as the reporter's main instrument of labor. If with a pencil and paper news reporters could have been seen working anywhere, the “typewriter anchored news workers to table space” (Nerone and Barnhurst, 2003: 440). At the same time, American newsrooms saw the first signs of the shift in the newsroom organization “from a mechanical one to a topical one” (Nerone and Barnhurst, 2003: 444), i.e. the organization into departments that are usually called “desks” in modern newspapers. By 1920, there would be editors assigned to work with “correspondence” (copy sent in by mail), with news from remote places (initially this person was called “telegraph editor,” which reflected the mechanical aspect of his work), and also with local news. The latter desk at bigger dailies could have been divided still further into sections writing about local markets, the courts, and city hall (Nerone and Barnhurst, 2003). In the meantime, German newspapers also adopted the division into independent desks. The process was catalyzed by the passage of the free press law in 1874, after which the number of newspapers in the country increased rapidly (Wilke, 2003). As is the case with newspapers in the US, large publishing houses were the pioneers in the innovation of newsroom structure. One example of the new spatial layout of the newsroom was Kolnische Zeitung (DuMont Schauberg, 1902 in Wilke, 2003: 468). As distinct from the American example, the workers of each desk at Kolnische Zeitung were working in separate rooms located next to each other along a hallway, while the editor-in-chief had a room of his own. Eventually, this layout became typical for German print news media (Wilke, 2003; Esser, 1998). Jacks-of-all-trades vs. niche specialists Over the course of the 20th century, German and American newsroom structures and editorial practices developed mostly along the tracks defined in the early 1900s. An important and noteworthy aspect of this development is how differently the division of labor was organized, and how different journalists perceived themselves and their functions. Staffers in Anglo-American print newsroom had become narrowly focused specialists with relatively limited duties (Esser, 1998), while German “redakteurs” became almost fully autonomous in their work. As Esser explains, while copy written by a reporter of a US newspaper in the second half of the 20th century was more often than not edited almost beyond recognition by the army of editors, their counterparts in Germany could count on the unaltered publication of their articles. Another important point of difference is the idea of objectivity and strict separation of facts from comments and opinions, adopted by the American press at the end of the 19th century. As Wilke (2003) explains, for the German press, this was a strange idea, as papers were mostly the carriers of a certain set of creeds and were read by like-minded people. The concept of objectivity was forced upon the German press after the World War II, when the Allied forces effectively took charge of the country's newspapers: M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 18

…the military government in the US Zone emphasized the introduction of the principles of American journalism in Germany. This included the norm of separation of news from comment (opinion), and the organization of news texts into a lead and body (Wilke, 2002a). The press, moreover, was to try to be more objective. Sporadic American efforts to introduce the American copy desk system into German editorial offices were in vain. It was impossible to prevail over the division of departments, which was so common in Germany (Hurwitz, 1972). (Wilke, 2003: 472) Therefore, even though in the middle of the 20th century there were attempts to forcibly “cross” the separate paths that German and American newsrooms had taken, it didn't happen until several decades later. Between the extremes Closer to our own period, many media companies on either side of the Atlantic showed signs of drifting away from the two extremes described above. As such, several German press agencies introduced open-plan newsrooms, while at certain newspapers some of the separate rooms housing desks were also changed into open-space structures (Wilke, 2003). Having outlined the history of the development of newsroom structures and editorial practices in its extreme manifestations, it is easier to assess and describe the model that has emerged in the “borderless” online-only newsrooms. Later on in this thesis, the research will show how certain features that historically belong to either German or American newsroom are intertwined in online- only media outlets on the Internet — the space, where national borders are erased and the thousands of kilometers that may lie between countries do not matter. In order to make the assessment more structured and ordered, the next subchapter will elaborate the four aspects, which will be examined in the case studies. Editorial practices and newsroom structures: definitions and data for comparison Further on in this thesis, the newsroom structures and editorial practices employed in online-only media outlets will be examined and compared to those employed in traditional publications. This chapter contains data from previous research about newsroom structures and editorial practices in traditional newspapers, which will be used for the comparison. To make the comparison more transparent and comprehensive, the aspects to be looked at are divided into four categories, which also appeared in the questionnaire that was used for interviewing (see the Appendix I). Physical structure When speaking of the physical structure of a newsroom, the researcher means first of all how the space of the newsroom is organized (of course, if there is any place that medium's staff is sharing to M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 19 work together), e.g. whether it is an open-space office or a number of smaller rooms, whether the journalists are mostly working together in the newsroom or sending their copy from other locations, etc. This topic was researched by Frank Esser (1998), Klaus Meier (2007), J. Aviles and M. Carvajal (2008), J. Nerone and K. Barnhurst (2003), and others. The main characteristics of this aspect of newsroom structure are the general planning of the newsroom and the principles employed to divide groups of journalists, editors and other staff members; the same goes for an online-only newsroom: the general question is if particular groups of staff members are isolated from others in any way (e.g., given a separate online chat room). Starting with the basics of traditional newsroom organization, it should be said that any newsroom is in most cases presumed to be a physical location — a building, a floor or just a big open-plan room (Esser, 1998; Meier, 2007; Aviles and Carvajal, 2008) — where the core team of journalists and editors is supposed to be working. The particular organization of space in such a location may vary depending on journalism culture, which in its turn heavily depends on geography of the medium (Esser, 1998). In the US and the UK the standard physical structure of a print newsroom would be a “centralized open-plan newsroom, which the district reporters send their copy to” (Esser, 1998) with provisional division between sections where journalists and editors sit. One of the implications of this structure is editorial control. As Esser mentions, it is just “much easier for the British editor to supervise each step of the operation.” In contrast to Anglo-Saxon newsrooms, those in Central Europe, particularly in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, prefer not to have open spaces, putting their “redakteurs” (more about the roles in the newsroom follows in the next section) in separate rooms grouped by desk (Esser, 1998; Meier, 2007; Wilke, 2003). With this system editorial control is less strict, but all the core team members are still lumped in one building in a relatively compact manner. Yet another kind of newsroom structure can be observed in converged media outlets in Spain, such as Novotecnica and La Verdad Multimedia (Aviles and Carvajal, 2008). Both of them own a print title as well as radio and TV stations, whose newsrooms have been put together into a converged one in 2004. In Novotecnica, for example, journalists of all media are concentrated in one huge open-plan room without separating screens, so they all have eye contact with each other. As put by one of the editors, “It is very useful for us to see each other all the time and to work side by side with our companions” (Aviles and Carvajal, 2008:228). La Verdad Multimedia, in its turn, has two separate newsrooms for broadcast journalists and those who work on print and web sections, while each of the newsrooms is still basically a room where journalists and editors work altogether. Another way of dividing journalists in the converged (print and online) newsroom, described by Schmitz Weiss and Domingo (2010), is the division based on tech-savviness. It basically means that a group of journalists who have a technological background serve as “translators” between their technologically unskilled colleagues and the software developers responsible for the medium's website. In the case of Catalan El Periodico de Catalunya newspaper (Schmitz Weiss and Domingo, 2010), the M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 20 group of tech-savvy journalists was even physically isolated from other journalists working for the print and online versions of the news outlet. To sum up this subsection, it is safe to say that the basic common feature of the traditional newsroom is that full-time journalists and editors spend most of their working hours in an office with each other, either sitting in an open-plan room or being grouped by desk and put into smaller rooms. As Meier (2007: 6) puts it, “in Central Europe emphasis is placed on departmentalizing the newsroom, while in contrast, the Anglo-American newsroom is more process-oriented.” Converged traditional newsrooms, however, are often characterized by openness in terms of room organization, even in regions where open-plan newsrooms have never been popular, such as Central Europe. At the same time, these converged centralized newsrooms may be divided by media (Aviles and Carvajal, 2008; Meier, 2007) or by the level of tech-savviness of their journalists (Schmitz Weiss and Domingo, 2010). In this case, journalists from different groups would be put into different places even if they work on similar topics. Roles in the newsroom The distribution of roles, or hierarchical structure, is also one of the main characteristics of any newsroom. It determines journalists' roles, subordination and responsibilities in the medium, and often depends on different external factors, such as convergence processes (Schmitz Weiss and Domingo, 2010). From this point of view, a newsroom can be characterized by the number of superiors that a journalist has, by the responsibilities of journalists and editors, and by the way the labor is divided in the newsroom (Esser, 1998; Meier, 2007). There are two most obvious approaches to journalists' roles in a newsroom that are peculiar to either Anglo-Saxon or Western European newspapers (Esser, 1998; Meier, 2007). Both of them have deep roots in the history of the respective states, and each has its own pros and cons. The Anglo-Saxon approach that Esser (1998) saw in British print newsrooms is characterized by a high degree of division of labor. Tasks like gathering and reporting news, editing copy, writing editorials and designing page layouts are divided between respective professionals: reporters, subeditors, leader writers, and page planners. The core concept of this approach is the division of those who gather information and those who process it, where “the gatherers include general reporters and specialists” while “the processors include copy and design subeditors” (Esser, 1998:381). One of consequences of this clear distinction is the fundamental conflict between reporters and editors that is common in Anglo-Saxon media and totally unimaginable in newsrooms that have structures similar to those in Germany or Austria. The conflict between “news gatherers” and “news processors” described by Esser has much to do with copy-flow in Anglo-Saxon newsrooms that will be elaborated on in the “Copy-flow” subsection. To sketch it briefly, reporter's copy in a British or American newsroom may go through more than five iterations of editing by “processors,” who would rarely ask the reporter for an opinion on how it should be done. In such a manner, the resulting piece may differ significantly from what has been written initially by the “gatherer.” M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 21

In newsrooms in German-speaking countries researched by Esser (1998) and Meier (2007), a different, more holistic, approach is employed. Most of employees in the newsroom have the same position called “redakteur” (German for “editor,” “desk worker”) and are responsible for virtually everything. As described by the German national daily newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau: “They not only edit the accounts of correspondents and wire services, they also write their own articles. […] All of them deal with several specialist areas: regions and topics they work on regularly — that is examining developments, establishing contacts, analysing special information and specialist journals, attending press conferences, reporting and writing editorials” (Neumann, 1995 in Esser, 1998: 382—383). As Esser points out, the closest resemblance of a pure news gatherer in the German newspaper tradition would be a freelance contributor, who is not considered as a part of the newsroom. With such a division of labor (or virtually with no division at all) in Central European newspapers, the degree of journalistic autonomy is higher than in Anglo-Saxon newsrooms, as what is written by a redakteur will usually get in paper without any changes. When speaking about roles in the newsroom, it is worth noting that in converged ones (print and online) new positions may appear that have not been even thought about before as a manifestation of structural convergence. Schmitz Weiss and Domingo (2010) have described the case of El Periodico de Catalunya newspaper, where a so-called “production team” is working along other journalists. Staffers of this team are basically tech-savvy young journalists who serve as a buffer between their less technologically educated colleagues and front-end developers responsible for the newspaper's website. Wrapping up this subsection, there are ultimately two main types of role distribution in a newsroom. The first one is to clearly divide news gatherers (reporters “on the ground”) and news processors (editors and subeditors) who edit all the pieces; the second one is having in a newsroom “universal soldiers” rather than focused specialists who are responsible for gathering and editing the news, as well as for writing editorials and planning page layout. Also, some of converged newsrooms may need to appoint tech-savvy people to work as a buffer between the new technologies and journalists not used to them. Copy-flow The process a story (be it a news piece, a feature story, or a round-up article) has to go through after it is written and until it is published (Esser, 1998) is called copy-flow. For traditional newspapers, especially in Anglo-American newsrooms, copy might need to be read, edited, and re-written several times. Possible difference in complexity of the copy-flow may be determined by convergence processes (such as structural convergence) and specifics of news work in online environment (no fixed deadlines, news has to get published as early as possible). This type of editorial practice can be characterized by the number of people who read and edit a story, the severity of editing of the texts that usually occurs, and the existence of any rules about whose call is to decide if a story can be published. Regarding the way in which journalist's copy makes it to the newspaper's pages, one can identify two approaches that are opposite to each other. Both of them are described by Esser (1998); they are M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 22 peculiar to either Anglo-American or German print newsrooms and have their roots in the traditional roles distribution. The approach in Anglo-Saxon newsrooms, where editorial control is more significant and news processing is done by several people, is that all the copy that comes from different sources goes through several steps of editing, most of which are the same for every source of copy. Depending on where the copy comes from, it is being read and edited at least 6 to 7 times (moreover, at some points copy may be returned to the author, for instance, for re-writing or adding extra information). Pieces written by the newspaper's reporters go through city or district editors, then come to the copy taster's desk to go forward to production table, or to copy subeditors and other editors before they are printed. In German newsrooms researched by Esser, copy from different sources also comes to one place, but is being read and (seldom) edited only once or twice, if one does not count proofreaders. For example, redakteurs' copy in the main newsroom of the German daily newspaper Koblenz Rhein-Zeitung is only being proofread in the proof-reading department, and after that it goes directly to the printing press (Esser, 1998). In case of the newspaper's district offices, the copy needs to pass one more check on its way, a producer whose position is filled by a different redakteur each day and whose responsibilities include reading the copy, editing it and sending it back to the author if necessary, and page planning. Therefore, a common thing for copy-flow of traditional newspapers is that the copy comes from different sources to one desk, from where its journey to the pages of a newspaper may take from one to seven steps. In a German newsroom, a piece usually makes its way without significant changes, which is not the case for British (and American) ones, where “news processors” may transform it beyond recognition. Desk structure The desk structure goes along with physical and editorial structures and determines how the medium's staff is divided based on topics (or regions) they cover (Esser, 1998; Nerone and Barnhurst, 2003), and to what extent different desks interact with each other. This aspect is characterized, first of all, by the actual existence of desks in a medium, by the number of desks, by the categories used for the division, and also by how strict the division is and how transparent are the borders between the desks, i.e. to what extent the desks interact and collaborate with each other. Esser points out that “the German newspapers in the 19th century developed a similar kind of desk structure to the Anglo-Saxon countries” (1998: 380). Desks in a newsroom can be determined by topic (Politics, Business, Sports, National, Foreign, Arts, Culture, etc.) and by region (especially when speaking of a national newspaper in a big country). Later in this thesis, these four aspects of the newsroom are used to describe the structure and workflow of the researched outlets and compare them to each other and to traditional newspapers (using the data from this subchapter). In addition to these, there is the fifth point of comparison — the business M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 23 models employed by the outlets. The various business models are described below, including how each model is influenced by and can influence editorial practices, newsroom structures, and convergence processes. The search for new business models In the literature devoted to the traditional newspapers and other media that fully or partially went online, there are numerous pieces of evidence that the reason for moving online and creating modern converged newsrooms is often not a desire to reach new audiences or innovate in the journalistic field, but the pursuit of cutting expenses and downsizing staff (Devyatkin, 2001; Singer, 2004). Therefore, this thesis, in addition to discussing editorial practices, also looks closely at business models employed in The Verge, Engadget, and The Next Web to analyze if they are determined by convergence processes, and also to see if they coincide with those suggested by researchers such as Macnamara (2010), O'Grady (2009), and Sullivan (2006). The thesis will elaborate the researchers’ ideas, and then uses them as a point of comparison with the information retrieved from interviews with editors of The Verge, Engadget, and The Next Web. In his study, Jim Macnamara (2010) references a huge body of previous research and names several sources of revenue that might, in his opinion, be part of a viable business model for an online medium. They are charging for content (creating so-called paywalls), new generation of targeted advertising, public funding, sales commissions on products sold via advertising, foundation grants, memberships and syndication (which can be also considered as charging for content), diversification into consumer products, and re-using archives. Candice O'Grady (2009: 8) proposes such a potentially profitable business model as citizen journalism, where “anyone can contribute content—generally on an unpaid basis,” with or without editing of those contributions by professional journalists or editors. The other O'Grady's ideas are pretty much the same as Macnamara's, including non-profit investigative journalism taking money from different foundations and reader-funded media. Another view on business models in media was presented by Daniel Sullivan (2006). In his research, he advocates the shift from the manufacturing model presumably employed by media nowadays to the service model, which basically lies in focusing on community building, more precise targeting of audience, and creating “value through their distribution systems and their pricing systems” (Sullivan, 2006: 71). The latter notion means particularly embracing “a policy of media flexibility” (2006: 71), catering different audiences via their favorite distribution channels. Summing up this section, it is clearly evident that scholars who work on the borderlands between media and economy studies admit the need for alternative revenue sources for online media, and have several suggestions on this matter. An analysis of the real state of affairs with business models in online-only media and their connection to editorial practices can help to broaden the approach to the research questions and to better understand possible reasons of the difference between editorial practices and newsroom structures of online-only newsrooms and their traditional counterparts. M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 24

To analyze the production side of media is a very complex task, and it needs to be assessed from several angles in order to paint a comprehensive picture of what is going on beyond the front pages of popular tech media. The next chapter will explain how the different aspects of the newsroom functioning looked upon in this thesis — convergence processes, newsroom structures, editorial practices, and business models, — are connected to each other.

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Chapter 3. Convergence, newsrooms, and business models: Finding interrelations The connection between editorial practices, day-to-day work in the newsroom and the concept of convergence is not deeply hidden. The process of convergence naturally leads to the creation of new roles and subsequent changes in the newsroom structure, while business models employed by the media, on the one hand, limit the development of a newsroom in many ways, but on the other hand, are being changed and shaped by this development. Also, when speaking about converged newsrooms, one should not omit such a thing as multi-skilling. This aspect of newsroom convergence means that journalists in such a newsroom need to develop skills that would allow them to “elaborate news stories for the print, radio, television, the internet [sic] and other platforms” (Aviles and Carvajal, 2008: 229). However, according to research done in converged newsrooms of traditional media outlets around the world, it is not a rare thing that journalists are far from being fond of cross-mediality and the possibility of using so many ways to bring the story to the reader, watcher, or listener. According to Deuze (2004: 143), “many if not most journalists tend to complain that convergence means more work for them, even while they get the same salary as before.” On the other hand, for employees of media that were “born online” this might not be the case, as working beyond boundaries of a particular genre or medium is what they were hired to do. It is also worth mentioning that, together with the trend of converging newsrooms of print, broadcast and online realms into one, there appears to be an opposite trend called “de-convergence” (Tameling and Broersma, 2013: 20—21). The ethnographic research of a Dutch media giant de Volkskrant has shown that the ways of working of a traditional newspaper can be so persistent that it makes more sense to separate the online and offline staff. The hypothesis in this thesis is that this difference in attitude must also have created a significant difference in editorial practices in the newsrooms of traditional media versus online-only newsrooms. Deuze (2004: 149), speaking about traditional outlets going online with their websites, argues that “any ‘new’ converged news operation also takes on the well-established roles, rituals, and cultures of doing things.” This means that even if traditional media outlets go online, there is always an influence from the “paper past” in their day-to-day work. Another possible implication of the “analog past” on editorial practices in news media is that multimedia possibilities are used in those outlets less often than they could be (Boczkowski, 2004; Domingo, 2008; Deuze, 2004), and that “in daily routines, there was a tendency towards reproducing mass media models, in which ... users were regarded as a rather passive audience, consumers of the stories” (Domingo, 2008 in Boczkowski, 2009: 573). When summing up previous research on the topic, Deuze also underscores that this is a tendency around the world that the “contemporary use of multimedia projects and processes in news organizations tends to reproduce existing (or “old school”) journalistic practices and culture” (2004: 141). M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 26

Thus, this study takes the institutional approach, researching particular news outlets, their structure and practices through the lens of convergence and comparing them to the structure and practices of traditional media outlets, as described in the previous work of different media researchers. This thesis aims to cover the “gap” mentioned by Erdal (2007: 58), that is “changing professional practices and genre development in relation to changes in the organization and practices of news journalism for multiple media platforms in an integrated or converged organization,” by providing valuable insights and research data on these topics.

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Chapter 4. Research methodology To find the answers for the first research question raised in this thesis, i.e. to determine the main features of editorial practices and newsroom structures in the three online publications, the researcher conducted a total of five interviews with editors of The Next Web, The Verge, and Engadget, who agreed that their names be used in the thesis. In addition, there is a brief content analysis to illustrate the outlets' approach to reporting news. The interviewees were Martin Bryant (Managing Editor at The Next Web), Alex Wilhelm (at the time of interview — Business and Political Editor at The Next Web), Dieter Bohn (Senior Editor at The Verge), Darren Murph (Managing Editor at Engadget), and Michael Gorman (Senior Associate Editor at Engadget). All the interviews were conducted via the VoIP service Skype and can be found in the Appendices as audio recordings and transcripts.

Interviewee Time Date Name Position Media outlet (H:M:S) Martin Bryant Managing Editor The Next Web 0:56:40 14-Feb-13 Alex Wilhelm Business and Political Editor The Next Web 0:33:59 14-Feb-13 Dieter Bohn Senior Editor The Verge 0:41:45 8-Mar-13 Darren Murph Managing Editor Engadget 1:09:10 15-Mar-13 Michael Gorman Senior Associate Editor Engadget 0:33:53 22-Mar-13

Illustration 1: List of the interviews conducted Semi-structured interviewing was chosen as the main research method of this thesis as the most appropriate methodology for qualitative research, because it allows a much broader perspective than quantitative methods and it receives first-hand information right from the sources (editors and journalists) rather than from the analysis of content produced by them. To achieve the goals set by the researcher, either semi-structured interviewing or ethnographic observations could have been used; the latter gives more insight into how the newsroom work is carried out on a daily basis. However, it was not an option because of the very nature of observed online newsrooms, outlets' general reluctance to allow a stranger into their sacrosanct workspace, and also because of the extreme time commitment this method would require. In the process of choosing the main research method, the researcher mostly relied on Alan Bryman's work “Social research methods” (2001). In accordance with the methods described in the chapter on interviewing in qualitative research (Bryman, 2001: 312—333), the researcher prepared an interview guide (see the Appendix I) consisting of several general groups of questions, related to different parts of the newsroom structures and editorial practices. M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 28

In the interview guide, apart from the basic set of questions, there is an optional block of questions devoted to the topic of business models. These questions were asked only in conversations with Dieter Bohn, Martin Bryant, and Darren Murph, who are either Managing or Senior editors at their publications and are able to discuss such matters. To carry out the interviews, the popular VoIP service Skype was chosen, as interviewees are based on two continents, and an in-person interview was unrealistic. This VoIP service allows video calls, which initially was considered. However, video-based interviewing was abandoned due to bandwidth issues. Unfortunately, bandwidth issues were not the only problem that emerged during the interviews. The interview with Darren Murph from Engadget initially consisted of three separate consequent recordings, because the Skype client crashed twice during the conversation for no apparent reason. Another problem observed during the interviews was inconsistent sound quality; at some points it is very difficult to hear the exact words used by interviewees, which resulted in a less accurate transcription. Semi-structured interviewing proved to be a very convenient way to carry out conversations with the online media editors. The interviews were provisionally divided into several blocks; however, often interviewees switched between topics from different blocks (e.g., between newsroom structure and copy-flow) while answering questions, which is actually encouraged in semi-structured interviews (Brayman, 2001: 313), and the interviewees also jumped from one topic to another. In such cases, they were allowed to finish and then asked additional questions if necessary, and after that the conversation was switched back to the topic of the initial question. The very first interview with Martin Bryant also proved that even though questions in semi-structured interviews should be quite generally formulated (Brayman, 2001: 313), it is better to describe to interviewees what is meant by the concept of (multimedia) convergence when asking them about its manifestations in the newsroom. This was the only refinement that had to be done in the course of interviews, and it proved to be very useful, as some of the interviewees did not have a media studies background and simply would not understand the word's meaning in this context. Thanks to the interviews, an elaborate body of data was collected, which shed light on the research questions raised in this thesis after its analysis. Content analysis As a secondary research method, quantitative content analysis was used, i.e. counting the appearances of certain embedded (multimedia) pieces in the stories published by the researched outlets during a certain period of time and about a certain topic. The studied time frame is the second half of February, and the topic is Google Glass, a wearable computer that generated quite a number of news stories in 2013. To conduct the content analysis, the researcher used guidelines provided by Klaus Krippendorff (2004), who divided the process into several parts: unitizing, sampling, recording/coding, reducing M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 29 data, inferring, and narrating. As the sample size was very small — just 20 stories with a total of 8,432 words — the data did not need to be reduced, while some of the steps were merged into one. During unitizing and sampling, all 20 articles were downloaded, and coded according to the occurrences that interested the researcher using a short coding book (see Appendix IV), which consisted of several content types — photos, videos, and audio fragments. Additionally, it was determined whether the multimedia pieces had been produced by the outlet itself or obtained from a third-party source. The inferring and narrating steps consisted of presenting the coded data and explaining the practical applications. At this stage the researcher is also supposed to answer the research questions, however in this thesis the research questions are addressed in the appropriate chapter, and the data obtained by content analysis serves as a supplement which serves mostly to raise readers' awareness of the approaches media outlets take to reporting. Limitations Both the content analysis and interviewing methodologies employed in this thesis have their limitations. First of all, in both cases the sample size is fairly small — three outlets, five interviews, and 20 news stories. Some may imply that samples of these sizes are not enough to paint a comprehensive picture of how online-only newsrooms work. However, one could argue that the chosen outlets at least represent the segment of popular tech blogs. The sample of 20 stories, in turn, could have been insufficient if it was the main source of data for the thesis, but this is not the case, and it serves well for illustrative purposes. Another limitation of this research is related to interviewing. Information on how the newsrooms work is crucial to answer the research questions of this thesis, however it is obtained not by the personal observations of the researcher, but rather by interviewing editors from the chosen outlets. Therefore, the real situation in the newsroom inevitably gets distorted by the interviewee's own views and thoughts. In the cases of Engadget and The Next Web, this problem is partially solved by interviewing two people, while with The Verge all information has been obtained from one person. On the other hand, the interviewees, who have worked in their respective outlets for several years, can often tell things that could not be observed during a short visit, such as long-term trends and changes in editorial practices or newsroom structure; moreover, the beliefs and expectations of the interviewees relating to convergence and business models have significant value for this thesis. For a larger-scale research on a similar topic, a combination of ethnographic observation and interviews can be the perfect way to create a comprehensive description of the newsroom structure and editorial practices in an outlet. It is worth noting, however, that it may be extremely hard to receive permission to observe the work of an online-only newsroom; even in interviews conducted for this thesis, I could not obtain certain information about The Verge's editorial practices as it was considered by the company as a competitive advantage.

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Chapter 5. The Next Web, The Verge, Engadget: A closer look This chapter will describe the three websites that are being analyzed in the thesis: The Next Web, The Verge, and Engadget. All three of them are covering the news about technology and the Internet, with Engadget leaning a bit towards the hardware part and The Next Web being one of the main information sources for the stories about Internet business. The three websites presented in this thesis generally work in the same niche and cover similar topics; in addition to that, they are not tied to any traditional media such as broadcasters or newspapers. These similarities make them suitable for the analysis necessary to determine the distinctive editorial practices employed in online-only media, which is the first research question of this thesis. There are, however, certain differences between The Next Web, The Verge, and Engadget. They are different in size and ownership structure, and they also produce different amounts of multimedia content on a daily basis. This allows the demonstration of a variety of approaches taken by online- only media in developing editorial structures, copy-flow processes, and multimedia strategy. Moreover, websites covering technology news are perfectly suitable for a research project that involves technological convergence: the initial hypothesis here is that editors of such outlets are not only aware of all the technological possibilities in media (this is their job), but are also able to make conscious decisions about introducing or passing on them. The descriptions below allow readers to familiarize themselves with the outlets, and also contain several comparison points, which add more depth to the analysis. These points include the role of multimedia content at the website, the number of staff writers and editors, and the websites' ownership structure. In addition, screenshots of the websites' front pages from different years help illustrate their development. The end of the chapter will show how each of the outlets covered a single topic in a specific time frame to create awareness of distinctive approaches to content production employed at the outlets. Engadget One of the oldest technology-focused blogs that has survived and become popular, Engadget was founded in 2004 (“About Engadget,” n.d.). It was launched as a part of the blog network Weblogs, Inc. by Peter Rojas, who is also known by co-founding another famous gadget-focused content project — Gizmodo.com. Later on, 2005 Weblogs, Inc. was purchased by America Online (known as AOL since 2006) (Rosmarin, 2007). At the moment of writing, Engadget is still a part of AOL Tech (“AOL Tech,” n.d.) — a network of technology blogs that includes TechCrunch, HuffPost Tech, Joystiq, and others. As of March 2013, there were 38 editors at Engadget located all over the world (“Editors - Engadget”, n.d.), including the editor-in-chief Tim Stevens. The publication has three offices, all in the US — in M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 31

New York, Palo Alto, and San Francisco, however the editorial staff is usually working only at the New York office.

Illustration 2: Engadget.com, June 2004 Under the Engadget brand, several blogs have been functioning since 2004. There are six blogs in different languages with separate editorial staff — English, German, Spanish, Chinese (traditional and simplified), Japanese, and Korean; up until 2010, there was also an Engadget blog in Polish. The English language Engadget also used to be divided into four sub-blogs — Classic (the original Engadget blog), Mobile (covering mobile devices of all kinds), HD (devoted to gaming, media, HiFi audio, HD video, etc.) and Alt (for “alternative” content that is “a little outside of the norm for [Engadget]” (Topolsky, 2010)). As of 2013, these divisions are integrated into the main structure of Engadget and do not have subdomains of their own anymore. Functioning in the format of a blog, Engadget is updated 24/7 with news stories, features and reviews of hardware and software products. Historically, the blog leans towards gadgets and consumer electronics in its coverage, although the most important news on related topics, like tech business, the Internet as both medium and technology, governmental affairs etc., can also be found there. M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 32

Apart from text pieces and hands-on videos, Engadget produces a fair amount of multimedia content. Since 2004, the blog's team members host the Engadget podcast (Rosmarin, 2007), which usually airs weekly; it is recorded in the format of a talk show on topics connected to important tech news stories of the week. There are three other, more narrowly focused weekly podcasts — Mobile, HD, and The Engadget Eurocast for the European audience.

Illustration 3: Engadget.com, March 2009 Another popular media product of Engadget is the Engadget Show, a video show that usually is taped once per month. It was launched in September 2009 by Joshua Topolsky, who was the editor-in-chief at that time, and consists of discussions, interviews, pre-recorded short video pieces, and live music. There is one more media activity of Engadget worth mentioning. It is the Distro tablet magazine, the first issue of which was published in September 2011 (Stevens, 2011). It is available for free as a standalone app for iOS and Android tablets, as well as a PDF document. As Engadget puts it, Distro contains “the best reviews and features curated from the website along with a weekly editorial to bring you up to speed on any news you might have missed” (“Engadget Distro App,” n.d.) In 2013, Engadget held the first Engadget Expand conference in San Francisco attended by about 2,000 people. This marked the blog's jump into event organizing, which is not uncommon for tech media — outlets like The Next Web or TechCrunch have been holding major events of their own since 2006. M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 33

Illustration 4: Engadget.com, April 2013 As of May 2013, the blog at Engadget.com had a monthly audience of 11.5 million unique visitors (“Top 15 Most Popular Blogs | May 2013,” 2013) and ranked 8th in the Technorati top technology blogs rating (“Technology blogs – Technorati,” n.d.) and 10th in a similar rating at TechMeme.com (“Techmeme Leaderboard,” n.d.). The Next Web The name The Next Web initially had nothing to do with media. Under this name, Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Patrick de Laive, and Arjen Schat from the Netherlands organized a relatively small conference in Amsterdam in 2006 (“About Us,” n.d.). Since it turned out to be a success, the team made it a yearly event, and in 2008 launched a blog of the same name. In just a few years, the blog had become one of the most popular online media outlets covering news related to technology and Internet business, venture capital, etc. As of January 2013, TheNextWeb.com attracted 9 million monthly visits and 14 million monthly page views (“Advertise on The Next Web,” n.d.). As of March 2013, it holds the 20th position in the Technorati ranking (“Technology blogs – Technorati,” n.d.) and the 2nd place at the TechMeme leaderboard (“Techmeme Leaderboard,” n.d.). M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 34

Illustration 5: TheNextWeb.com, December 2008 As of March 2013, The Next Web's team consists of 15 editors located in the US, the UK, Europe and Asia (“Team,” n.d.). The publication's Editor-in-Chief (and, since 2011, the CEO) is Ziad Muhmood Kane (Veldhuijzen van Zanten, 2011). The media outlet has no physical newsroom (and some of its staff journalists had worked together for a few years without meeting in person), although there is an office in Amsterdam where web developers and non-editorial employees (see the list of non-media businesses of The Next Web below) are located. The website TheNextWeb.com is updated 24/7 with short and long form content, with the latter being published mostly over the weekends. All the blog posts can be read as a timeline, but there are also so-called ‘channels’ where users can read only the stories they are interested in, grouped by topic, by content type or by region. Unlike Engadget and The Verge, The Next Web pays significant attention to all kinds of Internet business, including startups and venture investment news, and it normally publishes fewer consumer electronics and gadget-related stories. (It has to be noted however, that at the time of writing The Next Web is looking for Gadget editors, which means its focus may soon expand.) Although, officially, there is a dedicated staff member focused on video production at The Next Web (“Team,” n.d.), as of the beginning of 2013, the publication was not producing as much multimedia content as the two other websites studied in this thesis, though it did publish some through media partnerships. The main recurrent multimedia activity for The Next Web is apparently the Daily Dose M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 35 podcast (“TNW Daily Dose,” n.d.), a brief wrap-up of the tech news of the day. Of no less importance is its free The Next Web monthly magazine for iOS tablets. It features unique content packaged for the iPad; before the end of 2012 it was also available on tablets running Android, though at the end of December 2012 Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten announced that from 2013 on the magazine will be iOS-only (Veldhuijzen van Zanten, 2012).

Illustration 6: TheNextWeb.com, April 2013 Being an independent outlet not affiliated with any blog networks or media holdings, The Next Web is an extremely diverse business. Since it was held for the first time, The Next Web Conference has become one of the biggest and most respected events in the Internet business industry. It is held yearly in Amsterdam (as The Next Web Conference Europe) and in São Paulo (as The Next Web Conference Latin America). Also, 2013 is to be the first year of The Next Web Conference USA, which will be held in New York in October. There are other notable business activities that can be found at The Next Web website. The Next Web hosts a job board with paid postings, as well as the Academy project, which offers a wide variety of tech and startup-related online classes taught by industry professionals. Apart from the activities mentioned above, The Next Web has a strartup-growing greenhouse of its own called The Next Web Labs. The companies functioning as a part of the Labs include online ticketing and payment system Paydro, a platform for the creation of press releases called PressDoc, the social service Spread.us, and more. M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 36

The Verge The youngest of the three, The Verge was launched in November 2011 by a team of former Engadget journalists and editors led by the former Engadget Editor-in-Chief Joshua Topolsky. The website was co-founded and is owned by Vox Media, a global American media company that also operates sports network SB Nation and Polygon, a popular blog devoted to gaming. The Verge's content strategy was explained shortly before its launch in 2011 by Vox Media's Marty Moe (Edelman, 2011: 1):

We want to be on the cutting edge, The Verge, and always explaining to a broader and broader audience how technology is itself changing, and how technology is changing our culture and economy – now and looking ahead… It is clearly visible at the website that The Verge is paying a lot of attention to the layout of long form stories, such as features and reviews. The website also consists of a comprehensive product database that consists of specifications and reviews of computers, and mobile devices, as well as televisions, input devices, and so on.

Illustration 7: TheVerge.com, April 2013 As of March 2013, the editorial part of The Verge's staff consisted of 41 editors, reporters, and contributing writers (“About The Verge,” n.d.). As is the case with The Next Web and Engadget, The M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 37

Verge has journalists in the US, Europe and Asia, which, among other things, ensures a 24/7 news flow. The publication's offices are located in San Francisco and New York, and normally those editorial staffers who live in those areas work from there. Apart from high-quality video reviews of various consumer electronics, The Verge produces a whole range of multimedia content in-house. The most well-known is the show On The Verge that includes “interviews of major technology leaders and luminaries, in-the-field segments, comedy, and analysis and discussion with the leading tech experts” (Edelman, 2011: 1). On The Verge was first aired in November 2011, while its last episode (as of March 2013) was aired in November 2012. In 2013, The Verge launched a new show called Top Shelf hosted by its staff member David Pierce. It is a weekly show that, like On The Verge, consists of discussion of various tech-related topics, as well as interviews, short video segments, etc. There is also a short daily video show called 90 Seconds on The Verge that basically wraps up the most important tech news of the day. The Verge is also home to a few podcasts, such as The Vergecast, The Verge Book Club, and The Verge Mobile Show. The former can be seen as the most ‘general’ one, while the two others focus on certain topics, as suggested by their names. Although the main form of distribution of these podcasts is audio, each episode is also offered as an unedited video fragment taped during the recording of the podcast (it can be either taped by a camera in the studio or recorded from conference video call solutions like Google Hangouts). After its launch in 2011, The Verge quickly gained a significant audience. According to the data from measurement service Alexa.com (“Theverge.com site info,” n.d.), The Verge's audience size is insignificantly higher than that of The Next Web. As of March 2013, the website ranked 14rd in Technorati's top technology blogs (“Technology blogs – Technorati,” n.d.) and in Techmeme's rating (“Techmeme Leaderboard,” n.d.). Similarities and differences As follows from the descriptions above, the three websites analyzed in this thesis generally work in the same niche and cover similar topics. However, there are several differences in their appearance and organization as seen by readers, which may help to better understand and assess the deeper differences mentioned in interviews with their editors. First of all, it is worth mentioning that the websites' staff count differs significantly: while Engadget employs 38 editors and The Verge employs 41, The Next Web survives with just 15 full-time journalists. Apart from that, The Next Web is the only media outlet of the three that is not owned by a holding company. At the same time, from the current screenshots of the websites, it can be seen that Engadget and The Verge pay a lot of attention to engaging users with video content: both of them have a distinct “Video” of “Videos” link at the top of the front page. The Next Web, which at the moment of writing mostly publishes video sourced from partners, does not have such a link in a prominent place or even under the drop-down menu in the left column that contains a list of its topical sections called “Channels”. M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 38

About the same is the situation with other audio and video content, i.e. podcasts and shows. Engadget has “Podcasts” and “Engadget show” links at the front page, and The Verge has a drop-down menu labeled “Shows,” which contains the whole range of content of this kind produced by the team. The front page of The Next Web, however, does not contain anything like this, although its team does produce a daily podcast. By comparing screenshots of the current home pages of The Next Web and Engadget and their home pages from a few years ago (The Verge's front page has not changed since it was launched in 2011), one can see that multimedia content — be it video or just still images — has become a clear priority over time. While in 2004 to 2009 the front page of the older publications consisted mostly of textual information, in 2013 the emphasis is clearly on more pictures. The process of multimedia convergence in editorial practices, as well as in content production and distribution of the three websites analyzed in this thesis, is proved with descriptions and screenshots, but also confirmed and explained by the people who run the websites — their editors. The next section will explain the methods employed in the thesis, namely why interviewing was chosen as the main method and what was been done to retrieve the data for analysis. The outlets as seen through Google Glass To illustrate the approach to news reporting and content production taken by Engadget, The Next Web, and The Verge, this subchapter will briefly analyze 20 stories about Google Glass published by these media outlets during the second half of February 2013. The topic of Google Glass is similarly relevant to all three publications, while the gadget itself appears extremely mediagenic. Before delving deep into details and particular stories, it is worthwhile to elaborate on the chosen topic and explain why this particular time frame was been chosen for analysis. Google Glass, a wearable gadget running Android OS that resembles a normal pair of eyeglasses in shape, was introduced by Google back in 2012 as “Project Glass” (Goldman, 2012), and soon after that, in June 2012, began accepting preorders for the device. In February 2013, Google expanded preorders to a wider set of users and released a video showing how the Glass is operated and what an owner of this gadget sees. The video was widely distributed and attracted lots of media attention to Google's project; in the next couple of weeks, several stories were brought up by media concerning Glass, including Google's alleged talks with real glass manufacturer Warby Parker and a fake eBay auction for a pair of Google Glass, where the highest bid reached $15,900; the amount was never paid though, as the auction was pulled by eBay administration (D'Orazio, 2013b). News coverage In total, Engadget, The Next Web, and The Verge published 20 stories related to Google Glass. This total does not count textual round-ups (e.g. a list of the most interesting stories of a day/week/etc.), but did include round-up-like video and audio materials, e.g. The Verge's “90 Seconds on The Verge” daily video show and TNW's podcast “The Daily Dose.” It is also worth noting that the researcher M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 39 counted stories where Google Glass was the main subject, but not articles where the Glass was brought up just for reference or among the stories related to the main one. Among the Google Glass-related news that were published by Engadget, The Next Web, and The Verge between February 14, 2013 and February 28, 2013, it is possible to recognize four main themes: 1. In early February, Google hosted a series of hackathons centered around Google Glass. 2. On February 20, Google expanded preorders of Google Glass and released a video showing how it works. 3. On February 21, rumors surfaced that Google was in talks with Warby Parker about joining the effort for a Glass frame design. 4. On February 27, a pair of Google Glass was offered for sale on eBay. Bids reached $15,900 before the listing was pulled by the administration of eBay. The coverage of Google Glass by the three media outlets in the second half of February 2013 is summarized in a table below:

Topic TNW Engadget The Verge 1. In early February, Google hosted a http://goo.g http://goo.gl/9w series of hackathons centered around — l/UxdlG RzER Google Glass. 2. On February 20, Google expanded http:// http:// http://g http:// http://goo.g preorders of Google Glass and goo.gl/ goo.gl/ oo.gl/cK goo.gl/ l/p90dng released a video showing how it works. 1ZJ74l e62CGl T5UE 6FCnts

3. On February 21, rumors surfaced that Google was in talks with Warby http://goo.g http://goo.gl/gvd http://goo.gl/D6X

Parker about joining the effort for a l/puRD3L Cc 1X Glass frame design. 4. On February 27, a pair of Google Glass was offered for sale on eBay. http://goo.g http://goo.gl/kqhy — Bids reached $15,900 before the listing l/mePVxx z was pulled by the site’s administration. http://g http:// http://goo.g Multimedia roundups — oo.gl/O goo.gl/ l/OwBDgn T7Fj AwPzCi

Illustration 8: Google Glass coverage The researched outlets covered the aforementioned topics with a few exceptions, and also published several stories unrelated to the themes pinpointed here. The Verge did not report about the Hackathons (though it announced them in January (Hollister, 2013)), while Engadget decided not to write about the scandalous eBay auction. Moreover, Engadget did not cover Glass in its multimedia products, such as Engadget Show. M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 40

In addition, the publications ran a few stories unconnected to four “main” topics. The Verge had created an exclusive multimedia-rich hands-on review of Google Glass (Topolsky, 2013). The Verge also published a news story revealing the price of Google Glass — under $1,500, — and Google's plans to start selling it to consumers by the end of 2013 (D'Orazio, 2013a). The Next Web referred to both The Verge's posts in its news story about the alleged compatibility between Google Glass and iOS devices (Panzarino, 2013). Engadget, in its turn, published a brief walkthrough for Google's patent on the Glass [Dent, 2013] and an extensive editorial about possible ways to use the device (Hill, 2013). It is also worth mentioning that as a rule the outlets do not use texts from press releases and agency stories without changes, while Engadget sometimes adds full-text releases to its stories as an addition. This rule does not work for multimedia material though, as one can see from the next part of the analysis. Numbers and multimedia This subchapter presents the analysis, i.e. the numbers that characterize the coverage of Google Glass in the second half of February 2013 by Engadget, The Next Web, and The Verge.

The Next Web Engadget The Verge Self- Third- Self- Third- Self- Third- produced party produced party produced party Number of posts 6 6 8 Word count 1303 2220 4909 Photos/pictures 1 3 0 15 15 12 Video 0 1 0 1 3 1 Audio 1 0 0 0 0 0 Total multimedia pieces 2 4 0 16 18 13

Illustration 9: Number of stories about Google Glass In terms of number of stories (including multimedia roundups), The Verge produced more pieces than any other medium — eight; The Next Web and Engadget have run six stories each. Most of the total of 20 items are short stories, with the exceptions being The Verge's extensive review (Topolsky, 2013), Engadget's editorial (Hill, 2013), and three roundups published by The Next Web and The Verge (Knowles, 2013; Miller, 2013; Bishop, 2013). The Next Web's stories have the smallest total word count — just 1,303 words, compared to Engadget's 2,220 and The Verge's 4,909. The difference is mostly due to the fact that TNW did not post any long pieces on Google Glass in the second half of February 2013, while both Engadget and The Verge did. The Verge is the leader not only by word count, but also by multimedia items — photos, videos, and audio fragments — with 31 of them in total, of which 18 were produced by the outlet's journalists. M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 41

Engadget had embedded in its stories 16 multimedia items (mostly photos), all of which were obtained from 3rd-party sources like press releases. The Next Web, in turn, posted only six multimedia embeds, of which two were produced in-house. All in all, this brief quantitative analysis illustrates what was previously said in the outlets' descriptions. The Verge appears to be the most multimedia-oriented publication. Having the most staff writers, it was able to produce more textual and multimedia content than the other two websites. Engadget, in turn, pays significant attention to providing its readers with enough still visuals, even though they are taken from press kits or public sources. The Next Web, with its 15 editors, had covered the topic of Google Glass with reasonably short textual pieces, embedding multimedia materials where necessary but not focusing on them.

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Chapter 6. Discussion and insights The interviews with editors of The Next Web, The Verge, and Engadget, together with the brief analysis of their websites' content and data for comparison obtained from previous research, have provided a solid body of information to analyze in this thesis. Before moving on to this part, it makes sense to make several points that may help assess the results and suggest directions for analysis. The findings of this thesis show that convergence in all its various definitions can be easily spotted in today's online newsrooms. All the Internet publications that have been researched show manifestations of structural, tactical, multimedia, technological, and structural convergence in the way they are organized and how the work processes are defined. It can also be seen that the level of intertwining between diverse convergence processes, newsroom structures, editorial practices, and business models employed by media outlets is rather high. For instance, the multimedia convergence processes resulted in a shift of the focus of the researched outlets from mostly textual presentation of information to video materials (that can also be seen on the screenshots of their front pages shown before), which in turn led to the introduction of new roles and procedures in the newsroom and to the appearance of new types of advertising. Another important note is that, in this researcher’s opinion, the findings of this thesis confirms the initial hypothesis that the publications covering technology are most likely to be using the full potential of that technology for their needs, but are also selective in their way of using it; it even found evidence for this in one of the interviews:

“…it's just a matter of finding what works and what doesn't work, and making sure that you're not using a tool for [that] tool's sake. Oftentimes, especially in larger organizations, bigger than ours, an edict would come down that you need to use this tool or that tool, and it's not necessarily the right tool for the job.

[Interviewer:] “So you'd like to keep it simple?

“Just to keep it so that it matches the uses that we need, so we're not going to switch to some hot new Web 3.0 startup communication tool just because it's there. (Dieter Bohn, The Verge) In these publications, adoption of new technologies, be it on the production or the content side, is likely to be very thoroughly, and yet such outlets do not tend to be so conservative as to keep using outdated technologies and practices. Therefore, the technological aspect of convergence at the researched outlets is with a high probability a result of conscious decisions, not influenced by what is “fashionable” or by the hype around certain solutions or approaches. This chapter will present the main insights gained from the interviews and perform an analysis of them, taking into account the data for comparison presented before, as well as the conclusions drawn from examination of the websites in “The Next Web, The Verge, Engadget: A closer look.” In order M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 43 to simplify the transition between the theory and the practice, this chapter is structured in the same way as the previous one: the four main aspects of the editorial practices — physical structure, distribution of roles, copy-flow, and desk structure — are looked at separately, followed by subchapters on convergence and business models, also derived from the interviews. Physical structure For the online media outlets analyzed in this thesis, the newsroom is not, or not exclusively a real physical place, as the work is mostly centered around an online collaboration platform which functions as a virtual newsroom. However, the newsroom is as important for those publications as for traditional newspapers. Being updated 24/7 with news stories and features from all over the world, the researched outlets have staffers in many countries, which makes it impossible to combine them in one physical room; that's where an online newsroom comes into play. The only example of an online-only newsroom is that of The Next Web, where “even if two members of the team work in the same city, they rarely work together in the same place” (Martin Bryant, The Next Web). Both The Verge and Engadget employ a hybrid approach, having a physical office/offices, where journalists from the area mostly spend their working time, and also an online solution to connect all the staffers into a streamlined digital work-flow. A virtual newsroom can be organized with a secure chat room in case of Engadget, or a chat room combined with undisclosed collaboration tools in case of The Verge, or an online collaboration platform Convo in case of The Next Web. Physical offices of both The Verge and Engadget, where the editorial staff works, are located in the US and have an open-plan structure that is traditionally particular to American newsrooms. Work in an online chat room or with a collaboration tool like Convo can also be compared to an open newsroom, as even though there may be a possibility to send private messages, the discussion is in most cases visible for everyone. Therefore, it appears that the structure of both online (if one projects certain offline concepts onto the online world) and offline newsrooms resemble that of Anglo-Saxon ones (Esser, 1998; Nerone and Barnhurst, 2003), where people work next to each other and everyone can see and hear everyone else. As follows from the interviews with Dieter Bohn and Darren Murph, the chat room, if present, serves as a pool of story ideas being vetted by editorial staff. In a short period of time an idea of a news story would pop up and get approved or disapproved by the editors online. In cases where the story gets a green light, it is assigned to one of journalists, written by him or her, and then, in some cases, proofread before it gets published (see more details in the “Copy-flow” section). As one of the main advantages of having an online newsroom in a global news outlet in an extremely fast-paced news environment, Darren Murph remarked on the ability of going back in chat logs to check if a certain news story idea has already been discussed by the team. When speaking about the newsroom work, interviewees from The Next Web and Engadget mentioned that there are three 8-hour shifts in place based mainly on time zones, e.g. an “Asian shift, European shift, and US shift” (Martin Bryant) in The Next Web. This way of scheduling is aimed to M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 44 ensure the website is updated round the clock, and no news slips by unnoticed. In addition to this, Engadget's newsroom features an extra set of 3-hour “news shifts,” during which the people assigned to these shifts are watching closely the wires and RSS feeds, picking up the breaking news stories and sending them over to the chat room. Interestingly enough, the interviewees from The Verge and Engadget, although acknowledging the convenience of the online newsroom, emphasized that existence a physical location where journalists can gather to discuss and brainstorm, is “extremely helpful,” while Engadget’s editors also added that they wish there were more offices and more people working in them:

…you just need an Internet connection to cover a lot of things that happen on a day-to-day basis, however I think having an office where everyone on editorial sees each other and can actually talk face-to-face is something that I do miss and that I wish we had more of. (Michael Gorman, Engadget)

At the same time, interviewees from the 100% virtual newsroom at The Next Web did not evince any desire to get a shared physical office.

Having worked in actual offices before, what I find there is that there's so many distractions, people doing coffee and tea rounds, it's someone's birthday, so everyone goes to eat cake in the corner of the office, you get chatting to each other over the desk, that kind of thing. So in terms of actually being efficient, getting work done and being able to be as fast as we are on the news, that's a real benefit, and I think it's what allows us to work the way we do. (Martin Bryant, The Next Web) Apart from that, an online newsroom can be seen as a more collaborative environment than a physical one:

…we help each other edit, and so we really take the entire newsroom and editorial process and turn it into an online experience. It helps us move more quickly. […] It's a very fast-paced environment. It's very collaborative, we're all working together, it's a team effort. (Alex Wilhelm, The Next Web) Summing this part of the interviews up, each of the researched publications has an online newsroom that in some cases may be combined with a physical office where some of the journalists work. The newsrooms are organized around an online tool or set of tools that provide certain collaboration possibilities, such as a group chat. As all three outlets are global, the work in their newsrooms is going on 24/7; the schedule may be formalized with 8-hour shifts. This section also shows how technologies have shaped the online newsrooms and the very way the journalists communicate with each other and collaborate on their stories, creating a whole new realm of possibilities for live event coverage, various podcasts and shows, as well as introducing new, more engaging ways to tell the stories to the audience. M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 45

At the same time, the historical roots of the Anglo-Saxon newsroom structure (Esser, 1998) can be seen, as both online and offline newsrooms are open-plan, without any designated loci where groups of journalists collaborate on a permanent basis isolated from others. Apparently, there is also no sign of dividing journalists based on tech-savviness, as may happen in traditional converged newsrooms with an analog past (SchmitzWeiss and Domingo, 2010). This can be explained not only by the general openness of the researched newsrooms, but also by the fact that in a technology-related publication all the journalists are expected to have a high level of knowledge in this field. Roles in the newsroom The main insight of this part of the interviews is that all three outlets, although having familiar titles, like Editor-in-Chief, Managing Editor, and so on, claim to employ a flat hierarchy, where everyone's input is important and staffers are not supposed to be guided through the whole work process by the leadership.

We run a pretty flat organization, we don't have a vast hierarchy […] People of The Next Web can handle their own writing, and copy-editing, and fact-checking. That's the kind of people we have to have. So you've got to be kind of a full package, all at once. (Alex Wilhelm, The Next Web) The quote above demonstrates that editors are supposed to work as independent units. Moreover, their decisions do not have to be approved by any of senior editorial team members.

…even though we have this masthead and this editorial structure that you can see [on the website], it's not the case that I'm just sitting around and waiting for Nilay [Patel, the Managing Editor at The Verge,] to tell me what to do. And in a similar way everybody else in the team is engaged in their work and is good enough and smart enough to do that without needing direction 100% of the time. (Dieter Bohn, The Verge) It is noteworthy as well that, while a certain part of The Verge's staffers are titled as “reporters,” at The Next Web and Engadget there are only “editors” and, as is the case with the latter, “editorial assistants.” Interestingly, this resembles the historically shaped structure of German newsrooms (Esser, 1998), where the vast majority of editorial employees were “redakteurs” (which translates from German as “editors”). The level of autonomy, which editors have, according to the quotes above, is also much closer to the German newsroom tradition than to the American way of work. However, a hierarchical structure is still in place for the publications and can be seen at their websites. Common features are the presence of such titles as Editor-in-Chief, Managing Editor, and Editor. Also, in mastheads of all three websites at least one person is listed whose solely responsibility is video content. M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 46

When looking at the lists of editorial staff atThe Next Web, The Verge, and Engadget, it is easy to notice that writers may also be divided by the region they cover, as in “Reporters, Asia” or “Associate European Editors,” or by a certain topic, as in “Senior Mobile Editor” or “Apps & Media Editor.” Apart from the hierarchy, several questions in the interviews were devoted to the division of labor in the online newsroom. According to the participants, normally it takes one writer to complete a short news piece, while others may be involved in the process of preliminary discussion before writing and may participate in proof-reading after the piece. At the same time, a longer feature story may require more than one journalist and, in some cases, other specialists such as layout designers (as is case with The Verge) or a copy-editor (at Engadget). Here is an example of how many people may have a certain amount of input in a short story posted at The Next Web website:

…So I snag the story, Matthew [Panzarino] checked the title, I talked to Jon [Russell] about the copy, so I collaborated in a light way with several of my coworkers. But 99% of work was done by me; they had a couple of suggestions, we tightened it up a little bit, and we shipped it out. (Alex Wilhelm, The Next Web) But of course any rule can have exceptions, and sometimes even short stories require several writers:

In most cases one person would work on a story from start to end, but there are plenty of occasions when there's a breaking news story, and where we need to get something out quickly, but it needs to be accurate, it needs to tell the full story. In such an occasion one person will handle writing, but if it is a big enough story, other people will generally pitch in. Either a managing editor will ask people to help, or lots of the time we find that people do actually volunteer to help by, for example, finding links to previous coverage we've done, emailing companies involved to ask for comments, spell-checking the post, finding an image to use with the post, those kind of things that help speed up and make sure that the post is as good as it can be as quickly as possible. (Martin Bryant, The Next Web) A similar thing may happen with live coverage of an event or a trade show, according to Engadget's Michael Gorman, especially when multimedia content is involved:

A lot of times when you see the language that someone contributed to a post, particularly at a live trade show, there'd usually be one person shooting photographs of the devices, and then another person will write up the post. Therefore, normally the labor division in the newsrooms of the researched media outlets is similar to what would happen in a traditional German one, i.e. most of stories are written by one person with minimal interference from their colleagues, whether peers or senior editorial staff. However, at times when speed is crucial, a totally new way of collaboration emerges, induced by the requirements of the M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 47

Internet: when the deadline for a story is continuous, several writers may need to work on an article to publish it as fast as possible. But even with all the collaboration, members of editorial staff are normally expected to be autonomous enough, as Alex Wilhelm from The Next Web put it:

You have to f***ing run your own show, and you have to be on the ball enough that no-one ever is worried about you. […] And that's the way it works for everyone at The Next Web. You have to just be constantly delivering at all times, otherwise the process doesn't work. So it's self-directed; you work with your coworkers to get things to move, but on the whole the copy-flow comes from you. And that's your f***ing job. In the conversations, all five interviewees showed a high degree of satisfaction with the way in which the roles are divided between the newsroom staff and how labor is distributed between them. The interviewees stated that speed is the main strength of the structure employed in a newsroom, be it the enormously collaborative one at The Next Web, the more individually-oriented one at Engadget or the “intermediary” one of The Verge.

The advantage is that gives us speed, which is very important in the online world for us. That's the major reason that we operate the way that we do, because getting things up before our competitors is critical […] Certainly, we have posts go up on site that have errors, certainly more often than I would like. […] It's difficult to be first to get it right fact-wise and grammatically in the span of 10 minutes. (Michael Gorman, Engadget) To wrap things up, it is safe to say that the hierarchical structure in the researched online publications is relatively simple and flat and consists basically of just two or three tiers: Editor-in-Chief and Managing Editor(s), (Senior) editors, and reporters and interns. The level of labor division, on the other hand, may vary significantly, though what is commonplace is the probability of more than one person being involved in the writing process, and that is positively related to the size of a piece and amount of multimedia content included. After comparing the hierarchy of the analyzed online newsrooms with those in the UK and Germany shown in the work of Esser (1998), it becomes clear that the former is more flat and simple than any of the latter. The new media have fewer levels of hierarchy, while the autonomy of every editor or journalist is extremely high. What is also noteworthy here is that The Verge, although the youngest of the three, seems to have employees such as layout designers that are more commonly found at conventional newspapers. Of course, in The Verge it is all about layout of the web page, however, this is another sign of comparability between print and online newsrooms. M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 48

Copy-flow Regarding copy-flow in their newsrooms, the interviewees were asked to describe in general the way that a story goes from an idea and to the moment it gets published on the website. Special attention was also paid to the question of whether there are any copy-editing processes in place, and if so, then to what degree the author would participate in the editing process. The manner in which copy-flow is handled in each outlet may seem significantly different, so they will be described separately and the similarities and differences will be drawn out afterwards. In Engadget, content can essentially be divided into two types — short-form and long-form content. The former includes mostly news stories, while the latter covers everything else, from product reviews to market analysis to features to trade-show reports. Depending on the size, two different algorithms apply to the stories that are published on Engadget.com. A short news story, after it is approved by editors in the chat room, gets assigned to one of the editors who is free at the given time. The assignee's task is to write it up as fast and as accurately as possible, adding context and perspective, and also follow up by phone or email with the newsmaker, if necessary. The next step is proof-reading, and who is doing it depends on the “status” of the writer. As explained by Darren Murph and Michael Gorman, Engadget's new editorial hires undergo a mandatory training period of several months, during which they are taught how to write the stories according to the publication's standards:

…we train people over 6-8 months […] And then, once we're comfortable that they've adapted the Engadget tone and style, we'll cut them loose. Assuming they're cut loose, they're just given a story, and hands off, they go heads down on writing the story and whenever they're done they just publish it to the site. There's really no extra red tape involved whatsoever. And of course, once it goes live, they're free to flesh it out or add another paragraph or fix that one typo that they had in there. (Darren Murph, Engadget) So, in a nutshell, copy-editing of short news pieces is done either by the writers themselves, or, in case the writer is still on training, by a senior editor. For long-form content, the process of approving the idea in the chat room is about the same, but after the piece is written it must pass through a copy-editor, whose sole task is to proof-read and edit the articles for the website. This position was introduced at Engadget in 2012, and both Murph and Gorman expressed a high level of appreciation about the copy-editor’s work. It was impossible to get as detailed information about the copy-flow processes at The Verge, as most of the processes are considered sensitive. As Dieter Bohn explained, “one of the reasons I feel like we've been so successful, is because we put these processes together […] It's a little bit dicey to get into too great a detail with them.” In other words, copy-flow in this case is considered to be a knowledge-based process and a competitive advantage of the publication. M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 49

However, some features are known:

The spectrum of the kinds of things that we publish is so broad that the amount of collaboration and editing and work that needs to go into any one of them is pretty vast.

[…]

…even with the shortest, smallest stuff that we put up on the site, it's never the case that it's just getting thrown there. We do have processes for having multiple people look at stuff when necessary.

[…]

…when we do edit a piece, […] we don't want to edit the voice of the writer out of the piece. And so, it's a collaboration. The important thing for us is to get it right, but it's also to ensure that the voice of the writer isn't lost in the piece. (Dieter Bohn, The Verge) Another piece of information regarding The Verge's copy-flow can be found in the Twitter account of its managing editor, Nilay Patel (2013):

104 applicants for Verge copy editor job, ~50 women. 25 applicants for deputy managing editor job, 2 women.

Lean in, goddammit. As of March 27, 2013, when the tweet was posted, there was no copy-editor listed at The Verge's masthead, which means that the publication just decided to hire one at about that time. Introducing “conventional” newsroom roles like copy-editor at Engadget and The Verge or layout designer at The Verge is an interesting sign of newsrooms born online adopting some of traditional practices of the print newsroom. The main difference with an online newsroom that is tied to a print one is that, in case of the researched outlets, the decision of hiring such professionals is much more likely to be made consciously, not because this is something that everyone else does. This is what Dieter Bohn was talking about when saying that The Verge wants to “to keep it so that it matches the uses that we need and to make sure that they are “not using a tool for tool's sake.” At The Next Web, the copy-flow is organized a bit differently than in the two other outlets. All the feature stories are handled by a dedicated features editor, who is rarely involved in day-to-day news work. Usually “timeless” feature stories are published at The Next Web over the weekend, when readers are supposed to be more inclined to read a long text without haste. The way news stories are handled at The Next Web is closely tied with the Convo collaboration platform used by the publication: M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 50

Basically, anyone can come up with an idea of a story [and] whoever's come up with the idea will write it, or if they are unable to or they're working on something else, then someone else may volunteer, and another case is just a senior editor will pick someone to cover something.

Once they've written it, it then offered up within our virtual newsroom to get someone to read it. Generally, anyone who's available can proofread, so it doesn't have to be a senior editor, although generally a senior editor will read everything — if not before, then after it's posted, to check for any editing they think is a problem or any kind of problem with editorial voice, for example. But generally it's being checked over for spelling and any kind of factual accuracy […]. (Martin Bryant, The Next Web)

Therefore, at The Next Web there is a strict proof-reading policy in place, which ensures every story is checked by a peer, which presumably compensates for the lack of traditional copy-editing. However, there are steps in The Next Web's copy-flow that are peculiar to an online media outlet and could not be compared with their print counterparts:

Then we put it in a channel on Convo called Comms, which announces that we're going to be publishing it within a minute. Then the author will take responsibility to publish. Publishing into the Comms channel has two purposes. One gives everyone a chance to say if they've spotted a typo in the title, or [to] suggest a better title.

Everything we publish goes straight to Twitter, and we rely on Twitter a lot for initial traffic for a post, so the post needs to have an eye-catching title that will get people clicking on Twitter. Also the Comms channel is to make sure that if it's not breaking news, there needs to be a gap between posts, again, because we post a lot to Twitter. I don't think most of the people following The Next Web on Twitter would appreciate five tweets in one minute, and then nothing for half an hour. So we're trying to spread them out if it makes sense to do that. (Martin Bryant, The Next Web) In summary, several similarities can be drawn between the copy-flow processes in the researched outlets. First, all of them have significantly different processes for long-form and short-form content. Although it is unknown how copy-editing is done at The Verge, it is safe to say that longer features are always checked either by a copy-editor or by an editor working at the outlet long enough to be able to see any discrepancies with the publication's tone and style. In addition to the descriptions of their newsrooms' copy-flow, all interviewees stated that the author is never detached from its writing during the editing process and participates in it actively. M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 51

What is different in the way copy is handled in the researched outlets is by whom it is proof-read and also which kinds of copy get checked from editors. While in The Next Web every piece is read by at least one person, Engadget's editors after their training period are allowed to publish their stories with no copy-editing involved. At the same time, Engadget and The Verge have (or are going to hire) a copy-editor, while at The Next Web these functions are entrusted to editors. It is also clearly visible that all the described copy-flows are closer to the German model than to American one, as no copy gets more than 2 to 3 readers before it is published, while in a US newsroom this number may reach up to 7. However, one can see that some parts of the copy-flow in online media are peculiar to this particular distribution technology (i.e. the Internet). This includes copy-editing of breaking news after publication and the need to ensure that stories are posted with a sufficient interval so they will not be buried under each other on social networks such as Twitter. Desk structure Historically, the division of the print newsroom into different desks was determined by the need to cover several topics, which might be not connected with each other (Wilke, 2000; Nerone and Barnhurst, 2003). Therefore, it is pointless to expect a strong desk organization from a media outlet that is already focused on one topic, even if it is such a broad one as the Internet and technology. Yet even so, the three publications researched in this thesis do show certain elements of desk organization. Editors of The Verge and The Next Web stated in the interviews that there is no strict desk structure in place at their publications, while Darren Murph said that Engadget does have something that “very loosely” resembles as desk structure. However, in all the three researched newsrooms journalists are indeed provisionally divided according to their beats, be it a certain topic, or a geographic region (usually it would be the continent where the person is located), or a certain type of content.

There are different areas of responsibility, but it is fluid to a degree, so someone whose job is to cover Media and Latin America may jump into a story about some stuff about acquisition in Asia, because none of our Asian team is available, for example. So it pretty much gives each person an area to focus on, but when news is breaking, anyone needs to jump on as soon as possible, and helps keep our coverage as broad as possible. (Martin Bryant, The Next Web) In particular, Bryant's quote above shows not only that journalists in the newsroom are highly autonomous, but also that they are supposed to be ready to jump out of their comfort zone in terms of topics and join a collective effort to cover breaking news.

We don't have strict divisions in a way that you might think of with a traditional newspaper. But obviously there are people who are specialists in a certain kind of content. We have people focused on a particular kind of task, so we have a Videos team, a Features team, working on a certain kind of content. And then we also M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 52

have people who are especially good at one type of content or another, so they might be more likely be focused on writing [for] a certain news beat, I suppose. (Dieter Bohn, The Verge) The division of labor is a bit more structured at Engadget, which previously had even been divided into several separate blogs on narrow tech topics. More recently, those had become desks:

Mobile technology has become so big that it's impossible to ignore, so what we've done [is] we've hired – I think – four people whose primary focus is mobile. And then everything else, like robots or refrigerators, that's all secondary. They are the go-to people when it comes to mobile. They own the mobile PR relationships, they own mobile reviews, they get first tips on reviewing phones. We always solicit their input on whether we should or should not review a phone. So we definitely have a Mobile desk.

We also have an HD desk, so things like HiFi audio speakers, hi-def TVs, 3D technology, that kind of thing [goes there]. We only have two people on that, because it's a much smaller segment than mobile. We [also] have a few smaller segments, but we don't have a full desk dedicated to them. (Darren Murph, Engadget) Having staffers with narrow specialization within certain news beats assigned to them is considered by all the interviewees to be a strength rather than a weakness, as their expertise makes it possible to deliver more in-depth analysis and more reliable content. However, at the same time no-one would restrain a journalist from writing about something beyond their beat; quite the opposite, this kind of generalist ability is encouraged or even required:

Everybody's expected to be knowledgeable about everything that we cover, so it's a lot, but it's fun stuff to learn. Most people are reading about gadgets just in their spare time, and we get paid to do it. (Michael Gorman, Engadget) Overall, the kind of desk structure that can be seen in the online newsrooms resembles the original division in print newspapers very loosely, as journalists are permitted (and sometimes are encouraged to) float between different topic areas and help out with covering a broad range of topics when necessary. The latter point is something very characteristic of the Internet, where the news needs to be reported as quickly as possible, with every second of advantage being important (Shaw, 2006). Convergence in the newsrooms In the interviews with editors of Engadget, The Next Web, and The Verge, the conversation about convergence always began with questions related to technological or multimedia convergence and the ways it influences journalists' everyday work. From those initial conversations, the interviews smoothly transferred to other convergence types. This subchapter will build a similar structure, starting with the role of multimedia convergence in the researched outlets. M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 53

Although each media outlet researched in this thesis distributes its content through online channels and maintains an online newsroom, the degree of their “multimedia development” differs significantly. The Verge has regarded video content as one of its main focal points since the website was launched in 2011, while interviewees from Engadget and The Next Web admitted that their publications are still in the early stages of multimedia adoption (even though these early stages might seem pretty huge compared to general online news platforms, especially those tied to conventional newspapers). However, there is still solid evidence of how media convergence influences the way the outlets work. First of all, it is noteworthy that interviewees from all the outlets mentioned in conversations that being a converged online media outlet results in the formation of something that may be called a “multimedia mindset” (Tameling and Broersma, 2013: 24). This means that a journalist at such a publication does not separate the text from photo, video, and audio materials in terms of story-telling:

…if everyone writes a large feature, or a review, or just a news round-up, we don't think ‘well, okay, here's the text, how can I tack video onto it’ or ‘here's the text, how can I tack a pretty design to it.’ We fundamentally think about stories that we're telling, and the reporting that we're doing, and the narratives that we're building from the get-go, looking at those types of elements as a unified whole. (Dieter Bohn, The Verge) It is noteworthy that, in the above quote, the editor includes the layout design in the realm of multimedia possibilities, together with its traditional elements. That also seems logical, as The Verge is the only publication of the three where there are staffers whose sole responsibility is to create those layouts for (mostly long-form) stories. Editors of the two other outlets generally agree with Bohn:

…it's something that goes into the training. If this is something that will look good and be interesting, basically add value and context for readers, then we shoot a video. And that's how we judge it on a general level. That's a benefit of having well-trained, relatively independent staff. People are expected to be able to recognize and make those decisions on their own. (Michael Gorman, Engadget) And again, the high degree of journalist autonomy is emphasized by Gorman in the quote above.

There's definitely more [multimedia] content these days than there was when I first started in 2009. I don't think we did any original video content then. Now I don't think we necessarily flag it as something unusual, or something special or different, it's just part of the mix of what we offer on the site. (Martin Bryant, The Next Web) An obvious manifestation of multimedia and structural convergence in online news outlets is the new roles that have appeared in their mastheads over the past few years. As has been already mentioned, each outlet has at least one person whose sole responsibility is the video content. At M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 54

Engadget, there are three freelance video producers, while The Verge has at its disposal the Vox Studios creative and production group, which is a part of Vox Media, the publication's owner. Interviewees from all three researched publications also stated an obvious thing that can be easily noticed from outside: in the past few years the amount of multimedia content produced by their outlets has increased significantly. One of the main reasons for this change can be seen in the rapid development of the broadband Internet access, both stationary and mobile.

Over the past few years in particular, video has become a big focus for us, and I think a lot of that is actually due to the fact that Internet speeds as a whole continue to get faster. [For] home broadband, at least in developed countries, there are more service providers than ever before, the average speeds they're offering are higher than ever before, and prices are getting lower as competition increases. And moreover, LTE, where it is available, has completely changed what is possible to upload and share from the floor…

[…]

In prior years, when all we had were older 3G and EDGE services, it was impossible to upload a video remotely. So a lot of times we'd just skip it completely. We would just write a textual story, and there would be maybe a few pictures, but uploading a video was such a struggle that it just wasn't worth the effort. (Darren Murph, Engadget)

This is a confirmation of existing theories (Erdal, 2007; Deuze, 2003) that the convergence processes in online media are still strongly connected to the technological developments — no less than they were in the very beginning of the Internet publications. The global development of broadband connections and mobile Internet access (3G and LTE, in the first place) made multimedia content more desirable for online media, since, with the new technological developments, even mobile users and those from developing countries and rural areas can (and do) consume it. The development of the Internet and multimedia technologies has brought about not just new possibilities for producing and consuming multimedia content, but also a new degree of collaboration between journalists of online media. The participants of the interviews emphasized that usually stories with multimedia content — be it photos, video, or audio — are a result of a collaborative effort:

If you look at some of our feature pieces that include design layout and video production and writing and editing […] it's pretty obvious that that kind of quality of reporting and video and design can't come from just a single person, and so we can have a very large group of people working on a single piece depending on its needs. (Dieter Bohn, The Verge) Another interesting insight is that multimedia convergence may actually collide with the way online newsrooms are organized, as has happened at The Next Web: M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 55

If you look at [other publications], particularly The Verge, they have a dedicated team for video production in their New York offices who produce very slick videos to review apps and gadgets and things they're talking about. Those are really nice videos that look really good and are really a pleasure to watch. I suppose a disadvantage of our distributed layout in terms of staff is that we can't offer that […] (Martin Bryant, The Next Web) Therefore, different aspects of convergence that influence online media may have opposite vectors and cause online publications to struggle, trying to combine the best from all worlds. This is what is happening at The Next Web, where there is a 100% virtual online newsroom with journalists spread all over the world, which makes it lean and efficient, but leads to the inability to create a video production team that could deliver quality video content for the website. Engadget and The Verge, in turn, seem to overcome this problem by introducing a “hybrid” newsroom with online and offline parts. Struggles like this can be explained by the fact that, in spite of (or perhaps because of) the rapid development of Internet media, there are still no commonly accepted “best practices” for these type of publications. The whole landscape here is still being shaped, hence the difference in individual approaches. Apart from this, there was one more issue with multimedia content on the Internet raised by Darren Murph:

…the problem right now with how the Internet works is, if I write an article and you Google something related to that article, you might be able to find my work, because it's indexed by Google. But if I did a feature purely on video, you would never be able to find that unless you happen to search for the right headline that went along with my video. So, discoverability is a major problem with video. Essentially, what I would need to do is do the video segment and then transcribe and translate all of that into text, so that people without high broadband connections could find it and read and enjoy that same content.

Yet even though there are still issues with the process of multimedia adoption and the influence of multimedia convergence on online newsrooms is not always positive, the publications are adamant about their desire to get more multimedia content on their websites. However, in some cases multimedia is still seen as a supplement to textual content:

I think we're going to expand with video, because video isn't dying any time soon in the developed world, but I still think that text is always going to be number one for us, just because it's just universally accessible. (Darren Murph, Engadget)

For The Verge, again, page layout is considered to be part of the multimedia realm: M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 56

…since we launched, we've been producing more and more video and working harder and harder at creating visual styles and layouts that are integral to the actual story that the piece is telling. […] So I think there's no reason for us to move in a different direction other than doing more and more of that stuff. (Dieter Bohn, The Verge) The Next Web, which has certain struggles and issues with video production, is also inclined to continue its adoption of multimedia:

More is always better in my opinion. It enhances the post, and our readers love it. It's just a time thing. Producing video content is very, very labor and time intensive […] More of that would be great, it just comes down to how much time do we have and what we can invest in it. (Alex Wilhelm, The Next Web) The way convergence is adopted in the online newsrooms in terms of increasing of the amount of multimedia content goes along with Gordon's (2003) predictions, as with the significant improvements in the speed of broadband and mobile Internet connections it has become easy and natural to stream video in real-time, while at the time Gordon did his research, and even some years after that, mobile users would in most cases turn off even displaying of images on their mobile devices to save the traffic and speed up loading of websites. Apart from technological convergence which manifests itself in digital production of text and multimedia content (audio, video, photo) and its distribution over the Internet, the researched media outlets show signs of other types of convergence. One can say that ownership convergence and tactical convergence take place in Engadget and The Next Web, which both publish magazines for tablets. Those were not discussed closely with the editors, because the magazines are curated and issued by separate teams (and if it was not so, we would be speaking about structural convergence again). Going further, structural convergence is actually the essence of the newsrooms researched in this thesis. Multimedia content production melted into the newsrooms gradually over the past few years (or was there from the beginning, as is the case at The Verge), which shaped converged virtual newsrooms full of journalists thinking not in categories of different media, but in categories of efficient and engaging story-telling. It can be seen from the interview material that the described manifestations of convergence in online newsrooms at Engadget, The Next Web, and The Verge are strongly tied to each other and sometimes resemble the examples of traditional media described in the literature (Aviles and Carvajal, 2008; Meier, 2007; Schmitz Weiss and Domingo, 2010): new roles are introduced, new sorts of collaboration emerge, etc. There is, however, one more aspect to be looked at in order to analyze the newsroom structures and editorial practices of online-only outlets, which is the business models that are or could be employed there. M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 57

Business models In the interviews with Dieter Bohn, Martin Bryant, and Darren Murph, who are either Managing or Senior Editors at their publications, the question was raised of business models that are or could potentially be profitable for online media. In the beginning of this part of the interviews, all three participants emphasized that the editorial and revenue-generating parts of the websites are kept separate as far as they can be, so that readers can be sure that no financial matters affect journalists' judgment. Speaking about the revenue models employed in their respective news outlets, all three interviewees stated that their publications are funded mostly by different forms:

…for the most part, it's all advertising-based. Banner ads, or a sponsor’s logo in our videos, sponsoring reviews, things like that. But we draw a very bold line. For example, Samsung could not pay us specifically to review a Samsung product. Now, if Samsung wanted to sponsor our entire review channel, that's something that an advertising team would discuss with them. But if they wanted to pay specifically to have products included in our review cycle, that would never happen. […] It's always editorial first, and then advertising tries to work around our stipulations to make sure that our editorial integrity is never questioned. (Darren Murph, Engadget)

According to the interviewees, The Verge is funded solely by advertisements on its website, while Engadget has minor additional revenue streams, such as its own Expand Conference that was held in March 2013 for the first time as well as an affiliate program:

We have a partner site gdgt[.com], and we embed a product module at the bottom of certain posts […] If we write a post about the iPhone, you'll see a module beneath it that has the specifications and reviews and things like that. And there's a link; if you click to buy that phone or a product through that link, there are affiliate kickbacks where we get small amounts of money for people who buy it that way. (Darren Murph, Engadget) The Next Web, for its part, probably has the most complex revenue system among the three. Although funded mostly by advertising, there is also a revenue stream in place based on sponsored content:

…for example, let's say a car brand may sponsor something about the future of technology in cars we may write. The idea here is that they have no say over the content of the actual article. What they do is they simply put a banner ad embedded into the actual article itself […] Those tend to earn more money for us than standard display advertising, which is good. (Martin Bryant, The Next Web) Apart from that, there are conferences, a job board, an educational project, and an affiliate program: M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 58

We have our conferences, one in Europe and one in South America, and one planned for the USA as well. They generate good revenue for us as well. We've recently launched an international jobs board where people can advertise their technology-related jobs around the world. […] The other thing we're making a big push on is The Next Web Academy. That offers courses [in which] people can book a video class online with somebody high-profile about something that they want to learn more about.

[…]

…we recently updated affiliate links. The main one is for the Apple App Store, so wherever we link to an app in App Store, it's an affiliate link. And if the app has a cost attached to it, then we will make small amount of revenue from that sale as a referral. (Martin Bryant, The Next Web) Under The Next Web brand there is also something like a startup “greenhouse” called The Next Web Labs, where different new businesses are developing. Revenues from that direction were previously used to cross-subsidize the blog, however, according to Bryant, that is no longer happening, as the blog does not require subsidizing. In the final part of the interviews, the participants were asked a series of questions prompting them to express an opinion on the viability of some of business models deemed by media scholars as potentially profitable: charging readers for content, advanced advertising targeting (i.e. using so-called “cookies” to gather additional information about users' behavior and interests), crowdfunding, sales commissions, non-governmental and government grants, and diversification into consumer products and services. Opinions were divided about so-called paywalls, which means that users have to pay to reach a website's content or some of its parts. Martin Bryant expressed a view that this is generally not a good business model, and “you're really doing a disservice to yourself by hiding behind a paywall,” although it still may be a viable revenue source for specialist publications. Darren Murph expressed a similar opinion, adding that the paywall model can be of better use for “viral” content producers and individuals running blogs of their own. Dieter Bohn deemed the paywall an “incredibly interesting” model, although he emphasized that it is not even close to being as universal and effective as traditional display advertising:

I think that's interesting and promising, but it's also a little bit disingenuous to think that's the future for everybody, because not everybody is a New York Times, right? […] So, just speaking for myself, it's difficult to imagine how in the next at least two to three years anything is going to magically create money out of thin air for people in a way that's more effective than advertising. (Dieter Bohn, The Verge) M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 59

All the interviewees agreed that the next model, advanced advertising targeting, might be profitable enough (as it is actually just a subtype of normal advertising), but should only be tolerated when used responsibly. The main condition in this case is that the users must always know what's happening with their personal data when they visit the website and, optionally, they should be able to opt out of individually targeted ads. Crowdfunding, just like paywalls, was seen by all interviewees as a viable supplementary business model or a model that would suit a small publication, but is hardly enough to get a more or less big media outlet off the ground:

I think this is something that's gonna be fine to sustain smaller sites, I'd say probably of 10-15 staff, but for larger sites like The New York Times or even Engadget… we're too big to raise enough money via those means to continue doing what we're doing. The campaigns would have to be enormous just to pay our staffers for the year. (Darren Murph, Engadget) The model of receiving commissions from goods sold via the website was also deemed a viable one, especially given that it is already being used at Engadget and The Next Web in the form of affiliate programs. Yet again, Murph said that it can be seen only as an additional funding source, while Bryant also emphasized that the pay-per-action model should not replace the pay-per-view one in site advertisements, as the former one is advantageous for the advertiser, but not for the publication:

Obviously, if we're all relying on getting funds if a sale is made then a lot of your advertising inventory is kind of dead in a way, because a lot of people don't click through. But at the same time there is value in brand recognition, on seeing those brands. Even if nobody clicks through an advert for a particular brand on the site, at least they've seen it, and there's always value in repeat viewings of brand names, brand messages, marketing messages. So I think that making sure a publisher is compensated for that is a good thing. (Martin Bryan, The Next Web) Funding through governmental and non-governmental grants was also deemed a model with limited viability that works only for websites with a certain focus, like investigative journalism, science and innovations, etc. Also, there are not so obvious hidden obstacles to this revenue stream, which makes it, again, more of a supplementary one:

I don't think it's a viable long-term model, just because it's so sporadic. If the government you're getting a grant from has a great year and there's a lot of surplus, you might be okay. But next year they might completely do away with those grants, and you will have to find a new business model very quick. (Darren Murph, Engadget)

The last model, diversification into consumer products and services, also triggered a division of opinions. Darren Murph expressed his view that it can't be a viable option to fund a website, saying M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 60 that it could only generate “just some revenue to fund one or two stories a year,” while Dieter Bohn deemed it an interesting and promising model, “especially if you're looking to have some kind of editorial independence.” Martin Bryant stated his opinion on this topic earlier in the interview, when speaking about the additional revenue streams The Next Web has, some of which are actually services like a job board, its educational service, and the conferences. At the end of the next chapter, there will be some additional elaboration on the connection between the business models employed by the researched outlets and their editorial practices.

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Chapter 7. Reflections on converging online journalistic practices This chapter will align the findings and analysis from the previous one in order to shed light on the research questions raised in this thesis. Below, the distinctive features of virtual newsrooms are shown and compared to the traditional print practices; also, certain conclusions will be drawn about the viability of different business models in online media, as seen by media professionals. Distinctive features of the online newsroom The first research question stated in this thesis was: What are the main distinctive features of editorial practices used in particular online-only media outlets? Using the findings presented in the previous chapter, one can compile a list of the common practices and structural solutions shared by the researched newsrooms. Open structure, both physical and virtual. The publications that have physical offices where editorial staffers work all employ an open-plan structure with everyone sitting in one big room and visible to each other. It is also possible to draw certain parallels between the organization of the online and offline newsrooms: in a chat room or an online collaboration tool, each logged in person can read all the public exchanges and participate in discussions freely, which resembles an open-plan newsroom. Flat hierarchy and high degree of autonomy. The interviewees stated that the hierarchy in their publications is less strict and much flatter than it may seem from the mastheads on their websites. Each staff writer, whether a reporter or an editor, is expected to be able to “run his own show” and make decisions without additional guidance from an editor-in-chief or managing editor. An interesting detail related to this aspect is that there are many more staff writers with “editor” in their titles than those called “reporters.” Continuous news flow. As the publications cover news from all over the world, they need to be producing stories 24 hours per day, seven days a week. The solution for this requirement comes naturally with the distributed staff, who live in different time zones and can work according to 8-hour shifts introduced in at least two of the three outlets. One writer and multimedia contributors. Most news stories coming from the researched online newsrooms are written by one editor or reporter, although if there is multimedia content that complements the textual coverage, it will likely be contributed by another journalist. Copy-editing has become important. At the moment of the interviews, only Engadget had (for about a year) a professional copy-editor for its long-form content. However, The Verge also expressed an intention to hire one. At The Next Web, however, the function of copy-editor for short form copy is fulfilled by any of its editors, while longer feature stories are handled by the feature editor, who also does the copy-editing for longer pieces. M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 62

Editors work carefully and the author is never detached from her or his piece. Although many stories produced by the journalists at the researched outlets need to pass through one or more editors before publication, changes to the original piece are usually moderate, and editors take care not to edit the author's voice out of a piece. Moreover, the author is normally involved in the editing process. Everyone can cover for everyone else. Although journalists working in the online publications researched in this thesis usually have certain beats (which partially replace the traditional desk structure), they are at the same time expected to have enough general knowledge to cover any type of tech news. This feature may also be explained to some extent by the fact that the researched outlets are working in a niche as opposed to being general news publications. Multimedia mindset. Journalists at the outlets that were “born online” have developed a way of thinking without making distinctions between the means of storytelling such as text, video, audio, photos, etc. This comprehensive approach to the coverage lets them make the right calls about including multimedia elements in their journalism products. Dedicated video producers. Although in most cases every journalist of the researched online publications is supposed to be able to shoot video (which sometimes may be a part of learning process in the outlets), there is always at least one person whose sole responsibility is handling video content. In some cases it may be a production team from a parent organization or someone hired on freelance basis to create specific products (e.g., the Engadget Show). Therefore, in the list of nine features at least three of them are directly connected to the concept of convergence: multimedia contributors, multimedia mindset, and dedicated video producers could have emerged only in a converged newsroom. It is noteworthy that all three features belong to the realm of technological or multimedia convergence. This goes along well with Gordon's (2003) prediction of significant development of this type of convergence. On the other hand, the situation with multimedia convergence in the researched outlets proves Aviles and Carvajal's notion that “the technological foundation of newsroom convergence lies in the digitization of production” (2008: 222). While Aviles and Carvajal were speaking rather literally about the production of certain content, for Engadget, The Next Web, and The Verge, the definition of production can be broadened to the whole spectrum of collaboration possibilities in the online newsroom. It is also worth mentioning that in the vast majority of cases the interviewees expressed an extremely high degree of satisfaction with how the processes are organized in their respective media outlets and with their own work responsibilities. This is quite the opposite of the reaction to convergence expressed by journalists working in traditional media (Deuze, 2004; Tameling and Broersma, 2013). In addition, even though both traditional media going online and online-only outlets like Engadget, The Next Web, and The Verge can be called converged media, there is still a difference between publications born online and those who came to the Internet after years of working with conventional distribution platforms, such as newspapers or TV. This difference can be shown in an example of the concept of de-convergence introduced by Tameling and Broersma (2013). While it is easy to imagine M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 63 how a traditional media company gets converged and de-converged, it seems impossible to de- converge an online-only medium, meaning to separate structurally different content types (i.e. minimize collaboration between the people producing them). Comparison to traditional newspapers To answer the second research question, namely “How do the newsroom structure and editorial practices of online-only publications differ from those in traditional outlets,” the researcher will compare the distinctive features sketched out in the previous subsection to the practices of the traditional newsrooms from the “Data for comparison” subchapter, where applicable. The main difference between online-only publications and traditional newspapers is that online-only outlets do not necessarily have a “real,” physical newsroom. One of the three researched outlets, namely The Next Web, gets along without an office space for editorial staff for the past few years, while the two others have only some of their writers gathered in one building. The newsroom as a concept is still present in online publications though, and the way the real and virtual newsrooms are organized largely replicates the classic American (and modern Spanish) practice of having open-plan rooms, where everyone can see and interact with each other. On the other hand, the way the roles are distributed between journalists and the level of autonomy that each of them has resembles the classic German newsroom, where “redakteurs” were practically independent and wrote stories that would be published with few changes. Interestingly, the word “redakteur” actually means “editor” in German, which goes along well with the fact that the vast majority of writing employees of the online newsrooms also have “editor” in their titles. Continuous deadline. As opposed to traditional newspapers and, to some extent, to their online newsrooms, which tend to employ conventional approaches even on the Internet (Deuze, 2004), the newsrooms of the online-only publications researched in this thesis work mostly without set deadlines — or, to put it another way, with a constant deadline. This means that in most cases news stories are published as soon as they are written, because the Internet as a distribution technology is not tied to printing processes that make the news flow discrete. Among the consequences of the new approach is working in shifts that ensure the news flow is never interrupted. Editing process. As mentioned in the previous section, editors working with texts aim to save the author's voice and rarely make very significant changes; on the other hand, the author usually is an active participant in the editing process. This approach seems to be closer to the German tradition, as opposed to the American one where a reporter may bid goodbye to a piece after it is written, as he or she will probably never see it again before it is published. The new roles and the old roles. The new approaches to news work on the Internet have created new roles, ones never heard of in traditional newspapers. These new titles, such as “Video Producer,” are mostly related to multimedia content creation. At the same time, most of the other titles sound the same as in traditional mastheads: editors, reporters, and copy-editors do not seem to be disappearing any time soon. However the hierarchy in online media resembles that of traditional press only in a general way; it is much more flat and flexible. M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 64

Multimedia mindset. Arguably one of the most important changes that the Internet has brought to journalism is the development of a multimedia mindset, which is not intrinsic to newspaper journalists, and which may also seem strange to employees of the Internet publications stemming from conventional media (Deuze, 2004). This difference in the approach to storytelling marks a significant distinction between news outlets “born online” and those tied to conventional publications. However, given that the media landscape of the Internet is still taking shape, it is very probable that this border will disappear soon enough. Importance of copy-editing. In this aspect, the online-only media researched in this thesis seem to be coming back to their newspaper roots, as two out of three publications either had hired or were looking to hire a designated copy-editor (for long-form content) at the time the interviews were conducted. Therefore, today's online media, as shown by those examined in this research have adopted editorial practices and newsroom structures of both German and Anglo-American descent, combining the best from the two worlds in order to achieve maximum efficiency. At the same time, many new, innovative technology-induced approaches can be seen in their work, and given that the tech media do work on the bleeding edge of technology, some of their practices may soon find their place in mainstream online media. Convergence, newsroom practices and business models While The Next Web is an independent company, both The Verge and Engadget are experiencing the consequences of ownership convergence. The former is owned by Vox Media, the latter by AOL, and this appears to have a certain influence on their newsroom practices as well as their business models. For both The Verge and Engadget, there are obvious positive aspects of being part of a bigger media entity. Both media use the facilities of their parent companies in different ways — for instance, The Verge works with the video production team Vox Studios, while Engadget's offices are actually part of those of AOL. In addition, there are two interesting points about the correlation between the ownership structure, size, and business model employed by the researched media. First, for The Verge and Engadget, advertising is the main (and, for the former, the only) means of revenue generation and is handled by sales teams controlled by the owner. By contrast, The Next Web has a much more complex revenue structure, ranging from regular conferences to services such as a job board and online courses. As for the potential of different alternative (i.e., non-advertisement) business models for the new media, it appears that most of them are currently seen by decision-makers in online publications as supplementary and barely viable. However, some of them — and this is the second point — such as public funding or governmental grants, are deemed to be suitable for small media and/or those outlets just starting their business. However, the online media editors interviewed do not believe that traditional online advertising can be replaced in the foreseeable future by any other method of revenue generation. M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 65

Although the sample of three outlets may not be very representative, it can be said that ownership convergence does have some influence on business models. Outlets that are parts of a bigger media company appear to be less flexible in terms of alternative business models, which also goes along with the second point made above: the bigger the company, the less viable are those non-advertisement revenue sources. Other intersections of business models, newsroom practices and convergence processes include the emergence of advertisements in multimedia content — mostly video — which was deemed by Engadget's Darren Murph as the least interruptive and most user-friendly way of making money through ads. In addition to that, in case of The Next Web, which diversifies widely, one can see manifestations of tactical convergence, as the company's other businesses are being promoted in the publication. It must be noted that examining just three media outlets may be too few to draw decisive conclusions, so this particular topic apparently needs further analysis by media scholars and researchers from adjoining fields.

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Chapter 8. Conclusion With the world moving online slowly but surely, so do the media, and it is very interesting to see what exactly is happening within those publications that have never been “traditional” or “conventional,” but were born as what old-style newspapers call “the new media.” This thesis brings together data obtained from interviews with five editors and journalists working for three online-only news websites with a total audience of several million readers, all of which work in the same niche — news about technology, including business, gadgets, the Internet, and so on. In addition, the thesis includes a brief analysis of their websites to create awareness of the approach to reporting they take. By conducting a series of interviews with editors from The Next Web, Engadget, and The Verge, the research gathered valuable information about their newsroom structures, both physical and virtual, and their editorial practices. Going further, the researcher analyzed this data from an historical standpoint and through the lens of the concept of convergence, divided into several distinct types. This resulted in a list of nine distinctive features that the researched online-only newsrooms have in common: open structure, a flat hierarchy and high degree of journalist autonomy, continuous news flow, the practice of having one main writer and several multimedia contributors working on a piece, the increasing importance of copy-editing, careful editing practices, generalization within the main topic, a multimedia mindset, and the existence of dedicated video producers. Another substantial portion of this thesis is devoted to a comparison of the three newsrooms of the online publications to traditional print ones, which have emerged in the Anglo-Saxon world and in Germany (the two regions represent the two extremes of the ways in which news work can be organized). The thesis distinguished five main points of comparison, partially overlapping with the features mentioned above: deadlines, editing processes, roles in the newsroom, a multimedia mindset vs. conventional media mindset, and the approach to copy-editing. Despite very different approaches taken by old and new media in many aspects, certain parallels can still be drawn. The main conclusion of this part is that the new media researched in the thesis have adopted editorial practices and newsroom structures of both German and Anglo-American descent, combining the best from the two worlds in order to achieve maximum efficiency. The third dimension of the thesis is related to the pressing issue of business models that can possibly be viable for new media, i.e. outlets working only (or mostly) on the Internet. Historically, the main source of revenue for Internet media is advertisement; however, scholars in the field had proposed several alternative means of funding. In order to validate their hypotheses and find out the opinion of actual industry professionals, the researcher asked editors of The Next Web, Engadget, and The Verge to describe the business models of their websites and elaborate on the potential of other models. The main result of this was to reveal that advertisement is still considered the most viable and predictable business model for online media, while other ones are deemed to be helpful as additional revenue sources at best. M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 67

The three dimensions of this thesis are all looked at from the standpoint of convergence and are tightly connected to this concept. It is very important to note that many of the distinctive features of online newsrooms are induced by the convergence processes (multimedia contributors, multimedia mindset, video producers, and even the high degree of autonomy of journalists); the same goes for business models, where, for example, advertisements in video content was deemed by one of the interviewed editors as the most appropriate and desirable for the editorial team. This thesis focuses on a field which appears to be underrepresented in journalism research (due to its being a recent phenomenon) — niche online media, which employ the newest technologies consciously and create a type of structure that can be called an online newsroom of the future. Struggles in this process can be explained by the fact that, in spite of (or perhaps because of) the rapid development of Internet media, there are still no commonly accepted best practices for this type of publication. The whole landscape here is still being shaped. There is an extremely wide range of possible future research on this topic, and this thesis lays a basis for it. One logical way to extend it would be a full-fledged ethnographic research study of online newsrooms, as well as a comprehensive content analysis of the websites presented above, which may bring new insights on the role of convergence in these media. Overall, the hope is this thesis will be interesting and useful not only for scholars and researchers, but also for people working in the online media industry, and that it will partially bridge the gap between the two. This gap appears because, although online media is often researched by journalism studies professionals, the results of this research are not always taken into account by media themselves in planning future strategy. This thesis, which defines and puts in order the most important characteristics of how online tech media are working nowadays and what factors influence their day-to-day practices and newsroom structures, may have practical applications for industry players, who could use the findings to assess their own operations. On the other hand, this thesis can be seen as a basis (or part of a basis) upon which further research of online media in general and tech online media in particular can be built in the future.

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Appendices

Appendix I — Questionnaire 1. Introduction 1.1 Name, occupation, residence 1.2 What's your position in [media outlet name]? How long have you held it? 1.3 What are your professional duties? 2. Physical structure 2.1 Describe the structure of [media outlet name]'s newsroom. 2.2 Is there a place where journalists spend considerable amount of time together? 2.3 What do you see as the strengths of [media outlet name]'s newsroom structure? 2.4 Is there something you would change in it? Why? 3. Roles in the newsroom 3.1 What are particular roles in the [media outlet name]'s newsroom? (Such as journalists, editors, reporters, etc.) 3.2 Describe how labor is divided between these roles? (Who does what?) 3.3 Do you think the degree of labor division at [media outlet name] is rather high or low? What's your personal attitude to it? 3.4 What do you see as the strengths of [media outlet name]'s way of labor division? 3.5 Is there something you would change in it? Why? 4. Copy-flow 4.1 Describe the copy-flow at [media outlet name]. 4.2 How many changes are usually made to journalists' copy? How significant are they? 4.3 What do you see as the strengths of [media outlet name]'s copy-flow? 4.4 Is there something you would change in the copy-flow? Why? 5. Desk structure 5.1 Is there such thing as desks in [media outlet name]? If so, what are the desks? 5.2 What do you see as the strengths of [media outlet name]'s desk structure? 5.3 Is there something you would change in this structure? Why? 6. Convergence 6.1 How do you understand media convergence? 6.2 Do you see it influencing [media outlet name]'s structure, content, copy-flow, etc.? 6.3 What kind of influence is it? 6.4 Are there any special rules regarding multimedia content in [media outlet name]? 6.5 Do you think there should be more/less multimedia content at [media outlet name]? 7. Business models (for managing editors only) 7.1 Describe the revenue streams of [media outlet name]. 7.2 How did they change over the last several years? 7.3 What business models are, in your opinion, viable for converged media? M ARKET DEVELOPMENT TH ROUGH DIGITIZATION · 75

7.4 Do you think these business models are potentially profitable for media outlets: paywalls, targeted advertising, public funding, sales commissions on products sold via advertising, foundation grants, diversification into consumer products, reusing archives, sales of data. 7.5 What are the linking policies at [media outlet name]? Are they determined by business considerations? 8. Is there anything you would like to add on the topics we discussed in this interview? Appendix II — Audio Audio recordings of the interviews can be retrieved at [edited]. Appendix III — Transcripts Transcripts of the interviews can be retrieved at [edited]. Appendix IV — Coding book To analyze the content of 20 stories about Google Glass published by Engadget, The Next Web, and The Verge in the second half of February 2013, a coding book was developed. It consists of two categories with subcategories as follows: 1. Multimedia pieces 1.1 Photos/pictures. This subcategory includes any images in the selected posts, including photos, diagrams, and screenshots. 1.2 Videos. All video fragments embedded in the posts using a third-party service (e.g. YouTube) or a website's own embedding engine. 1.3 Audio. All audio fragments embedded in the posts using a third-party service (e.g. Soundcloud) or a website's own embedding engine. 2. Sources of multimedia content 2.1 Self-produced. Multimedia content produced by a website's staffers or freelancers (this also includes screenshots taken by journalists). 2.2 Third-party. Multimedia content attributed to third-party sources, such as press services, public databases, etc.