Being a “Truth-Teller” in the Unsettled Period of Korean Journalism: a Case Study of Newstapa and Its Boundary Work

Being a “Truth-Teller” in the Unsettled Period of Korean Journalism: A Case Study of Newstapa and its Boundary Work A Dissertation SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Wooyeol Shin IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Giovanna Dell’Orto June 2016 © Wooyeol Shin, 2016 i Acknowledgements Completing this dissertation is a long journey. Faculty, friends, family members, and Newstapa journalists have helped me along the way. I would like to express my gratitude to these people for their support. Giovanna Dell’Orto has been an inspirational adviser to me throughout my graduate years. She is not just my academic adviser but also a truly good friend. She shows me how I can strive to be a good person in the highly stressful, competitive academic field. Without GD’s support, I would never survive in Murphy Hall. I am grateful to have Seth Lewis, Sid Bedingfield, and Jeffrey Broadbent as my dissertation committee members. Seth Lewis is a productive media sociologist and an encouraging reviewer. His research program has guided me to study the sociology of journalism, especially the boundary work of journalists in the changing media environment. Sid Bedingfield provides me with thoughtful feedback on how to extend my research on journalism further. Jeffrey Broadbent has been enormously generous to me. When I found out my outside committee member, he gradly agreed with a big smile, although I had never taken his class before. From him, I learned how to think and ask questions like a sociologist. His specialty of Asian studies, as well as of social movements, also helps me develop research ideas. I owe special thanks to Julie Golias, Kimberley Strain, and Katie Levin. Whenever I need a good laugh, a thoughtful advice, and a motivation in the UMN campus, they have been there for me. I will try to be like them for my people. ii I also have a wonderful group of colleagues in Murphy Hall: 김소윤, 김수정, 김옥현, 김지수, 김태민, 김혜진, 이지윤, 임희원, 한지영, 홍예진, Sarah Cavanah, and Susan LoRusso. I want to thank them full-heartedly. You are different from me, such an unapproachable man. I am extremely fortunate to have a group of wonderful friends from South Korea. They have been great assets to me. 경성현, 김다니엘, 김병욱, 김정국, 김진환, 권오민, 서덕형, 서보운, 심경보, 이정한, 임혜규, 임혜찬, 윤형중, 최창호, and 최홍준, I am really proud of myself because I have you as my friends. I would like to thank Newstapa journalists. Their contribution to Korean journalism motivates me to explore their daily newswork. They recognized the potential of my work and allowed me to be with them in their newsroom. In the newsroom, they were a group of kind, funny, energetic, and righteous friends of mine. Without their help, this dissertation would never be possible. I most want to thank my family – my father 신형인, my mother 남길화, my brother 신승열, my sister-in-law Ngọc Huyền, my niece 신수연, my aunt 남재화, my two dogs 또순 and 탄이, and my love of heart 이예지 – for their love and support. Mom and dad, you have always been the warmest, never-stop supporters in my whole life. Thank you for guiding me through the process of being a human being who wants to be good and righteous. 예지, no words can express my gratitude here. Saying “사랑해” is not enough. I believe you have already known what I want to say. Thank you, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the son of man, my goal, my motivation, and my moral compass. iii Dedication To my parents, 신형인 and 남길화. iv Abstract In this dissertation, I explore the negotiation between the journalistic community and members of the public of what constitutes “good journalism” in today’s Korean society, with the news nonprofit Newstapa as an example of the transformation of the norms and practices of journalism through interactions with citizens. Utilizing ethnographic fieldwork and interviews, I examine how Newstapa journalists do boundary work, attempting to rebuild and maintain their professional identities as “truth-tellers” in and through the use of journalistic practices. These days, a significant number of Koreans have started to question what journalism should be, seeking to assess the performance of journalists. A gap between the range of journalists’ actual behaviors and the range of behaviors that members of the public define as appropriate for journalists has become wider. By pejoratively calling journalists “giraegis,” literally meaning journalists who produce garbage rather than report news, Koreans have actively created and circulated journalism’s meanings. In this unsettled period of Korean journalism, Newstapa journalists strive to rebuild public trust and thereby to be distinguished from “giraegi-like” journalists. By reclaiming the elements of professional journalism and especially emphasizing the public service mission, these journalists try to form arguments determining what journalists’ real self should be in Korean society. My participant observations and interviews with Newstapa journalists help understand how Newstapa journalists reconstruct their professional identities as truth-tellers in ways that justify themselves to other journalists, to the public, and to themselves. In the newsroom, Newstapa journalists develop a set of v journalistic dispositions, such as autonomy and endurance, associated with becoming a “good journalist.” These journalistic dispositions are used as symbolic resources through which Newstapa journalists can guide their own boundary work. In the daily and ongoing interaction with citizens, Newstapa journalists have chances to reexamine the roles that citizens can play in the newswork. Newstapa journalists start to embrace the core practices of participatory culture, such as participation, engagement, and collaboration, and then develop a modified version of truth-telling. Newstapa’s truth is different in a sense that it is collaboratively produced in the interaction with citizens. This conversational version of truth-telling leads to the development of mutually beneficial relationships between Newstapa journalists and citizens. In this indissoluble relationship with citizens, Newstapa journalists can confidently self-identify as truth-tellers in the unsettled period of Korean journalism. vi Table of Contents Acknowledgements...............................................................................................................i Dedication...........................................................................................................................iii Abstract...............................................................................................................................iv Table of Contents................................................................................................................vi List of Figures...................................................................................................................viii I. Introduction…………………………………..………………………………………..1 Why Newstapa?.......................................................................................................4 Theoretical Frameworks…………………………………………………………..8 Journalism as practices in interaction with discourses……………………9 Journalism as an institution………………………………………………13 The competition between the logics of journalism in the digital era…….17 Research Questions and Methods………………………………………………..24 Organization of the Dissertation…………………………………………………32 II. The Boundaries of the Korean Journalistic Culture and its Logic………………35 The Development of the Instrumental View of Journalism during the Military Regimes…………………………………………………………………………..36 The Stigma of Having Been in the Shadow of Authoritarian Regimes: The Lack of Autonomy in the Journalistic Culture...............................................................40 Journalists Embodying the Instrumental View of Journalism...............................48 Socialization into the logic of Korean journalism.....................................54 III. A Constitutive Moment in the Korean Journalistic Culture.................................70 “The Second Dark Age” of Korean Journalism.....................................................71 An Unsettled Cultural Period of Korean Journalism.............................................83 The discourse of giraegi............................................................................86 A Good Journalism: Nonprofit, Citizen Funded Journalism.................................94 vii IV. Embodying “Good Journalism” in the Hierarchical Social Space.....................100 The Way to Reach Newstapa...............................................................................100 Embodying Precarious Autonomy: Becoming Autonomous Journalists.............109 Working with the Respected Journalists in the Hierarchical Social Space: Keys to the Boundary of the Juniors’ Autonomy..............................................................121 The seniors’ journalistic gut feeling........................................................124 The juniors’ assimilation into the seniors’ gut feeling.............................130 Newstapa Journalism as Moral Boundaries.........................................................139 V. Being a “Truth-Teller” in the Networked Society.................................................144 Getting away from the Past..................................................................................150 “Good pressure” from audiences.............................................................153 Newstapa’s Experimentation across Digital Media Platforms............................158

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