Building the future: newspaper culture and innovation

Abstract

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] As the business environment erodes for newspapers and the need for change becomes ever more pressing, it is important to look at how the organizational culture of newspapers affects the business' ability to innovate. This study examines the culture of one newsroom through ethnographic observation. As part of this study, the Web site of the subject newspaper, as well as those of other newspapers that distribute in the same area, was conducted. Each site was analyzed to determine how innovative it is. A definition of an innovative newspaper is given, based on the work of Thorson and Duffy (2006). The newsroom's culture was diagnosed using the Organizational Culture Inventory[superscript 1][registered trademark sign]. A comparison of an earlier study of 90 newsrooms using the same study found that this culture differs in degree but not in type.