Human Still in the Loop

Abstract

The study investigates how automation novelties in the newsroom both challenge and maintain the core values of journalism’s professional ideology. Building on semi-structured interviews with editors of legacy news institutions in the United Kingdom and Germany, the study reveals the rationales behind the changing journalism–technology relationship and the dynamics of the re-articulation of the core ideals of journalism. In discussing automation with respect to strategic newsroom development, the interviewees see journalism’s professional ideology as being in a state of flux. They identify contradictions between automation and some of journalism’s core ideals (public service, autonomy, and objectivity) and acknowledge both the potential and limits of technology with regard to others (timeliness and ethics). Despite the growing relevance of automation for news production, human journalists are still regarded as the dominant agents in news production and its continuous reinvention. This human-still-in-the-loop perspective highlights the idea that journalism is undergoing a profound yet long transformation where new technologies are not simply appearing and changing everything, but are innovations developed and embedded in established relations of the news production process. This perspective both reiterates and challenges the prevailing meanings of journalism.

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