Agents of meta: Institutional actors in the journalism space and the innovation of local news

• Published in: Journalism (London, England) Vol. 24; no. 6; pp. 1155 - 1173
• Main Authors: Lowrey, Wilson, Deavours, Danielle, Singleton, William
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England SAGE Publications 01.06.2023
• Subjects: Innovation; local journalism; journalism roles; journalism (Profession); institutional actors
• ISSN: 1464-8849; 1741-3001
• DOI: 10.1177/14648849221095898

This study sheds light on the increasingly important roles that meta-level organizations, a type of institutional actor, play in the processes of local journalism innovation. Examples of meta-level organizations in journalism include journalism professional associations, training and research centers, nonprofits, and trade publications. Definitionally, metalevel organizations embrace the functions of coordination, regulation, agenda-setting, information diffusion, and the boundary negotiation of an institutionalized space. This qualitative study uses in-depth interviews to explore the roles of meta-level organizations in relation to the troubles of local journalism, how these roles are enacted at professional association conferences, and how they are conceptualized by journalists and representatives of meta-level organizations. We found evidence of three traditional roles of meta-level organizations – information, interaction, existential roles – across different types of meta-level organizations. Respondents tended to view these roles through a lens of resource scarcity. We also found evidence of the role of self-maintenance—i.e., meta-level organizations have their own institutional spaces and an interest in self-preservation—as well as the role of conceptualization or theorization, of innovations, and an emergent role of translation. Translation involves adaptation of abstract ideas to local-level sites, as well as communication of results from local-level experimentation back to the field level, an increasingly important role in a resource-poor local journalism space that is inundated with a flood of new field-level initiatives.