Matrix Organisation : The design of cross-beat teamwork in newsrooms
Journal
Journalism Practice
ISSN
1751-2786
ISSN-Digital
1751-2794
Type
journal article
Date Issued
2016-02-09
Author(s)
Abstract
Confronted by increased internal and external complexity, traditional forms of newswork have reached their limits. Journalistic start-ups, such as Quartz and NZZ.at, form emerging editorial teams around "obsessions" or "phenomena" to gain cross-beat perspectives of complex issues such as climate change, the financial crisis or the refugee crisis. Legacy media experimenting with cross-beat newswork see themselves confronted by challenges arising predominantly from beat structures. Consequently, this paper focuses on an example of cross-beat teamwork at a major Swiss daily newspaper, investigating the journalists' experiences of working in a particular project. Insights from 13 interviews indicate that a matrix organisation is one way to organise cross-beat topic-focused newswork in larger newsrooms. A matrix organisation combines traditional functional hierarchy (i.e. the beat structure) with a project dimension. Based on insights from organisational studies, I compare the known advantages and disadvantages of a matrix organisation with journalists' experiences and derive implications for the introduction and design of a matrix organisation in newsrooms.
Language
English
Keywords
complexity
cross-beat teamwork
editorial structures
matrix organisation
newswork
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
Refereed
No
Publisher
Routledge, Taylor & Francis
Publisher place
Abingdon
Number
online first publication
Start page
1
End page
19
Subject(s)
Division(s)
Eprints ID
247286
File(s)![Thumbnail Image]()
open.access
Name
Accepted Manuscript_Matrix Organisation.pdf
Size
259.51 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
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