Beyond the Newsroom: Making News in Three Indonesian News Organisations During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Abstract

Across the world, newsrooms underwent disruption due to the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic as they struggled to navigate routine transitions amid an unexpected crisis. Unlike other crisis events such as conflicts or disasters, COVID-19 is neither visible nor material; it did not physically destroy newsrooms, but there is no centrally located place of the pandemic for journalists to work from. The pandemic has meant that the physical centre of news-making and a source of symbolic power - the newsroom - is no longer a safe space for journalists. The outbreak, resulting in drastic limitations on mobility and interaction, offers a compelling context to examine changing news routines, practices, and changes in journalists’ relationships with ‘place’, objects of journalism, and news sources. This study employed ethnography and focused on the Global South context to uncover cultural nuances in news production and diversify our global understanding of journalistic practices. It addresses these gaps in three Jakarta-based Indonesian newsrooms: SCTV, a television station, and two digital newsrooms, Liputan 6.com and BBC Indonesia. The data collection includes approximately 245 hours of offline and online observations, 35 in-depth interviews, and an analysis of internal documents. The fieldwork for this study spanned over 15 months, from the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Indonesia in April 2020 to the second wave in July 2021. The data revealed four main findings. First, the pandemic severely affected journalism routines, changing how news is produced and the quality of the content, with journalists experiencing both resilience and anxiety in their professional challenges. Second, newsroom reconfiguration caused by the pandemic created tension as making news in the newsroom was inseparable from their professional journalistic identity and authority. Third, journalists heavily relied on news objects in the newsroom and encountered difficulties when parting them, as specific objects of journalism held significant meaning. Lastly, the impact of social distancing hindered journalists from finding and verifying sources, resulting in a dependency on official sources, which had major consequences for power relations between journalists and state authorities. Overall, this study reinvigorates news production studies by laying the theoretical groundwork for understanding the changing journalistic routines and newsroom culture in crisis environments. Empirically, the study contributes to a better understanding of the legacy newsroom and digital newsroom within a rapidly evolving field of journalism from a Global South case study.