Changes in Journalism: Digitalization and Convergence of Newsrooms in Germany (El Periodismo en Cambio: Digitalización y Convergencia de Redacciones en Alemania) (Spanish)

Abstract

Journalistic newsrooms are in the midst of a period of far-reaching change. There are many reasons for this, but above all the Internet, the digitization of the news process and the convergence of the media industry are reshaping the landscape of journalism in a variety of ways. This article analyzes central trends in German newsrooms. The main focus is on newspaper newsrooms and their effort to manage the transition from print to Internet. Initial points of the analysis are the reasons and strategies which lead to the convergence activities of the newspapers: the dynamic change of media technology, of audience behavior and of media markets. Subsequently we describe – on the basis of several case studies – the status of newsroom convergence in Germany: How are newspaper editorial departments in Germany overcoming the challenges facing them? How have they re-structured their organization and workflows? Evidence suggests that there are certain key factors of success even though we can find three models of newsroom convergence which meet the challenges in different ways.

Note: Downloadable document is in Spanish.

Keywords: Digitization, Journalism, Media Convergence, Multimedia, Newsroom Convergence in Germany