From BBC Newsroom to BBC Newscentre : On Changing Technology and Journalist Practices

Abstract
New communication technologies, digitalisation and technological convergence along with multi-skilling and multi-media production are now contributing to the transformation of broadcast news production. To date, the role of technology within news production has received relatively little theoretical study. This article, based on empirical research findings from a case study of a major multi-media BBC newscentre piloting the latest digital news technologies, challenges the technological myopia and technological determinism that variously inform academic and practitioner accounts of changing news technology and demonstrates how technologies of news production are in fact socially and culturally shaped and embedded within corporate and professional contexts and practices. Based upon in-house documents, interviews and participant observation the authors' findings endorse normative concerns about the increasingly pressurised and superficial nature of multi-skilled, multi-media news production and its impact upon news output.