Changing newsroom culture by putting readers first: how Australian journalists reacted to a corporate change program

Abstract

This article explores the attitudes of journalists towards the introduction of a corporate-change program in the newsrooms of 14 regional daily newspapers in Australia. It draws data from a survey of journalists working for one of Australia's largest regional media corporations, Australian Provincial Newspapers. The article examines the journalists' attitudes towards the change effort, a year and a half after its introduction. The program had two over-arching aims. The first was to bring about a change in the relationship between journalists and their communities; the second was to get the journalists to use more 'real' or ordinary people as news sources. The study found that support for the corporate-change program remained high in the 18-month period between its introduction and the survey.