Understanding the role of internal factors in the newsroom on the quantity and quality of television news

Abstract

The current research was conducted with the aim of knowing the role of the internal organizational factors of the newsroom on the quantity and quality of television news. In this research, which was conducted through a survey method by distributing a questionnaire among a statistical sample of the employees of the Central News Unit of the Islamic Republic of Iran; The relationship between the four factors of organizational structure, organizational culture, human resources and material and capital resources with the quantity and quality of news was measured and analyzed from the perspective of the employees of the central news unit. Based on the findings of this research, all internal organizational factors studied play a role in the quantity and quality of television news in the newsroom. Of course, this role-playing is different in relation to different factors. The results of this research showed that the employees of the central news unit believe that the organizational structure with all its dimensions (policy, professionalism, decision-making, management and technology) is the most effective factor in the quantity and quality of television news in the newsroom. The organizational culture in this research is at the average level. According to the findings, in organizational culture, apart from the control variable, dimensions of commitment, value, integrity and communication patterns play a role in the news production process. Also, material and capital resources including: physical work environment, services, equipment and budget are among the influencing factors in the quantity and quality of TV news. According to experts, the three factors of the physical work environment, equipment and budget have a great effect on television news. According to the findings, human resources, including the four variables of recruitment, retention, training, and attraction, are also at an average level. But the two dimensions of employment and training play a role in the quantity and quality of TV news more than other dimensions. In general, it can be said: the organizational structure in all its dimensions plays a role in the quantity and quality of television news in the newsroom, but each of the factors of organizational culture, human resources, and material and capital are not influential in all their dimensions. From the point of view of the employees of the central news unit, each of these factors plays an effective role in the quantity and quality of news in one or more dimensions.

Key words: news, newsroom, internal factors, quantity, quality and systems theory. The invention of printing, the beginning of modern communication, has disrupted the foundation of oral society and the introduction of mass communication tools such as books, newspapers, radio, television, satellite and internet has reduced the time interval of interpersonal and collective communication as much as possible. Now the revolution of communication technology is going on more than before. Digital technology has cast a shadow on our lives and everything is being digitized. With the introduction of digital media systems, the newsrooms have been transformed, the newsroom, news editing, archive, sound recording room, news broadcast and news manager's room have been integrated and introduced under the title of "Newsroom" [1]. "Powell (1998)" [2] refers to these changes as "the television newsroom of one cloth" (Afq, 2016, p. 26). Today, newsrooms have unique features and characteristics in addition to the material and appearance differences compared to the past, and their adherence to different principles, policies, and management methods has caused a clear distinction in news broadcasting between newsroom owned and non-owned media. The use of this technology has changed the power of choice and the reach of the audience in terms of determining the type, volume and time of receiving the message. In the new newsrooms, it is possible to receive and process a large amount of feedback from the audience through e-mail, SMS, mobile phones and other services, and use them again in the news production cycle. Access to the Internet is also one of the features of modern newsrooms, which has helped to activate the audience and the culture of interaction between the media and the audience. In these rooms, which are equipped with digital systems, websites, as written reflectors of visual events, have changed and in other words manipulated the structure and nature of news media. Therefore, management knowledge in the newsrooms of the digital era is one of the important topics in the field of communication studies and research. "The qualitative expansion of mass communication, the quantitative development of mass communication tools, the constant invention and use of new methods, and the subsequent increase in the speed of reflection of events, have made the continuous and persistent efforts of the employees of these tools inevitable, and the operators of these tools feel the daily need for expert personnel" (Motamanjad, 2012, p. 16).. In the media that have newsrooms, paper has been removed for a long time, keyboards instead of pens, computers instead of typewriters, faxes and telexes are responsible for recording, transmitting text and dozens of other actions. All parts of the news organization, especially the newsroom, are under the network. Written news and news images from the editorial office and the news editing room are sent to the broadcast at a very high speed, and the news anchors [3] use teleprompter [4] and laptops to read the prepared texts easily. In modern newsrooms, all the information has been transferred on a supercomputer and all the editors and secretaries and even the announcers have access to that information and images. The use of new tools in the newsroom has increased the speed of users' actions and reduced their error rate to a great extent. The amount of manpower in the production process has been minimized by replacing computers, although the amount of manpower reduction as one of the benefits of Newsroom has not been applied to the same extent in all networks. In this intelligent system, management is the main driver and can monitor all components of this process from production to distribution. Of course, using the benefits of newsroom is completely a function of management and decision-making methods in the news production process. The possession of the country's television networks, especially the local networks, of the scientific knowledge required to take advantage of digital facilities in the newsroom and the way of employing human resources in accordance with their abilities and training is very decisive for transforming the newsroom of the digital era compared to the analog era. "In Europe, the full use of the digital system [5] began in 1996.

Swedish TV's digital news services "STV" [6] in 1999 and larger radio and television broadcasters such as "BBC") (British Broadcasting Corporation) [7] and "ITN" were launched in 1998. The news network "CNN" [8] (cable TV network) was also launched in 1998. In 1999, the analog equipment of its central offices in the state of Atlanta was replaced with digital systems. But the most complete digital network belongs to the commercial network "Telpanj" [9], which was launched in August 1998. Newsrooms in the process of evolution and modernization are facing a fundamental question, whether despite the development and technological developments in this field and spending exorbitant costs on equipment and Using digital systems, can it be claimed that in addition to dramatic changes in physical structures, fundamental changes have occurred in the field of news content and are basically comparable to before? Experts and those involved in the matter, that is, those who are involved in the use of digital systems in newsrooms, believe that the change in the actual content of news programs is very small compared to before. In 1997, when a small news station with limited human resources, started news operations with the two goals of speeding up and being cost-effective, and by spending 6 million euros, this investment was expected to increase the number of news produced, but surveys showed that only 11.6% of journalists from "Tel Five" and "Antenna Four" [10] Spanish networks believe that significant changes have been made in the news content with the implementation of this program. (Ibid., p. 45). Objective observations in the gradual process of digitalization of national and provincial networks of the country in the last decade confirm the opinion that the use of new and modern technologies is not effective in the field of content to the extent that it transforms the field of form and physical structure of the media. It seems that the reason for this should be sought in the nature of the two categories of structure and content. The change and transformation in the content is directly related to the two elements of knowledge and creativity and the amount of intelligent use of these two elements. Accordingly, the main providers of knowledge-based fields and the platform for individual and group creativity to bring about transformation in the nature and content of news in every media organization are their managers and decision-makers. According to Simon [11] 1360, "managers are the same decision-makers who, at different times, when faced with different options, try to choose an option that has a better result with a rational decision.