News As Genre

News as Genre
News as Genre
Jelle Mast
Subject: Journalism Studies Online Publication Date: Jan 2020
DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.844
Summary and Keywords
The term “genre,” typically understood as a conventional categorization of recognizable

texts or discursive practices based on perceived similarities and differences, has become
quite commonsensical across academic, professional, and everyday settings. One has to
look no further than, for instance, the catalogues or profiles of on-demand (streaming)
services and (other) niche providers in today’s fragmented news media landscape, cate
gories of professional press or broadcast award competitions, or, for that matter, the sec
tions of an average newspaper, news website or app, or television schedule, to see a
genre logic at work. Hiding behind this ubiquity, though, is a complex multidimensional
notion that weaves together authorial intentions or industrial practices, textual configura
tions, and audience interpretations and uses, evoking a web of interactions between the
textual and contextual, the material and immaterial, the consistent and contingent. A tri
partite conception of genre as an enabling, shared set of codes and conventions thus sug
gests the term’s associated overtones of the “generic,” “patterned,” “recurrent,” “rou
tine,” and the like. Yet, at the same time, by shedding light on the practical uses of genres
and the wider contexts of their production and reception, it also opens up to contempo
rary conceptions looking afresh at genre by primarily accentuating its discursive, dynam
ic, and contingent qualities.
As such, genre has been defined as a purposive communicative event that is socially em
bedded in a particular discourse community and materializes through the affordances of
available media (technologies) while providing an entry point into broader group identi
ties, sociocultural belief systems and normative political ideals or epistemologies. Applied
to the present context, an image emerges of journalistic genres as a heterogeneous and
hierarchical set of socially situated groupings of texts or practices tied to a range of coex
isting journalistic (sub)cultures and the normative professional values they adhere to,
emerging and evolving in interaction with technological developments, social change, and
the wider cultural atmosphere. Understanding news through the lens of genre resonates
particularly well, then, in a networked, hybrid and (self-)reflexive media environment,
where the normative foundations of (the) news (paradigm), and journalism broadly are
being reexamined. Developments in the shifting landscape of news/journalism such as an
interpretive turn, a (new) narrative wave, soft news, and the appropriation and transgres
sions of taken for granted conventions and expectations in “fake news” and cross-generic
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News as Genre
forms, render the concept of “genre” ever more visible, and valuable for the field of jour
nalism studies. For in line with journalism studies’ multidisciplinary constellation, a multi
perspectival view on genre provides a rich, dialogic site where scholars adopting differ
ent approaches could meet around the heterogeneous subject of what news is, could be,
or should be.
Keywords: discourse, journalism culture, news paradigm, professional ideology, news form, narrative journalism,
interpretive journalism, intertextuality, hybridity, journalism studies
Introduction
It is fair to say that usage of the term “genre,” which is French for “type” or “kind,” and
derives from the same Latin root as for instance “general,” “genus,” or
“generate” (Cobley, 2008, p. 1954; Feuer, 1992), has become quite commonsensical
across academic, professional, and everyday settings. Indeed, the basic idea of genre as a
categorization of recognizable discursive phenomena, or texts broadly understood, based
on perceived similarities and differences, the origins of which date back as far as classi
cal times and the work of Aristotle, has spread in the course of the past century beyond
literature and high art to the mundane spheres of popular culture and everyday social
(inter)action. As such, genre has emerged as a topical focus and key concept in a wide ar
ray of scholarly traditions, from rhetoric, literary and folklore studies, to linguistics and
film, media, and television studies, and through these, also in the heterogeneous field of
journalism studies. By the same token, one has to look no further than, for instance, the
catalogues or profiles of on-demand (streaming) services and (other) niche providers in
today’s fragmented news media landscape, categories of professional press or broadcast
award competitions, or, for that matter, the sections of an average newspaper, news web
site or app, or television schedule, to see a genre logic at work. However, this ubiquity
hides, to some extent, the complexities that underlie genre as an essentially multifaceted
research concept and method.
The Multidimensional Nature of Genre
For as the previous examples already allude to, genres could not merely be understood as
categories of texts but rather operate in a broader sense as multilayered “systems of ori
entations, expectations, and conventions” (Neale, 1980, p. 19) guiding the different ac
tors involved in some type of “communicative event” (Van Leeuwen, 2008). That is, as in a
tacit agreement, the codified nature of genres weaves together authorial intentions or in
dustrial practices, textual configurations, and audience interpretations and uses. So, ap
plied to the present context, it could be argued that the day-to-day practices of produc
tion and distribution within and across newsrooms are more or less led by the conven
tions of an established set of (textbook) journalistic genres, informing where priorities are
assigned and resources allocated, and in which forms the news is presented, thus en
abling a news organization to provide the services and to fulfil the goals it stands for in a
most efficient way. By the same token, then, it could be said that the uses and gratifica
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News as Genre
tions variously sought for by news audiences, which kinds of news they look for, click,
like, share, comment upon, and so on, and where they do so, are similarly guided to a
greater or lesser extent by the expectations they have come to hold regarding journalistic
genres and the needs or interests they accommodate. Such tripartite conception of genre
as an enabling, shared set of codes and conventions evokes the term’s associated over
tones of the “generic,” “patterned,” “recurrent,” “routine,” and the like. Yet, at the same
time, by shedding light on the practical uses of genres and the wider contexts of their
production and reception, it also opens up to contemporary conceptions looking afresh at
genre by primarily accentuating its discursive, dynamic, and contingent qualities.
From a (new) rhetorical perspective, for example, Miller (1984) developed the idea of
genre as a social, purposive practice that fits and articulates the needs, or exigencies, of
a particular cultural Zeitgeist, or socially perceived space-time (e.g., the need for expres
sion, examination, and validation of the self characterizing a “reflexive
modernity” [Giddens, 1991] or liberal democratic society’s ideal of a rational citizenry).
As such, a “Darwinian approach” (Jamieson, 1973) asserts itself, which builds on the
premise that genres “change, evolve and decay” (p. 163) and concentrates beyond sub
stance and form on understanding the rhetorical actions genres perform in any given so
ciety. Likewise, in the domain of cultural studies, Mittell (2004) has problematized what is
referred to as the “textualist assumption” (p. 7) underlying traditional conceptions, ac
cording to which genre is considered to be an inherent component of the text. For “[t]exts
have many different components,” the author argues, “but only some are activated into
defining generic properties. As many genre scholars have noted there are no uniform cri
teria for genre delimitation” (p. 8). For example, genres have been variously identified in
terms of (ascribed) characteristics of theme (e.g., true crime), function (e.g., recipe), (au
dience) effect (e.g., horror), setting (e.g., Western), or (narrative) form (e.g., musical; Mit
tell, 2004; Van Leeuwen, 2008). Since genres do not intrinsically reside in the text, then,
Mittell contends it is more worthwhile to carefully unravel how genre categorizations and
boundaries are constructed and (re-)negotiated at a particular sociocultural moment or
over time through the “discursive clusters” (p. 17)—or discursive practices and struggles
—surrounding and permeating specific texts.
A Genre Approach to News/Journalism
For the present argument, this translates into different possible ways of delineating news,
along other, both journalistic and non-journalistic genres, and the contestations and nego
tiations that characterize this definitional work. Høyer and Nossen (2015) note that, due
to the multiplicity of generic classifications circulating in the field of journalism, “(t)here
is no widespread agreement on journalistic genres and their number” (p. 546). In this re
gard, Broersma (2010, p. 22) points out how Anglo-American and European traditions
have looked at genre through the lens of “beats and practices” versus the “characteriza
tion and organization of the text,” respectively. Whereas the former maps the generic
field of journalism largely in terms of topical areas (e.g., politics, justice, sports, lifestyle,
etc.), the latter highlights conventional textual forms such as news reports, analyses and
background stories, editorials, opinion pieces or commentaries, reviews, or interviews. To
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News as Genre
this, other criteria could be added still, like the journalistic method and kind of knowl
edge production (Ekström, 2002) (e.g., investigative and data journalism), or the attitude
or institutional role perception (e.g., adversary and advocacy journalism; Høyer &
Nossen, 2015). What needs to be considered, then, is that different, more or less cohering
or overlapping, genre classifications (may) coexist depending on the “operative cate
gories of differentiation” (Mittell, 2004, p. 8), or the “principle of coherence” (Feuer,
1992, p. 141), one adheres to led by a particular research agenda or practical use.
Summarized, there has been a tendency in genre scholarship to shift focus from analyz
ing genres as general, text-based structures or products to the generative, process-based
qualities of genre development and evolution (cf. Rulyova & Westley, 2017)—or, as Feuer
(1992) puts it, to approaching genres as “rhetorical and pragmatic constructions” (p. 141)
that are “made, not born” (p. 144). Clearly, these conceptions do not necessarily or wholly
exclude each other but should rather be considered as complementary perspectives. In
deed, an integrative approach seems most useful, and required, so it could be argued, in
order to fully grasp genre’s multifaceted nature.
In light of this, understanding news through the lens of genre resonates particularly well
in the contemporary diversified and networked media environment and against the back
ground of a wider atmosphere of (self-)reflexivity and transparency, where definitions and
uses of news and journalism broadly are being reconsidered. Likewise, the specific merit
of a genre approach is also evident in understanding the porosity of traditional bound
aries and the subversion of taken for granted conventions and expectations with both
playful and serious intents, for instance in infotainment, news satire and parodies, native
advertising formulas, and “fake news” frauds and hoaxes. Quite contrary to poststruc
turalist critiques that have faulted genre categorization for its (perceived) normative or
essentialist inclinations, therefore, a contemporary genre approach, which conceptualizes
communicative forms within and across (news) media but also sheds light on the prag
matic uses of (news as) genre, lends itself particularly well to interrogate absolute and
evaluative thinking while moving beyond rather unproductive positions of relativism.
Toward a Working Definition of “News as

Genre”
Attesting to the multifaceted nature of genre is a rich and multidisciplinary research do
main that has yielded a rather dispersed range of approaches. It could be argued, then,
that the usefulness of genre as a legitimate concept or methodology in its own right, as
well as theory building in the field, would benefit from an integrative working definition.
Building on a set of premises derived from a cross-disciplinary review of genre conceptu
alizations, Swales (1990) goes a long way to providing just that:
A genre comprises a class of communicative events the members of which share

some set of communicative purposes. These purposes are recognized by the ex
pert members of the parent discourse community, and hereby constitute the ratio
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News as Genre
nale for the genre. This rationale shapes the schematic structure of the discourse
and influences and constrains choice of content and style. . . . In addition to pur
pose, exemplars of a genre exhibit various patterns of similarity in terms of struc
ture, style, content and intended audience. If all high probability expectations are
realized, the exemplar will be viewed as prototypical by the parent discourse com
munity. (p. 58)
Several points in this working definition merit further elaboration as they provide a fruit
ful basis for the present discussion. Starting from the idea that news genres are embed
ded in journalistic communities and tied to the normative ideals and values they adhere
to, and specifying the complex intersection of textual components, media technologies,
and broader discourses defining genre, it is then argued how the dynamic of news genre
emergence and development could be usefully looked at through the lenses of “proto
type” and “family resemblance” theory.
Journalistic Genres, Communities, and Ideologies
First, the use of genres is situated within the context of a particular discourse community,
which denotes a “sociorhetorical,” “special interest” grouping taking shape around the
accomplishment of a shared set of “public goals” (Swales, 1990, pp. 24–25). This res
onates with well-established, related concepts in journalism scholarship such as the no
tion of the “interpretive community” (Zelizer, 1993), which describes how journalists col
lectively make sense of what they do and stand for, discursively and informally, through
the re-articulation of communal interpretations of key events. Similarly, the idea of a
“journalism culture” entails a distinct set of ideas, practices, and artifacts reflecting a
particular institutional role perception, epistemology, and ethical position, which individ
ual journalistic communities identify with so as to “legitimate their role in society and
render their work meaningful for themselves and others” (Hanitzsch, 2007, p. 369). As
several different journalistic communities coexist and seek wider recognition, a journal
ism culture could also be understood as “the arena in which diverse professional ideolo
gies struggle over the dominant interpretation of journalisms social function and
identity” (Hanitzsch, 2007, p. 370). In doing so, a view emerges of journalism as an “inte
gral discourse” (Broersma, 2010), harboring a multiplicity of genres, communicative pur
poses, and associated “professional ideologies” (Deuze, 2005; Van Leeuwen, 1987).
Journalistic Genres as Intermediate Entities
Additionally, genres are construed as intermediate entities. For, on the one hand, they
transcend isolated, self-contained communicative events, such as a specific journalistic
text, and pertain instead to recurrent, patterned configurations. At the same time, howev
er, they provide a particular manifestation of more fundamental, basic categories of com
munication, still, which operate at the higher levels of (the) discourse (community), media
institution, and general culture or society at large (also referred to as “pre-
genres” [Swales, 1990] or “primary genres” [Bakhtin, 1986]). Genres are nodal points,
then, that intersect (a) specific news texts broadly understood (e.g., a newspaper article,
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News as Genre
news bulletin item, or news blogpost), which are organized into purposive and cohesive
compositional wholes; (b) individual news media (e.g., print, broadcast, online) and the
communicative affordances that typify them (e.g., mono- or multimodal, mono- or dialogi
cal, a/synchronous, linear or hypertextual; Gruber, 2008); and (c) broader discourses, un
derstood at a more abstract level as verbal and/or visual patterns of “language” use that
represent and articulate particular “knowledge constructions” about social reality (Baym,
2017; see also Barnhurst & Nerone, 2002; Broersma, 2010; Fairclough, 1995; Van Dijk,
1988). In this regard, Baym, for instance, identifies a rift between “politico-normative”
and “aesthetic-expressive” discourses structuring idea(l)s of journalism’s public role and
status. Whereas the former denotes authoritative, rational discursive practices related to
the fields of law, history, or politics, the latter is more typically associated with the experi
ential and playful qualities of arts, literature, fiction, and/or entertainment (Baym, 2017,
p. 3). As such, the codes and conventions of genres ultimately relate to fundamental nor
mative political ideals and epistemologies and thus assumptions about what constitutes
legitimate or proper public discourse, engagement, or knowledge claims (cf. ratio vs.
emotion, objectivity vs. subjectivity, or “knowledge as facts” vs. “learning as experience”;
Hill, 2007, p. 149).
So an image emerges of journalistic genres as socially embedded, purposive groupings of

texts, which evoke discourses that exceed the field of journalism per se while materializ
ing through the communicative affordances of single or multiple media (Gruber, 2008).
What follows is that genres develop or evolve, in the aforementioned Darwinian sense,
through an interaction between proliferating journalistic (sub)cultures, the development
of new media technologies, and broader sociocultural values. In this context, an “evolu
tionary genre dynamic” (Shepherd & Watters, 1998) has manifested itself throughout the
history of journalism, notably informed, amongst others, by the emergence and prolifera
tion of photography (e.g., illustrated magazines, photojournalism), cinema and the mov
ing image (e.g., newsreels, documentary film), and analogue electronic communication al
lowing instant transmission (radio and television broadcasting). This has become ever
more evident in the contemporary media landscape where journalism has gone digital
and online, and long-time news genres thus have come to coexist with a wide array of so-
called “cybergenres” (Shepherd & Watters, 1998). These include both “extant” genres,
which migrate wholly online and/or gradually adapt, and “novel” genres, which are either
mutations of traditional genres or emerge spontaneously from the affordances of new me
dia technologies (Shepherd & Watters, 1998, p. 98). As such, digital news genres have
come in many forms: from mere online replicas of newspapers or magazines (so-called
shovelware), to blogs, podcasts, digital long-reads (infra), “collaborative news clips” (Wall
& Zahed, 2015), and “immersive” reportages (Mabrook & Singer, 2019) variously inte
grating antecedent genres with the immediacy, multimodal, hypertextual, and/or hyper
textual features of digital media, to novel forms such as “listicles” and personalized news
aggregators which derive directly from the exigencies and functionalities of the digital
and social media environment (Shepherd & Watters, 1998).
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News as Genre
Families and Prototypes of Journalistic Genres
Finally, these ideas link up with an understanding of (genre) categorization that sub
scribes to the well-established “family resemblances” and “prototype” theories of, respec
tively, language philosophers Wittgenstein (1958) and Lakoff (1975). Summarized, these
theorizations point out that objects are often grouped based on perceived similarities
rather than through a definitive list of “individually necessary and cumulatively suffi
cient” conditions that all instances of a particular category exhibit (Wittgenstein, 1958).
As the family metaphor indicates, these resemblances are circumscribed by shared “blood
ties,” which could be interpreted as some conventional usage, or, in the present context, a
shared communicative purpose (Swales, 1990; Wittgenstein, 1958). By the same token, in
dividual exemplars differ in the extent to which they are perceived as prototypical versus
peripherical members, depending on the extent to which they meet “high probability
expectations” (Lakoff, 1975; Swales, 1990). Moreover, what is considered prototypical
news/journalism is informed by experience and conventional agreement and will, there
fore, differ across sociocultural settings and over time (Lakoff, 1975; Swales, 1990).
So understood, genre offers a useful analytical framework for the study of fundamental
questions concerning what news and journalism is, could be, or should be. A logical start
ing point for this inquiry is the key concept of the news paradigm.
The News Paradigm

As journalism scholarship has noted, “news,” in a sense, has no history (Nerone, 2013).
Driven by a so-called awareness instinct (Kovach & Rosenstiel, 2001), “(h)umans,”
Stephens (2014) argues, “have exchanged a similar mix of news with a consistency
throughout history and cultures that makes interest in this news seems inevitable, if not
innate” (p. 15). That is, the idea of monitoring the environment and sharing information
that is deemed necessary or (just) interesting to know, seems to fulfill basic human needs
for orientation, connection, and security (Kovach & Rosenstiel, 2001; Stephens, 2014).
The communicative forms and media through which news has been exchanged, from visu
al, oral and written traditions to print and eventually electronic means, do have a history
though (Nerone, 2013; Rantanen, 2009). As communication technologies affect the spa
tiotemporal frame of reference in which this new information is gathered and distributed
(Rantanen, 2009), conceptions of newness and the news, then, have evolved accordingly.
As such, a more specific notion of “the news” has emerged, which refers to a specialized
genre of public discourse defined by the “use of the concept of time and of an event in or
der to construct a new story” (Rantanen, 2009, p. 2, emphasis in original). This modern
way of telling new stories took root—was “invented” (Rantanen, 2009) or
“discovered” (Schudson, 1978)—through a complex interaction of technological, commer
cial, and sociopolitical developments taking place mid- to late 19th century as “democrat
ic market societies” developed (Schudson, 1978). News thus became a commodity to be
delivered on a regular, immediate basis, which could be promoted on its newness, render
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News as Genre
ing the idea of “no news, no novelty” inconceivable (Rantanen, 2009, p. xii; see also
Broersma, 2010). In this particular sociohistorical setting, the notions of the news and
journalism grew entangled as the gathering and delivery of new, recent information in the
generic form of news stories became the province of media businesses and specialized
practitioners adhering to a set of professional values and routines. In doing so, journalism
took shape as an institutionalized, professional enterprise (Broersma, 2010) led by a pri
mary focus on “collecting and presenting news” rather than the alternate possible func
tions of commenting upon and interpreting the news (Stephens, 2014, p. xiii)—a principle
that persevered as journalism expanded from print to other media such as radio, televi
sion, and online and was arguably even enhanced by the heightened measures of immedi
acy these technologies afforded.
These historical developments and the particular generic form that emerged from it (also)
crystallize in the key concept of the “news paradigm” (Høyer & Pöttker, 2005). Scholarly
literature on the inception and formalization of this “norm-based mindset” (Høyer & Pöt
tker, 2005; Vos & Moore, 2018) has pointed out five constituent components, which in
clude the news event, news value factors, the news interview, the inverted pyramid, and
journalistic objectivity. These paradigmatic features essentially provide a way of relating
the idea of news as genre to a modern conception of journalism-as-news as outlined earli
er: an identifiable authoritative public discourse that is event-centered and immediate,
primarily focused on bringing out the newsworthiness of what is reported (cf. Galtung &
Ruge, 1965) and led by professional—that is, objective and autonomous—methods and
standards of newsgathering and presentation. As such, the news paradigm aligned with
the core assumptions of modernity and liberal democratic society and the ideal of a “ra
tional citizenry” (Baym, 2017; Hartley, 2001; Wahl-Jorgensen, 2019). For here, news me
dia were accorded a central role in facilitating a public sphere of rational debate (Haber
mas, 1989) and political judgment by engaging in a “public knowledge project” (Corner,
1995) providing “citizens the information they need to be free and self-
governing” (Kovach & Rosenstiel, 2001, p. 17; see also, e.g., Baym, 2017; Wahl-Jorgensen,
2019).
The News Interview
So the genre of the news interview suited journalism’s aspirations to professional status
as it enabled the active collection and the attribution of reliable information and view
points needed to substantiate and corroborate the events reported (Broersma, 2008;
Rantanen, 2009). Moreover, the underlying communicative form of a conversation or in
terrogation allowed the journalist-interviewer to hold more control over the exchange and
to take on a less deferential disposition toward political elites, which served journalism’s
public service and watchdog role(-perception) and proclaimed autonomy (Broersma,
2008; Hanitzsch, 2007; Örnebring & Jönsson, 2004). The interview’s entwinement with
the modern conception of news also entailed its commercial potential as a genre, enliven
ing news stories through expressive quotes, tension, or the transgression of established
boundaries between the private and the public. Although this contributed to an initial
perception of the interview as inappropriate or “subversive” (Broersma, 2008; Hanitzsch,
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News as Genre
2007; Örnebring & Jönsson, 2004) in journalistic cultures that were less commercialized
and professionalized at the time, as in Europe, the interview—as part of the news para
digm—gradually spread to become a widely used, textbook genre in journalism. Similar to
Corner’s (1999) description of the (broadcast) interview as “talk designed for overhear
ing” and “an indirect form which is really only a direct form pretending not to be” (p. 37),
Montgomery (2010) refers to the genre as “a public performance of talk” (p. 331). Differ
ent subgenres of the news interview could be discerned, Montgomery continues, depend
ing on the social position and the communicative entitlement of the interviewee, which
corresponds with a particular communicative purpose and discursive style (e.g., type of
questions, audience alignment, presence/absence of the interviewer, visual framing; Cor
ner, 1999; Montgomery, 2010). As such, the interview engages with the news in a variety
of ways, from holding public officials and other “responsible agents” accountable to offer
ing expert explanations and specialized knowledge about events or first-hand knowledge
of reported events (Montgomery, 2010) to the increasingly prominent communicative
genre of the “intraprofessional interview” (Lundell, 2010) providing observations and
analyses of “affiliated” sources (Montgomery, 2010) like correspondents, reporters, and
editors (cf. “the interpretive turn”).
News and/as the Inverted Pyramid
Additionally, in terms of genre, the news paradigm materializes particularly through the
prototypical format of the inverted pyramid, which presents what is considered to be the
most important, or newsworthy, information in the lead (and headline) of the news item.
In a critical review of historical positions on when and why the lead summary model origi
nated, Pöttker (2003) contends that its emergence should be primarily seen against the
backdrop of commercial influences and professional aspirations informing late-19th-cen
tury journalistic practice (in the United States). So, rather than the oft-assumed political
or technological vectors, the author points at the decisive role of the format’s “commu
nicative potency—helpful in the journalist’s task of creating publicness and public dis
course” by enhancing “reader receptivity” (Pöttker, 2003, pp. 509–510) and, simultane
ously, its accommodation of a swift, (cost-)efficient news production process. So, as jour
nalists evolved from stenographers into autonomous professionals who “extract[ed] the
news from an event” and “told [readers] what the most important information
was” (Broersma, 2007, p. 187), they also proceeded on the assertion that the “5 Ws and
H” formula provided, and accentuated, the hard, material facts of the news (Tuchman,
1972).
The structuring principle of the inverted pyramid has indeed been understood as part of a
larger set of “strategic rituals” (Tuchman, 1972) or “discursive strategies” (Broersma,
2010) through which objectivity is performed. Besides a focus on the reporting of verified
facts, for which journalists routinely rely on “pre-justified knowledge” (Ekström, 2002)
provided by authoritative official and experts sources—what Tuchman refers to as the
construction of a “web of facticity”—such strategies take the form of, among others, the
avoidance of self-attributions and evaluative language, the presentation of conflicting pos
sibilities (“he said, she said”), and the use of direct quotes or sources’ actual voices as a
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way of corroborating and according responsibility for assertions (Bell, 1991; Broersma,
2010; Ekström, 2002; Tuchman, 1972). Typically considered the “core value” of the news
paradigm (Reese, 1990) and, by extension, of the predominant belief system or profes
sional ideology guiding journalistic practice (in Western democratic societies; Deuze,
2005), objectivity thus warranted journalists’ authoritative status and credibility as truth-
tellers. Further attesting to the meaningful role of genre in constructing and perpetuat
ing these aspirations and their associated values is the way they have equally found ex
pression in the codes and conventions of established forms of broadcast journalism. This
materializes most notably, verbally speaking, through an emphasis on sober, serious, com
manding, or formal voices and talk, both direct and indirect, epitomized by the archetypi
cal “Voice of God” commentary or the embodied “Voice of Authority” exposition (Corner,
1996). Adding a visual layer, television newscasts have featured a “news anchor” whose
bodily performance and persona typically exudes “knowledgeability and
likeability” (Carroll, 1985), while the iconography of the opening sequence, the décor and
props of the news set, and the use of graphics all radiate the idea(l)s image of the news
room as an “omniscient institution” (Ekström, 2000), or a sophisticated, energetic, inter
connected, and therefore reliable locus for the newsgathering and presentation (Carroll,
1985; Ekström, 2002).
The idea of the inverted pyramid has also been developed from a linguistic point of view,
for example in Bell’s (1991) analysis of news media as a distinctive “speech community”
of “professional story-tellers” (p. 147) using their own “variety of language” (p. 9). It is in
the “hard news story” reporting on immediate “spot” news events, the author argues,
that a “distinctive news style” is most likely to be found as other (sub)genres, such as the
feature article or opinion copy, typically allow more latitude in terms of writing style and
are also frequently produced by nonprofessional journalists. Referencing Labov and
Waletzky’s (1972) syntactic model of the (personal) narrative, Bell argues that the orga
nizing principle of the hard news story across media typically differs from that of the clas
sic narrative in the sense that newsworthiness takes precedence over chronology—while
“resolution” and “coda” are often absent (cf. Van Leeuwen, 2008). Building on Van Dijk’s
(1988) discourse analytical approach to news schemata, particularly the idea of news sto
ries’ “installment structure,” Bell adds that besides an “abstract” (lead plus headline) and
“attributions,” the hard news story proper consists of “episodes” featuring actors, actions
as well as indications of setting (time and place). More specific to television journalism, it
could be additionally noted that the “primacy of visualization” (Ekström, 2002), or show
ing rather than telling, and the promise of allowing audiences to vicariously eyewitness
and “see it happen”; its fragmentary narrative and illustrative mode of representation
(Corner, 1995, 1996); and its “transient” flow of images and messages and “standardized
pace of reception” (Ekström, 2002) all resonate particularly well with the event-centered
ness and immediacy values that define the news paradigm as outlined earlier. Although a
news story is thus focused and event-centered, it may contain references to a number of
related events, such as background (providing context in the form of immediate past
events or historical background), follow-up (or any action subsequent to the main action
of an event, i.e., consequences or reactions), and commentary (or the journalist’s or news
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actors’ observations on the action, from contextualization to expectations to evaluations),

which may have been or become full stories of their own (Ekström, 2002).
These categories of related events imply journalistic genres that stray from the event-cen
teredness and/or objectivity of the news paradigm. Interestingly, it seems that the mod
ern conception of news as an immediate form of public information exchange has reached
an apotheosis in the contemporary 24/7 news culture (Lewis & Cushion, 2009; Lewis,
Cushion, & Thomas, 2005; Rantanen, 2009) where news is “always on.” That is, through
rolling news bulletins, live news streams or blogs, news feeds, and “breaking news” cov
erage, among others, a continuous flow of up-to-date and instantaneous information is
created which both epitomizes and feeds into the so-called “thirst to be first” (Lewis &
Cushion, 2009; Lewis et al., 2005). At the same time, it could be argued that given shrink
ing news cycles and the sheer availability of news and information in a networked media
environment, the “newness” of the “news” has become less of a marker of distinction for
those professionally engaged in its production (Rantanen, 2009). This has provided an im
petus for traditional print and broadcast newsrooms as well as newcomers in the journal
istic field to invest in alternatives to the news paradigm. A notable example that is most
relevant for the present argument is the emergent philosophy and practice of “slow jour
nalism,” which subscribes to the value of transparency and transpires at the level of re
search (e.g., investigative and participatory approaches), storytelling (e.g., long-form, hy
brid), and news values (e.g., looking beyond and behind daily news cycles; Le Masurier,
2015). Additionally, and partly following from this, the boundaries between the news,
opinions, and new information generally have become increasingly porous, which, in com
bination with observations of a changing “emotional regime” and increased centrality of
“emotionality” in public life (Wahl-Jorgensen, 2019), further destabilizes the normative
modernist foundations of the news paradigm (Rantanen, 2009). Clearly, this has opened
up a space for the emergence or revitalization of nontraditional news genres, or “journal
istic others” (Örnebring & Jönsson, 2004), and the reassessment of what constitutes legit
imate news for whom, which heralds, some argue, a phase of “paradigm
reexamination” (Vos & Moore, 2018).
Beyond the “News Paradigm”

Indeed, as argued here, when approaching news as genre through the theoretical lenses
of family resemblance and prototype theory, the implication is, also, that peripherical
news forms exist whose membership status is rather ambiguous. Occupying the border
areas, variously, between “journalism-as-news reporting” and literature; facts and values;
objectivity and subjectivity; ratio and emotion; or information and entertainment, these
“journalistic others” or so-called “non-news genres” (Vestergaard, 2000) are insightful
“counterpoints” (Coward, 2013) shedding light on prototypical understandings of news.
Moreover, shifting priorities or transgressions related to these peripherical genres under
lie fundamental debates in the field (e.g., on popularization, hybridization, subjectivity,
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news bias), becoming ever more relevant as technological and societal evolutions reshape
contemporary journalism.
Even a cursory glance at a random newspaper or news website, the outline of a journal
ism practice textbook, television schedule, or press (photo) award categories, shows that
news encompasses more than reporting recent events in a detached, manner-of-fact style
according to the principles of the news paradigm. Illustrative here is the customary gen
eral distinction in professional and scholarly fields between the “Big Three” of news, edi
torials, and features (Wyatt & Badger, 1993, p. 3)—and their broadcast equivalents of the
news bulletin, newscast, or news report; commentary; and current affairs magazine or re
portage (Bell, 1991; Hill, 2007). Similarly, Bell (1991, pp. 13–14) identifies news as a
genre along opinion (editorials, letters to the editor, columns, reviews, commentaries)
within the editorial content of newspaper or broadcast news and further points out
“newsworkers’ basic distinction” between hard news and features (cf. hard/soft news).
The distinction is also apparent in Corner’s (1999) categories of the “information,” “view
point,” and “experiential” interview, or, for that matter, in broad classifications of press
photography into “spot” and “general” news, “photo-illustrations,” and “feature” (e.g.,
Kędra, 2016). Along the same lines, Broersma (2010), referencing Schudson (1978), dif
ferentiates between “news style,” comprising an “information” and a “story” model, and
“reflective style.” Each of these styles, understood as institutionalized, ideological “mark
ers of sociocultural context and group identity” (Broersma, 2010, p. 23; see also Barn
hurst & Nerone, 2002), is articulated by a particular set of genres (including e.g., news
reports or hard news stories [news-as-information]; profile interviews and human interest
[news-as-story]; and editorials and background [reflective]). Finally, the information and
storytelling models also return in Ekström’s (2000) mapping of the “communicative
modes” of television journalism and his related analysis of the epistemologies (Ekström,
2002) of the news report and investigative journalism. For Ekström (2000) distinguishes
between the intentions, role conceptions, and viewing modes of information (the “bulletin
board”), which emphasizes factual knowledge-seeking; storytelling (the “bedtime story”),
which focuses on experiential engagement and dramatic pleasures; and the growing area
of sensation and spectacle-driven attractions (the “circus performance”), which for exam
ple contains staged conflicts in talk shows and debate programs and current affairs mag
azines predicated on exposés and scandals.
Building on this, the remainder of this article elaborates some key developments and con
cepts in the journalistic field, which collectively grasp the dynamics of divergence and
convergence relentlessly propelling definitions and uses of news as genre in different di
rections.
The Interpretive Turn
In the light of this, a broad range of so-called interpretive forms of journalism have
steadily grown into prominence, both in public and professional discourse and in journal
istic practice. Accordingly, there is a growing body of (empirical) scholarship in the field
that substantiates a trend toward interpretive journalism, defined by Salgado and Ström
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bäck (2011) as a form “opposed to or going beyond descriptive, fact-focused and source-
driven journalism” (p. 154)—or related terms such as “new long journalism” (Barnhurst,
2003) and “contextual journalism” (Fink & Schudson, 2014). For instance, arguing that
“[i]f the conventional story is a well-cropped, tightly focused shot, the contextual story us
es a wide-angle lens” (Fink & Schudson, 2014, p. 8), a recent study found indications of a
steep decline of conventional news stories and a parallel increase of contextual reporting
on U.S. newspaper front pages throughout the second half of the previous century. As
these findings connect with analyses in related topical areas, applied across media types
and national contexts, it is concluded that this suggests broader developments in journal
istic role perceptions and newsroom cultures, big data resources and computer-assisted
reporting, as well as a heightened sense of complexity regarding social life generally
(Fink & Schudson, 2014; cf. Barnhurst & Mutz, 1997). As Pauly (2014) notes, indications
of journalistic movements questioning the objectivity norm and calling for a more respon
sible disposition in order to grasp contemporary societal developments could be traced
back to almost a century ago. Yet, it seems that the current combination of a cultural at
mosphere of a “reflexive modernity” where “social practices are constantly examined and
reformed” (Giddens, 1991, pp. 38–39), including self-reflection and the vibrant space of a
participatory, networked media landscape, have created a renewed context for an “inter
pretive turn” (Pauly, 2014) to manifest itself ever more expressively.
The idea of the journalist as a “maker of meaning” instead of a “mechanic of event

transmission” (Salgado & Strömbäck, 2011, p. 152; see also Barnhurst, 2003), providing
“views rather than news” (Broersma, 2010, p. 25), and the reflective-style journalistic
genres associated with this disposition, have been typically relegated to the background
by the objectivity-led and event-centered ethos of the news paradigm. However, such bi
nary oppositions seem hard to uphold in practice. For elements of context, interpretation,
and judgement occur quite commonly, and more or less subtly, outside of the designated
spaces for such “assessives” (Vestergaard, 2000), whether self-attributed by the journalist
or, in Van Leeuwens (2008) terms, through the “double structure” of news stories or re
ports containing attributed opinions. More fundamental, still, interpretation has been
considered as one of the five principles of design defining journalistic discourse (besides
news judgement, reporting, linguistic and narrative techniques; Adam, 1993); as a dis
tinct rhetorical faculty of journalistic practice following discovery and examination and
preceding the stages of style and presentation (Shapiro, 2010); or, noted earlier, as addi
tional categories contributing to the main event of a hard news story, comprising back
ground, follow-up, and commentary (Bell, 1991). Yet, while it is obviously worthwhile to
problematize naïve realistic claims to value-free reporting, and to restore, in a sense,
journalism as a meaning-making activity, measures of interpretation vary in kind and de
gree, as a genre approach helps to clarify.
Insightful in this regard is Wyatt and Badger’s (1993) mapping of journalistic genres
based on the textual composition and purpose of the classical rhetorical modes of descrip
tion, narration, exposition, argumentation, and criticism. Whereas description underlies
the genre of “‘straight,’ inverted pyramid descriptive news,” (p. 10) providing factual in
formation ordered by perceived importance, the three latter categories are set apart by
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their logics-based structure, which aims, respectively, to explain and heighten under
standing (exposition), to persuade (argumentation), or to offer evaluative assessments or
judgements of taste—appealing to affect rather than cognition (criticism) (Wyatt & Bad
ger, 1993). Interestingly, the authors further add a layer of subjective versus objective ori
entation to their conceptualization, which they argue should be rather thought of as em
phases extending a continuum which applies across the different journalistic genres iden
tified. In terms of interpretive journalism, this yields a more nuanced set of genres com
prising—along the lines of exposition, argumentation and criticism—the categories of
“news analyses” and “commentaries” (cf. current affairs reportages), “editorials” and
“personal polemics,” and “analytical” and “impressionistic” reviews (Wyatt & Badger,
1993, p. 10). Additionally, extending their working definition, Salgado and Strömbäck
(2011) derive a set of underlying textual indicators (e.g., various manifestations of jour
nalistic voice, use of value-laden terms) from a comprehensive literature review, which
enables a systematic analysis of measures of interpretation—or the extent to which jour
nalists assume responsibility for their assertions (Ekström, 2002)—occurring across jour
nalistic genres, whether labeled as interpretive journalism or not. In doing so, a more
fine-grained conceptual basis is provided for further investigations of the impact of the in
terpretive turn on the nature and quality of contemporary public discourse.
The Narrative Wave
Against the same contemporary background, and effectively overlapping with the broader
tenets of an “interpretive turn” (Pauly, 2014), current developments in the journalistic
field have also led up to the identification of a so-called new “wave” of narrative journal
ism (Jacobson, Marino, & Gutsche, 2016; Van Krieken & Sanders, 2017). For what charac
terizes narratives is their aim to deliver kinds of knowledge that are primarily experien
tial or existential rather than informational, explanatory, or argumentative (Broersma,
2010; Hill, 2007; Wahl-Jorgensen, 2019; Wyatt & Badger, 1993), which is indicated, for in
stance, by the aforementioned distinctions between aesthetic-expressive and politico-nor
mative (Baym, 2017), or information and story modes of discourse (Broersma, 2010; Ek
ström, 2000, 2002; Schudson, 1978). Along the lines of earlier waves of respectively New
Journalism and Gonzo Journalism, narrative journalism’s engagement with social reality
could be outward-objective versus inward-subjective oriented, or, alternatively, speak
from a position of epistemic authority versus hesitance (Pauly, 2014; Roberts & Giles,
2014; Wyatt & Badger, 1993). Relying on the structuring principle of plot or chronology
for composition (Wyatt & Badger, 1993) instead of either newsworthiness or logic, narra
tives differ from the discursive genres of the descriptive, matter-of-fact news report as
well as reflective-style opinionated content (Broersma, 2010). Further distinguishing the
narrative tradition is the use of storytelling techniques such as characterization, dramati
zation, dialogue, scene construction, and a vivid, detailed, “colourful” presentation
through “subjective descriptions, reflections, and assessments” (Steensen, 2009, p. 16;
see also Jacobson et al., 2016)—elements that could be considered as markers of a
“strategic ritual of emotionality” (Wahl-Jorgensen, 2019; cf. Tuchman, 1972).
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Analyzing the genre family of feature journalism, Steensen (2011) insightfully transposes
these ideas to a conceptual framework that aligns with Swales’ (1990) working definition
of genre. As such, feature journalism addresses the “social purpose” of “a publicly recog
nized need to be entertained and connected with other people on a mainly emotional level
by accounts of personal experiences that are related to contemporary events of perceived
public interest” (Steensen, 2011, p. 51). This takes shape through three constitutive dis
courses that materialize through a set of rhetorical devices corresponding with the tech
niques mentioned earlier: the discourse of “literary writing,” “intimacy” (subjectivity,
emotionality, immersion), and “adventure” (focus on human action and encounters). As
feature journalism is “remediated” online, a diversified, complex range of novel and ex
tant genres develops, which both adapt and transform the interplay between discourses
and manifest rhetorical devices (Steensen, 2009).
Part of the recently renewed interest in narrative, and interpretive, journalism indeed fol
lows from the interactive, hypertextual, and/or multimodal affordances of the digital era.
So, the immersive, linear narrative of the digital long-form, for instance, which integrates
traditional literary techniques and in-depth reporting with digital tools, could be seen as
an antidote to the Web’s native fragmentary hypertext format and immediate soundbite
information (Jacobson et al., 2016; Neveu, 2014). Another example is the podcast, which
breaks with the time-based linearity of radio and seems, therefore, amenable to narrow
casting and for extended content complementing live broadcasts (Starkey, 2016). Refer
ring to Coward’s (2013) analysis of the growing prominence of a “confessional” and “con
versational” style in contemporary journalistic writing, Lindgren (2016) argues that the
“intimate nature of the audio medium” makes it perfectly suited for a new genre of “per
sonal narrative journalism” (p. 24), in which the presenter-journalist becomes a character
in the story engaging in self-reflections and a simulated dialogue with the listener. By the
same token, the news blog can be understood as a new, “postmodern” journalistic genre
that challenges the high-modern approach encapsulated in the news paradigm by creat
ing more “conversational” and “decentralized” type of news (Wall, 2005, p. 157; see also
Garden, 2011).
Hard and Soft News

Operating as a kind of shorthand for much of the dynamic and tensions discussed here is
the twin notion of hard and soft news. Originating from professional practice, as noted in
Tuchman’s (1973) classical newsroom ethnography, the terminology provided an intuitive
way of organizing day-to-day workflows and resource allocation in the newsroom based,
primarily, on the perceived timeliness of the news. Yet, the distinction also carried over
tones of a “genre hierarchy” according to which “hard news concerns important matters
and soft news interesting matters” (Tuchman, 1973, p. 114), which translates into a dis
tinctive treatment of events. This dual understanding of news has since been widely
adopted as a key concept in journalism studies. Across different operationalizations, a
more or less consensual, yet admittedly broad picture emerges of the two categories.
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Thus hard news is typically conceived as covering newsworthy events within topical areas
related to the system-world of public affairs, (institutional) politics, and economy; report
ed with a sense of immediacy (cf. breaking news) in a detached, manner-of-fact style ac
cording to the inverted pyramid but also prompting additional explanation or interpreta
tion through analysis or commentary (Harrington, 2008; Reinemann, Stanyer, Scherr, &
Legnante, 2012; Sjøvaag, 2015; Tuchman, 1973); and, in so doing, providing the general
public with the information they need to be self-governing (Kovach & Rosenstiel, 2001)—
that is, addressing audiences as citizens and providing news that is in the public interest
or that the public needs to know (Franklin, 1997). Soft news, then, is defined in more en
compassing terms, still, as a counterpoint comprising items that are usually less time-
bound and that pertain to the everyday life-world and to matters of private or personal
concern, thus connecting with sports, lifestyle, (celebrity) culture, and other areas typi
cally considered to belong to the domain of entertainment or leisure; characterized by an
informal, personalized, emotional, and/or often visually oriented style, and as such ad
dressing audiences as consumers with news that interests the public or that the public
wants to know (Franklin, 1997; Harrington, 2008; Reinemann et al., 2012; Sjøvaag, 2015).
In this regard, Sjøvaag argues that soft news in fact harbors both “popular” and
“lifestyle” (or consumer/service) journalism as “two opposite ends of a scale” (p. 106).
While the former rather crudely denotes a “more extreme form” associated with simplifi
cation, sensationalism, and “little social responsibility,” the latter captures the guidance
and market-orientation of “news-you-can-use” (Sjøvaag, 2015, p. 106). Reinemann et al.
(2012) further conceptualize these operationalizations spanning traditional oppositions
between objectivity and subjectivity, ratio and emotion, and public and private, in a multi
dimensional (text-based) framework that distinguishes between the continua of topic (i.e.,
relative degrees of political relevance), focus (i.e., thematic vs. episodic, public vs. pri
vate), and style (i.e., [im]personal and/or [un]emotional treatment).
Scholarship on hard/soft news covers similar ground to that on the related, well-estab
lished terms of infotainment and tabloidization (Reinemann et al., 2012; see also Harring
ton, 2008; Hartley, 2001; Hill, 2007). Effectively demonstrating the discursive, normative
layer of genre categorization, public discourses have traditionally taken shape around a
set of value-laden binary oppositions that align soft news, tabloid, or infotainment with
the low-end poles of popular, emotion, private, or trivial and hard news with the high-end
poles of quality, ratio, public, or serious based on perceived social value and democratic
merit (Harrington, 2008). From the perspective of traditional, high-modern notions of
journalism as a public good, the proliferation of soft news under impulse of market-driven
imperatives and personalized media content is variously met by defensive positions or
derogatory discourses of a “narrative of decline” (Harrington, 2008, p. 267) or
“newszak” (Franklin, 1997). Such views, then, stand against (overly) optimistic or pop
ulist but also more nuanced, critically appreciative assessments of the empowerment po
tential of particular forms of popular journalism (Gans, 2009), renegotiating the meaning
of public relevance—the personal is political—and, indeed, journalism itself (Harrington,
2008; Hartley, 2001; Örnebring & Jönsson, 2004). Although the issues at stake clearly
pertain to different kinds of news media, television occupies a central position in the info
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tainment debate following the medium’s impact on traditional generic form of journalism.
For as television developed, journalism had to adapt to the exigencies of a primarily en
tertainment and image-oriented medium, characterized by a particularly rich and porous
generic environment (Carroll, 1985; Hartley, 2001). This need to reconcile divergent im
peratives not only informed the hard/soft news dynamic and the various kinds of news
emerging from it but it also spurred a range of hybrid genres traversing the fields of fac
tual television, drama and comedy (cf. infra), including so-called reality television, presen
ter-led magazines, or popular talk shows. Meanwhile, these transformations of journalis
tic form equally spilled over to competing news media, most notably the traditional press
(Broersma, 2010; cf. Barnhurst & Nerone, 2002).
It should be noted, though, that while the debate has indeed largely focused on the disso
lution of the boundaries between hard and soft news, other analyses have pointed at
countervailing forces. Quite apart from the fact that cross-fertilizations as such by no
means detract from the persistence of prototypical or ancestor categories, empirical stud
ies have demonstrated that the hard/soft news distinction and genre hierarchy do remain
significant as an organizing principle in contemporary newsrooms, and perhaps ever
more so in the light of multiplatform diversification strategies and prolific boundary work
in a digital media landscape (Boczkowski, 2009; Sjøvaag, 2015).
Beyond Genre Boundaries

It could be argued that like similarity and difference, and stability and change, the inter
action between text and context runs through genre theory and analysis as a central
theme. For one thing, genres are both textual and pragmatic categories, which do not ex
ist in isolation but in a dialogue with the larger sociocultural milieu and the affordances
of available media technologies (i.e., the extratextual). More fundamental, still, and the
focus here, genres emerge and evolve, are defined and legitimated, in a dialectic or sym
biotic relationship with other genre categories and exemplars (i.e., the intertextual). Addi
tionally, it is quite common if not typical for individual exemplars of the “integral dis
courses” of media and journalism (Broersma, 2010; Fairclough, 1995) to articulate multi
ple genres through cross-generic references or combinations. Such elements of impurity
or transgression by no means invalidate the concept of genre but, conversely, as Mittell
(2004) argues, “often foreground generic conventions even more than ‘core’ examples of
a genre, as often unstated generic assumptions rise to the surface through textual juxta
positions, production decisions, and reception controversies” (p. xii). In an era where vec
tors of convergence, reflexivity, and innovation have intensified, the inextricable link be
tween genre and forms and strategies of hybridity and intertextuality has therefore
grown into a key site of analysis and debate.
Intertextuality
Media scholarship on intertextuality, Ott and Walter (2000) point out, has tended toward
two conceptually divergent definitions of the term, one denoting an interpretive practice,
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relocating textual authority away from the author and to the reader, and the other, con
versely, referring to an intentional stylistic practice or textual strategy. The former, in
debted to the writings of amongst others Roland Barthes and Julia Kristeva, entails the
idea that “[t]o identify a text is to classify it as generically akin to some texts and not oth
ers, to read/write it through cultural codes and interpretive conventions learned from oth
er texts” (Ott & Walter, 2000, p. 432). In this regard, Neale’s (2000) notion of the “inter
textual relay” similarly draws out how audience expectations and interpretations take
shape, also, in interaction with extra-textual discourses of publicity, scheduling, cata
logues, and so on. At the same time, though, the concept links up with intertextuality’s in
flection of the intentional referencing of other texts (Ott & Walter, 2000). Such commu
nicative practices play up familiar generic codes and conventions, and audience expecta
tions, in various forms and with different rhetorical intents, ranging from “latent” to
“manifest” and relatively “benevolent” to “hostile” appropriations (Roscoe & Hight, 2001;
e.g., parody, satire, critical deconstruction; self-conscious styling and creative appropria
tion; Ott & Walter, 2000).
Of special interest here is the concept of “fake news,” a broad denominator for any type
of text that masquerades as generic news and “hides under a veneer of legitimacy as it
takes on some form of credibility by trying to appear like real news” (Tandoc, Lim, &
Ling, 2018, p. 147). As such, the term has been used differently to refer to genres such as
the news parody, which derives comic effect from the incongruency between the serious
ness of factual news discourse and a more or less ludicrous content, or the closely related
category of the news satire, where imitation and humor primarily serve forms of social or
political commentary and media critique (Hight, 2010; Roscoe & Hight, 2001; Tandoc et
al., 2018). Indeed, these reflexive genres (also) contribute to “metajournalistic
discourse” (Carlson, 2016) by targeting, implicitly or explicitly, generic assumptions and
claims (e.g., authoritativeness, truth, objectivity) as well as current developments affect
ing these—such as the softening of the news, an heightened sense of
“televisuality” (Caldwell, 1995; see also Friedman, 2002), or the hyping of breaking news
(Hight, 2010). In addition, fake news has also increasingly been used to designate less in
nocent forms of generic appropriation where the deception is more sustained and hidden,
whether informed by commercial or ideological considerations (Tandoc et al., 2018). No
table examples here are malevolent hoaxes and outright fabrications but also more con
ventional yet controversial practices like native advertising or clickbait, which have pro
liferated in the digital era. Such forms of fake news basically testify to how genre oper
ates at the intersection of text and context and distinctly draw out the value of approach
ing genre as a purposive communicative practice, which effectively enables to conceptual
ly “separate the spurious from the genuine” (Swales, 1990, p. 49).
Hybridity
Closely related to the idea of intertextuality is the concept of hybridity, which could be
succinctly defined as a “process of de-differentiation” (Baym, 2017, p. 2). Deriving from
the natural sciences, the term has been used figuratively in the humanities and everyday
discourse as a metaphor for the “heterogeneous” or “incongruent” (Chadwick, 2013, pp.
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8–9). Furthermore, in line with its Greek etymological origins, which suggest connota
tions of the “unusual” or “bizarre,” as “something that questions conventional under
standings and the accepted order” (Chadwick, 2013, p. 8), hybridity has invited conflict
ing views which discern its “increased vigor or capacity for growth” (Stross, 1999, p. 257)
or, conversely, its “degenerative” character as a “diluted version” of the original (Chad
wick, 2013, pp. 14–15). Clearly, assessments of processes of hybridization align with the
dynamics of paradigm reexamination outlined earlier, including “power struggles and
competition for preeminence during periods of unusual transition, contingency, and
negotiability” (Chadwick, 2013, p. 15).
This is particularly relevant against the present backdrop of what Chadwick (2013) de
fines as the “hybrid media system,” which is “built upon the interaction among older and
newer media logics” (p. 4) and where once separated textual and discursive repertoires
blend. Following up on this, Baym (2017) conceptualizes hybridity as a “multi-tiered” phe
nomenon operating at the “mutually informing levels” (p. 2) of “text,” “institution,” and
“discourse” understood as a “verbal-conceptual” communicative pattern (p. 3). For, so it
is argued, “textual hybridity is both constituent and constitutive of wider systemic
hybridity” (Baym, 2017, p. 2, emphasis in original), which together, in turn, relate to the
increasingly porous, foundational categories of politico-normative and aesthetic-expres
sive discourse mentioned earlier. Similar to developments in interpretive and narrative
journalism, these hybrid configurations have urged scholars to look beyond binary opposi
tions—either/or—toward cross-generic interactions—both/and—to assess “news-
ness” (Edgerly, 2017) and journalistic value (Mast, Coesemans, & Temmerman, 2017).
Whereas a growing body of literature on native advertising (Carlson, 2016) pertains to

(further) transgressions in the border area between the consumer/service variant of soft
news and advertising, another research focus concerns the merits and limitations of
cross-generic forms of popular journalism that mix elements of hard and soft news (Sjø
vaag, 2015; cf. earlier discussion). The proliferation and public impact of instances of this
so-called “new news,” Harrington (2008) argues, indicate “that news and the news (the
genre) are two very distinct entities” (p. 278, emphasis in original). That is, rather than
who is providing news, or (to some extent at least) how, the question “what information”
and “for what purpose”—ends instead of means—should guide the assessment of these
popular hybrids as cases either of degeneration or vigorous renewal (Harrington, 2008, p.
279; cf. Gans, 2009). In similar terms, Baym (2017) points out that in the “hybrid condi
tion,” traditional conceptions of news and journalism no longer seem to hold, so that
“(w)e must look instead, toward the work that journalism does—toward that which jour
nalism, or . . . the journalistic, achieves” (p. 4, emphasis in original).
So, the case of scripted yet realistic public affairs long-form drama, for example, per
forms “culturally evocative” (Baym, 2017, p. 5) and aesthetically pleasing narratives that
orient audiences toward the texture and everyday realities of the lifeworld while connect
ing to the system world of administrative power (p. 13). Such “journalism as orientation”
emerges as a valuable form of civic discourse that may be more effective in engaging con
temporary audiences with matters of public interest than traditional informational news
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genres (Baym, 2017, pp. 3–4). Similar lines of thought are evident in analyses of the news
satire, which is also referred to as fake news because of its detachment from or opposi
tion to conventional news shows (Baym, 2009; Tandoc et al., 2018). In terms of the afore
mentioned three-tiered approach to hybridity, news satire is indeed unbound to main
stream news institution’s routines of editorial control, immediacy, and elite sourcing,
dealing with current events and aggregating news media content but using a delivery
style that intermingles an appeal to logic and critical argumentation with irony, satire, or
a playful tenor. Through its “carnivalesque” and “dialogic” approach (Druick, 2009, cf.
Bakhtin), the news satire is not simply, or primarily, a source of information but (also) a
“rhetorical resource” (Baym, 2009, p. 381), which poignantly “reminds us that entertain
ment is a doubly articulated concept,” meaning both “to amuse and to give pleasure and
to engage with and to consider” (Baym, 2009, p. 382, emphases in original).
Conclusion
In line with journalism studies’ multidisciplinary constellation, a multiperspectival view
on genre provides a rich, dialogic site where scholars adopting different approaches
could meet around the heterogeneous subject of what news is, could be, or should be.
Providing an entry point, as a kind of barometer, into broader sociocultural belief systems
and community identities; into the affordances of new technologies and the communica
tive forms enabled by them; and into the discursive struggles surrounding the legitimacy
and civic values of journalism and news, and, relatedly, at a deeper level still, normative
political and epistemological philosophies, an integrated, text and process-based notion of
genre seems to become ever more relevant for journalism scholars in an era variously
characterized by innovation and experimentation, reexamination and reflexivity, hybridity
and intertextuality.
Moreover, the concept of genre elaborated here also resonates quite well with other basic
premises of the field of journalism studies as described by Carlson, Robinson, Lewis, and
Berkowitz (2018), including—most notably for the present argument—a “contextual sensi
tivity,” “holistic relationality,” and “normative awareness.” In this regard, analyzing news
as genre should further invest in the multimodal qualities of genres; the pragmatics of
genres as systems of orientation and expectation in day-to-day news production and
users’ media diets; as well as cross-cultural comparisons of journalistic communities and
their preferred genres, in order to stay attuned to the exigencies of the contemporary
news media landscape and cultural Zeitgeist. As scholars, practitioners, and audiences
alike engage in “genre work” negotiating modes and modalities of “factuality” (Hill, 2007)
and “news-ness” (Edgerly, 2017), long-time categories are both invoked and interrogated,
boundaries both reaffirmed and redrawn. Like journalism generally, then, understandings
and uses of news as genre are characterized by coexisting and conflicting tendencies of
change and continuation. The entanglement of this “trans-genre” dynamic (Van Bauwel &
Carpentier, 2012) with the normative foundations of journalism proper, render genre into
a highly valuable, and indeed, critical concept in journalism scholarship.
Page 20 of 27

News as Genre
Further Reading
Barnhurst, K. G., & Nerone, J. (2002). The form of news: A history. New York, NY: Guilford
Press.
Baym, G. (2009). Real news/fake news: Beyond the news/entertainment divide. In S. Allan
(Ed.), The Routledge companion to news and journalism (pp. 374–383). New York, NY:
Routledge.
Bell, A. (1991). The language of news media. Oxford, U.K.: Blackwell.
Broersma, M. (2010). Journalism as performative discourse: The importance of form and

style in journalism. In V. Rupar (Ed.), Journalism and meaning-making: Reading the news
paper (pp. 15–35). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.
Høyer, S., & Pöttker, H. (2005). Diffusion of the news paradigm 1850–2000. Göteborg,
Germany: Nordicom.
Mast, J., Coesemans, R., & Temmerman, M. (2017). Hybridity and the news: Blending
genres and interaction patterns in new forms of journalism. Journalism, 18(1), 3–10.
Swales, J. (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge,
U.K.: Cambridge University Press.
Van Leeuwen, T. (2008). News genres. In R. Wodak & V. Koller (Eds.), Handbook of com
munication in the public sphere (pp. 345–362). Berlin, Germany: Mouton de Gruyter.
Vestergaard, T. (2000). That’s not news: Persuasive and expository genres in the press. In
A. Trosborg (Ed.), Analysing professional genres (pp. 97–120). Amsterdam, The Nether
lands: John Benjamins.
Wyatt, R. O., & Badger, D. P. (1993). A new typology for journalism and mass communica
tion writing. The Journalism Educator, 48(1), 3–11.
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Summary and Keywords

The term “genre,” typically understood as a conventional categorization of recognizable

Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 31 January 2020

The Multidimensional Nature of Genre

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A Genre Approach to News/Journalism

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Toward a Working Definition of “News as

A genre comprises a class of communicative events the members of which share

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Journalistic Genres, Communities, and Ideologies

Journalistic Genres as Intermediate Entities

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So an image emerges of journalistic genres as socially embedded, purposive groupings of

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Families and Prototypes of Journalistic Genres

The News Paradigm

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The News Interview

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News and/as the Inverted Pyramid

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actors’ observations on the action, from contextualization to expectations to evaluations),

Beyond the “News Paradigm”

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The Interpretive Turn

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The idea of the journalist as a “maker of meaning” instead of a “mechanic of event

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The Narrative Wave

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Hard and Soft News

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Beyond Genre Boundaries

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Whereas a growing body of literature on native advertising (Carlson, 2016) pertains to

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Bell, A. (1991). The language of news media. Oxford, U.K.: Blackwell.

Broersma, M. (2010). Journalism as performative discourse: The importance of form and

Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 31 January 2020

Bell, A. (1991). The language of news media. Oxford, U.K.: Blackwell.

Broersma, M. (2008). The discursive strategy of a subversive genre: The introduction of

Broersma, M. (2010). Journalism as performative discourse: The importance of form and

Caldwell, J. (1995). Televisuality. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Carlson, M. (2016). Metajournalistic discourse and the meanings of journalism: Defini­

Cobley, P. (2008). Genre. In W. Donsbach (Ed.), The international encyclopedia of commu­

Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 31 January 2020

Coward, R. (2013). Speaking personally. Houndsmills, U.K.: Palgrave Macmillan.

Ekström, M. (2000). Information, storytelling and attractions: TV journalism in three

Ekström, M. (2002). Epistemologies of TV journalism: A theoretical framework. Journal­

Fairclough, N. (1995). Media discourse. London, U.K.: Arnold.

Franklin, B. (1997). Newszak and news media. London, U.K.: Arnold.

Garden, M. (2011). Defining blog: A fool’s errand or a necessary undertaking. Journalism,

Carlson, M. (2016). Metajournalistic discourse and the meanings of journalism: Defini

Cobley, P. (2008). Genre. In W. Donsbach (Ed.), The international encyclopedia of commu

Ekström, M. (2002). Epistemologies of TV journalism: A theoretical framework. Journal

Hanitzsch, T. (2007). Deconstructing journalism culture: Toward a universal theory. Com

Kędra, J. (2016). Enhancing visual literacy through interpretation of photo-genres: To

Montgomery, M. (2010). The broadcast news interview: Questions of discourse. In S. Al

Zelizer, B. (1993). Journalists as interpretive communities. Critical Studies in Media Com