Desk Reject?: How Computational Journalists Reconceptualized Newsroom “Office Space” for the Data Age
摘要
If asked to envision a newsroom, the image of a journalist toiling at their desk might be one of the first pictures in your mind. These tables, of course, store the tools of journalistic practice—like computers, cell phones, recorders, reporter’s notebooks and documents—as well as the messy array of ephemera that journalists collect across their newsroom tenure. To reporters, a desk represents far more than office furniture, though. Within newsrooms, desks are creative workspaces where colleagues are consulted, relationships are fostered, and stories are imagined. Desks, which physically separate the labour of editors and reporters, are also visual landmarks within newsrooms that can indicate how power is structured and distributed. In short, desks are integral to making the news. But in the past decade, the form and function of newsroom buildings, and the desks within them, have dramatically shifted. More specifically, desks have been reconstituted in the post-pandemic world as workspaces that exist beyond the newsroom. As remote and hybrid work cultures solidify, this chapter asks: what happens when newsroom desks are no longer the primary place where newswork happens?