Crafting Newsworthiness in the Intersection of “Business” and “Journalism”: The Role of Context and Identity in Nascent Economic News Practice in Sweden

Abstract

In this article, I explore how economic information was turned into newsworthy content in Sweden during the 1960s and 1970s. Professional norms and identities of “business journalists” were during the 1960s yet to be developed, and there were concerns raised whether issues about the corporate world and the economy were suitable to turn into journalistic news content at all. Conceptualizing newsworthiness as a logic of appropriateness, the analysis focuses on the roles that professional norms and identities played in forming nascent economic news practice. The empirical findings show that there was not one way—or one place—that this newsworthiness was constructed. Instead, nascent economic news was produced in two highly separated organizational settings: one rooted in the journalistic world and one in the business world. Depending on the context, significantly different methods and ideas guided the nascent work of creating newsworthiness for economic information.