Managing Journalistic Innovation and Source Security in the Age of the Weaponized Internet

Journalism scholarship has for the last two decades grappled with a paradox: while the industry spent years mired in gloomy proclamations of falling ad revenue, shrinking newsrooms, and the death of local reporting, since the late 2000s the industry has also been caught up in a wave of jubilance about technology and innovation. After a tour through academic theories on innovation through organizations and industries, we adopt the models of Social Construction of Technology and Institutional Isomorphism. With these frameworks in hand, we then introduce two empirical case studies on the adoption of novel technologies, specifically, privacy- and security-enhancing tools. Through these case studies we explain the puzzling paradox in the shift from stasis to change in the news industry, and show that innovation is neither an imposing, inexorable force of nature demanding compliance nor a sweeping wave of future-oriented effervescence. Rather, innovative tools and practices are interpreted and implemented against a backdrop of social, environmental and structural parameters. We close with recommendations for how managers can implement innovation in their own newsrooms, in particular through hiring practices, and hiring from diverse backgrounds but taking care to hire key “brokers” who have experience across backgrounds and can do critical translation work between groups.