Media and Communication (ISSN: 2183–2439)
2018, Volume 6, Issue 4, Pages 79–90
DOI: 10.17645/mac.v6i4.1465
Article
Hybrid Engagement: Discourses and Scenarios of
Entrepreneurial Journalism
Juho Ruotsalainen 1,* and Mikko Villi 2
1 Finland Futures Research Centre, University of Turku, 00130 Helsinki, Finland; E-Mail: juho.ruotsalainen@utu.fi
2 Department of Language and Communication Studies, University of Jyväskylä, 40014 Jyväskylä, Finland;
E-Mail: mikko.villi@jyu.fi
* Corresponding author
Submitted: 7 March 2018 | Accepted: 24 May 2018 | Published: 8 November 2018
Abstract
Although the challenge posed by social media and the participatory turn concerns culture and values at the very heart
of journalism, journalists have been reluctant to adopt participatory values and practices. To encourage audience partic-
ipation and to offer journalism that is both trustworthy and engaging, journalists of the future may embrace a hybrid
practice of journalistic objectivity and audience-centred dialogue. As innovative and experimental actors, entrepreneurial
journalism outlets can perform as forerunners of such a culture. By analysing discourses in the “About Us” pages of 41 en-
trepreneurial journalism outlets, the article examines the emerging journalistic ethos of entrepreneurial journalism and its
participatory tendencies. The results show a conception of journalism that is a hybrid of the journalistic ideals of dialogue
and objectivity. This kind of hybrid journalism and adjacent “hybrid engagement” can offer an answer to the dual challenge
of how to make journalism more participation-friendly while at the same time hold on to the defining values and criteria
of journalism. Drawing from futures research, the article concludes by sketching four scenarios of how entrepreneurial
journalism and participatory hybrid engagement may develop in the future.
Keywords
affect; discourse analysis; entrepreneurial journalism; futures research; future of journalism; hybrid journalism;
participatory journalism; scenarios
Issue
This article is part of the issue “News and Participation through andbeyondProprietary Platforms in anAge of SocialMedia”,
edited by Oscar Westlund (Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway) and Mats Ekström (University of Gothenburg, Sweden).
© 2018 by the authors; licensee Cogitatio (Lisbon, Portugal). This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribu-
tion 4.0 International License (CC BY).
1. Introduction
From the beginning of themillenniummedia and journal-
ism have increasingly been characterised by a participa-
tory turn. Audiences have in various ways taken a cen-
tral stage, by both contributing to the production and
distribution of journalism and shaping its cultural land-
scape (Gillmor, 2004; Villi, 2012). Journalists have often
been reluctant to embrace the turn as the new audience-
centred ideals “do not mesh well with the traditional
journalistic culture” (Graham, 2013, p. 116). In the net-
worked era of social platforms, “intimate” mobile tech-
nology and increasingly affective and participatory forms
of communication, journalism faces a dual challenge:
how to increase audience engagement―broadly defined
as a personal connection the audiences have with the
news—and participation, while preserving the core cri-
teria and values that define journalism (Beckett & Deuze,
2016). A common argument is that journalism needs to
connect with citizens’ lives and identities better than be-
fore (Ha et al., 2018; Swart, Peters, & Broersma, 2017).
While participatory journalism is often defined as
news content produced by non-professionals (Wall,
2015), this article addresses participatory journalism
Media and Communication, 2018, Volume 6, Issue 4, Pages 79–90 79
more broadly, in terms of emerging journalistic culture,
values and actors. The conceptual framework of the ar-
ticle consists of entrepreneurial journalism and hybrid
journalism. We define entrepreneurial journalism as one
that 1) is produced by new media outlets established
by journalists themselves, 2) reflects the personalities,
goals and visions of the founders, 3) seeks to renew jour-
nalism by addressing new niches, exploring new styles
and formats, and building a new relationship with the au-
diences, and 4) pursues a sustainable business based on
these attributes.
Entrepreneurial journalists pioneer hybrid journal-
ism (see Wagemans, Witschge, & Harbers, 2018), which
merges the dialogical and objective traditions of journal-
ism (Soffer, 2009) and is manifested in such “hybrid” gen-
res as participatory journalism. Hybrid journalism offers
one solution to the potentially contradicting ideals of en-
gagement and objectivity. It arguably suits social media
platforms with their conversational and affective regis-
ters better than the traditional, detached type of journal-
ism, and potentiallymakes journalismmore attractive for
audience participation.
Hybrid journalism can invoke hybrid engagement,
which appeals to both rational and affective sentiments
in the audience. In the same way as hybrid journalism
mixes objective-rational and dialogical-affective aspects
in reporting, the invoked hybrid engagement mixes ratio-
nal and affective aspects of engagement (Kormelink &
Meijer, 2015) in a balanced way. Rational engagement is
used here to refer to factual information and the feeling
of trust it invokes (Newman, Fletcher, Kalogeropoulos,
Levy, & Nielsen, 2017), and affective engagement refers
to a personal, emotional connection with news content.
Content produced by newmedia players are often af-
fective and seek to engage the user on a personal level
(Papacharissi, 2015), which questions traditional norma-
tive claims of what journalism should be like and how
it should address and appeal to its audiences. Accord-
ing to Singer (2017a, p. 131), entrepreneurial journalists
“revisit what often are deeply held views about what
journalism is, should be and might become”. Such dis-
senting approaches place entrepreneurial journalists in
a good position to pioneer possible futures of journal-
ism (Ruotsalainen, in press). Participatory and interactive
audience relationships are often built-in as a part of en-
trepreneurial journalism, as entrepreneurs have to know
their customers and their needs very closely (Siapera &
Papadopoulou, 2016).
According to Singer (2017b), entrepreneurial
journalists—their conceptions about journalism as well
as the actual journalism they produce—have been stud-
ied relatively little. Thus, this article makes a needed
contribution to the discussion on what constitutes the
ideas, approaches and values of entrepreneurial journal-
ism. Furthermore, entrepreneurial journalism is studied
in relation to hybrid journalism, clarifying what hybrid
news journalism could be like in practice and how it
may evolve in the future. The main research question
in the article concentrates on examining how the ethos
of entrepreneurial journalism reflects hybrid journalism,
hybrid engagement, and a more participation-oriented
journalistic culture.
The article analyses discourses in the 41 “About us”
pages of entrepreneurial journalism outlets from North
America and Europe. Building on the analysis, the article
constructs four scenario sketches for the development
of entrepreneurial and hybrid journalism. The scenario
sketches are not predictions, as the probability of any
scenario ever being realized accurately is low (Gordon
& Glenn, 2018). Their purpose, instead, is to open up
the space of alternative possibilities in the development
of entrepreneurial journalism. While Vos and Singer
(2016) have analysed discourses of entrepreneurial jour-
nalism in trade and popular press, this article analyses
the discourses used by entrepreneurial journalism out-
lets themselves.
The next section addresses and elaborates on the
trend towards hybridity in journalism, analyses some
future-shaping trends related to audience engagement,
and presents entrepreneurial journalists as pioneers of
hybrid journalism. A short review on entrepreneurial
journalism is offered in section 3. Section 4 presents the
results from the analysis of the “About us” pages. The
results are elaborated as scenario sketches in section 5,
and in the conclusions, the idea of hybrid engagement is
reflected upon for each scenario.
2. The Hybridization of Journalism
The media systems of western democracies have be-
come hybrids of traditional and social media: content
on online platforms is collectively produced and shared
by journalists, citizens, bloggers, and activists (Chad-
wick, 2013). As journalism is increasingly distributed on
these platforms, the question of how to combine pub-
lic with personal communication in journalism becomes
pivotal—news needs to become more engaging than be-
fore. In this article, engagement is defined as affectual,
personal and social experiences the audience has with
a publication and its contents (Mersey, Malthouse, &
Calder, 2010).
In such a hybrid system, the rationality of traditional
media and the affectuality of social media are blended
(Laaksonen, 2017)—in effect, “dichotomies such as pub-
lic/private, entertainment/politics, work/leisure become
blended, and personal and political become intertwined”
(Laaksonen, 2017, p. 12). Affect refers to both subjec-
tively experienced emotion and intersubjective experi-
ences (Papacharissi, 2015). As embodied social mean-
ings, affects constitute a shared life-world that “makes
sense” and is experienced asmeaningful (Langlois, 2014).
A shared life-world between a media outlet and its audi-
ence is a crucial prerequisite for audience engagement
and participation. In the hybrid media ecology of affec-
tive news streams, audiences need to find news con-
tent as personally meaningful if they are to consume,
Media and Communication, 2018, Volume 6, Issue 4, Pages 79–90 80
share, and comment on it (Papacharissi, 2015), and so
journalism has to find new, affective ways of reporting
and connecting with the audiences’ identities if it is to
stay relevant.
Hybridity reflects a broader socio-political environ-
ment in which matters of personal interest related to
identity are emphasised in public life—i.e., “identity poli-
tics” (Lilla, 2017). Although identity politics cannot be al-
together reduced to social media, the heightened role of
identity is a structural feature of the current media ecol-
ogy. Van Dijck and Poell (2013) describe a social media
logic that in different ways intensifies and interacts with
users’ (networked) identities. A person’s identity and per-
sonal relevance have become core filter mechanisms in
news consumption (Eveland & Dunwoody, 2002), and so-
cial media also steer political action to identity-driven
strategies as they “enable personalized public engage-
ment” (Bennett& Segerberg, 2012, p. 739). Furthermore,
Western societies have for decades already been exhibit-
ing postmaterialist values of intellectual, aesthetic, self-
expressive, and humanitarian pursuits (Inglehart, 1977).
In a post-materialistworld, citizens’ identities are increas-
ingly constructed in networked communication instead
of economic production (Lash, 1994).
Some other trends, too, hint at new directions for en-
gagement. On social media, audience trust is often de-
termined by who shares the content to them, instead
of the news organisation that produced the content
(The Media Insight Project, 2017), steering power away
from news organisations to audience communities (Villi
& Jung, 2015). Moreover, growth in online audience rev-
enue is compensating for the decrease in advertising rev-
enue (WAN-IFRA, 2017). New payment models are of-
ten membership-like (Newman et al., 2017), implying
a closer relationship between news organisations and
their audiences. Finally, “old-fashioned” reporting still
engages audiences. In theUSA,manyof the legacymedia,
such as theWashington Post and theWall Street Journal,
have recently grown their subscription base especially
among young consumers (Schwartz, 2017).
These trends imply that an audience-first develop-
ment of affect, identity, and emotion is emerging as
news consumption is shifting to online—while, at the
same time, traditional reporting is still regarded as valu-
able. A key question for the future of journalism is, then,
how journalism can re-establish a connection with its
audience while also preserving its own autonomy. Ben-
ton (2017) believes that in order to recreate their rela-
tionship with the audiences, news organisations need to
offer a feeling of community and personal connection
with them, as well as producing trustworthy, high-quality
journalism—in other words: hybrid journalism, arguably
enticing rich hybrid engagement.
However, the concept of hybridity can be criticised
as being too vague and general. Witschge, Anderson,
Domingo and Hermida (2018, p. 2) criticise hybridity as a
catch-all term and a shortcut to “denote everything that
is complex as hybrid”. They call for next steps in the study
of hybridity to “not only name but also describe and
theorize the complexity of the field” (p. 4). Importantly,
the implications of hybridity remain under-explored in
the field of journalism studies (Baym, 2017, p. 11), and
research on hybrid journalism tends to focus on soft-
news genres (cf. Bødker, 2017; Hamilton, 2016) such as
celebrity journalism (Bulck, Paulussen, & Bels, 2017).
Baym (2017) contributes to the study of hybrid jour-
nalism by dividing the concept into three interlinked lev-
els: systemic, discursive, and textual. Systemic hybridity
refers to the melding of technological affordances, eco-
nomic agendas, and structures of media production and
distribution. Discursive hybridity refers to the blending
of journalistic discourses or “linguistic consciousnesses”.
Textual hybridity describes the blending of genres, forms,
and styles. In fact, all new journalistic genres, such as
participatory journalism, can be defined as hybrid as
they mix different elements in a non-binary way (see
Witschge et al., 2018).
Through these three levels hybridity can be seen as
a future-oriented concept: by adding new segments on
top of traditional journalistic values and attributes, dif-
ferent manifestations of hybridity open new paths for
the development of journalism (see Wagemans et al.,
2018). In order to analyse hybridity in the values of
journalists in a more focused way, this article concen-
trates on discursive hybridity and defines it as the blend-
ing of two constitutive journalistic notions—objectivity
and dialogue—which have traditionally been thought of
as competing and incompatible (Soffer, 2009). Accord-
ing to Soffer (2009), objective journalism observes, gath-
ers information, and objectifies social phenomena while
maintaining an external position and avoiding dialogical
relationships. Dialogical journalism, in turn, presents a
polyphony of views instead of an authoritative mono-
logue, encourages different interpretations instead of a
unified, singlemessage, and draws on the subjective, per-
sonal styles of individual reporters. The goal of dialogical
journalism is to inspire public discourse and political com-
munal life as opposed to simply conveying neutral infor-
mation to citizens (Carey, 1989).
It may be that in the future participatory approaches
steer journalism in the direction of the hybridity of ob-
jectivity and dialogue. Beckett and Deuze (2016) call this
kind of a new journalistic ideal “affective objectivity”, pi-
oneered by the global journalism startup scene: while
retaining its criticality and independence, journalism of
affective objectivity advocates more engaged, involved,
and emotional approaches. The concept of affective ob-
jectivity is close to the concept of hybrid engagement
outlined in this article.
3. Entrepreneurial Journalists as Change Agents
Entrepreneurial journalism is growing globally
(Mathisen, 2017), and is one of the trends shaping
the future of journalism (Wagemans et al., 2018). En-
trepreneurial journalists are those who have established
Media and Communication, 2018, Volume 6, Issue 4, Pages 79–90 81
their own business, and who not only produce journal-
ism but have a total control over running the enter-
prise. Casero-Ripollés, Izquierdo-Castillo and Doménech-
Fabregat (2016) describe entrepreneurial journalism as
having three characteristics: it 1) is produced by small-
scale media organisations, or cooperatives, of individ-
ual initiatives, 2) involves the creation of a business of
one’s own—seeking new (business) opportunities and
journalistic niches, and 3) encourages people to see the
journalist as an entrepreneur, “tearing down the wall
that traditionally separated the creation of content from
business” (p. 288). The third characteristic also involves
new forms of news production, such as the craft produc-
tion model of journalism that reflects the personality
and skills of the entrepreneur (Picard, 2014).
Casero-Ripollés et al. (2016, p. 288) describe in-
novation and creativity as the core qualities of en-
trepreneurial journalists, “venturing into new territory
and topics, and incorporating new techniques”. Assum-
ing control over the production, entrepreneurial jour-
nalists can steer their journalism in directions they find
interesting, innovative, and worth exploring (Carlson &
Usher, 2016). Free of the path dependencies of tradi-
tional newsrooms, new players in the field can chal-
lenge established norms and routines and create new
journalistic cultures and practices (see Tandoc & Jenkins,
2018). Entrepreneurial journalists, and especially cooper-
ative enterprises, also seek to establish close and collab-
orative relationships with their audiences, bridging the
gap between media outlets and citizens (Siapera & Pa-
padopoulou, 2016).
More loose and inclusive descriptions emphasise an
orientation of change as defining entrepreneurial jour-
nalism (Compaine & Hoag, 2012). Some authors even
count freelancers as entrepreneurial journalists (De Cock
& de Smaele, 2016; Holton, 2016) because of their
“entrepreneurial soul” (Mathisen, 2017, p. 919). Along
these lines, Schultz and Jones (2017, p. 12) emphasise
“discovery and exploitation of opportunities” as defin-
ing entrepreneurial journalism, accentuating that en-
trepreneurial journalism does not concern only nascent
and small enterprises but businesses of all sizes.
The above review is in line with what Singer (2017a)
points out: the concept of entrepreneurial journalism
is blurry, more a label than an identifiable practice. Ac-
cording to Vos and Singer (2016, p. 150), entrepreneurial
journalism is “as likely…described in terms of an ‘en-
trepreneurial spirit’ as…a specific practice or set of prac-
tices”. Perhaps a criterion that is neither too exclusive nor
too inclusive is the following: entrepreneurial journalism
involves the discovery of new opportunities and the con-
struction of a business around them. Legacy media can
also find and exploit new opportunities, but their busi-
ness is not dependent on them. Although large, estab-
lished digital media outlets such as Buzzfeed or Vox are
not strictly entrepreneurial as they are no more exten-
sions of their founders or owned solely by them, their
business is based on one defining idea—focusing exclu-
sively on explanatory journalism in the case of Vox, or
trying to make news viral in the case of Buzzfeed.
Finally, it must be emphasised that entrepreneurial
journalism is not about ditching the traditions of journal-
ism. New media outlets often uphold the core values of
journalism (Tandoc & Jenkins, 2018; Usher, 2017; Wage-
mans et al., 2018). For instance, the Dutch startup De
Correspondent is a hybrid of objective reporting and jour-
nalists’ mediating subjectivity (Harbers, 2016). In a simi-
lar way, Buzzfeed produces rather traditional journalism
but emphasises the importance of social and identity-
related issues that are of interest to its audiences, as
well as drawing on the knowledge of citizen sources (Tan-
doc, 2018).
4. We the Explorers—Discourses of Entrepreneurial
Journalism
4.1. Data and Method
The data for the article is collected from the “About Us”
pages of 41 entrepreneurial journalism outlets mainly
from the U.S., with individual outlets from Canada, Cuba,
Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Scotland,
Spain and Sweden (see Appendix). The U.S. outlets were
chosen from a list of major digital media organisations
collected by Pew Research Institute (Jurkowitz, 2014).
The list was complemented with smaller entrepreneurial
outlets both inside and outside the U.S. The sampling
was continued until a sufficiently diverse sample of out-
lets was covered. Data saturation was reached as all col-
lected data fit in the identified discourses and did not
reveal uncovered aspects in them. Perhaps surprisingly,
no country or region-specific differences were identified,
except for a brief mention about the fight against censor-
ship in the Cuban case. The U.S. pages were collected in
spring 2015 for the purposes of another research project
(Ruotsalainen, 2016) and the rest in autumn 2017. The
non-English pages were translated into English.
Because the purpose of this article is to add to the
understanding of the emerging ethos of entrepreneurial
journalism, a broad definition of entrepreneurial jour-
nalism (Singer, 2017b) was assumed in the collection of
the data. The selected outlets include a broad spectrum
of large and small entrepreneurial media organisations:
startups, non-profits, established outlets and newcom-
ers. For the same reasons, the definition of journalism
was kept relatively wide. While most of the organisa-
tions in the data are journalistic, there are some, such
as the science publication Aeon or the technology site
TechCrunch, which do not publish “news” but, rather,
topical articles with a niche interest.
On the “About Us” pages the new digital media out-
lets describe their journalism, values and visions, thereby
opening vistas to possible futures of journalism (Carlson
& Usher, 2016). To reveal the shared meanings in the
texts, the datawas analysed using discourse analysis. Dis-
course refers to a socially designated and shared way of
Media and Communication, 2018, Volume 6, Issue 4, Pages 79–90 82
thinking expressed through language. Discourses are so-
cial boundaries around what can be said about a topic,
and how. This way they both limit and enable how a phe-
nomenon or issue can be presented. (Fairclough, 2003.)
New, emerging discourses create new social reality and
can be used to anticipate emerging social futures (Inay-
atullah, 1998).
The analysis was initiated by coding different themes
found in the data. The actual discourse analysis was con-
ducted by analysing how these themes are represented
in the data. Four discourseswere identified and analysed:
identity, niche, network, and change discourse. A rather
strong discourse of traditional journalism was also iden-
tified. This discourse consists of such features and val-
ues as factuality, public service and impartiality. Because
these features are well-known, the discourse of tradi-
tional journalism will not be presented in more detail in
this article. The discourse is, however, pivotal as it sup-
ports the hypothesis of this article—that the conception
of journalism among entrepreneurial journalists is a hy-
brid of the traditions of objectivity and dialogue.
4.2. Media Outlets as Persons—The Identity Discourse
In the identity discourse the media signify themselves as
human-like individuals with their own identity and per-
sonality. This is done in five ways. First, the media as-
cribe themselves different characteristics and describe
their “emotions”. Politico, for instance, is “proud” and
it has “passion”, Zetland has written journalism as its
“original passion”, and Quartz is “nerdy” and defined by
its “obsessions”. Second, the media describe themselves
as value-driven and ethical—how they believe in what
they are doing. Investigative Reporting Project Italy, for
instance, “believes journalism should be a watchdog of
democracy” and Krautreporter describes its “principles”.
Twelve of the media write how “dedicated” and “com-
mitted” they are to their journalism, connoting they care
about their journalism on a “personal” level. Third, the
media construct identities by identifying with their au-
dience. Mic for instance writes how its editors and writ-
ers share attributes with its readers, and The Ferret seeks
to build a community of like-minded people. Fourth, the
media highlight their individual reporters and founders.
This can be interpreted as a way to brand their journal-
ists (Molyneux, 2015), associate the organisation with
real humans and thus to construct an authentic iden-
tity. The Rumpus for instance mentions the “overtly per-
sonal” newsletter of its editor-in-chief, and Mic was cre-
ated by “two long-time friends”. Fifth, the subjectivity
and personal voice of the journalists are highlighted. This
is demonstrated by De Correspondent, whose “authors
are no objective automatons…; rather, they are subjec-
tive beings, rooted in andmotivated by ideas and ideals”.
The identity discourse presents news selection and
journalism as something reporters personally care about.
This is well exemplified by Krautreporter: “Our authors
decide for themselves what they are going to report on”.
However, the focus is still on the news, onmatters of pub-
lic interest, and the discourse reflects a hybrid of the ide-
als of objectivity and dialogue. El Diariomanifests this by
emphasising that its defining values are subordinate to
traditional journalistic ideals: “But all our values are sub-
ject to a fundamental one in journalistic terms: respect
for the truth”.
4.3. Going Deeper—The Niche Discourse
In the niche discourse, the media emphasise how they
concentrate and specialise—an often-recurring word in
the discourse is “focus”. The subjects on which the me-
dia claim to concentrate on are, however, quite general,
such as politics and business trends. Only a few media
indicate clearly defined and narrow niches, such as The
Marshall Project, which writes about the American crim-
inal justice system.
In other words, the media claim to focus on rather
traditional areas of journalism—“niche” refers to their
specific journalistic approaches and voices rather than
narrow topics. The outlets often assert to have some dis-
tinct feature that separates their news from “traditional”
news. Buzzfeed does not produce only news but “the
most shareable news”. Discourse Media is “focused on
matters of public importance” and includes topics such
as gender and indigenous issues among those themes.
Many of the media manifest their journalism as
“deep”, as going or looking deeper than the surface of
daily events: “dive deep” (ProPublica), “delve deeper”
(Vox), “to uncover, explain and highlight deep-lying struc-
tures” (De Correspondent). Many of the analysed media
thus claim their niche as somethingmore comprehensive
and more steeped-in than day-to-day reporting. In the
words of Zetland, its “mission is not to make news—it is
to make sense”.
Niche discourse rhetorically highlights how en-
trepreneurial media differentiate themselves from
general-purpose mass media and build their distinctive
identity. This kind of journalistic ideal is not about pro-
viding “just the facts”, but to assist with sense-making, a
core tenet of dialogical journalism. However, the niche
discourse does not question the objectivity ideal of gen-
eral interest journalism.
4.4. Rhizomatic Media—The Network Discourse
The network discourse signifies media as nodes in net-
works. The Marshall Project, for instance, describes its
web page as a “dynamic hub”, and FlavorWire defines it-
self as “a network of culturally connected people”. The
network discoursemarks a departure from legacymedia,
which often draw clear lines to separate them from both
the audience and other organisations and institutions.
In the network discourse, the media seek to network
and establish a personal relationship with their audience.
The network discourse hence allows media to embody
its audience’s tastes and values. The New Inquiry seeks
Media and Communication, 2018, Volume 6, Issue 4, Pages 79–90 83
to “connect directly with our audience” and Quartz calls
readers to share its “passions”. A personal and direct rela-
tionship with the audiences is manifested in how theme-
dia present themselves as communities: the word “com-
munity” appears in the data 15 times (see Malmelin &
Villi, 2016).
The production of journalism is described as a net-
worked process. The media often mention their free-
lance network and how they cooperate with other or-
ganisations. Discourse Media writes how media should
“work together” more, and how it “collaborates with
our colleagues to pool resources, build capacity and
maximize our collective impact”. ProPublica not only
publishes pieces by other outlets but also annotates
them and does follow-ups. This way the network dis-
course relies on the collective intelligence enhanced by
the Internet.
In the network discourse, hybridity is expressed both
as a cooperative production of (objective) journalismand
as a dialogue between media and their audiences. The
discourse can also be interpreted to incorporate people’s
intimate life spheres into journalism—a core characteris-
tic of dialogical journalism.
4.5. The Reformists—The Change Discourse
In the change discourse, the media present themselves
as change actors: as reformers of media, journalism,
and society. First Look Media “seeks to improve society
through journalism and technology”, and Zetland partici-
pates “in themuch-needed reinvention of Danish quality
journalism”. Traditional journalism is displayed in the dis-
course as being too passive.Mic states how “news orga-
nizations can domore to empower our generation”. ProP-
ublica, in turn, criticises traditional investigative jour-
nalism for its “past failings” and touts how it will per-
sistently hold the powerful accountable “until change
comes about”.
Some media highlight narrative journalism, as op-
posed to fact-reporting, as being the tool to make such
change happen. According to The Marshall Project “sto-
rytelling can be a powerful agent of social change”. Mic,
in turn, believes that ”stories…shape theworld, especially
when they challenge traditional narratives”. Here, “tradi-
tional narratives” can be interpreted as referring to legacy
media, as Mic notes how the perspectives of young peo-
ple are often “left out of the media’s narrative”.
In the change discourse, traditional journalism is por-
trayed as too dull and uniform. Politico claims that “tra-
ditional journalistic conventions…make stories dull, pre-
dictable and often unreadable”. Implicitly criticising ho-
mogenous traditional media, The Awl argues that read-
ers are “poorly served by being delivered those same sto-
ries in numbing repetition”. Similar views are presented
also by Gawker, Mic, El Diario, De Correspondent and
Marshall Report.
In the change discourse, traditional journalism of the
objective tradition is posed to be renewed by shaping
journalism as more socially active and less dull and ho-
mogenous. The discourse implicitly encourages the injec-
tion of journalism with the diversity and “activism” of di-
alogical styles.
5. Sketching Scenarios for the Future of
Entrepreneurial Journalism
The future of entrepreneurial journalism—as with jour-
nalism in general—remains fundamentally open. Alter-
native futures of entrepreneurial journalism can be
explored—and long-term ideas, policies, strategies, and
plans formulated—by constructing scenarios. A scenario
is a vivid, information-rich description of a certain topic
in a certain time in the future, with key trends, decisions,
and events depicting how the present situation has led
to a particular future (Glenn, 2009; Ralston & Wilson,
2006). It needs to be highlighted that scenarios are not
predictions: by studying potential at the present time,
scenarios anticipate plausible futures instead of predict-
ing probable ones.
This section presents four scenario sketches of en-
trepreneurial, hybrid journalism in the year 2030. The
scenarios presented are called “sketches” as they lack a
full narrative of how a certain future could have been
reached—instead, they are more snapshot-like views
into the future. The year 2030 is chosen because a lit-
tle over ten years is a sufficient time for entrepreneurial
journalism to evolve and establish itself in the field of
journalism. Each scenario sketch ends with an interpre-
tation, in which manifestations of hybridity and possible
outcomes of the scenario are assessed.
The scenarioswere constructed by first selecting core
elements from each of the four discourses and placing
them into a table. Then thematically similar elements
were coded to form initial scenario categories. Finally,
to make the categories concise they were condensed so
that each scenario had only one or two elements from
each discourse (see Table 1). The table was then elabo-
rated and expanded as short scenario narratives.
5.1. Scenario Sketch 1: Elitist-Individualists
Entrepreneurial journalists offer their journalism to edu-
cated “elite” audiences. Their value proposition is based
on very narrow—and thus highly monetizable—niches:
they provide high-quality, specialised and backstage in-
formation the audiences cannot find elsewhere. Quality
journalism has become a way to make social distinctions,
and an outlet’s distinctive identity entices (elite) audi-
ence engagement.
The audiences expect individuality, character and in-
tegrity from their preferred media. Hence the media’s
identities reflect their founders’ personality, voices and
passions. As “individualists” entrepreneurial journalists
often avoid having too close a relationship with their au-
diences. As such they can remain true to themselves, a
principle appreciated by their audiences. However, the
Media and Communication, 2018, Volume 6, Issue 4, Pages 79–90 84
Table 1. Scenario sketches of entrepreneurial hybrid journalism in 2030.
Elements from the discourses
Scenarios Identity Discourse Niche Discourse Network Discourse Change Discourse
1. Elitist- Identity based on the Narrow niches (such Networked with other, A pioneer spirit
Individualists founders’ personality, as the judiciary system), similar media outlets. emphasizing the
voices, passions and often on topics outside cutting-edge, the
opinions. the daily news grind. alternative, and
the experimental.
2. Communalists Identity based on Relatively broad topic Networked with the The audience
the audience and areas (such as audience. Audience members as change
its passions. technology), but members as agents in society.
audience members reporters.
provide highly
specialised knowledge.
3. Public Service Identity based on a General news “with a Utilising the collective Seeking to renew
dedication to the twist” (such as explainers intelligence of the society.
“common good”. and interpretations). public.
4. Identity Media Identity based on the Eclectic niches reflecting Networked, distributed Catering to new,
reporters’ personality the interest areas of “newsrooms” and emerging needs
and “obsessions”. reporters. Partisan freelance networks. and offering highly
journalism with strong novel content.
opinions.
media often cooperate with other high-minded media
outlets, as well as high-profile or insider audience mem-
bers. Together this vanguard bunch relentlessly seeks the
cutting-edge and is prone to experimentation.
Interpretation: Prototypes for this kind of a future are
such outlets as the Politico or theQuartz. Dialogue in jour-
nalism is expressed by the subjective voices of the en-
trepreneurs rather than apolyphonyof views. If a focus on
elite niches became more common, it would, on the one
hand, indicate a journalism that is more in-the-know, re-
sourceful, and deep. On the other hand, though, it would
imply a retreat from the public sphere and large-scale au-
dience participation. A crucial question is whether legacy
media would go this direction too, or whether they would
seek to fulfil the function of public service.
In this scenario, entrepreneurial journalism would
probably rely strongly on audience payments, be they
by subscription, membership fees or single payments.
This would further risk widening the gap between
the information-haves and have-nots, the well-off and
the deprived.
5.2. Scenario Sketch 2: Communalists
Entrepreneurial journalism outlets are built around au-
dience communities (see Malmelin & Villi, 2016). Audi-
ence members are closely involved and often become
reporters too. In a highly fragmented culture and pub-
lic sphere, citizens seek existential security and a sense
of purpose from different communities—audience com-
munities among them.
Journalists specialise to offer content that their audi-
ence finds interesting. The media’s niche areas and per-
sonality reflect the interests and identities of their audi-
ence. Many of the audience communities are oriented
towards public matters. However, entrepreneurial out-
lets can nurture communities also for those audience
segments unacquainted with current events. This fos-
ters engagement in matters of public interest, and audi-
ence members often become influential change agents
in society.
Interpretation: The scenario posits that audience
communities and affiliated hybrid journalism could act
as bridges between private and public motives and inter-
ests, in effect creating a new, hybrid social and societal
entity. The “dialogue” in this scenario is a balanced mix
of subjective styles and different points of view.
The scenario is inclusive and participation-positive
and does not suggest the prospect of rising information-
inequality. However, the risk is that journalism may lose
its autonomy: journalists may have to submit to the au-
diences in order to stay relevant. All in all, this scenario
promises a major opportunity for entrepreneurial me-
dia outlets, assuming they are much more proficient in
nurturing audience communities than rigid legacy media
(see Villi & Jung, 2015).
5.3. Scenario Sketch 3: Public Service
Entrepreneurial journalists offer their products to the
general public. They report on the matters of public in-
terest, but in new ways—for example, through news ex-
Media and Communication, 2018, Volume 6, Issue 4, Pages 79–90 85
plainers. Many entrepreneurial news outlets also spe-
cialise in covering journalistic blind spots.
Entrepreneurial journalists construct their identities
through a dedication to the common good. Still, they are
not as passive in regards to promoting change as legacy
media but seek to renew society and right wrongs. The
polarisation and decentralisation of societies has been
reversed through state interventions, active social policy,
and civic-minded journalism. Citizens are to a large ex-
tent committed to acting in the benefit of the broader
society. Entrepreneurial journalists are networked with
citizens, and can thus efficiently utilise the collective in-
telligence of the public.
Interpretation: This scenario could be driven by a
broad awakening to the threat of widening social gaps
and deepening inequalities in the society. A general sen-
timent towards public-mindedness would encourage en-
trepreneurial journalists to embrace traditional virtues
of journalism with an activist streak, competing in the
same field with legacy media but seeking to outperform
them in terms of social impact.
In this scenario, entrepreneurial journalists pioneer
a new kind of “institutionalised” public or citizen jour-
nalism, one that has the prowess to respond to the per-
ceived shortcomings of mainstream media. Journalism
leans toward an objective style of delivery with an em-
phasis on underserved voices.
5.4. Scenario Sketch 4: Identity Media
Entrepreneurial journalism outlets focus on helping audi-
ences construct their identities. Identity politics have es-
calated. The world is changing faster than expected, and
people cherish and protect their identities almost neu-
rotically. Media outlets base their identities on their re-
porters’ “obsessions”.
The niche areas entrepreneurial media focus on are
eclectic, reflecting the personal interests of both the re-
porters and the audiences. Journalism is often hyper-
partisan with strong, albeit well-argued, opinions and
views. Still, people are curious about the world and con-
stantly seek new material to construct their identity.
Newsrooms are highly networked, often free of phys-
ical spaces. Freelance networks and audience partici-
pators provide reporting and ideas to meet extremely
diverse demands. Entrepreneurial journalism caters to
new, emerging needs, tastes and topics, offering highly
novel content.
Interpretation: In this scenario, hybrid journalism is
perhaps most dominated by dialogue and especially its
use of literary techniques. With narrow audience seg-
ments and their own journalistic voices, this scenario re-
flects what Nechushtai (2018) describes as an emerging
news system category of “polarized liberal”.
With the focus on idiosyncrasy and identity, the sce-
nario runs the risk of severing cultural and ideological
polarization. On the other hand, in this scenario media
are themost pluralistic and diverse, and audiences highly
engaged to participate in the production of journalism.
Hence, perhaps paradoxically, there is also a potentially
heightened interest in public affairs.
6. Conclusions
In a possible future, journalistic media outlets will con-
tinue to lose their relevance, interest and engagement
among audiences, to the advantage of other content pro-
ducers who engage more participatory forms of commu-
nication on social platforms. The solution outlined in this
article to avoid such a future is a hybrid of the ideals
of objectivity and dialogue in journalism—arguably well-
fitting to the participatory social media. This type of jour-
nalism has the potential to invoke “hybrid engagement”,
which draws on both affect and reason and potentially
encourages behavioural engagement as well—i.e., audi-
ence participation.
The assumption that an ideal of hybrid journal-
ism and hybrid engagement is spearheaded by en-
trepreneurial journalists was tested in the analysis of the
“About us” pages of 41 entrepreneurial journalism out-
lets. The article found that the discourses—emphasising
distinctive identity, niche approaches, networks, change-
oriented culture, and traditional journalistic values—
indeed display hybrid notions of journalism and engage-
ment. In the words of Zetland, journalism should “en-
gage the heart as well as the mind”.
Elaborating the discourses, this article presented four
scenario sketches of entrepreneurial hybrid journalism.
In the “Elitist-individualists” scenario, hybrid engage-
ment is based on the mix of premium and trustwor-
thy quality as well as the distinctive, highbrow sensibil-
ities of the media outlets. Audience participation is rela-
tively low as media outlets and audiences alike appreci-
ate the uncompromised autonomy of journalism. In the
“Communalists” scenario, themedia and their audiences
live in an almost symbiotic relationship, on which par-
ticipation and engagement are built on. Audiences as-
sume journalistic ideals and norms, which set themapart
from, e.g., independent bloggers. The “Public service”
scenario, comes closest to traditional journalism, as en-
trepreneurial journalists offer their journalism first and
foremost for the general public. However, they engage
audiences by an active stance towards social change and
by embracing a wide range of citizen contributions, set-
ting them apart from legacy media. In the “Identity Me-
dia” scenario, audiences are engaged by the outlets’ id-
iosyncratic identities and contents, which help them con-
struct their identities, as well as by the accurate but opin-
ionated reporting. Audience contributions are needed to
meet the immensely diverse and swiftly changing tastes
and demands.
Entrepreneurial journalists offer a testbed to exper-
iment with new approaches in journalism. The scenar-
ios presented here show different approaches how en-
trepreneurial journalists can renew journalism and how
hybrid journalism can manifest and evolve in practice. In
Media and Communication, 2018, Volume 6, Issue 4, Pages 79–90 86
each of the scenarios, the outlets interact closely with
their audiences and consequently know their intricate
needs and tastes in detail. This kind of sensibility is some-
thing that bigger news organisations may find hard to
establish—butwhich is increasingly crucial in amedia en-
vironment where the provision of facts alone is insuffi-
cient and needs to be spiced up with affective and partic-
ipatory approaches. The “audience-first sensibility” is—
or should be—closely connected to the audience-first
strategies of media outlets, as they seek to compensate
for diminishing advertising revenue with gaining and re-
taining loyal paying consumers (Villi & Picard, in press).
Further studies could build on, elaborate, broaden
and challenge the scenarios, and compare if and howem-
pirical analyses of entrepreneurial journalism—not just
conceptions of journalism—match the findings of this
article. Studies could also advance the study of both
concepts by anticipating what different outcomes en-
trepreneurial journalism and hybrid journalismmay have
in the future, for which scenarios are only one tool. Jour-
nalism studies is already a strongly future-focused dis-
cipline (Broersma & Peters, 2017), and assuming con-
cepts and methods of futures research could help clar-
ify the academic discussion on the possible, desirable,
and undesirable futures of journalism (see Ruotsalainen,
in press).
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by the Media Industry Re-
search Foundation of Finland and the Finnish Foundation
for Economic Education.
Conflict of Interests
The authors declare no conflict of interests.
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About the Authors
Juho Ruotsalainen (M. Soc. Sc.) is a postgraduate student at the Finland Futures Research Centre, Uni-
versity of Turku. His doctoral thesis explores entrepreneurial journalists―their conceptions of journal-
ism and its futures, and the reporting styles they develop and adopt. By studying entrepreneurs as
pioneers in the field of journalism Ruotsalainen seeks to anticipate how journalism, in general, may
change by the year 2030.
Mikko Villi (PhD) is Professor of Journalism at the University of Jyväskylä, Department of Language
and Communication Studies. In his work he explores the evolution in different media sectors, focusing
on digital communication, online communication, mobile communication, and visual communication.
His key interest is the study of media organisations and media management, thereby joining the study
of organisational communication with media studies.
Media and Communication, 2018, Volume 6, Issue 4, Pages 79–90 89
Appendix
The studied entrepreneurial journalism outlets and the URLs of their “About Us” pages.
14ymedio (http://www.14ymedio.com/quienes-somos.html),
Aeon (http://aeon.co/magazine/about),
All Things Digital (http://allthingsd.com/about/site),
Blank Spot (https://www.blankspot.se/in-english),
Bleacher Report (http://bleacherreport.com/about),
Business Insider (http://businessinsider.com/about),
Buzzfeed (http://www.buzzfeed.com/about),
De Correspondent (https://decorrespondent.nl/en),
Discourse Media (http://discoursemedia.org/about),
eldiario.es (http://www.eldiario.es/que_es),
The Ferret (https://theferret.scot/about-us),
First Look Media (https://firstlook.org/about),
Flavorwire (http://flavorwire.com/about),
Gawker (gawker.com/about),
Gigaom (about.gigaom.com),
GlobalPost (http://www.globalpost.com/content/about),
Investigative Reporting Project Italy (https://irpi.eu/en/about-us),
Krautreporter (https://krautreporter.de/pages/ueber_uns),
Mashable (http://mashable.com/about),
Mediapart (https://blogs.mediapart.fr/la-redaction-de-mediapart/blog/290910/about-mediapart),
Mic (http://mic.com/about),
MinnPost (http://www.minnpost.com/about),
News Deeply (http://www.newsdeeply.com/overview/),
OZY (http://www.ozy.com/about),
Politico (http://www.politico.com/about/our-story),
ProPublica (http://www.propublica.org/about),
Quartz (http://qz.com/about/welcome-to-quartz),
Re/code (http://recode.net/about),
Salon (http://www.salon.com/about),
Talking Points Memo (http://talkingpointsmemo.com/about),
TechCrunch (http:// techcrunch.com/about),
The Awl (http://www.theawl.com/about),
The Daily Beast (http://www.thedailybeast.com/company/about-us.html),
The Daily Caller (http://dailycaller.com/about-us),
The Marshall Project (https://www.themarshallproject.org/about),
The New Inquiry (http://thenewinquiry.com/about),
The Texas Tribune (http://www.texastribune.org/about),
The Verge (http://www.theverge.com/about-the-verge),
The Rumpus (http://therumpus.net/about/),
Vox (http://www.voxmedia.com/brands/vox),
Zetland (https://www.zetland.dk/aboutzetland).
Media and Communication, 2018, Volume 6, Issue 4, Pages 79–90 90