News Pluralism and Bureaucratization of Journalists Work in Two Daily Press Contexts

Abstract

The paper aims to characterize the professional routines of daily press Chilean journalists in two different contexts (nacional-wide newspapers and local-wide press, specifically some newspapers of Chile’s Northern regions), and to recognize what effects these production routines have in the assurance of news pluralism. The main results indicate that professional routines increasingly acquire the nature of an active bureaucracy: journalists become a managers of information, under performance and productivity criteria that respond to a new model of commercialsegmented press. This bureaucratization of journalist work produces standardization and homogenization of daily information, even more in relation to sources and newsworthing, challenging the public interest in ensuring pluralism: actually, a bureaucratic and homogeneous press could be a main obstacle to appropriate representation of social diversity in the journalism discourses.