Abstract

The current media environment demands a continuous stream of products ready to meet audience needs, and the emergent role of product manager serves to prioritize those needs by providing a holistic perspective on a news organization’s goals. Product managers meet a crucial business imperative of journalism by bringing new skillsets into the newsroom to help bridge the divide of the varying operating logics and align priorities among editorial, business, and technology departments. Thus, the increasing popularity of the product manager across news organizations serves as a prime example of the reengineering of journalism’s institutions. While much scholarship explains how journalism’s institutions evolve with regard to digital transformation, less focuses on the specific impact to the business of news and the role of actors as embedded yet still responsible for change. This article frames journalism’s product managers as institutional entrepreneurs to better understand how actors can promote change and reengineer journalism’s longstanding professional boundaries. A unique dataset of product manager employment histories from a sample set of news organizations in both the US and UK is systematically analysed to examine hiring patterns, training backgrounds, degree of professionalization, and organizational field structure, shedding light on the enabling conditions of institutional entrepreneurs.

摘要

当前的媒体环境需要连续不断的产品流，以满足观众的需求，而产品经理的崭露头角则是通过提供新闻机构目标的整体视角来优先考虑这些需求。产品经理通过将新技能集带入新闻编辑室，以帮助弥合各种运营逻辑之间的分歧，并使社论，业务和技术部门之间的工作重点保持一致，从而满足新闻界至关重要的业务需求。因此，产品经理在新闻机构中越来越受欢迎，这是新闻机构重新设计的一个典型例子。尽管有很多奖学金可以解释新闻业的机构在数字化转型方面是如何发展的，较少关注于对新闻业务的特定影响以及参与者的角色，这些参与者虽然嵌入但仍对变化负责。本文将新闻业的产品经理视为机构企业家，以更好地了解参与者如何促进变革并重塑新闻业的长期专业界限。系统地分析了来自美国和英国的新闻机构的样本集中的产品经理雇用历史的唯一数据集，以检查雇用模式，培训背景，专业化程度和组织领域结构，从而阐明机构企业家的有利条件。本文将新闻业的产品经理视为机构企业家，以更好地了解参与者如何促进变革并重塑新闻业的长期专业界限。系统地分析了来自美国和英国的新闻机构样本集中的产品经理雇用历史的唯一数据集，以检查雇用模式，培训背景，专业化程度和组织领域结构，从而阐明机构企业家的有利条件。本文将新闻业的产品经理视为机构企业家，以更好地了解参与者如何促进变革并重塑新闻业的长期专业界限。系统地分析了来自美国和英国的新闻机构样本集中的产品经理雇用历史的唯一数据集，以检查雇用模式，培训背景，专业化程度和组织领域结构，从而阐明机构企业家的有利条件。