Focusing on deadlines: How orientation to time is a constitutive normative constraint at meetings in media organizations

News, deadlines and timeliness

Zerubavel (1982, 1976, 1985) argues that all social activities are in some way conducted in accordance with schedules that specify a certain temporality: “When” specifies the temporal location, “how long” the duration, the “order” specifies the sequence, and “how often” the rate of occurrence. These parameters constitute the “sociotemporal order” of our complex society.

Most communities and institutional settings construct and attend to temporal order (Boden, 1997; Bourdieu, 1986; Clayman, 1989; Ochs and Jacoby, 1997; Whorf and Carroll, 1956; Zerubavel, 1985), but few other professions as strongly as that of news organisations. News must be delivered, not only on time but also at the appropriate time (Bell, 1995: 323). Journalists work at routinizing the unexpected, as they “try to control the flow of work and the amount of work to be done” (1973: 110), and Shoemaker and Reese discuss how: “The job of these routines is to deliver, within time and space limitations, the most acceptable product to the consumer in the most efficient manner,” (1996: 108–109). These time and space limitations create a ‘stop-watch culture’ or “time machines” (Schlesinger, 1977: 83), and immediacy is defined as one of the values in the “shared occupational ideology” of journalists (Deuze, 2005). This time constraint in the shape of deadlines not only influences the interactions within the newsroom, but also the content of the news (Soloski, 1984).

A deadline is the predetermined moment of time in which a particular task must be completed. The etymological origin of the term underlines the seriousness of deadlines. The term is ascribed to originate from a prison camp in Andersonville, USA, during the American Civil War (Hendrickson, 1997). The deadline was a line 17 feet from the camp's fence. If a prisoner was caught trying to cross this line, he was shot by the guards.

The work process of the employees in media organisations is tightly structured around a string of serious, even if less lethal, deadlines throughout the 24 h of the day, and the sense of urgency has not diminished with the emergence of web media, as web media compete on being first and best at covering events as they occur (Barnhurst, 2011; Pavlik, 2000; Singer, 2003; Usher, 2014; Witschge and Nygren, 2009).

To problematize this orientation to time, a survey study on political journalists in the four countries, Spain, Germany, United Kingdom and Denmark has shown that “limitations inherent in the routines within the news organization and format of the news outlet, such as limits of space and time” (van Dalen, 2011) are regarded as the main limitation in journalists’ daily work by the journalists themselves. A major study (Amabile et al., 2002) has shown that time pressure leads to less creativity. Exempt from this rule, though, are professionals, who feel that their job is important and that they have a “mission” (Gardner et al., 2001). A qualitative study shows that journalists appreciate deadlines, as deadlines ensure that the work of the journalist has a limit, a schedule that cannot be transgressed (Pihl-Thingvad, 2010).

Meetings as sociotemporal institutional settings

Meetings are interesting as an object of study because they are one of the interactions through which “institutions produce and reproduce themselves” (Boden, 1984: 81; Heritage and Clayman, 2010; Schwartzman, 1989). Meetings are defined as”a planned gathering” (Boden, 1984: 84) and are characterized by being goal or task oriented, and this results in special constraints on what will be treated as allowable or relevant contributions at the meetings (Drew and Heritage, 1992; Heritage and Clayman, 2010).

Temporal frames are treated as “matters of institutional import, as well as individual accomplishments” (Boden, 1997: 29). In the case of news organisations, deadlines are pervasive in the work process and the individual journalist and employee will orient to these deadlines in many ways during the working day.

Time at meetings can be seen as “temporal formulations” (Schegloff, 1972), as lexical choices with an explicit reference to time, but time is also embodied in the interaction itself and can be found in the temporal organisation (Sacks, 1978: 252) and the sequentiality of the interaction (Sacks et al., 1974; Schegloff, 2000). The temporal organisation and sequentiality at meetings such as morning meetings involve a mediated turn-allocation (Asmuss and Svennevig, 2009; Heritage and Clayman, 2010), as a chairperson, often an editor, is in charge of the organization of the interaction. The head of the meeting will to some extent administer turn-taking, topic progression and topic organization (Stivers and Robinson, 2006). The more formal a meeting, the tighter the control of turn-allocation (Asmuss and Svennevig, 2009).

As will be shown in this article, references and orientation to time are important factors at meetings. The particular institutional context of deadlines has “procedural consequentiality” for the “shape, form, trajectory, content or character of the interaction that the parties conduct” (Schegloff, 1992: 111) at the meetings.

Even though the task of and the framework for the meeting are well known to the participants, the extreme orientation to time constitutes a potentially face-threatening situation (Brown and Levinson, 1987), as the participants want their face to be “appreciated and approved of” and be “free from imposition” by others. In the analysis, it will be shown how these potential face threats are mitigated at the meetings, as progression is ensured.

Objectives

Through the analysis of meetings in newsrooms, it is possible to describe how temporality has an impact on the daily routines and norms of journalists.

The objective of this paper is to analyse how the normative constraints of start, progress and conclusion of the meeting are achieved, while handling the potentially face-threatening situation of demanding progression and thereby impositioning others.

Research context, data and method

The data for this paper consist of 35 morning meetings from two different organisations, a national newspaper and a national television broadcaster, both Danish. The meetings have been videotaped, and the interactions have been transcribed according to conversation analytical conventions (Jefferson, 1984). The identities of the participants have been anonymised.

The method used is conversation analysis, which is the systematic analysis of talk from everyday interaction (Heritage and Antaki, 1988; Heritage and Clayman, 2010; Hutchby and Wooffitt, 2008; Sacks et al., 1974; Schegloff, 1986). This interdisciplinary ethnographic approach involves transcending the traditional analysis of the general structures and provides situated knowledge of the actual practices. The examples have been selected to depict regularly occurring interactions in the data.

The meetings in the data are attended by 4–18 people and are usually chaired by an editor or a subeditor. Most of the participants are reporters, but other editorial employees may also attend the meetings. The meetings’ main function is the presentation of ideas for the upcoming production. However, the agenda of the morning meeting can also consist of a short oral feedback for and important messages to the participants. The presentation of ideas is sometimes done in the shape of a round, on other occasions the editor is the main presenter of the ideas.

The start of the meeting

Meetings are often planned events, involving a scheduled time of starting and ending the meeting (Asmuss and Svennevig, 2009; Nielsen, 2009, 2010a, 2010b). Morning meetings are prearranged daily routines and are scheduled both temporally and spatially, taking place at the same time and at the same location every weekday.

The meeting is often the first meeting of the day for the editorial staff and is obligatory in the sense that a reporter is expected to account for his or her absence before or after the meeting. After the meeting, the editor participates in other meetings, e.g. the editorial conference, during which the editor in chief meets with the desk editors or subeditors in order to discuss how to prioritize the news stories (Clayman and Reisner, 1998).

This strict orientation to the daily organisational routine is displayed from the start, as all the meetings in the data either start on schedule or within 2–5 min after the appointed time.

Here is an example of this kind of interaction at the opening of a meeting (see Appendix for conversational transcription conventions). This meeting has a scheduled start at 9.05 AM. The editor asks a reporter, if he is ready for the meeting:

Example 1

EDI: Svend er du klar?

Svend are you ready?

((EDI points with his pen at Svend, who is sitting at his desk a short distance from the meeting table))

SVE: jeg kommer nu den er kun lige fem minutter over [ni]

I am coming now it is only just five minutes past [nine]

EDI: [I]da, (.) er det mit ur der er foran.

[I]da, (.) is it my watch that is in front. ((running too fast))

(4.5)

This utterance can be seen as an implicit accusation: Either his watch is wrong, or they are late. But, it also serves as a plausible excuse for the fact that the editor has been forced to call the reporters individually to the meeting and saves him or them from losing face. There is no uptake after his wondering about the precision of his watch, and this leaves him on his own in the endeavour to find excuses for the possible tardiness.

The example also exemplifies a temporal formulation: an explicit reference to time and timeliness. The editor takes on the identity as the chair of the meeting, ensuring that it starts on time, but there is a struggle about the right to decide if it is time or not. The matter is never settled, but as the editor doesn’t insist on being right, no one loses face. The meeting actually starts 2 min later, when the reporters have assembled at the table.

This type of sequence is a frequently seen example of the time pressure at the outset of a meeting. One specific editor, whose meetings are not held in an open office space, closes the door to the meeting room at the exact appointed starting time to mark that the meeting has started. One day this editor greets a reporter who arrives late by asking: “Couldn’t you try to be here on time. It is a little frustrating being interrupted all the time.” The Danish word used for “you” is in the plural. By this lexical choice the reprimand is not only directed at the reporter, who arrives late that day, but at everyone in general.

The editors are in general clearly communicating that the meeting is starting on time, and the focus is on efficiently getting the task ahead done, but they do this in a manner that handles potentially face-threatening situations by mitigating and hedging the demands.

During the meeting

During the meetings in the newsroom, the orientation to time is also pronounced. This occurs in several ways, explicitly referring to time or implicitly by gestures and sequentiality. In the following excerpts, the issue occurs as an explicit orientation to time and as a factor influencing the turn-taking organization.

The next instance depicts a way of allocating the turn-taking and also exemplifies the efficiency and cooperation of the participants. The editor ends his feedback to the editorial staff, a primarily monological turn, during which he criticizes the content and the design of the paper. Then he evokes one of the reporters by calling out her name.

Example 2

EDI: hvor meget de ha:r ø:h

>trukket ud til sig selv<. °det er helt vildt store beløb°.

how much they ha:ve e:h >taken out for themselves<. °it is really wildly large sums°.

JO1: m::. (1.8)

m::. (1.8)

EDI: Charlotte?

Charlotte?

CHA: der kommer i hvert fald regnskab fra:

PePetersen.

at any rate there will be the accounts

fro:m PePetersen.

EDI: ja.hh (5.3) ((noterer på sin blok))

yes.hh (5.3) ((taking notes on paper))

EDI: sonst was?

sonst was? ((German for ’anything

else’))

(6.8)

((Editor still looks at his papers, looks up and nods in the direction of Charlotte, who shakes her head a little bit, the editor then raises his gaze and turns to another reporter, sitting to his left and points with his pen towards JON))

JON: mig?

me?

EDI: >nu har du jo no’et at leve op te: jo<.

>now you have PRT something to live up to: you know.

Without any boundary marker or explicit metacomment, the editor changes to the next item on the agenda: The round, during which the reporters present their ideas. The editor allocates the next turn to one of the participants by calling out her name. He doesn’t pose a question or make a request; he merely says her name and turns to her. Lee (2011) has shown how participants in an interaction can “depart from type-conformity when orienting to activity progressivity”, skipping several steps in the interaction, when familiar with it. The interaction shows how the reporter uses her experience from the past morning meetings to cooperate and comply with the unspoken change of agenda. She displays that she possesses the necessary tacit expert knowledge (Catenaccio et al., 2011; Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995; Polany, 1966; Wackerhausen et al., 2000; Wackerhausen and Learning, 1998).

Furthermore, Charlotte’s answer to the implicit, unspoken question is one of the shortest in the data collection. Her turn lasts 3 s. It is a statement of an event, a specific company announces its annual accounts, and indirectly Charlotte says she will cover that event. Furthermore, she displays openness to other potential stories by using the formulation “at any rate”. The editor writes her story on his notepad, and in this way non-verbally indicates it has been accepted. The journalist’s phrase “at any rate” indicates there might be more to come, and the editor, with this German phrase “sonst was?”, asks her to elaborate: Does she want to contribute with anything else?

Charlotte does a small shake of her head, and the editor moves on to the next reporter in the round. Here, the editor simply points with his pen to the person to whom he allocates the next turn: Jon. The next selected speaker reacts as if he is in doubt about whom the pen is pointing to, as he asks “me?”. This question stalls the hasty progression, and the editor starts a narrative about the reporter’s recent accomplishments – he displays an eagerness for the journalist not to lose face by doing this account.

The entire sequence is an example of orientation to time embodied in the organisation of the interaction. The interaction is characterized by a high degree of efficiency, progression and speed: The minimal positive response token by a reporter as an acknowledgment of the feedback; the editor’s unmarked progression to the next topic on the agenda; the editor’s selection of the next speaker by utterance of name only, and no explicit request of information; the reporter’s very short statement of idea; no verbal acknowledgment or evaluation of her statement, only non-verbal, from the editor; a short, sharply formulated inquiry if there is more from the editor, and then progression to turn allocation of the next speaker by the pointing of the pen.

Not only the editor, but also the other participants in this example interact in a way that shortens the extent of talk to an absolute minimum. There is no explicit decision making, no discussion, but more a brief recital of intentions. This, of course, is the extreme case of time orientation. But even when the discussion about a story expands, there is an orientation to and a demand for progression.

The next example is an excerpt from a discussion about a story that has been covered by a reporter, John (JOH), for a few days already. Before the sequence shown here, the editor – as the initiator of the entire sequence and chair of the meeting – asks the reporter if any follow-up to the story has been planned. The reporter, who has been responsible for the coverage so far, answers that he hasn’t had time to think up new angles. Some of the other participants join in with suggestions of possible new angles. Several new angles on the story are launched, and especially two of those are discussed.

The excerpt is from the end of this ideation process, and the interaction about that particular story has already been going on for more than 3 min. A senior reporter, Carl (CAR), has just stated the importance of keeping the story going, and now the journalist responsible for the coverage answers this by stating it will be hard for him to manage to do both the suggested angles.

Example 3

JOH: .h men det bli’r lidt svært å både

nå å å [lave den]

.h but it will be a little hard both to

manage to to [do this]

EDI: [jaja] ((kigger på JOH))

[yesyes] ((gazes at JOH))

JOH: generelle be[sti]kkelses[hi]storie

general bri[be]ry [sto]ry

EDI: [ja] [ja]

[yes] [yes]

JOH: og så opfølgningen på:

and then the follow up on:

EDI: .h j[a]

.h y[es]

CAR: [ja] (°de’t jo det°)

[yes] (°it’s that you know°)

JOH: beskyldningerne ikk’.

the accusations right.

EDI: ja.h

yes.h

(0.8)

The individual reporter’s explicit reference to the lack of time is a common feature at story meetings. There are many stories worth telling, but in order to do the work before deadlines, prioritization is necessary. By expressing it will be “hard”, he shows his commitment to do it, if necessary, keeping his positive face but at the same time indicating that it is problematic.

At least three competing norms are present in his statement: The norm of being positively inclined to working hard, the norm of doing the job well enough and the norm of handing in the right stories at the right time. The temporal aspect of the profession surfaces and collides with the professional standards of delivering “the most acceptable product to the consumer in the most efficient manner” (Shoemaker and Reese, 1996). The journalist on the one hand has to handle his positive face and on the other the negative face ensuing from him not being able to handle the stories on his own.

The editor agrees several times on this assessment, but offers no immediate solution to the problem John faces. The question is: Who is responsible for the reporter not being able to do both pieces within the given temporal framework?

As seen in the data, there is no immediate uptake from the editor, who in theory could relegate resources to the task and solve the problem. This might be the norm at other meetings, and is also seen in the present data, but here the editor doesn’t suggest a solution. However, after the short silence another subeditor allocates resources to the story, by offering the help of a journalist, who is not present at the meeting.

The competing agendas of the editor and the reporters are seen. Two deadlines seem to be competing: The meeting has a deadline, and there is no enough time for debating all potential issues thoroughly. However, the reporter has a deadline that will be “hard” to meet if he has to do two stories, and he makes this an issue to be discussed within the timeframe of the meeting.

Time orientation in non-verbal interaction

Apart from temporal formulations, the time explicit mentioning of time and the time constraint displayed through the interactional organisation, the morning meetings involve a number of artefacts. As seen in the earlier examples prominent props are the watch, pen and notepad, but the participants also use phones, computers, papers, newspapers, whiteboards and board markers.

These items can also be used as agencies of time orientation.

As seen in the example already presented the watch is used at the start and the end of the meeting. But the editor and some of the participants also employ the watch as way of orienting to time, and at the same time displaying an orientation to time.

The editor looks at his watch, and by looking at the watch he not only learns what the time is, but at the same time he discreetly signals to the others that time is passing. The gesture becomes a preliminary equivalent to a boundary marker, indicating an inclination to make a progression, leave or otherwise change the interaction in some way.

Another “progression tool” is pieces of paper. For example, at the end of a feedback an editor says: “That was what I had to say about today’s paper. Are there any other comments?” He pauses, creating a transition relevant point, but at the same time he picks up the stack of papers in front of him. He assembles the pieces of paper by hitting the surface of the table with the lower edge of the stack. “Otherwise we will proceed,” he then says, just as he hits the table with the paper.

Semantically, prosodically and by making a pause the editor encourages the other participants to comment on his feedback, but non-verbally he discourages the action by “packing the paper away”. This gesture works as a boundary marker (Gardner, 2001; Goodwin, 1986) indicating it is time to move on.

However, the pen and the notepad are by far the most sequentially used artefact in the present data. The pen and the notepad are present in three versions, as pen and paper, board marker and white board or as a computer screen on the wall, big enough for all to see. These items are used continually during the meetings as the editor notes new ideas or read aloud ideas already noted.

The pen has a variety of purposes, for example it is used as:

Writing device – “signing the contract” as the editor notes the ideas of the reporters.

Gestures with pen and paper have procedural consequentiality. The contract writing signals the acceptance of an idea and as the idea has been noted, no more talk is needed. By using the pen as a pointing device the allocation of a turn can be done without words. The mood indicator can subtly signal to the others present that now the editor is impatient or disagrees, and this might have an impact on the interaction.

These artefacts render some verbal communication superfluous or support the verbal interaction, as they can be used to signal the need for progression without asking for it verbally and explicitly. In this way, the gestures mitigate the potentially face-threatening situations of having to ask a participant to finish his or her turn or move on to the next subject.

The end of the meeting

Another indication of the strong orientation to time is the fact that only one meeting of the 35 interactions in the data exceeds the scheduled time, as the consequences of a delay will be severe in this particular setting.

Ending the meeting becomes a laughable issue at this excerpt, in which a reporter asks if the meeting will end soon.

Example 4

JOU: Er det her møde ikke snart slut? ((hun smiler))

Isn’t this meeting soon over? ((she smiles))

((3--4 participants laugh, while others smile))

EDI: £Jo det HÅ:BER jeg ved gud.£

£Yes I HO:PE that by god.£

((More laughter. Participants start to leave. Editor leaves the table as the fifth person.))

Participants, who have delivered their say, often display impatience towards the end of meeting. As the example above shows some participants will grasp the first opportunity to leave with gratitude, as they want to move on to the next tasks of the day.

As seen in the data the schedule of the meeting and the obligation to ending and finishing on time plays a major role. Especially the editor makes sure that these temporal aspects of the meeting are respected, and the journalists seem eager to conclude the meeting, too.

Discussion

As seen in the prior analyses, this particular institutional setting, the morning meeting, is very much oriented towards temporality in particularly two ways: the meeting has a temporal location, a scheduled duration and an orientation to progression. In comparison to e.g. emergency calls (Heritage and Clayman, 2010), which have an extreme orientation to the completion of the task, dispatching emergency assitance, the morning meetings are oriented to the task of producing news on time. However, the pervasiveness of deadlines is displayed in the explicit temporal formulations as well as being embodied in the interaction itself: the way of allocating turns and ensuring progression verbally and non-verbally.

Furthermore, the analysis documents how the meeting is a small part of a sequence of specified temporal locations: deadlines. The high degree of orientation to temporality in the interaction intersects with the overall goal of the organisation: delivering timely and well-timed pieces of news to an audience, and in order to do that the deadline of the meeting and the deadline of the media must be respected.

Schudson and Munoff (1986) argues that the rush and adrenaline of the deadline are done in – “an effort to deny and to escape the humdrum of daily journalism” (1986: 82). But one could also argue that the ideal of embracing the information overload and abundance of potential news stories clashes with the severe time constraint.

The morning meeting could be seen as an effort to make the most of time as a scarce, fleeting and demarcatory resource, and doing it in a way that has the least impoliteness or negative consequences for the participants’ face.

The high degree of progressivity during the meetings is indicating that the participants do not want to waste anybody’s time, the editor and other participants being in control of the allowance of time for debate and a strong focus on the deadlines within and after the meeting.

As the meeting is a regularly occurring event, the norms of progression and deadline orientation have become tacit. The role and identity of the reporters, participating in the meeting, is to respect and help comply with these progression and boundary signals and to deliver their ideas within the allocated timeslot. The reporters display not only an orientation to temporality, but also bring the identity of the busy and hardworking reporter with a constant focus on deadline into play at the meetings. So it is on the one hand an individual accomplishment and on the other also a communal effort to ensure the progression of the meeting.

This study does not discuss if the quality of the news suffers, because of the time pressure, but very likely it does have a negative influence. More time might very likely lead to better, more in-depth news. However, this would contravene the entire concept of news and the prominent news value of timeliness.

The present study describes how time and deadline orientations influence the daily work of journalists, but it is necessary to do further research to conclude how and how much the time constraint influences the content of both the meetings and the media.

Conclusion

Time constraints and deadlines are constitutive of news, and this constraint can be traced on two levels at the morning meetings in the newsroom. The meeting has a deadline, and the media has a deadline. The meeting has a temporal location, a scheduled duration and an orientation to progression. However, the meeting is a small part of a sequence of specified temporal locations: a string of deadlines. Prolonged debates about stories, angles, sources and ideas will inevitable clash with finishing the meeting on time. Two temporal aspects of the media organisation are displayed in the data: Doing the meeting on time and getting the job done on time.

This temporal orientation can be seen in primarily three ways: 1) by explicit verbal orientation to time, 2) by the turn-taking organization, turn design and the sequential order of the interaction, and 3) by gestures involving the use of artefacts such as pen, notepad, paper and watch.

The orientation to deadlines and the time pressure constitutes a constraint and is a scarce resource in this particular institutional setting. By demanding progression and sometimes forcing a topic change, the editor is also at risk of threatening the face of the participants, who “take the time”. This potentially damaging constraint of the meeting is managed by mitigating and hedging the demand for progression and topic changes in order to save the face of the participants.