Cultural journalism in Finland

Balancing with values: understanding the change of cultural journalism in Finland

Culture departments in newspapers base their activity on the balancing 
principle. The strive for balance most saliently manifests in the 
concept of culture that regulates the choice of topics and valuation 
of artistic objects. As a normative basis it caters for a coverage of 
certain artistic disciplines defined as essential. The balancing 
principle is also taken into account in the choice of authorship that 
basically approaches culture from two different directions, either 
from the aesthetically oriented artworld or the practically oriented 
world of journalism. These paradigms of cultural journalism tend to be 
balanced by organizational strategies.

During the three past decades, the popularization of the cultural 
canon and the organizational urge for service journalism, as reflected 
in a content analysis of the culture sections of the Finnish 
newspapers 1978-2008, have challenged the balancing principle. 
Cultural journalism has responded to the changes by developing 
in-house news production and outsourcing reviewing. However, as shown 
and discussed in the presentation by exploring archival documents, the 
balancing principle causes distinct formalism in cultural reporting 
that has often been found the source for critical observations on 
shortcomings of cultural journalism, perhaps more than the actual 
changes.

Time: Tuesday October 29th 2013 12.00-14.00 pm
Location: room 645, 6. floor

The lecture will be held in English.
Everyone who is interested in the topic is welcome to attend.

Kontaktperson: anja.salzmann@infomedia.uib.no