Abstract
Editors are in an ambivalent position: on the one hand, their contribution to the production of journalistic content is often invisible to the outside world; on the other, their practices, responsibilities and the teamwork in which they hold decisive positions are considered key components of professional journalism. As their role is generally understudied or treated as part of the wider field of journalism, they find themselves on the periphery of journalism studies. Information about editors’ professional practices and how they change is particularly scarce in the context of Central and Eastern European post-transformation media systems. This paper addresses this gap by examining how two generations of Czech editors perceive and assess their work. Drawing on in-depth interviews, the findings uncover differences and similarities between the downturn and the transformation generations of Czech editors, including the conflicts perceived and the mutual criticisms formulated by representatives of the two generations.
Keywords
Editors are invisible. Their contribution to the production of journalistic content is obscured, as they do not sign their products, nor are they seen or heard in audiovisual pieces (Keith, 2000). Editors’ invisibility (Duffy, 2021) adds to the stereotypical understanding of their position as either “a dumping ground” for aging reporters, or women after maternity leave, or the reason behind poor-quality journalism, as they are the ones to decide on clickbait headlines without knowing the actual content of the articles (Keith, 2005).
Even so, editors hold power. Their position in newsrooms is both managerial and executive (Gade, 2008; Sylvie and Huang, 2008) and one must demonstrate certain skills or experience to obtain it. Editors have decisive authority over and responsibility for people and media content (Lindner, 2017). They manage teamwork, supervision, gatekeeping and feedback to reporters, which is considered one of the pillars of professional journalism (Lindner, 2017).
The ambivalences of the editors’ position have been given limited scholarly attention. Changing professional practices, including the transformation of some reporters into editors, have been largely understudied (Keith, 2000; Keith 2005; Le Masurier, 2016). Because they are rarely the subject of dedicated research or are “lumped together” with reporters, they find themselves on the periphery of journalism studies (Duffy, 2021).
Hence, there is limited knowledge about the professional challenges and current transformation of editorial practices. In the specific context of Central and Eastern European post-transformation media systems (Waschková Císařová, 2025), a pronounced generational shift has taken place among editors (Stępińska and Ossowski, 2012; Moravec et al., 2015), which generational change has not been explored so far (Wang, 2021).
To address this research gap, this paper investigates different perceptions of editorial practices in a Central and Eastern European context by studying the case of two generations of Czech news editors. An exploration of these tangible factors and developments furthers not only our knowledge beyond the most researched media systems but also transcends the mainstream view of journalism.
Editors and editorial practices
The position of an editor in the newsroom is a comprehensive and complex one. Over the years and across different journalistic cultures, different types of editors and related job responsibilities have been identified (Duffy, 2021). At the most general level, an editor is defined as ‘the journalist with overall responsibility for running and overseeing a news organization's editorial operation, staffing, and content’, or understood as ‘a title given to journalists who run particular sections or departments’ (Harcup, 2015: 91). At a more specific level, however, other types of editors emerged such as copy editors (Cook and Banks, 1993; Clayman and Reisner, 1998; Keith, 2000; Keith 2005) and managing editors (Sylvie and Huang, 2008). Nevertheless, in today's shrinking newsrooms, where savings are also being made on editors’ positions (Le Masurier, 2016), editors are once again becoming jack-of-all-trades: they are responsible for content editing and layout and, as they climb the career ladder (Lindner, 2017) or as newsrooms converge (Gade, 2008), they also become responsible for a section and its reporters (including their socialisation), as well as gatekeeping and content strategy tied to the audience (Duffy, 2021). Related to this is substituting on the editors’ position multiple job assignments and responsibilities (Cook and Banks, 1993; Keith, 2005).
The editors’ position in a newsroom is one of power, as editors define the characteristics of professional journalism. The editor is considered ‘a marker of quality control which legitimises news journalism […] who negotiates among four groups with distinct values: the audience, the organisation, journalism as practice, and society’ (Duffy, 2021: 634). The main practices of an editor are twofold, including (1) editorial supervision or oversight based on teamwork performed through discussions and negotiations with other colleagues in the newsroom, which Andrew Duffy (2021: 636) describes as journalistic content ‘being looked at, judged and approved by an independent second pair of eyes with a view to informing debate in the public sphere’ and (2) responsibility for gatekeeping (Clayman and Reisner, 1998; Greenberg, 2016; Lindner, 2017), as editors are also in charge of ‘choosing [and] justifying’ (Sylvie and Huang, 2008: 61); or ‘commissioning [and] selecting’ topics (Harcup, 2015: 91). Both practices are linked to leadership and management, but their scope often depends on the size of the newsroom.
However, there is little information on how the position of editors has been changing over time or what their practices involve, for at least three reasons, including 1) the invisibility of their work and their role in the content creation and production processes, their labour being mostly anonymous (Keith, 2000); 2) in research, editors are often hidden under ‘the catch-all term “journalist”’ (Duffy, 2021: 634); and 3) scholarly attention paid to aspects of editors’ work is rather fragmented (Keith, 2000; Keith, 2005; Gade, 2008; Sylvie and Huang, 2008; Greenberg, 2016; Le Masurier, 2016; Lindner, 2017; Duffy, 2021). Furthermore, there is no significant scholarship on editors and their practices in Central and Eastern European media systems.
Generations of editors
The generational approach to the research on journalists appears rather sporadically (Barcellos and Gil, 2019; Broersma and Singer, 2021; Wang, 2021) and is even less frequent when it comes to Central and Eastern European journalists (Pasti, 2005; Lauk & Høyer, 2008; Stępińska and Ossowski, 2012; Moravec et al., 2015).
The term generation has been variously defined and is lacking consensus (Moravec et al., 2015; Wang, 2021). A generation does not mean just a cohort, a group of individuals of the same age. These individuals are ‘only united as an actual generation in so far as they participate in the characteristic social and intellectual currents of their society and period, and in so far as they have an active or passive experience of the interactions of forces which made up the new situation’ (Mannheim, 1952: 304). The faster the pace of social and cultural change, the greater the likelihood that the generation will respond to it by creating their own goals and principles (Mannheim, 1952). Therefore, one can understand the editors’ generation ‘in the sense of a cohort formed especially by an experience with a particular relatively bounded socio-political period and its long-term socio-professional consequences’ (Moravec et al., 2015: 35; cf. Lauk & Høyer, 2008; Nikunen, 2014).
The 35 year-long post-transformation history of Central and Eastern European media systems (Waschková Císařová, 2025) has seen several changes forming the subsequent generations of editors (Lauk, 1996). The Czech media system, labelled as the Hybrid Liberal Model or the monitorial journalistic cultures model (Němcová Tejkalová et al., 2025), is relatively stable and has experienced two major turning points in its history, including the transformation of the entire social system and, subsequently, the media after the 1989 revolution, as well as a fundamental change in its structure as a result of the 2008 economic crisis, which led to a changes in media ownership, resulting in its concentration and oligarchisation (Waschková Císařová, 2025). Journalistic work is, like in neighbouring countries, considered relatively safe, autonomous, but precarious (Němcová Tejkalová et al., 2025).
Authors focusing on post-transformation journalists either distinguish between ‘the old generation’ (journalists from the pre-revolution era) and ‘the new generation’ (those who joined the profession after the revolution) (Pasti, 2005: 89); or the pre-transformation, transformation and post-transformation generations of journalists (Stępińska and Ossowski, 2012). In the Czech context, Moravec et al. (2015: 35) distinguish between three generations: (1) the pre-transformation generation ‘born after February 1948 (part of which came back to media in the 1990s after a forced “time out”)’, (2) the transformation generation ‘which, at the beginning of the 1990s, entered the media as hastily as the new media system was being formed and its members quickly took the posts which, in media with uninterrupted historical continuity, are usually performed by journalists one generation older’ and (3) the post-transformation generation which ‘differs from the previous two by its lack of experience with radical social transformation’. They also take a critical stance toward the formation of the youngest generation: …this characteristic makes it a generation forming no specific, original consciousness but only further reproducing or diffusing (post) the November
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ethos which represents only a mediated experience for this generation. However, this journalistic generation seems to compensate for its lack of dramatic historical experience by its identification with the current socio-technical transformation (Moravec et al., 2015: 35).
Additionally, there are other sub-topics based on research worth consideration when assessing generational differences for editors. Nikunen (2014: 869) points out that one should consider the early retirement arrangements which ‘became a significant tool with which to fight the recession’. Authors also repeatedly note that the journalists most exposed to burnout are young copy editors at small newspapers (Cook and Banks, 1993; cf. Keith, 2005; Reinardy, 2011), indicating that journalism did not meet their expectations and they want to leave the profession. They are not satisfied with their job mainly because they earn less than the average income and are emotionally exhausted (Cook and Banks, 1993), which also leads to burnout, which, in turn, reduces the quality and quantity of the work done, increases staff turnover and generates conflict both at home and at work (Reinardy, 2011).
Considering the specificities of editorial work and the generational change in the Czech context, this paper explores how the two active generations of Czech editors perceive and assess changing editorial practices. Drawing on practice theory approach (Witschge and Harbers, 2018: 110), this study adopts a bottom-up perspective foregrounding interviewees’ understanding of both “sayings” and “doings”, that is, the shared set of activities and interpretations of what constitutes editorial work. This orientation is captured in the central research question of how the two different generations of editors perceive their changing editorial practices.
Research methods
The qualitative study consisted of 16 in-depth interviews conducted in 2024 with editors from four Czech media outlets’ types, including print, online, audio/radio and video/TV and from two different generations (see Table 1 for summary).
Structure of the group of interviewees
* Less than 16 years of editorial experience.
To cover the relevant spectrum of editorial practices and different generations, the sample of interviewees was carefully constructed. In the first step, the websites of Czech news media were searched and a database of editors was created with roughly 400 journalists who had the title of editor (cf. Urbániková and Volek, 2018).
Editors were individually invited to participate in the study to achieve heterogeneity in terms of age, gender, journalistic experience and media type. The interviewees were purposefully selected (cf. Deuze, 2005; Pasti, 2005; Birkner et al., 2024; Figenschou and Ihlebæk, 2025) as four sub-groups (according to media type) represented by 2 women and 2 men, ideally from different generations. The two generations were defined based on years of editorial experience (cf. Moravec et al., 2015; Birkner et al., 2024;). The interviewees represented 12 Czech outlets (including both public service and commercial media on both the national and regional levels).
Although the pre-determined distribution across the four groups was not fully achieved, the number of interviewees from both generations is 8. The deviation from the original design was caused by several factors: editors are older than reporters because they are usually more experienced; there are fewer older women among editors (probably due to job precarity); most of the interviewees (13) were from the capital city due to the overall centralisation of media; and the group has a significantly higher level of education (university – 14), concurrently in journalism or related fields (12) (cf. Urbániková and Volek, 2018). The study received ethical clearance from the Research Ethics Committee at the Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University (98-2024). All interviewees signed an informed consent form. The data were anonymised, and interviewees appear under pseudonyms.
The face-to-face interviews, which focused in general on changing professional practices, were collected in the Czech language and ranged from 48 min to 1,34 h. They were recorded, transcribed verbatim with the help of AI, corrected and translated. The data analysis took two cycles of coding: a primary round based on structural, descriptive and thematic matters; and a second round based on focused coding (Saldaña, 2009).
Findings
The topic of generational differences in editorial practices emerged in the interviews with both generations of editors without being prompted by questions, which stems from the bottom-up approach forming the basis of practice theory (Witschge and Harbers, 2018). Generational themes emerged in the interviews in three ways: 1) as a perception of the other generation of collaborators and their editorial practices and culture; 2) as a perception of one's own generation of collaborators and their editorial practices and culture; and 3) as similarities and differences in the editorial practices and cultures across these groups.
Editors’ perception of the other generation's practices and culture
For most of the participants, the reflection on generational differences began with defining themselves in relation to the other generation, naming (and occasionally stereotyping) its work culture and practices that are visible or even problematic for members of the other generation.
For the editors from the younger (downturn) generation, their older colleagues are ‘in their sixties with ‘90 s values and attitudes’
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(Barbora, PE, DG). The term ‘old fogey’ that they used refers not only to “old people”, but also to editors focused solely on numbers and sales; those happy with the precarious position of their subordinates, treating women unequally, and even being openly sexist in the newsroom: They happily put blondes with cleavage on the covers. It was completely bizarre. […] Such a clash of worlds. I preferred to leave because I would have become a bitter old person like them, and I didn’t want that. […] Such old fogeys. […] In the larger media outlets, they treat women terribly. My colleague is forty, and a colleague calls her “kitten”! (Barbora, PE, DG) People who come from traditional media don’t really have anywhere to work today because print has started to decline dramatically. The centre of power has shifted elsewhere. And it's paradoxical that people who ignored online media while being in the print edition are now leading the online edition. But they are leading them in the same way they would lead a newspaper. […] Where there was fun and opportunity at the beginning, it has become rigid again, because these old structures came in and took charge. […] That was one of the reasons why I left. (Jana, AE, DG) When I was younger, the older ones called me the same, now I do it myself, thinking: what will become of these young people? […] They wouldn’t be able to cope if they were in our situation. On the other hand, I know that I have to catch up with them in something they are at home [technology]. (Milan, AE, TG) The editorial team communicates more via electronic tools, which brings some disadvantages or problems, […] some of the more sensitive souls from the snowflake generation took it, when an older boss wrote something curtly, as a personal attack, and this caused big problems. […] People like us had no problem with this, but it caused problems for the younger ones. They felt that he was being mean to them, that he was hurting them and it was just because you don’t write unnecessary words like ‘please’, but you write ‘I need you to do this’. (Roman, OE, TG)
Editors’ perception of their own generation's practices and culture
Considering the answer to the question about the motivation to join or advance to the position of an editor from the position of a reporter or from outside of a newsroom, there are clear differences of perspectives in terms of the editors’ abilities, experience and responsibilities.
The downturn generation's interviewees unanimously interpret the fact that they became editors at a relatively young age as ‘a coincidence’ (Barbora, PE; Marie, OE) and a personnel necessity for the newsroom (Jana, AE; Alena, VE; Jakub, AE; Hana, AE, all DG): It was a coincidence. At first, I turned down the offer because I thought I didn’t have enough experience, but later I realised that it was my chance to have a less precarious job than being a reporter, and I accepted it for the sake of my health. (Robert, OE, DG) I was by far the youngest member of the editors’ team, most of our editors are around fifty. They can’t be novices who barely know how to use the editorial system. That really surprised me with the editor's position offer at the age of twenty-six. But somehow, I gained their trust, they knew I could do it, so I took it. But it was a huge experiment, also a bit forced by the shortage of staff. I think editors should be between 45–50 – they’ve already written something, they know people, they remember the topics. There's also an authority effect: when a reporter thinks he knows everything, a 45-year-old editor can rein him in more easily than I can… I can do it too now, but it took me a while. The editor has the final say, even if the author stands on his head. And this works better with the older editors. (Robert, OE, DG)
There is a significant difference in their perceptions of the crucial editorial practice – gatekeeping. Younger editors are aware that their outlets do not cover certain topics (e.g., gender, LGBTQIA+, mental health) and want to push for their coverage, but they encounter resistance by the older generation (Jana, AE, DG; Hana, AE, DG) and, surprisingly, also by some of their younger colleagues: Our youngest editor used to write about gender and mental health issues, so now she's pushing for these topics. She's pretty good at justifying why it should be written about. Since she became an editor, she's started to understand better, she admitted to me that it's not always appropriate to write in the activist way she sometimes intended. It has to be digestible for the 45 + target audience, who may be hearing about it for the first time or may not consider it important, but may learn from the article. (Robert, OE, DG)
The reservations of the older generation of editors regarding gatekeeping practices of the younger generation stem from similar topics – gender and climate change – and their criticism of the related editorial process: Contrary to what we’ve been trying to maintain for a long time, a relatively impartial approach, the texts by younger authors are starting to show a lot of activism, which is quite difficult to remove because authors are sensitive to it. […] I think it's a general trend, except that it's stronger among younger people: you can really feel the ideological position that many of them hold, and often they don’t even try to pretend that they’re impartial. […] There are two topics that are always related to it: gender issues and climate change. (Roman, OE, TG)
Editors’ perception of similarities in the editorial practices and culture across generations
Finally, the generational topic also emerged in editors’ reflection on similarities across generations. That of shared culture is based on a unanimous passion for the job declared by all the interviewed editors.
Factors contributing to their job satisfaction include good communication, creative discussion and cooperation in the team (Marie, OE, DG; Jakub, AE, DG; Pavel, PE, TG; Petr, PE, TG; Milan, AE, TG) and a certain type of freedom, liberty and creativity (Alena, VE, DG; Marie, OE, DG; Hana, AE, DG; Tereza, PE, TG).
Regardless of the generation, the interviewees also experienced stress and burnout related to editorial responsibility and subbing, which has a negative impact on their health, no matter the age (Robert, OE, DG; Hana, AE, DG; Marie, OE, DG; Roman, OE, TG; Terezie, PE, TG).
At the same time, the interviews reveal a significant difference in how the different generations of editors respond to these conditions and adapt their editorial practices. While the downturn generation actively and vigorously negotiates better working conditions and can achieve a less precarious environment (Jakub, AE; Hana, AE; Alena, VE, all DG), the transformation generation accepts conditions as a given and “necessary to survive”, or leaves the profession (Roman, OE; Petr, PE; Pavel, PE, all TG).
Summary and conclusions
The aim of this paper was to map the specificities of editorial work and generational change in the Czech context, based on a practice theory approach and answering the research question of how two different generations of editors perceive and assess their changing editorial practices.
The interviewed downturn generation of editors, that is, the “young snowflakes”, reflected on the following editorial practices and culture: 1) They have a complex self-perception stemming from both self-doubt and confidence in innovation. 2) They possess an adaptive learning culture where creative collaboration fills mentorship gaps. 3) They have agency under precarity: they are able to identify problems, negotiating their improvement, or leaving. 4) Their practices encompass technological and editorial innovation based on bold gatekeeping and activist practices. And 5) they show in their perceptions intergenerational cultural shift – conflicts between generations reveal the transformation of newsroom norms and practices. These conclusions add nuance to existing literature and new insights into the norms and practices of the emerging generation of editors.
The interviewed transformation generation of editors, that is, the “old fogeys” perceived the following editorial practices: 1) Their self-perception is based on confidence, authority and less on self-criticism. 2) They are conservatively resilient: they accept precarity and burnout as part of the job and adhere to traditional form of practices, especially in gatekeeping. 3) They did not develop innovation in their practices, which is one of the drivers of intergenerational tension: they are perceived by younger editors as resistant to change, seen as both survivors and enablers of corporate transformation. 4) This leads to cultural anchoring whereby the transformation generation of editors stabilises newsroom practices and norms and their conservatism creates friction with the adaptive younger downturn generation.
It is this last point that brings us back to the age distribution of the two generations, as the older one will reach retirement age in about five years, or is already of retirement age. With this approach – “we have already endured it, so we will see it through to the end”– they are capable of discouraging younger editors from seeing the meaning in their work and not only forcing them to seek out other media outlets with better (younger) teams and more current practices, but even to leave the profession for good.
The division into two generations proved highly insightful for the Czech post-transformation media system during the analysis, showing similarities with general research on journalists’ generational differences in the Central and Eastern European countries (Pasti, 2005; Stępińska and Ossowski, 2012; Moravec et al., 2015). Crucially, this study demonstrates the need to bring editors out of the shadows (Duffy, 2021) and situate them within the dynamics of generational changes in journalism. This is especially pressing in the Central and Eastern European media systems, where such research is scarce despite the manifest ongoing multiple turning points of the profession's transformation. By uncovering how these shifts shape the two generations of editors, the study not only fills a critical gap but also opens a new avenue for journalism studies, offering a framework to explore editorial work, innovation and editorial practices across time and contexts.
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
This output was supported by the NPO “Systemic Risk Institute” number LX22NPO5101, funded by European Union – Next Generation EU (Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, NPO: EXCELES).