This Monograph will explore the empirical and theoretical ramifications of journalism as social media, specifically “journalism as process.” The piece calls for an end to thinking about news as a discrete product and the beginning of considering news production as a shared, distributed action with multiple authors, shifting institution-audience relationships and altered labor dynamics for everyone involved. Using the exemplar of one Midwestern city - Madison, WI - and its information-production/consumption community, this research stems from a newsroom ethnography and 100 interviews with journalists, bloggers, and members of the socially mediating public. It puts forward the idea that news has become a transportive, transactional object of professional, social and civic work for both journalists and audience members.
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