Journalism and the City

Place matters a great deal in journalism, even in the era of the ‘death of geography.’ Yet space never produces effects through its existence alone. To understand the relevance of location beyond its most immediate assigned role of ‘logistic constraint’ we must rework not only our understanding of journalism, but of the whole social world. This article presents a comparative analysis of foreign correspondents’ practices in London and Oslo. The foreign journalists’ experiences in the case studies are analytically dissected through the lens of Bruno Latour’s Actor Network Theory (ANT). The analysis shows the utility of the application of Latour’s framework to the study of international journalism in two respects. First, by mapping how local practices—identities, newsgathering routines and story outputs—are relationally constructed through the interactions of social actors, technologies, and material infrastructures, ANT provides an understanding of the role of location that transcends the merely physical and geographical dimensions. Second, by showing how situated practices are the outcomes of unique network configurations, ANT questions the validity of any generalized one-size-fits-all statements about the current state of foreign correspondence.