Newsroom Engineering Teams as “Survival Entities” for Journalism? Mapping the Process of Institutionalization at The Washington Post

Engineering teams – a form of newsroom innovation labs – have been heralded as survival entities in the news ecosystem as they have the potential to improve where news goes and moves. At The Washington Post, these teams have been around for three years, and they started to implement tools like election models fueled by A.I. and smart data pipelines that can possibly affect the autonomy and the tasks of the broader newsroom. By applying the process of institutionalization as an analytical framework, this study enhances our understanding of how the interaction takes place between these rather novel engineering teams and the established newsroom. In addition, we get a glimpse if the tools that are being implemented by these engineering teams are taken for granted and what forms of interaction obstruct or drive the way these tools are institutionalized. This study conducted 16 expert interviews focusing on the interaction and the process of institutionalization in combination with digital ethnography where that interaction is observable. Results reveal how the innovation justify – via interaction – the implementation of these tools to the broader newsroom and vice versa. The ways in which the tools are trusted to a minimal group of the newsroom show that the process of institutionalization, for both the teams and the tools, are still in a nascent state. The journalists in the broader newsroom that trust these tools are mostly data savvy and are therefore very homogenous. Transparency is key in order to increase institutionalization across the newsroom for these engineering teams and their tools.