'We have never been part of the journalistic profession': Self-perceptions and professionalization of online journalists in the early era of Hungarian digital media. Issue 3 (3rd July 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Tofalvy, Tamas
• Is Part Of: Media history. Volume 27:Issue 3(2021)
• Page Start: 381
• Page End: 402
• Publication Date: 2021-07-03
• Subjects: online journalism -- professionalization -- social history -- Hungary -- self-perception; Mass media -- History -- Periodicals; Press -- History -- Periodicals; Journalism -- History -- Periodicals; 070.09
• DOI: 10.1080/13688804.2020.1825931
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1368-8804

Abstract

Abstract : This paper is an examination of the self-perceptions and professionalization of online journalists who worked for the first two Hungarian content-providing ventures, Internetto and the Content Project, and their successors, Index.hu and Origo.hu, respectively, between 1995 and 1999. I have analyzed how organizational cultures and values attached to technology interacted with the process of professionalization. The evolution of Hungarian online journalism exhibits three chief characteristics. First, the earliest online news sites were online-first and online-only. Second, the organizational contexts of the outlets were radically different. Though both outlets had publishers with international backgrounds, the journalists at Internetto operated as a kind of experimental community, while the Origo-team had to adjust to the organizational culture of a telecommunications monopoly. Third, the participants were simultaneously learning and formulating the rules of the then new profession called online journalism.