Journalism as office work

This chapter presents research on office equipment as journalistic tools and how they have shaped news, editorial practices, and professional roles. It follows two technologies – scissors and typewriters – from editorial offices and into underground networks where the tools are turned into “small media.” Scissors and paste pots were important technologies in the nineteenth-century press. To cut and reprint text items from other newspapers made individual papers part of networks of text reuse and information flows. Yet, this reproduction also restricted the possibilities of self-expression of the individual journalist. The introduction of typewriters in the early twentieth century made it possible to speed up news production. They were often introduced along with a division of labor, where reporters gathered information and the rewrite staff typed the stories. However, examining the technologies also in other contexts show that material conditions play out differently in different organizations and cultures. Used in fanzine production, for example, scissors became creative tools of self-expression. In totalitarian regimes, typewriters were used to reproduce underground newsletters in distributed networks where readers took part as writers and distributors. The examples illustrate that the materiality of journalism matters, but always in interaction with practices and economic, political and cultural circumstances.