Revisiting News Work: The Impact of Corporate Technology Use on U.S. TV Newsroom Labor

This research revisits a 2015–16 study to update U.S. local television newsrooms labor conditions. Through qualitative surveys (n = 71) and in-depth interviews (n = 21), this study focuses on how corporate owners used technology in their newsrooms in 2024 and the subsequent impacts on their employees. Labor process theory is the framework used, critically examining the power relations of control and worker response during product production under capitalism. In U.S. local television newsrooms, the corporate ownership companies are the main power drivers - deploying technology to enhance profits and decrease labor costs across their properties. When the original study data was collected, the day-to-day routines of the individual worker saw the biggest impacts of corporate technology at the time–gear purchased by ownership changed how a person did a specific job, or added content platforms increased an individual's daily expected output. In 2024, the focus is on using tech to impact workers as a collective instead of on an individual basis. This includes rapidly-expanding use of regional or national news hubs and automated or prerecorded newscasts. The majority of the 2024 study participants were looking for what their next career move would be; for many that did not include local tv news.