Visual Gatekeeping – Selection of News Photographs at a Flemish Newspaper ; A Qualitative Inquiry into the Photo News Desk

Abstract As ethnographic studies of the visual gatekeeping process at newsrooms are scarce and the increasingly digitised news era demands for reconsideration, this article focuses on the results of a qualitative study at the photo news desk of a Flemish newspaper in Belgium. Our aim has been to provide an update and a broadening of previous studies on visual gatekeeping processes, and the findings are based on observations, in-depth interviews and reconstructions of the visual selection process. Our results show that routine and organisational influences as the ‘newsroom culture’ and the ‘rhy... Mehr ...