Print journalism and the creative process: journalists and the organisation

This paper applies current research in the domain of creativity research to the domain of print journalism to illustrate how a journalist learns the rules and procedures of the organisation worked for and how important they are in the production of creative media texts. Using Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s systems model of creativity, a Rationalist model, it can be demonstrated that it is both the cultural and social structures of the organisation, as well as those of the broader journalism domain, that supports a journalist’s production. Csikszentmihalyi claims that creativity is generated within the interaction of a system of three elements: a domain of knowledge (the cultural structure), a field (the social structure) and an individual, in this case the print journalist. The paper maintains that by learning the rules and procedures of the organisation, a print journalist can produce work that is both novel and appropriate: a creative text. The paper is drawn from ongoing PhD research into the creative practices of print journalists in Australia. After conducting semi-structured interviews with 36 members of the field of print journalism, data analysis indicated that cultural and social structures are a crucial element in the communication of an organisation’s policies and expectations to journalists, both formally and informally. Furthermore, there is an inextricable link between the cultural structure, the social structure and an individual journalist in the creation of a media text and this is an illustration of Csikszentmihalyi’s systems model of creativity in action.