Insurgent rule? Aligning to technological innovation and convergence in media production

Digital innovation, warranted an unprecedented marking off from what went before in the media production and brought with it a paradigm or ‘isoquantic shift’– a significant technological advancement that caused dramatic changes to an environment already characterized by crisis and uncertainty. Indeed, digitalization alongside its catalytic consequence of the convergence are said to have influenced the way journalist, in general, do their job, the nature of news content, the structure and organization of newsroom as well as the relationship between and among news organizations. Against this background, this paper assesses how Portuguese media incumbent and resurgent companies have changed their business practices in terms of organization and production strategies as a result of digitalization and convergence within a particular journalistic métier usually disregarded: the photojournalism. To achieve it, the study resorts to a multiple theory approach to the subject, combining three research streams: (evolutionary) economic, regulatory and management theories. The impact of such dramatic changes and the implications in the photojournalism and the way these media professionals are aligning to changes in job design, work processes, organizational culture is gauged through the qualitative interviewing of a representative sample of the Portuguese key media personnel.
We argue that digitalization of photography, similarly to the invention of black and white photography in the past, is to be integrated within a cyclical model of technological evolution - dominant design theory - characterized by breakthrough and discontinuity but with the potential of a ‘discontinuous innovation’ which is likely to become a ‘competence destroyer’. We conclude that far from marking the final snap-shot of photojournalism, incumbent or traditional newsrooms will have to resort to the strategies adopted by the insurgent players: outsourcing to freelancers and/or photo-agencies.