Narative journalism in the contemporary newsroom: The rise of new paradigm in news format?

This study examines the journalistic discourse in American trade publications toward a storytelling format, competitive in contemporary daily papers, which has long been considered as not appropriate for objective news writing. Thomas Kuhn’s concept of ‘paradigm’ was employed in examining and analyzing narrative discourse in trade journals. The outcome of text-analysis revealed that assenters in narrative news writing outnumbered the dissenters; narrative upholders have vividly attempted to construct a friendly perspective toward a storytelling format by eulogizing the prose style, battering the old form of news production, and distancing the previous literary movement from contemporary narrative news writing. The author concludes that the change of journalistic perception toward the narrative style documents the hierarchical relationship between the occupational ideology and the market ideology within which the journalistic paradigm of news writing can be modified and replaced when the established one — the inverted pyramid news writing — fails to satisfy the concerns of the media industry.