This study examines how legacy news organizations in Bangladesh are navigating digital transformation within a repressive political system and a moderately developed media market. Drawing on the frameworks of disruptive innovation and post-industrial journalism, it employs a mixed-methods approach to analyze how digital adaptation is reconfiguring journalistic labor, editorial practices, and professional norms. Findings suggest that news organizations are increasingly adopting platform-oriented content strategies to reach large domestic and diasporic audiences, with particular emphasis on algorithm-driven and sensationalized news distributed through official YouTube channels. This shift is accompanied by the expansion of multimedia desks staffed primarily by digitally skilled younger journalists. While these “innovative” strategies are perceived as generating new revenue streams, they also intensify job insecurity among senior journalists and raise concerns about the erosion of journalistic quality. The study also contributes to scholarship on the digital transformation of legacy media in politically constrained Global South contexts.
Khan et al. (Tue,) studied this question.