Phases of Going Digital: A Framework for Assessing Newsroom Digitalisation Process

The success stories of digitalised newsrooms mostly depict outstanding news organisations with abundant resources. However, newsrooms with limited resources (e.g., local newspapers, media organisations of tiny media systems, especially in non-Western regions and new democracies) also undergo digitalisation. This study delves into the newsroom digitalisation processes, spotlighting the indicators characterising different phases of digitalisation. We conducted semi-structured interviews with Estonian online journalists. The interviews were conducted in five waves between 2012 and 2023. Our results show that the transformation from legacy to the digital newsroom is a complex structure of factors, manifesting indicators that become evident in certain phases of digitalisation. These indicators include technological, production-related, human capital, and audience perception domains. If some indicators do not exhibit complete transformation, the newsroom may be unable to move into the next phase. This study contributes to the conceptual understanding of digital journalism epistemology by presenting a framework of newsroom digitalisation phases.