Journalism

Copyright © 2000 SAGE Publications

(London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi)
Vol. 1(2): 125–143 [1464-8849(200008)1:2;125–143;013415]

ARTICLE

Doing double duty

Paradigm repair and the Princess Diana
what-a-story

j Dan Berkowitz
School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Iowa

ABSTRACT

This study draws on journalistic discourse about the death of Princess Diana to frame
everyday newswork as cultural ritual, and show how some kinds of newswork serve to
maintain and restore the core tenets of the culture’s beliefs. The study focuses on the
ritual of paradigm repair and its particular case employed in what-a-story newswork.
KEY WORDS j newswork j paradigm repair j Princess Diana j ritual j what-a-
story

When Princess Diana died after her car crashed in a Paris tunnel during a chase
by paparazzi, news media worldwide generated extensive coverage. Most news
stories detailed the situation that led to her death, but significant reporting
and editorializing also focused on the actions of the news media themselves.
Viewed through the lens of journalistic professional norms (Berkowitz, 1997;
Hackett, 1984; Voakes, 1997), this activity by journalists could be viewed
simply as the responsible thing for the news media to do. Seen through social
and cultural perspectives, though, the news media commenting on Princess
Diana’s death can be considered an effort by a professional community to
maintain itself by enacting special and infrequently used cultural rituals
(Ehrlich, 1996).
This study thus portrays newswork as the enactment of craft culture, of
what could be considered professional ritual. Some newswork rituals perform
journalistic maintenance work that explicitly draws attention to and re-
inforces the core tenets of the culture when those tenets are drawn out for
public scrutiny and criticism. These maintenance rituals perform double duty
by re-affirming professional ideology in both the mind of society and in the
minds of journalists who belong to and believe in that professional culture.
126 Journalism 1(2)

Here, the case of Princess Diana’s death provides a good example of journal-
istic ritual that highlights distinctions between discussions that speak about
‘good’ or ‘ethical’ journalism and discussions based on conceptual explana-
tions that portray these kinds of newswork as ritual forms of journalistic
culture (Voakes, 1997).
After introducing the conceptual dimensions of everyday newswork and
the journalistic paradigm, I elaborate the conceptual framework related to the
paradigm repair involved in telling what-a-story. Paradigm repair attempts to
restore faith in the paradigm of objectivity by isolating the people or organiza-
tions that stray from the rest of the news media institution (Bennett et al.,
1985; Hackett, 1984; Reese, 1990). Telling the what-a-story is accomplished by
applying an all-out, large-scale effort to a highly unexpected but well known
occurrence (such as a plane crash) that attempts to simulate everyday work
routines (Berkowitz, 1992; Tuchman, 1978). What-a-story newswork creates
the appearance that the dominant news paradigm is capable of managing even
the most challenging situations. With this framework of ritual newswork in
place, I present a case study about the death of Princess Diana to show how
this kind of paradigm repair serves the culture that spawned it.

Everyday newswork: ritual for the predictable accomplishment

of work

From a journalist’s point of view, the news is created through a deep under-
standing of professional standards and norms. Much of the sociological
literature, however, has portrayed everyday journalism as a strategic effort to
successfully accomplish work in a predictable manner that meets the daily
expectations of the news organizations (Fishman, 1982; Schudson, 1989;
Tuchman, 1978). To do so, journalists learn routines for gathering information
and writing news stories that can regularly produce an expected product
(Eliasoph, 1988). These routines usually are learned informally on the job
through socialization in a news media organization – ‘by osmosis’ – but are
rarely documented or taught explicitly (Breed, 1955). Similarly, they are
reinforced informally by unspoken rewards and punishments (Soloski, 1989).
Rather than working as members of a profession, then, journalists can be
depicted as members of an interpretive community, where meanings develop
from experience within their work culture (Zelizer, 1993a).
Everyday life in a news organization can accurately be viewed as routine
activity, but it should not be taken as impersonal work without cultural
meaning. Ehrlich (1996: 7) explains that ‘newswork is not simply routinized; it
is also ritualized’. He argues that sociological approaches to the study of
 Berkowitz Doing double duty 127

newswork tend to overlook this personal sense of meaning and belonging to a

profession and its culture. Ehrlich adds that some authors (i.e. Dayan and Katz,
1992) have offered the concept of ‘media events’, those specific but infrequent
‘high rituals’ that bond the professional culture during times of challenge. To
place the concept of media event into this study’s conceptual framework,
though, a stronger sense of the cultural ritual dimension needs to be empha-
sized: here it is cast into its cultural context as ritual that explicitly serves the
role of paradigm repair. The next sections discuss ways that professional rituals
serve this purpose of cultural bonding for journalists and the journalistic
institution. They should be seen not as conflicting, but instead as com-
plementary and helping to serve the same cultural task.

The news paradigm and its repair process

If membership among the ranks of journalism professionals is based upon

everyday ritual that produces ‘correct’ news, then the activity of paradigm
repair can be viewed as a practice intended to bind together the interpretive
community of journalists during times of stress. A key aspect of this commu-
nity identity among mainstream journalists is their belief in the paradigm of
objectivity as a way of knowing as they strive to be recognized as the unbiased
tellers of society’s goings-on (Hackett, 1984). The ritual of paradigm repair
reasserts this objective news paradigm – the core of journalistic ideology –
when it has been breached, by generating discussion among journalists. Thus,
paradigm repair may be seen as a ritual performed, at least in part, to set
‘objective’ journalists apart from the ‘unobjective’ journalists for both them-
selves and society, outlining the boundaries of the community along the way.
The chief purpose of paradigm repair is to add continuity to the meanings of
the journalistic interpretive community, to keep those meanings from moving
too quickly or too far from the interpretive norm.
Journalism education, for example, can therefore be viewed as ritual
designed to prepare fledgling reporters to become members of an interpretive
group that performs within a professional paradigm (Altschull, 1995). Journal-
ism textbooks accomplish this indoctrination in part by passing along the
mechanical and process aspects of daily journalism, such as writing leads,
interviewing sources, and applying the correct publication style. Ultimately,
these texts and the courses that use them strive to build ‘a news sense’ for their
students and to develop ‘a correct way’ of reporting issues and occurrences
that aligns with accepted meanings and interpretations of working journalists
(Hackett, 1984; Hardt, 1998). Because of this commonality in training, jour-
nalism courses also create industry workers who can quickly adapt to different
128 Journalism 1(2)

media organizations and make a predictable product with little reorientation

or retraining in their basic skills (Bantz et al., 1980). Newsworkers come to see
occurrences through similar frames and, without even realizing it, are able to
present an interpretation that matches that of most other journalists (Bird and
Dardenne, 1988; Gitlin, 1980; Tuchman, 1978). Rather than opening their
eyes to see truth and reality, though, journalists learn the meanings that ‘good
journalists’ are supposed to know and they strive to replicate those meanings
to demonstrate professionalism to their peers and their superiors (Bennett
et al., 1985).
It follows from this ideological viewpoint that if journalists remain true to
their own ideological school, they can be true to truth itself (Ettema and
Whitney, 1987; Hackett, 1984). If instead truth appears not to have been told,
the ready conclusion is that a journalist did not follow the rules of the
objectivity paradigm carefully enough – adhering to the correct professional
behaviors should have caused the news to turn out ‘correctly’ (Soloski, 1989).
When these errors of interpretation or professional discretion occur, blame is
then placed on the person or news organization that made an error in practice
– that broke the paradigm’s procedures – rather than on the institution that
stakes its reputation on the effectiveness of practicing that paradigm.
Operationally, paradigm repair is usually accomplished by the media
institution through a series of editorials and opinion pieces identifying the
culprit and explaining how the wrongdoing occurred (Berkowitz, 1997). In all,
paradigm repair becomes a way for the media institution to justify its existence
within its current system of practice (Bennett et al., 1985). As Reese (1990)
explains, news paradigms tend toward the hegemonic within a profession; a
member of the profession must follow the routines of the paradigm in order to
be seen as a member in good standing. A key tenet here is that journalists
should report the news through the valueless procedures of objectivity, rather
than making the news by either becoming actors in an occurrence (Bennett
et al., 1985; Schudson, 1996) or obvious re-interpreters from another ideologi-
cal vantage point (Reese, 1990). These kinds of paradigmatic errors, when
detected, bring the media institution’s paradigm repair process into action. For
example, when WHMA-TV filmed a protester who requested television cov-
erage of his self-immolation, major media across the country criticized the
station for showing up as requested and becoming part of the news (Bennett et
al., 1985). When long-time Wall Street Journal reporter A. Kent MacDougall
revealed that he had been an active socialist while working for the Journal,
editorials worked both to discredit him as a reporter and to celebrate the
checks and balances inherent in the journalistic editing process (Reese, 1990).
Similarly, when seven-year-old pilot Jessica Dubroff and two others were killed
when her plane crashed while taking off in a storm, the print media quickly
 Berkowitz Doing double duty 129

pointed at the broadcast media for violating the paradigm’s standards in

promoting her fatal flight (Berkowitz, 1997). In each case, ‘objective’ journal-
ists responded by engaging in the ritual of building barriers that would divide
objective and unobjective journalists, simultaneously reasserting the objectiv-
ity paradigm and redefining which journalists deserved membership within its
interpretive community (Bishop, 1999).
To summarize so far, professional ideology guides and constrains the work
of journalists. Everyday newswork serves as professional ritual to reaffirm
journalists’ support of their professional beliefs and keep the tenets of this
ideology in place. When journalists stray from correctly enacting their pro-
fessional ideology in a way that is visible to both their peers and to society,
ritual newswork in the form of paradigm repair is begun to demonstrate that
while individuals might have strayed, the institution itself has remained
intact. A further stage of ritual newswork, reporting on a what-a-story, some-
times works along with paradigm repair and sometimes becomes a ritual on its
own. I discuss this in the section that follows.

Reporting on a what-a-story

If paradigm repair centers on damage control, then reporting on a what-a-story

represents the process of taking extraordinary occurrences and reporting on
them in a way that makes journalistic work appear competent to news media
audiences. Much of the work of journalists involves routine practices designed
to efficiently tell and retell common everyday events (Tuchman, 1978). Sur-
prisingly, when a highly unexpected event of major proportions occurs, the
unknown is also processed quite efficiently through a special what-a-story
work routine. Tuchman (1978: 59–63) discussed what-a-story newswork in her
example about President Lyndon B. Johnson’s surprise announcement that he
would not run for re-election. There, journalists were casually watching
Johnson’s televised speech about de-escalation of bombing in Vietnam just in
case he departed slightly from the prepared script they received on the wire.
When Johnson actually did depart from the script, reporters became caught up
in the moment as they began an all-out effort to cover the unexpected
announcement that had previously been typified as a routine occurrence.
To cover Tuchman’s what-a-story, newsworkers first signified the what-a-
story by engaging in behaviors such as exclaiming those very words aloud in
an excited manner and referring to past occurrences of similar surprise and
magnitude. Zelizer (1993b: 225) calls this process of comparison to the past
‘the durational mode of interpretation’. Once signified, the journalists in
130 Journalism 1(2)

Tuchman’s example then modified their work rhythms, as editors and re-
porters were called in for the extra reconnaissance needed to report the story.
Newswork became an all-out effort to recast the news net to meet publication
deadlines. All the while, news workers relied on a variety of everyday work
procedures to get the job done. This example shows how journalists demon-
strate that their paradigm can be effective even in times of significant pressure.
Other authors have documented this concept as well, often using the same
name. Bennett et al. (1985) quoted reporter Robin McDonald saying, ‘My God,
what a story!’ to signify the magnitude of the self-immolation story. Romano
(1986) used the term ‘Holy shit!’ instead to typify a story about a guest who
had drowned at a party attended by 100 lifeguards. Berkowitz (1992) described
what-a-story newswork in the case where a military jet flew into a hotel,
setting the hotel on fire and causing several deaths.
As with paradigm repair, the activities of journalists during a what-a-story
build bonds within their interpretive community and maintain belief in its
core tenets. Elliott (1982: 584) offers a similar notion of ‘press rites’, the
coverage of stories that demonstrate the stability of a social system by showing
how it works in a consensual way. In covering these press rites, the news media
tend to show uncommon agreement on how the story should be told.
Coverage of what-a-stories also tends to be very predictable and varies little
among news organizations. Story themes frequently move from shock at the
tragic intervention of fate in our lives, to a search for heroes and/or villains,
and finally, to a reassertion of existing authorities and a return to normal
(Berkowitz, 1992; Vincent et al., 1989). Many what-a-stories end with the
playing of expected songs, such as ‘Amazing Grace’ at a funeral or series of
funerals to symbolize closure and a new beginning (e.g. The New York Times,
1998: 12A). Journalistic interpretive communities also engage in a ‘local’ mode
of interpretation (Zelizer, 1993b: 225) during what-a-stories to reassure them-
selves that they got the story ‘right’, often by comparing their take on the
coverage with that of their colleagues.
Although properly socialized newsworkers know how the story is sup-
posed to go and can identify the requisite story elements, their reconnaissance
work still is difficult because information is not as accessible early in the what-
a-story (Graber, 1984; Vincent et al.,1989). This is a challenging, amorphous
occurrence, even though the what-a-story routine is known by most journal-
ists in the interpretive community: it tends to be mentally rehearsed but rarely
implemented. For example, even though newsworkers know how to bring out
the entire staff during a disaster and they know that early disaster coverage is
usually the story of ‘fate intervening in our lives’, they still face significant
challenges when actually locating the story parts they think they should be
gathering and assembling. The broadcast media face a further challenge as
 Berkowitz Doing double duty 131

newsworkers scurry to prepare and present a series of bulletins that require

both written content and visuals, so that greater reliance on routine typifica-
tions becomes a working necessity to stay on course (Berkowitz, 1992).
Much of what-a-story coverage is therefore typified as quite expected news.
The notion of typification – placing the story within a familiar model –
deserves further elaboration in relation to the what-a-story concept. Typifica-
tion becomes important for the accomplishment of what-a-story coverage in
two intertwined dimensions (Berkowitz, 1992). The first form of typification
concerns the element of time. Tuchman (1978), when attempting to learn
journalists’ categorization of news stories, discovered that the categories they
spoke about within their community (hard news, soft news, etc.) did not really
provide an accurate match to their working practice. She found instead that
their categorizations of occurrences were more related to the work rhythms
they employed to cover these stories. For example, they knew that spot news
would unfold in a short period of time, while issue-related stories would have
a much longer life. Typifying work rhythms becomes crucial for successful
what-a-story coverage, because of the need to understand what work is
needed, streamline its processes, and bring it into the folds of everyday
routines.
The second form of typification appears during the process of categorizing
occurrences into different themes, such as ‘a plane crash story’ or ‘a union
strike story’. With experience, and presumably as they become more immersed
in the journalistic interpretive community, journalists learn how these kinds
of stories are ‘supposed to go’. They know what the basic plot elements should
be and the basic kinds of actors involved. If they don’t know, they know to ask
a more experienced (i.e. more ‘professional’) journalist to explain the proper
model. This leads to strategic information gathering that rules out some parts
of the story and mandates others (Fishman, 1982; Nossek, 1994; Stocking and
Gross, 1989; van Dijk, 1988).
Taken together, typification of both work rhythms and story-telling
modes becomes a key part for successful implementation of the what-a-story
ritual. Successful application of this typification demonstrates to both journal-
ists and their audiences that the dominant news paradigm is indeed an
appropriate one. In performing the double duty of paradigm repair and
covering the what-a-story, journalists also define the boundaries of their
interpretive community and make explicit their cultural commonalties. They
use both durational and local discourse to reassure themselves of the limits of
that community while distancing themselves from unobjective journalists.
And they enact rarely used, but well-known rituals of their culture to reassert
and maintain its core values.
132 Journalism 1(2)

Method

This study draws its data from a qualitative examination of journalistic

discourse in editorial columns and opinion pieces found in searches of the
Nexis news database. Analysis was guided by key ideas from Altheide’s (1996)
approach, which he calls ‘ethnographic content analysis’ or ECA. Central to
this approach is that meanings emerge through repeated encounters with the
texts under study. This includes both research design and findings, which are
guided by conceptual dimensions of the study, as well as what is gleaned from
the texts. The ECA approach aims for both rigor and validity, but does not use
the imposed design and measurement scheme frequently associated with
traditional content analysis. As with the ECA approach to analysis, sampling
of texts here was emergent and guided by what Altheide (1996: 33–5) calls
theoretical or conceptual sampling. That is, materials are chosen for theoret-
ically relevant reasons rather than through probability samples.
Putting these ideas into place, stories, editorials, and opinion pieces were
chosen to illustrate the concepts presented in previous sections of this article,
and to explore their dimensions. Newspaper content was seen as a good fit to
the study’s conceptual dimensions in two ways. First, concerns about media
performance and ethics would be most central to newspapers in this case,
because this is where the paparazzi’s work usually appears. Second, paradigm
repair usually takes place in the print media, because they are the primary site
of editorial comment. Examining newspapers offered the additional advantage
of analytic convenience and archival accessibility to facilitate the analysis.
The specific stories were chosen from the Nexis file called ‘major papers’,
again because news commentary on the story would most likely appear in this
group of large regional or national newspapers, such as The New York Times and
The Boston Globe. The specific search terms submitted to the Nexis news
database focused on two ideas. First, a search was conducted to find stories
about Diana’s death appearing during the week following her death, that is,
from 31 August 1997 to 8 September 1997. These stories were read for content
related to the concepts of paradigm repair and the what-a-story. From approx-
imately 400 stories, a smaller group of 30 stories and editorials were selected
for their fit to the topic. Additionally, approximately 175 stories that focused
on the tabloid newspapers’ decision not to buy materials about the story from
the paparazzi were located. These were read carefully and 11 stories and
editorials that were most central to this study’s concepts were selected for
further analysis. This approach corresponds to Altheide’s theoretical sampling
concept.
After reviewing key concepts once again, close textual analysis was applied
to the news texts. This began with a general reading of the texts to gain
 Berkowitz Doing double duty 133

familiarity with them. Next, stories were read more closely and notes were
taken to highlight overall trends related to the study’s concepts. The stories
were then read again to identify portions that most clearly made points related
to paradigm repair and what-a-story coverage, and more broadly, for indica-
tions that this newswork was seen as a cultural ritual by journalists. Additional
notes grouped examples together and compared both the nuances they offered
and the effectiveness by which they expressed the concepts of this study.

Applying concepts to context

This section presents and discusses connections between paradigm repair and
what-a-story newswork. Discussion begins by highlighting two distinct kinds
of paradigm repair that took place, one in the mainstream news and another in
the tabloid press. An opinion column in The Houston Chronicle provides an
ironic characterization of the situation:

. . . the regular press stands on its collective head to try to convince the world
there is a great difference between the real press and the paparazzi. And the
paparazzi insist the fault lies with the tabloids that buy their pictures for such
outrageous sums of money. Then everyone in the trade rushes to contend any
blame lies with the public; for, after all, if the people wouldn’t buy the publica-
tions featuring the products of the paparazzi, then no one would publish them
and, ergo, the paparazzi would stop their celebrity chases. Of course, the public
says it wouldn’t look if the paparazzi pictures weren’t there to see. And the
regular press says it wouldn’t describe – often even reprint – the work of the
paparazzi if it hadn’t become such an issue because of its wide distribution. (Ely,
1997)

Ritual, boosterism and the dominant news paradigm

For mainstream media, this story became an opportunity to demonstrate the

dominant paradigm’s superiority to that of the tabloid press, a kind of
paradigm boosterism. The theme here was ‘The dominant news paradigm
doesn’t make news, it mirrors the world’s occurrences’. This notion appeared
frequently in stories passing initial blame for the occurrence on the paparazzi
and on the tabloid press that hired them. In addition to serving as a kind
of ritual for community-building among journalists, these stories made a clear
differentiation between mainstream media – portrayed as reputable and
ethical – and the tabloid press, which was portrayed as a social leech drawing
its money from the famous and from that sector of the public buying tabloid
publications. As Bishop (1999) argues, this was a kind of boundary building
activity that worked to separate members of the journalistic community.
134 Journalism 1(2)

An Orlando Sentinel editorial (1997) attempted to make a clear distinction

– to establish boundaries – between the two kinds of publications by applying
the term ‘serious journalists’ to members of the mainstream press. ‘Make no
mistake, the paparazzi are part of the chaff of journalism, egged on by tabloids
whose weak values and disregard for truth hurt everyone,’ the editorial
concluded. That editorial also cast distinctions about the organizations where
those serious journalists worked:
Serious news organizations don’t spend their time relentlessly chasing celebrities
or even politicians. For those organizations, there are unwritten rules that
separate public from private.

Those ‘unwritten rules’ were, of course, unwritten in that article and else-
where. But the assertion corresponds to the literature that portrays journalistic
norms as being socially learned and supports the idea that the paradigm itself
does not allow formally written, organizationally prescribed rules for pro-
fessional conduct. The San Francisco Chronicle (1997) was more blunt, referring
to the tabloid press as the ‘tawdry soap opera industry’, of which it clearly
preferred not to be considered a part. And an editorial in the Ft Lauderdale Sun-
Sentinel (1997) took no chances that the mainstream news paradigm could be
confused with that of the tabloid paradigm, stating:
First of all, there is no such thing as ‘the press’. The Sun-Sentinel, National Enquirer,
Entertainment Tonight and the London tabloids are not identical pieces of a single,
think-alike, act-alike, ethically and professionally invisible organism.

In this example, editors of the Sun-Sentinel appear to be carefully building a

boundary between themselves and the tabloid media. This act of dismissing
the notion of a monolithic ‘press’ may be seen as a performative gesture to set
unobjective organizations outside the boundary of the mainstream inter-
pretive community. And the Sun-Sentinel did not stand alone. Journalist Hugo
Gurdon (1997), writing in Washington for The Daily Telegraph said: ‘The wave
of disgust at tabloid techniques surged to full flood, receiving mass coverage
second only to emotional appreciations of the Princess.’ He went on to cite
several major US newspapers that addressed this point in their pages. A writer
in The San Francisco Chronicle (Carroll, 1997) dubbed this boundary-building
effort a ‘tiny psychotic break’:
It’s easy to make the diagnosis from hearing the patient describe the event. Many
hours were logged by the media distancing itself from the media. ‘The death of
Princess Diana raises questions about the role of the media,’ say the media. ‘Can
the media be blamed?’ wonder the media.

Other parts of this particular story, though, could be interpreted as a larger

effort to repair rather than simply boost the dominant paradigm. Later in the
same column, Carroll pointed out that the whole media institution was
 Berkowitz Doing double duty 135

slipping from rigid adherence to approved practices of the paradigm. He

asserted that for media commentators, ‘the media’ included every organiza-
tion except the one employing the commentator. He then turned to critique
his own newspaper’s performance:
The proprietors of major media outlets control the money; they could control the
behavior. They could not end the problem, but they could lessen it. They could
decide (for instance) that celebrities on vacation should be allowed to recreate in
peace. . . . They could finally acknowledge that the creation of a more civil
society – so often called for in the editorial pages – starts right here.

This theme continued to develop in the days following initial coverage. In

general, though, coverage clearly indicated a large-scale effort by mainstream
media to seize the opportunity to engage in paradigm boosterism. And that
boosterism may be viewed as a performative – a gesture more important
because it occurred than for what language it contained – in shaping the
journalistic interpretive community.
This performance converged quite clearly across mainstream media organ-
izations that directed their attention to condemnation from Diana’s family.
One particular assertion appeared time and again in this coverage. A quote-
heard-around-the-world summed up the case for the mainstream press. It came
from Diana’s brother, Earl Spencer, who said: ‘I always believed the press
would kill her in the end’ (Lyall, 1997). There, of course, he was taken as
referring to the tabloid media, where he added, ‘But not even I could imagine
that they would take such a direct hand in her death as seems to be the
case.’
Another strategy that appeared, one more related to paradigm repair,
seemed directed at the overall media institution. Here, blame was cast on
society itself for buying tabloid news and supporting the tabloid press. Many
of these themes appear in the discussion of the tabloid press’s repair work that
follows, however, and so examples will be saved for the next section.

Repairing the tabloid news paradigm

If the mainstream media seized the opportunity to engage in paradigm

boosterism, then the challenge for the tabloid press to maintain its paradigm’s
validity was even more formidable. In contrast to the objectivity tenet of the
mainstream press, the tabloid press paradigm could be portrayed as ‘We’re just
having some harmless fun that everybody seems to enjoy.’ Paradigm work thus
needed to focus on how coverage of the princess would produce this harmless
fun under normal conditions and how the conditions leading to Diana’s death
were not normal. In this case, the tabloids needed to block attacks coming
both from the mainstream press and from society. First, the tabloids needed to
136 Journalism 1(2)

defend their paradigm against the assault from the mainstream press’ para-
digm boosterism. At the same time, the tabloids needed to address concerns
from a public demand for a tabloid boycott.
For the tabloid press’ paradigm repair work to be accomplished, blame was
placed on two other social groups – the media audience and the paparazzi –
rather than on a specific journalist or news organization, as is frequently the
case. This is not usually the way paradigm repair is accomplished, but this
strategy was also applied by the news media after the death of Jessica Dubroff,
the young pilot who died when her plane crashed on a cross-country flight.
More frequently, repair work is accomplished from within, as the media
community attempts to establish boundaries between themselves and the
deviant person in their culture. However, because paradigm violation came
from more than just one or two people, this strategy was not a good fit – the
tabloid community would have to set a boundary to separate itself from
itself.
For the audience, the tabloids singled them out for being too hungry for
more and more stories about Princess Diana. That is, if the audience didn’t
have such an appetite for the coverage, the tabloid press wouldn’t need to
pursue the rich and famous so intensively. As a columnist in The Daily News
(1997) wrote: ‘And let’s face it: The business is so lucrative because the public
demands with one hand what it condemns with the other.’ A similar commen-
tary in The New York Times (1997) raised the question of the tabloids’ percep-
tions of their audience’s intelligence:
Cries against a celebrity-mad media are always welcome, but the worldwide
slobbering over celebrities, often by celebrities who became celebrities by slob-
bering over celebrities, is a felony only against journalism. The stroking may be
a trivial use of television and a comment on audience intelligence, but it is not
likely to cause bodily injury.

A second site of blame for paradigm repair was the paparazzi, who were
regularly identified as freelancers, rather than as official employees of the
tabloid press. In other words, this site of paradigm repair was designed to show
that it wasn’t really the tabloids at fault, but some unaffiliated people who sold
their work to the tabloids. The same column in The New York Times illustrates
this point:
Steve Coz, the editor of The National Inquirer, one of the supermarket tabloids
known for patronizing the paparazzi . . . was seen on more than one program
making a distinction between ‘observing’ and ‘causing’. He distanced himself
from ‘a certain aberrant group’, whose photographs he said The Inquirer would no
longer buy.

To maintain the boundaries of its interpretive group and uphold its culture’s
values, the tabloid press needed to demonstrate that it followed the same level
 Berkowitz Doing double duty 137

of ethical standards as its mainstream counterparts. An interesting nuance was

that much of the tabloid repair work was done through statements in the
mainstream media, the place where the broader audience in society was
watching the spectacle and passing judgement. At the heart of this defense
were pronouncements refuting the contention that the tabloid press would
buy anything from the paparazzi that seemed likely to sell newspapers (Baker,
1997). As a San Francisco Chronicle columnist summed up, one tabloid first
announced it ‘would not buy any photographs of the actual bleeding body of
the princess, and then congratulated itself for its restraint’ (Carroll, 1997). Still
other pronouncements from the tabloids pointed out how their ethical stan-
dards kept them from attending Diana’s funeral (Bennett, 1997).
For the mainstream media and for the tabloid newspapers, the process
involved a demonstration of how the paradigm should have worked, but failed
in this unusual instance because some sectors of society and the media strayed
too far from the acceptable. The paradigm repair work itself, however, served a
performative function as ritual that sparked both local and durational dis-
course among journalists, thus redefining and reasserting the values of the
journalistic interpretive community.

The Princess and the what-a-story

In what-a-story coverage, the media report on a highly unexpected occurrence

by applying specialized yet routinized work processes that approximate every-
day work routines (Berkowitz, 1992). Those routines also serve a ritual func-
tion, defining the limits of the journalistic interpretive community by
performing a kind of work that deserves explicit acknowledgement and dem-
onstrates how the dominant journalistic paradigm can adapt to arduous
conditions (Ehrlich, 1999: 4).
One key strategy for accomplishing what-a-story newswork is fortifying
the size of the workforce to gather information quickly from widely dispersed
sources. Another strategy is to decrease uncertainty of information-gathering
by following commonly acknowledged plot lines and then filling in the pieces
of information that are required. As what-a-story newswork progresses, jour-
nalists continue to marvel and revel at the ceremonies of this little performed,
but well-known ritual of their culture (Berkowitz, 1992; Tuchman, 1978).
In this particular what-a-story, media accounts of the death of Princess
Diana clearly show how the journalistic troops were mobilized. But to reach
this point of mobilization, journalists needed to first make an effort to signify
that this was, indeed, a what-a-story. A story in The Observer (1997) offers an
example of how this was done as the story was breaking:
138 Journalism 1(2)

Princess Diana’s death dominated front pages around the world yesterday, many
with prominent pictures of the world’s most photographed woman. . . . In
France, where she died while being pursued by photographers, Liberation gave
over its whole front page to a picture of her with the headline, ‘One photo too
many’.

The Observer’s story continued by detailing how Diana’s death had filled the
front pages of newspapers in Germany, Russia, Italy, Egypt, the USA, South
America, Hong Kong, Bangladesh, and China. Reporting this detail can be
considered as an indication of the larger shared ritual of what-a-story news-
work. Similarly, in a story describing how the major television networks had
‘mobilized their troops’, The Daily News (Huff, 1997) quoted NBC News Vice
President David Corvo’s description of the irony in this what-a-story, describ-
ing how an uncommon woman’s life ended in such a common way. What-a-
stories are often characterized by a large mismatch of circumstances, usually
involving a highly visible person or relatively large groups of ordinary ones
(Berkowitz, 1992).
This occurrence therefore qualified as a what-a-story, both by the magni-
tude of the person involved and by the irony of her demise. In its signification
that this occurrence was indeed a what-a-story, The Daily News story described
how Fox, CNN, CBS, ABC and NBC had all sent their top news anchors, even
those on vacation or working on other stories. Further, the story explained
how ABC News had applied the newsgathering process it had just reworked
after getting caught short-handed in the coverage of the Centennial Park
bombing at the Atlanta Olympics. This refined what-a-story procedure allowed
the network to scoop the competition in the Diana story, according to an ABC
senior vice president (Huff, 1997). Commenting on widespread coverage by
television networks also served as a means of demonstrating the pervasiveness
of the journalistic interpretive community through its consensus to enact this
ritual.
One last element appearing in what-a-story signification is the effort of
comparing the present situation with others of large magnitude from the past,
the ‘durational mode’ of interpretation (Zelizer, 1993b). Thus, there were
analogies to coverage of the funeral of Winston Churchill (Krauthammer,
1997), parallels to Jacqueline Kennedy’s beauty and fashionability (Dallas
Morning News, 1997), to the assassination of President John Kennedy (Ely,
1997) and to several celebrity deaths, including that of musician John Lennon,
who was dubbed a ‘celebrity martyr’ (Krauthammer, 1997).
With all-out coverage in place for the certified what-a-story, typification of
the story line was then needed to get the job done. There, the media drew
upon a story theme of large magnitude, one that carried drama and for which
it was relatively easy to gather information. A column by humorist Dave Barry
 Berkowitz Doing double duty 139

(1997) satirized the typified television coverage of the story through the tale of
a fictitious broadcast news anchor who reported on using:

. . . our standard Celebrity Tragedy Format, during which we look sad and
constantly remind you how tragic this situation is and repeat the only three
pieces of actual news we have over and over far into the night.

Barry highlighted other parts of typified, routine what-a-story coverage includ-

ing special tragedy graphics for segueing into commercials tastefully, and field
reporters sent out ‘to see how shocked and saddened the public is’ by literally
asking the question that way. For Diana’s death, this was a typified story found
in children’s books about the tortured life of a beautiful, good-hearted prin-
cess. One reporter (The Wellington Dominion, 1997) summoned up the imagery
when he wrote:

Diana, queen of hearts, Princess of Wales, friend of the oppressed and the
unfortunate, became in people’s minds a real fairytale princess. She became a
living embodiment of the seraph, the angelic being of love and light and ardour,
the reason perhaps for her husband’s suggesting that Kiri Te Kanawa sing
Handel’s Let the Bright Seraphim at their wedding.

Other stories called her ‘the people’s princess’, (Ft Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel,
1997) who led a ‘magical life . . . forever the beautiful young princess we all
loved’ (The Arizona Republic, 1997). They painted images of Diana to match the
best that a Disney film could produce, with phrases such as ‘Over and over, the
willowy princess could be seen reaching out with ballet-like grace to others’
(Dallas Morning News, 1997). Besides creating an easily-told story, the ‘people’s
princess’ angle could also be construed as another means of paradigm repair
for the mainstream media, a way of again showing the benevolence of the
dominant paradigm through the telling of a fairy tale rather than pandering to
gossip about Diana’s personal affairs.
In summary, the discussion here has demonstrated how what-a-story news
serves journalists as a form of cultural ritual that spans local newsroom
cultures and asserts the existence of a larger journalistic interpretive commu-
nity based on those cultural values. It is an uncommon, yet well-known
procedure that restates and unifies identity in the culture’s core tenets of
objectivity. The stories, editorials, and opinion pieces examined for this
research and the examples that are offered here clearly identify the elements of
what-a-story newswork. This content shows how what-a-story newswork was
broadly acknowledged by the journalistic interpretive community that
spanned both genres and media. And the content identifies the scope and
pageantry of news coverage that did indeed make Princess Diana’s death
journalistic ritual.
140 Journalism 1(2)

Conclusion

This study began with the idea that journalists work within a culture that
shares relatively common frames of interpretation and meaning-making.
Everyday work routines – journalism’s daily rituals – serve as cultural glue to
maintain this commonalty on an on-going basis by regularly reasserting the
paradigm. However, when an occurrence emerges that breaks from the every-
day and leads toward paradigm scrutiny, journalists engage in the enactment
of other rituals to reassert the validity of their paradigm both to society and to
themselves. In some cases, they might actually have to enact multiple rituals,
such as the double-duty here of both paradigm repair and what-a-story
newswork. Whether mainstream journalists are defending a challenge to their
paradigm as society’s social scientists or tabloid journalists are attempting to
declare their paradigm as only a means for harmless fun, these rituals serve
much the same purpose of large-scale cultural maintenance.
A limitation of this study stems from the difficulty of observing the actual
newsmaking process, because assertions about process were based on content.
In this case study, observation would be particularly difficult to accomplish
because of the geographically widespread nature of the reporting efforts
involved. Although much could have been learned from observing and inter-
viewing journalists at work as the story broke, developed, and waned, it would
also be quite challenging to see beyond their professional ideology. The study
might have been enhanced by a broader examination of available data, too,
including the different set of working constraints, demands and limitations
tied to broadcast journalism.
I argued here that journalistic practice is usually discussed within the
framework of journalism’s professional ideology, and those critiques tend to
result in judgements about ‘proper’ practice. These assertions become little
more than reification of professional conventions, however. To go beyond this
level and toward a more analytic dimension, the concept of professional ritual
was introduced to reinterpret media discourse about the death of Princess
Diana and place it into its journalistic cultural context. This was a situation
that clearly threatened the boundaries of news media genres and also threat-
ened to shake up the core working beliefs of the journalistic culture.
A particularly interesting aspect of this case study is that either paradigm
repair or reporting on a what-a-story alone represents a formidable challenge
for accomplishing newswork. Here, both situations appeared at once. Yet, the
columns and opinion pieces that were examined show that this double duty
appears unwieldy but not unmanageable. In each case, media workers knew
the procedures to apply (rituals to perform) to meet each challenge.
 Berkowitz Doing double duty 141

Another unique aspect of this case study was the coexistence of two
simultaneous forms of paradigm repair, one for the mainstream media and one
for the tabloid press. Reporting on the what-a-story of the Princess’ death
seemed to serve as a reinforcing element for the paradigm repair process,
because some of the typifications that were invoked actually served as tools for
paradigm repair. Along the way, I unearthed an unusual twist on the concept
of paradigm repair by showing how the mainstream media engaged in para-
digm boosterism to glorify the dominant journalistic paradigm and demon-
strate that it was not broken in the first place. In all, this study has shown how
rituals serve as cultural maintenance efforts when validity of the profession’s
central beliefs is challenged.

Acknowledgements
Thanks to Matt Cecil for his contributions to an earlier manuscript, to Hillel Nossek for his
suggestions on a previous draft, and to the editors and reviewers for their insightful
comments for revising this article.

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Biographical notes

Dan Berkowitz is an associate professor in the School of Journalism and Mass

Communication at the University of Iowa. His research interests are in the sociol-
ogy of newsmaking, including the interface of media and community.
Address: School of Journalism and Mass Communication, 611 Seashore Hall West,
University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa 52242, USA.
[email: dan-berkowitz@uiowa.edu]