INSIDERS TURNED INTERLOPERS: The change agents behind engaged journalism

Many within the news industry have begun to embrace “engagement” as one of their primary goals. Yet these calls for its pursuit often originate not from people working within newsrooms, but from those working outside of them. This chapter reviews previously published studies of engaged journalism that derive from interview data gathered from employees of several well-known organizations focused on pushing newsrooms to embrace engaged journalism’s values and practices to put forward a novel theoretical lens for understanding the pursuit of engaged journalism - and the people behind it. Our overarching argument is that the change agents on the front line in the pursuit of engaged journalism often comprise people who once worked in traditional news organizations, but subsequently left those positions for ones at less conventional organizations - including those more focused on transforming the news than on producing it.