Epilogue

Both individually and as a whole, the chapters in this excellent volume have much to recommend them. Many embrace a level of personal introspection that is sadly rare in today’s scholarly publishing ecosystem. The reflexive nature of the first two chapters, penned by both a founding figure of the ethnographic newsroom research tradition (Schlesinger) and a more recent contributor to that same tradition (Ryfe), makes them particularly helpful for scholars trying to forge their own journalistic research paradigms. Likewise, Munnik’s later chapter details the steps he took when initial avenues of ethnography were closed to him, making it an essential starting point for fledgling ethnographers. The middle sets of chapters, by Willig, Berkowitz and Liu, along with Slaatta, Munnik, Gynnild, Perrin, Lowrey and Erzikova, and Bruun, develop media production research along a variety of important axes and zero in on some recent advances in both theory and method. The final section, with chapters by Alacovska, Sanders, and Lesage, is perhaps the most expansive, drawing production research on news and journalism into dialogue with a variety of other fields (genre film, documentary, and even software production).