Walking the Newsroom: Towards a Sensory Experience of Journalism

Sander Hölsgens

We invite you to join us on a walk through the newsroom of a regional newspaper, Dagblad van het Noorden. We trace how the journalists perceive, articulate, engage, embrace, challenge, are receptive to, and give form to the ‘atmospheres’ of their workspace. The concept of atmospheres is central in how we have looked at the newsroom. On this walk, we explore the spatial, socio-cultural, rhythmic, tonal, and somatic characteristics of the recently redesigned newsroom, using video, sound, text, and drawing. Employing artistic methods, we want to let you experience this newsroom together with us – giving you insight into the journalists’ lived experience of their profession as fundamentally interwoven with the idiosyncrasies of their workspace. Our host on the walk is online news editor Alfred Meester. Alfred walked us, Saskia and Sander, through the newsroom, which we visited as part of the project Exploring Journalism’s Limits (funded by the Dutch Research Council, NWO, project number: 314-99-205). Also joining us on this day is Ricky Booms, a visual artist invited to reflect on the space alongside us. Along the way, we encounter visual editors, interns, freelancers, editorial staff writers, and learn about the kinds of spaces that resonate with them. The walk takes approximately 45 minutes.

Interaction with

What we found during our research visit, and what is also strikingly clear in Ricky Boom’s artwork, is the purpose-built design of the newsroom. There is an open floor plan with flexible workplaces – echoing an office landscape with hubs and nodes, an abundance of greenery, and an organic geometry. The few enclosed rooms are merely separated by transparent glass, so as to contribute to a sense of transparency, accessibility, and a less hierarchical use of space. Simultaneously, the interior design contains reminders of the newsroom as it once was: the cranes and steel elements that used to be part of the newspaper’s printing process are preserved, and so are paintings, sculptures, and signs alluding to the publication’s founding fathers and its history more generally. At the same time, it becomes clear that however much of the purpose-built nature shines through, its inhabitants make the space their own: They navigate, fine-tune, and at times negate the spatial configuration and interior design.

It is always ‘in interaction with’ that experience comes about, but there is a clear way in which there is atmospheric staging in the newsroom: As pointed out by a video intern at the news organisation: ‘this space is thought through.’ Two forms of atmospheric staging stood out: first, a deliberate layering of history and place, and second, an ideological commitment to open workspaces, hot-desking, and green, sustainable interior design. As we aim to intimate in our exposition, these two forms act as an active reminder of an ideal model or a set of criteria suggesting what the journalistic practice could or should feel like. Simulated via and materialised through architectural design, the question is how such purposeful, top-down staging of the newsroom’s atmosphere interlaces with the lived experiences of journalists.

Interestingly, our inquiry into atmospheres brought to the fore a focus on human and nonhuman interactions. In parallel, the aim by visual artist Ricky Booms to visually ‘order’ the seemingly chaotic newsroom led to the exclusion of people in his work. As he describes:

'Humans move, and I couldn’t give place to them [in the artwork] (...) For me, humans didn’t make this space. They were just… they were not a part of the space; they just moved through it just like I did (..) It is only when I closed my eyes that I thought, "yes, now I don’t see the space, so now I hear it," and then people come to the fore.'

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