The Role of Language in a Journalistic Interpretive Community: Building on Indonesia’s “biggest scoop ever”

Abstract

Drawing on anniversary-edition articles and interviews with journalists at Jakarta Post, Indonesia’s largest English-language news outlet, we argue that language of publication directly informs the narratives a journalistic interpretive community [Zelizer, Barbie. 1993. “Journalists as Interpretive Communities.” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 10: 219–237] develops to position itself as a news authority. Analysis showed that associations with English as a foreign language in Indonesia influenced stories of the newspaper’s professional values and practice, and the ways it conceptualized readership. The study contributes to the growing body of literature that examines intersections of journalism and language—in this case, English as a language of publication in a global context.