Patterns of transnational news making Reconstructing the biographies of European news stories.

Understanding how news stories are constructed through journalistic practices lies at the heart of much of journalism research. We contribute to this strand of research by reconstructing journalistic practices from the perspective of the journalists in order to identify typical constellations of factors that trigger coverage. The method developed for this purpose is the comparative reconstruction of the 'biographies' of news stories by interviewing the authors of articles shortly after their publication. This was done during the same two weeks covering European news in 23 elite, popular and regional newspapers in six countries (Great Britain, France, Germany, Poland, Denmark, Austria). It turns out that complex constellations of different factors trigger the process of news making. Typical components of the European trigger constellation are occurrences in the field of institutional politics, information gathered through coverage of other media and space being available in that day's paper. Cluster analysis reveals four typical biographies of news stories. Embodied in these biographies are common practices of news making that form the core of journalism as a transnational profession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]