Experience, Aesthetics and News Practices in Live Journalism Events

Live Journalism events, yet to be explored within academia, bring together journalistic values, stories, and professionals with elements of theatre and spoken word performances in order to engage audiences in a physical gathering. This article discusses this emerging format in its experiential and aesthetic dimensions, while also analysing how it sits with other journalistic practices in aspects such as news selection, use of sources and critique. Using two case studies from the UK, the journalistic festival Sunday Papers Live and the monologue No Direction Home: Refuge Woman, it argues that live events could potentially foster a slower and more in depth engagement with news content, provide the audience with an opportunity to understand aspects of the production and funding of journalism and, in the case of the monologue studied, present a new form of working with sources. Thus, they contribute to a more varied journalistic ecology in which different forms of production, distribution, and consumption of journalism coexist and audiences engage with them at different paces.