Understanding encountering of story leads: A case of newspaper reporting behavior at Midwestern metropolitan-area newspapers

An interdisciplinary approach explores how journalists embrace the unexpected as part of their reporting routines using Erdelez’s framework of information encountering from the study of human information behavior and the concepts of news routines and story ideation from journalism studies. This paper provides a fresh perspective on the sociology of news in finding that the participating journalists embraced the unexpected by routinizing encountering of story leads and opening themselves to the opportunities they provide.