Document analysis

As triangulation, the use is different methods, helps reducing each method's disadvantages and improving the overall research's reliability and credibility (Johnson, Onwuegbuzie et al. 2007), document analysis was also included in my study, but only in Tien Phong's case where I was allowed to access them. The documents include the newsroom's regulations, guidelines, staffs survey

completed questionnaires, etc. My approach is to use the documents such as regulations, announcements of the newsroom to double check the interview and observations. The staffs survey questionnaires were used in the same way as the interview transcriptions as a compensation for the poor number of reporters who were willing to be interviewed (see research reality section). Therefore, the discussion of content analysis as a research method is not raised here.

Beside Tien Phong's internal documents that I was able to access, in order to put the case study in its context, other relevant official statistics, records, documents, etc. were also gathered and analysed, which include secondary data and statistics from different agencies such as Authority of Press - Vietnam Ministry of Information and Communication, and domestic and international non- governmental organisations (NGOs)' project/donor reports. However, it is noted that, strangely enough, the Ministry of Information and Communication, who is the governmental administrator in the news media field, in fact does not do media statistics and analyses regularly and does not have official updated data20. The NGOs project or donor reports, on the other hand, like foreign research literature on Vietnamese media, often only focus on the project/donor's specific interest field which, on its turn, usually is macro-level media system as a whole or political characteristics of the media. The reports, therefore, usually neglects other characteristics of the media and the society in general which, I believe, are also important to understand the more complete picture. Some other reports, for instance by Vietnamese authors/consultants, do not at all provide contexts, probably assuming that the context is already known or understood.

Moreover, I regularly read/survey the most popular dailies and periodicals. I also read online newspapers and/or the print papers' online versions. I do not intend to

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Instead, from my observations as someone who personally directly has involved in quite a few projects with the Ministry's offices especially the Press Bureau, only every now and then, for instance when the Ministry's bosses are required to report to the Parliament or the Vietnamese Communist Party's Summits, or when individual departments within the Ministry have cooperative projects with foreign partners/donors and, thus, are required to do reports, they would compile data from different sources in a very casual way and the data, in my personal view, usually very scattered and shallow. When I several times asked for media official statistics such as the total number of each news medium; their circulations, staffs, etc., I was told by the bosses that their staffs are very busy and, thus, of course have no time to compile such statistics! When I ask the staffs, some say they do not know if the data exist and if yes, who should have them. The others claim that of course individual departments should have such data but no one has bothered to put everything together. When I check with individual departments, I am told that they think the data are confidential!

do content analysis but I think the reading helps me to keep track of any big changes to the papers/organisations (for instance new design/layout, new publications, new sections, new versions, etc.) and to cross-check some of my respondents' information about their newspapers' content strategies.

Some conclusions derived from my observation of the media products were not double checked with the newsrooms' personnels meaning they might not correctly reflect the newsrooms' strategies. However, I will make notes when I present such conclusions. Still, I believe media product survey could be a good approach to understand the newsrooms' content and business strategies.

To summarise the above recount of the research methodology:

- Due to the access problem, one of the initially proposed cases was replaced by another case which turned out to be probably even better as it is more typical in Vietnam in terms of size (circulation, staffs, economies, etc.); - Also due to access, I had to use different methods to generate data about the

two studied cases - interview and focus group for Tuoi Tre whereas interview, observation and document analysis for Tien Phong. There was also some difference between the two cases in terms of interview respondents' attitude which obviously affected the interview data.

With Tuoi Tre, observation was refused leaving a big hole in the database considering interviewing's proven disadvantages discussed above.

The unplanned focus groups were fortunate as they brought very good/trustworthy data as the respondents were seriously discussing their newsroom's real situation without any "screens". However, as mentioned earlier, because it was run by someone else than myself, the researcher, and for another purpose (the newsrooms' professional training), the data were not adequate to compensate totally for the lack of observation. Also, despite the fact that I have permission by the chief executive editor to use the focus group content (which was given afterward), there could be an ethical problem as the participants were not aware that what they said would be used for an outsider's research. Still, I do not think they would mind or worry about problems with their bosses, as they were aware

of the fact that what they said were being recorded for the newsroom's internal training and development purposes.

The limited data about Tuoi Tre due to the absence of observation21 was not only partly compensated by the focus group, but also by the fact that almost all the interview respondents were very open. This was, I believe, mainly thanks to my previous direct contact with them. Besides, it could be contributed to the newspaper's perceived democratic working atmosphere which empowers its staff to speak more freely. This will be discussed more in the result chapters.

Having said that the interview respondents seemed very open and straight in their answers, I do not mean to neglect the possible complications associated with interview as a method of investigation, as indicated by the theorists discussed above.

In case of Tien Phong, on the contrary, while the editor-in-chief, some other high and middle managers and a few journalists who I have had contacts for long before were very open, most other interviewees were much more "cautious" while talking about the situation in their newsrooms and how they feel working there. This, in my view, was due to the fact that I did not have personal/direct contact with them before. Also, contrary to Tuoi Tre, it might be because of the working atmosphere in Tien Phong that make people feel unsecure and hesitant.

However, the problems with hesitant interviewees were somehow compensated by my able to observe the newsroom's activities including the newsroom's everyday communication/interaction with the reporters. The observation data, together with data gathered from the newsroom's, the regions/branches' and all the departments' daily, weekly and monthly reports and plans, might be biased as they mostly are from the editors' rather than the reporters' perspective. Nevertheless, the staff two surveys' answers that I could access, where the respondents could choose to be anonymous and, thus, free to express their view about their workplaces, communication, work relations, environment and suggest solutions to improve the newspaper, were very helpful and compensating for the poor interview data.

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by this I mean the proposed observation for my research that the editor-in-chief rejected. Otherwise, as mentioned earlier, I had previously in 2007 done two-week observation while working as an interpreter with the newspaper in a in-house training course run by two Swedish trainers who beside journalistic training focused a lot on cooperation among journalists in the newsrooms.

Another problem of this study is anonymity. Some people namely the editors in chief and chief news editors cannot be anonymous as it is easy to identify them through public documents if associate them with the time of my research.

In short, bearing in mind that the different investigation methods that I employed to study the two cases all have their own shortcomings which associate with both the researcher and the studied people, I believe I have got two quite rich cases that help me to answer my research questions.