Indonesia is facing major environmental crisis, namely deforestation, plastic wasteand climate change. Environment and development are always almost conflicting in this country where the rate of natural resources destruction and growing economic development is always competing. Despite the urgency of environmental crisis,environmental news reporting in the countrystill in its infancy step. To understand what affected news content production, the fundamental stage is to learn about thegatekeeping process.Currently, gatekeeping role of journalists has been put into question with the new practice of using social media as part of the newsroom routine. This study is exploring about the extent of the shifting professional role due to the emerging of social media that at the sametime influence gatekeeping process. Using case study and in-depth interview, this study unpacks the role and gatekeeping process throughout five level of influences: individual, routine, media organization, social institutions and social system. The results showed that there is no significant change on their role that may affect gatekeeping and news content production. Instead of altering, social media fits into the framework of gatekeeping, making journalists working in a longer and more complicated process. As of the environmental news reporting, the real challenge is not due to the competition with other issues such as economic and politic, but on the homogeneity of the content offered by different type of media. Unfortunately, media organizations have not been maximizing social media power to create morecompelling marketing communication activitiesto grasp more readership and loyalty.
Keywords: environmental journalists, journalist role, social media, gatekeeping, journalism