This edited collection brings together leading scholars from around the world to discuss the consequences and implications of precarious labor conditions within the modern news industry.
In 14 original chapters, contributors speak to global concerns about journalism across all platforms, based on the assumption that unstable employment conditions affect the extent to which journalists can continue to play their historically crucial role in sustaining democracies. Topics discussed include work conditions for freelancers and entrepreneurial journalists as well as the risks facing conflict reporters; precarity in media start-ups; unionization and other collective efforts; policies regulating journalistic labor around the world; and the impact of hedge fund money on newswork. Drawing on case studies and data from South America, Africa, the United States, Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom and continental Europe, the book highlights that media outlets are forcing newsworkers to work harder for less money and few countries are proactive in alleviating the precarity of journalists.
Newswork and Precarity is a valuable addition to an important still-emerging area in journalism studies that will be of interest to both professionals and scholars of journalism, media studies, sociology and labor history.
Author(s): Kalyani Chadha, Linda Steiner
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2021
Language: English
Pages: 240
City: London
Cover Page
Half title Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication Page
Table of Contents Page
List of contributors Page
Introduction: global precarity’s uneven impacts on journalism
PART I Theoretical, historical, and economic context
1 Precarity: The concept, evolution, forms, and implications
2 The labor history of newswork from industrialization to the digital age
3 Dead on arrival: Deadspin’s fight with its private equity owner and the rise of Defector
PART II Applications to journalism specializations and innovations
4 Producing in precarity: A focus on freelancing in US local television newsrooms
5 The precarious labor of freelance war correspondents
6 “All the news that’s fit to print. Except for cartoons. Those things are scary.”
7 Precarity in community journalism start-ups: The deep story of sacrifice
8 “Becoming real”: Professional precarity in entrepreneurial journalism
PART III Regional and national particularities
9 Labor precarity and gig journalism in Latin America
10 Endogenous “precarious professionalism” in African newswork
11 Alleviating or exacerbating precarity?: How freelancers in Germany and Canada experience policies regulating insecure journalistic labor
PART IV Resistance and productivity
12 Making precarity productive
13 Collectively confronting journalists’ precarity through unionization
14 The responsibilities of journalism educators
Index
