Journalism and Digital Labor

Experiences of Online News Production

Tai Neilson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780429561061
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Journalism
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This book investigates journalists' work practices, professional ideologies, and the power relations that impact their work, arguing that reporters' lives and livelihoods are shaped by digital technologies and new modes of capital accumulation.Tai Neilson weaves together ethnographic approaches and critical theories of digital labor. Journalists' experiences are at the heart of the book, which is based on interviews with news workers from Aotearoa New Zealand and the United States. The book also adopts a critical approach to the political economy of news across global and local contexts, digital start-ups, legacy media, nonprofits, and public service organizations. Each chapter features key debates illustrated by journalists' personal narratives.

This book will be of great interest to researchers and students of journalism, media and communication, cultural studies, and the sociology of work.

1Global changes and national news

News producers, news organizations, and news stories cross borders. Stories are regularly dislodged from their local ecologies, as they travel along international news wires or find new audiences in social networking platforms. We access news using technologies that are mobile and roaming. Global media corporations and investors swallow up national, metropolitan, and local news outlets. Even independent news sources are buffeted by global markets, technological changes, and shifting political climates. It seems the forces of deterritorialization have prevailed, as the velocity of global news picks up pace. Amidst this globalization of media markets and forms of management, media theorists have questioned whether it is still appropriate for journalism research to use national frames of reference or national case studies.

According to theorists of media globalization, national approaches to media systems are no longer adequate. These theories posit that forces of globalization have forged qualitatively new ways of life, rather than extending and intensifying existing social relations. For instance, Zygmunt Bauman (2000) argues that the state and other institutions that used to anchor our identities have all but dissolved in our “liquid modernity.” In liquid modern society, institutions such as the family, company, mass media, and state no longer offer stable identities, habits, or routines. Mark Deuze (2007, p. 676) considers the role of journalism within this “post-national constellation” and “liquid life.” Journalism is, for Deuze, part of a global model of media management that effaces many of the differences between national news cultures. He suggests that journalists now operate in a post-national world that is characterized by international deregulation, media concentration, and globalized forms of media management (Deuze, 2007b, p. 57).

The globalization of news media is also facilitated by digital technologies. Manuel Castells' proposes another theory of “strong globalization” (Flew, Iosifidis, & Steemers, 2016, p. 54). His concept of the “network society” differs from liquid modernity in that networks provide a paradigmatic form of social organization. For Castells, networked technologies and forms of sociality are now pervasive and global. They connect people, organizations, and states, but also precipitate fragmentation and restructure social conflicts and identities. Ansgard Heinrich, (2012) applies this theory to, what he terms, “network journalism.” Journalists now operate in a media environment shaped by global networks. “Digitalisation and globalisation trends,” he argues, “have to be seen as intertwined mechanisms that have given rise to an increasingly global flow of information” (Heinrich, 2012, p. 62). Castells also offers the concept “space of flows” to describe global movements of capital, information, technology, and symbols (Castells, 1996, p. 442). Liquid modernity and network society models are both examples of theories of strong globalization. They posit a qualitative break from the past, rather than the extension and intensification of existing processes of capital, communication, and power.

How well do the claims of strong globalization theories hold up under the strain of empirical evidence and what do they mean for studying journalism? In Understanding Global Media, Terry Flew (2018) poses a set of questions about the extent to which we now inhabit a global media environment. According to Flew, we should ask, to what degree: 1) have national frames of reference been displaced by global mediascapes; 2) have national forms of governance been replaced by international institutions; 3) are media markets global rather than national and dominated by global corporations; 4) are local laws, policies and regulations subordinated to global forces; and, 5) are our identities primarily global rather than local or national? The answers to these questions point us toward complex interrelationships and conflicts between the national and the global.

In this chapter, I trace the career trajectories of two journalists who have lived and worked in both Aotearoa New Zealand and the US. Their experiences provide insights into the globalization of news media. For instance, they describe the impacts of the global financial crises on newsrooms in different countries, the technological infrastructure of international news organizations, and the need to adopt a global perspective when reporting on national stories. Their experiences also demonstrate the continued significance of national policies and identities. For example, the news ecology of New Zealand includes prominent publicly owned broadcast media, while the US is dominated by commercial media with a small role for nonprofit organizations. Rather than taking a purely structural approach to comparing the two national case studies, the interview data in this chapter provide an understanding of journalists' lived experiences of these national contexts and how they inflect global shifts in news production.

Flows of news and journalists: from Aotearoa New Zealand to the US and back again

Questions about the relationship between globalizing forces and national contexts followed me through the entire research process. As I started to recruit journalists, I spoke with people who had not only worked for local and international news organizations but had physically crossed borders to live and work between Aotearoa New Zealand and the US. James, for instance, described moving from NZ to the US and back again. “Maybe a little bit like you,” he started, “I've spent a bit of time split between New Zealand and the US.” He is a New Zealander and started work at a New Zealand newspaper, but worked most of his journalism career on the West Coast of America.

Even amid tumultuous times for journalism, the time that James spent in the US was particularly volatile. James felt the brunt of the global financial crisis and its impacts on the news industry. Contemplating one of the biggest issues he had experienced during his carrier, James reflects:

I worked at a newspaper through the global financial crisis. We didn't know if we were going to keep the doors open and our staff was reduced by about 50% over a few years. It was quite dramatic and by 2008 in the US the newspaper industry was already facing issues even before the financial crisis, but that just really exacerbated it and made it very obvious.

During his time in the US, he worked for two newspapers. One merged with a competitor, “joining forces as the challenges mounted.” His second employer outlasted a competing metropolitan paper, yet even at the surviving paper he and his colleagues were swept up in the winds of the global crisis.

The financial position of the two newspapers had been severely affected by the shift to online advertising and classifieds. The city where James lived had sustained two mid-sized, metropolitan papers for more than a century. Prior to the global recession, both papers lost around a third of their revenue as classified advertising migrated to Craigslist and eBay, and the papers sold a shrinking number of physical copies. The financial crisis proved the final straw for one of the papers. It was owned by a large national media corporation and now the paper lives on in name as a reduced, digital offering. The problems continuing to face the US news industry are collectively dubbed “the crisis of journalism” (McChesney & Pickard, 2011). With some more recent exceptions, annual reports from Pew Research Center show spiraling declines in newspaper circulation, falling advertising revenue, and diminishing trust in the media. Yet, sweeping industry statistics fail to capture journalists' experiences of these violent upheavals and more gradual changes in their day-to-day work.

The downward pressure on advertising revenue and the shock of the financial crisis were felt by journalists around the world. In James's newsroom, his position became increasingly precarious. “It was definitely a bit scary,” he recounts:

Our boss said “you guys should have a plan B,” which was very interesting coming from a boss who up until that point had been very much a cheerleader for the newspaper and he was saying you should be thinking about what other career paths you have. It was really quite a frightening time, especially immediately after 2008-2009. It just felt like we were in a total crisis. They also stopped our pension and there was this question of whether there would be enough funding in the pension, because the stock market had also crashed. The pension was underfunded and stuff like that, so it was a cascading series of things. The morale was pretty low for a while. A lot of people had left, and others were just sitting around and wondering what to do.

With one of his colleagues, James set out to find other writing work – a plan B. The project, which drew on his journalistic skills and experiences helped him feel that, if the immediate crisis did not abate, he could continue working in some capacity as a writer. It gave him a sense of agency in a global crisis, which otherwise felt out of his hands and out of the control of his newsroom colleagues.

Economic upheavals in the industry have contributed to the concentration of media ownership. In the US, there have been periods of relative stability in the news industry since the global financial crisis, but that does not mean that the news industry returned to its pre-crisis state. Some companies have emerged in better shape than others. James predicts that

The big players, I think, are going to be OK, like The New York Times has been able to implement a fairly successful metered paywall [sic]. But, it's really the mid and metro papers that are having a hard time. So, it's almost the small papers (the real community papers) and then the big organizations that are faring the best and then it's all the ones in the middle, which are really struggling and consolidating or closing down.

As James experienced, the brunt of financial problems have been felt at mid-sized and metropolitan newsrooms. Many regional papers are now owned by large chains and have been burdened with debt from buy-outs and mergers (McChesney & Pickard, 2011, p. 4). Prior to the 2008 financial crisis, entrepreneurs like real estate speculator Sam Zell bought up newspaper chains in over-leveraged purchases. Newspaper moguls and hedge funds dumped their papers when their profit margins began to narrow.

The process of consolidation has continued after the crisis. For many disaster capitalists, the crisis was an opportunity to purchase media properties at bargain prices and strip them for assets. Corporations such as Gannett Co., USA Today's parent company, has aggressively acquired and often down-sized newsrooms across the country. When one of my interviewees walked me through USA Today's newsroom in McLean Virginia, he pointed to a US map posted on the wall. Almost 40 pins in the map represented states with Gannett-owned newspapers. He insisted that a handful more were soon to be added and there were others outside the US. The same is true of broadcast news with companies such as Sinclaire expanding their network of local television properties. As Robert McChesney (2008, p. 316) notes, media firms are guided by the logic: “get very big very quickly, or get swallowed up by someone else.” In contrast to metropolitan and regional operators, larger national news outlets have been better placed to weather the dual, and intertwined, challenges related to the financial crisis and the internet. National papers such as The New York Times have been able to expand to global audiences online, reverse downward trends in subscription, and increase digital ad revenue. They are able to take advantage of their prestigious masthead's and their orientation to a more global audience. They are also better placed to take advantage of interest in US federal politics to grow their audiences and implement paywalls compared to their regional counterparts.

The results of the crisis and the wave of disaster capitalism that followed included redundancies, bankruptcies, and shuttering of community news organizations that are experienced at the local and national levels. However, the economic crisis revealed ways in which the work and livelihoods of journalists are tethered to global markets through complex forms of financialization. The crisis is a primary example of a “globalizing force.” It arguably resulted from the debt bubble in the US (itself a financial response to earlier crises and stagnant wages), but it quickly spread to almost every continent. It was a crisis of globalization. It was a signal that the liberal regime of capitalist globalization is uneven and unsustainable (Smith, 2014).

****

James moved back to New Zealand where he took a reporting position at an international newswire service. As the single New Zealand reporter for the company, he is a remote colony. Yet, he is always connected to the vast corporate and technological network with tentacles wrapped around the globe. The infrastructure for this network is a content management system (CMS) that allows James to communicate with his editors and file his stories to bureaus in different countries depending on local time zones. He explained that most of the time he files to Asia, because that's where his bureau is located:

But, if something happens early in the morning and they're not there, then I file directly to New York which is working at that time. Sometimes I'll file to Europe if something happens in the middle of the night, which happens occasionally, and New York isn't available. It's not always to the same place, and then I take photos and video as well and they go to different places. The photo hub is in Tokyo and the video hub is in London, so there you go. Different parts of it go to different places.

James' work circles the globe to reach his editors before being published. His daily work practices are shaped by international time differences and his employer is a transnational, corporate player. Yet, the rhythm of his reporting also follows the pulse of local events and his work is framed by New Zealand's national context.

There is a degree of geographical fixity to James' role, which is not accounted for in theories of strong globalization. The nature of being a national reporter for the company means he cannot do his job from just anywhere. He reports stories about New Zealand and its neighbors, and as a national reporter, James benefits from having local cultural knowledge and connections. He needs to be “on the ground” to find and report original stories. At the same time, his stories are primarily carried by overseas and international news organizations.

James has to direct his reporting outward to global audiences. As such, he adopts a “global outlook” (Berglez, 2008, p. 847). This requires him to develop modes of explication and include aspects of the story's background that would not be necessary for a national audience. James notes that this required a change of orientation in terms of how he views and reports events. He has to “take a step back” and consider audience members that are outside of and less familiar with New Zealand's culture, history, and daily news cycle. For example, James worked on an enterprise story about treaty settlements between the New Zealand government and iwi (Maori tribal groups). While the tribunal process for adjudicating Maori land ownership claims had sped up recently, it has a 20-ye...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgement
• List of tables
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction: The digital reporter
• 1 Global changes and national news
• 2 The digitization of journalism: Typewriter, camera, and electronic tape
• 3 The entrepreneurial journalist and subjectivities of digital labor
• 4 Social media metrics and the reified journalist
• 5 The news machine
• 6 Unionizing digital newsrooms
• Conclusion: Writing for algorithms
• Afterword: The ideology problem
• Index