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Presentism in the newsroom: How uncertainty redefines journalists’ career expectations
Abstract
In this article, we investigate the effects of uncertainty on job expectations in a news organization (El Mundo) facing fierce financial turmoil and several redundancy plans. Drawing on in-depth material (27 interviews and non-participant observation), we show how the declining news and media landscape is hampering the configuration of good employment prospects. In order to manage this harsh reality, we argue that journalists draw upon emotional resources (specifically what we conceptualize as presentism, a form of limiting and defusing concern for prospects by focusing on the present) and social ones (in particular, support from their colleagues). By implementing these responses, journalists can navigate the turbulent waters of uncertainty and be focused on the development of their craft. Our findings address how the negation of future employment expectations, associated with the uncertain media environment, makes journalists naturalize their current professional conditions and, therefore, assume that their professional future should maintain the status quo (continuous orientation). That makes them reflect on the privilege of plying their trade in a prestigious newspaper and getting paid to do so despite the severe crisis in the industry (relativistic orientation).
... Through diverse case studies, this line of research has uncovered that 21st century news workers are leaving behind the goal of developing a long-term career in a single organization (Goyanes & Rodríguez, 2021;Lassila-Merisalo, 2018;Reyna, 2019). Instead, their empirical evidence attests that those who remain in journalism are inclined to develop individualized labor trajectories by moving from one organization to another. ...
... As in the 19th century, in the 21st century a series of structural and individual factors push news workers away from journalism. First the redundancies that became the new normal from the 2008 financial recession and on (O'Donnell et al., 2016), second the uncertainty of job continuity (Reyna, 2019), and finally the rise of presentism as an individual propensity to focus on the present and not to envision a future in one organization (Goyanes & Rodríguez, 2021). Hence, we can question the division between voluntary and involuntary turnover, as the structural conditions of employment drive labor mobility. ...
... This body of works, which has produced evidence from Australia (O'Donnell, 2017), Finland (Lassila-Merisalo, 2018), Israel (Davidson & Meyers, 2016), Mexico (Reyna, 2021), Spain (Goyanes & Rodríguez, 2021), Sweden (Nygren, 2011), and the United States (Reinardy, 2016), to name the studies cited in this article, is part of an incipient labor turn in journalism studies. Collectively, they display the relevance of studying journalism as labor-with emphasis on potential and actual labor mobility-to understand how the actors of this field are perceiving and experiencing the widespread uncertainty about the future of journalism. ...
As mobility is becoming a distinctive feature of 21st century journalists, this theoretical article proposes a mobility turn in journalism studies. Drawing on sociological perspectives on mobilities, individualization, and turnover, it puts forward a shift from the analysis of news workers as static and fixed to the organizations that employ them to their analysis as mobility agents. By stressing that their capacity to move is transforming their employment and identities, it invites contemporary journalism scholars to recognize how this bottom-up disruption is reshaping the institution, the organizations and the labor of journalism. Since journalism’s corporate and industrial structures have not fully crumbled, this article’s emphasis on labor, physical and virtual mobilities offers an alternative to current theorizations of change in journalism.
... On the one hand, some works suggest that journalists lack standardized strategies for navigating negative emotions (Richard and Rees, 2011). On the other hand, a growing number of studies suggest that a common approach to address conflicts and their subsequent emotional toll is the initiation of peer-to-peer discussions (Goyanes and Rodríguez-Gómez, 2018;Kotisova, 2018), typically during after-hours bar talks (Dreier, 1978). This informal practice (Hopper and Huxford, 2015), may lend further support to the friendly atmosphere and camaraderie portrayed in most newsrooms (Thomsen, 2014). ...
... Paulussen (2012) suggests that doing more with less -more content with fewer staff, more tasks in less time, more flexibility for less salary -has become a normalized pattern, resulting in a growing erosion of solidarity between peers. Regarding the Spanish case, a number of studies have also extensively examined the normalization of bad working conditions, underscoring two fundamental issues: the challenges of digitalization and the 2008 financial crisis (Goyanes and Rodríguez-Gómez, 2018;Soengas-Pérez et al., 2014). According to recent market and scholarly research, journalistic dynamics of news production typically normalize the obsession with speed and the accumulation of tasks (Goyanes and Rodríguez-Gómez, 2018;García-Avilés et al., 2014). ...
... Regarding the Spanish case, a number of studies have also extensively examined the normalization of bad working conditions, underscoring two fundamental issues: the challenges of digitalization and the 2008 financial crisis (Goyanes and Rodríguez-Gómez, 2018;Soengas-Pérez et al., 2014). According to recent market and scholarly research, journalistic dynamics of news production typically normalize the obsession with speed and the accumulation of tasks (Goyanes and Rodríguez-Gómez, 2018;García-Avilés et al., 2014). In this context, Spanish journalists consider that the conditions for performing their craft have decreased the quality of their work (Gómez-Mompart et al., 2015). ...
The practice and structural conditions of the journalism craft provide fertile grounds for facilitating the emergence of conflicts in the newsroom. However, extant research on journalism studies have largely neglected the boundary conditions for their emergence and the individual and organizational mechanisms displayed to unravel them. Based on in-depth interviews with 40 Spanish journalists, we conceptualize newsrooms’ conflicts as the dark side of journalism and examine the structural and individual factors that nurtures their appearance. We also clarify the main strategies for conflict management, arguing that conflict resolution is typically based on informal mediation strategies, rather than institutionalized plans directly implemented by news organizations.
... Accordingly, the analysis of this strategic evolution has allowed us to examine the transformation of the digital culture. The analysis of cases has been a successful way to understand the relevance of decisions and market realities in journalistic contexts (Goyanes & Rodríguez-Gómez, 2018;Goyanes, 2013;Myllylahti, 2020;Yin, 2014) in journalistic contexts. It contributes to the examination of a contemporary phenomenon in its real context, in which boundaries between the phenomena and their context are precise and multiple sources of evidence are available (Yin, 2014, p. 59). ...
This article explores the relationship between the transformation of the digital culture of legacy newspapers and the implementation of paywalls. Its premise is the relevance of an organizational culture based on risk adoption and adaptability, as well as the correlation between the success of payment models and market conditions. This article aims to contribute to the understanding of management decisions in the stages of digital transformation. The leading Spanish newspaper in the digital market, El Mundo, serves as a case study. Findings suggest that charging for content is a factor that decisively contributes to changing the digital culture of executives. ARTICLE HISTORY
... All these transformations and alterations to the journalistic profession in an environment of generalized crisis contribute to young journalists viewing their future as an uncontrollable, diffuse and unpredictable domain of uncertainty and work anxiety (Goyanes & Rodríguez-Gómez, 2018). The change of the business model of journalism, the new labor demands of its workers and the emergence of new professional profiles directly affect the training of future journalists (Casero-Ripollés, Ortells-Badenes & Doménech-Fabregat, 2013) which, according to Scolari et al. (2008), should promote the education of students and adjust their training to the functions required by the media system and the journalistic sector. ...
This paper analyses the pre-professional journalistic culture of Ecuador, Cuba and Venezuela based on the degree of permissiveness held by Journalism students in regard to controversial ethical practices and their views of the media and the journalistic profession. We surveyed a probabilistic sample of 1,273 students from 21 universities enrolled on their first course (Ecuador=500, Venezuela=390, Cuba=383) in 2016. The results show that future journalists are reluctant to accept questionable journalistic practices, and hold a pessimistic view as to the quality and confidence of the media and the profession. We found that the degree of permissiveness is related to the perceived risk-reward analysis in terms of the quality of journalism in Cuba and Ecuador, and that the student perceptions of ethics differ in Venezuela and Ecuador. We conclude that, despite their political similarities in terms of having left-wing Governments, perceptions in the three countries diverge.
... Literature on this subject suggests that cases of extreme career mobility are related to a disorganized labor market and an increased flexibility of labor relations, and the feeling of uncertainty that comes with it (Goyanes and Rodríguez-Gómez, 2021). This type of situation applies to CF1's trajectory. ...
This article discusses how the evolution of media industry in Canada affects the construction of identities and careers in digital journalism. It is based on 17 in-depth interviews with professionals working in Canadian Anglophone and Francophone media. Based on an interactionist theoretical approach, this article underlines how journalists negotiate their career project in a scenario of precariousness and deterioration of the job market in Canadian journalism. In this regard it highlights the strategies of resistance and resilience adopted by some interviewees in contrast to the international discourses that aim to restructure their practices and identities. This results in a conservative approach to adapting to the professional identity in digital journalism-which in fact translates into segmentation and diversification of the status that comes with this profession.
... The concepts of presentism and labor uncertainty used by Goyanes and Rodríguez (2021) For journalists who resign from a news organization but not from journalism, developing protean careers by moving from one organization to another without identifying with any of them or directly employing themselves as freelancers to offer their labor to one or several organizations, identity with their work replaces identity with their newsroom-organization. In a sense, this is what Beck (1998) has called the individualization of employment and unemployment but expressed as an unexpected and unwanted consequence of the erosion of the identitarian character of newsrooms. ...
The objective of this article is to analyze the meaning of journalists' voluntary turnover in the configuration of the space that they have historically occupied: newsrooms. Drawing on Auge's concept of non-place and fieldwork in the leading newspapers of three northern Mexican states, it is discovered that the recurring recreation of turnover events transforms newsrooms from spaces of permanence into spaces of transition; that is, from places to non-places. The scope of this phenomenon transcends the entry and exit of a certain generation since it erodes the identitarian, relational and historical character of these spaces.
Journalists work in a creative profession and often become emotionally attached to “their” medium. Emotions toward their work are an integral part of journalists’ career histories. At the same time, working conditions within contemporary journalism are in a state of constant change that could lead to job precariousness and general insecurity. Emotions are also understood to be part of the journalists’ engagement with the local media environment: though local newsrooms are experiencing similar changes, peripheral newsrooms have different opportunities to respond. The aim of this article is to investigate local journalists’ emotions toward their work during times of change. Drawing on a longitudinal qualitative case study based on interviews, this article focuses on how journalists manage their emotions throughout their career histories in the local media environment. The study focuses on local journalists in the VLM group, the dominant local press owner in the Czech Republic, which has experienced permanent losses and staff layoffs over the past few years. The interviewed journalists manifest deepening contradictions in their feelings towards work, the media organisation which employs them and the local community. The increasing volatility of their emotional responses has led to a general dissatisfaction and the growing importance of emotional management.
ABSTRACT – The objective of this article is to analyze the meaning of journalists’ voluntary turnover in the configuration of the space that they have historically occupied: newsrooms. Drawing on Auge’s concept of non-place and fieldwork in the leading newspapers of three northern Mexican states, it is discovered that the recurring recreation of turnover events transforms newsrooms from spaces of permanence into spaces of transition; that is, from places to non-places. The scope of this phenomenon transcends the entry and exit of a certain generation since it erodes the identitarian, relational and historical character of these spaces.
RESUMO – O objetivo deste artigo é analisar o significado da rotatividade voluntária dos jornalistas na configuração do espaço que historicamente ocuparam: as redações. Com base no conceito de Augé de não-lugar e do trabalho de campo realizado junto aos principais jornais de três estados do norte do México, conclui-se que a recorrência de eventos de demissão transforma as redações, de espaços de permanência em espaços de transição; ou seja, de lugares em não-lugares. O alcance deste fenômeno transcende a entrada e saída de uma determinada geração, pois corrói a identidade, o carácter relacional e histórico destes espaços.
RESUMEN – El objetivo de este artículo es analizar el significado de la rotación de personal voluntaria de los periodistas en la configuración del espacio que históricamente han ocupado: las salas de redacción. A partir del concepto de no lugar de Augé y trabajo de campo en los principales periódicos de tres estados del norte de México, se descubre que la recreación recurrente de los eventos de renuncia transforma a las redacciones de espacios de permanencia en espacios de transición; es decir, de lugares en no lugares. El alcance de este fenómeno trasciende la entrada y la salida de determinada generación, pues erosiona el carácter identitario, relacional e histórico de estos espacios.
This article analyzes the conditions in which Portuguese digital journalists enter the workplace by looking at certain choices they made while studying, during internships, and entering the ever-growing labour market. Thirteen biographical interviews were conducted with professionals who started working in journalism after 2005. The results show an opposition to the regressing conditions surrounding entry into journalism, as well as a set of strategies for insertion and permanence in the profession. The results also show that a journalist’s entry into journalism is a result of a combination of having a career project, of the individual choices that journalist makes, and how he or she has had to adapt their identity based on labour market limitations and the opportunities that have opened up ever since the onset of digital media.
Since the emergence and growing popularity of digital technologies and social media platforms, the relationship between professional and citizen journalism has been challenging. In recent years, however, this critical relationship has de-escalated due to a growing collaboration in shaping a complemental news repertoire. This study examines how social and traditional news use and users’ perceptions on professional journalism affect citizens’ news content creation. Based on survey data from Spain, we first find that social media use for news and users’ positive perceptions on professional journalism predict citizens’ news production behavior. Second, social media use for news and traditional media consumption are explored as additive moderators over the relationship of users’ perceptions on professional journalism on citizens’ news content creation, showing a positive significant effect. This study contributes to current conversations on the potential symbiotic association between professional and citizens journalism, arguing that citizens’ perceptual appraisals on professional journalism are key in fostering public’s participation through news content creation.
Se analiza la probabilidad de pagar por un diario digital en España. Mediante una encuesta a una muestra representativa de 2.104 españoles mayores de edad, mostramos, de modo general, el escaso número de ciudadanos dispuestos a pagar por información digital. Asimismo, a través de una regresión logística binomial exploramos los factores que afectan a esta probabilidad y discutimos las principales implicaciones prácticas para el desarrollo de estrategias de pago por contenidos de la industria de los periódicos.
This article analyses leadership in the newsroom of the Spanish newspaper El País as well as its impact on the craft of journalism more generally. Through 23 in-depth interviews, we try to elucidate how the newsroom constructs its leaders (in the newsroom, what does it mean to be a leader?), paying particular attention to the main skills considered to be necessary. According to our newsroom findings, not all heads of section or editors-in-chief are leaders, a fact that questions formal authority relations and proclaims expertise and know-how as discriminatory skills. This study emphasizes that the collective recognition of a leader is not an ultimate disposition, but can vary over time: consequently leaders who do not achieve the professional requirements of the newsroom can be denied the status, despite their expertise and experience. Our findings indicate that leaders at El País are those journalists (no matter what their positions) with strong capacities and skills (fundamentally experience, expertise and creativity) to manage form (relationships) and substance (contents) in the daily work of the newsroom. In short, journalists seen as leaders combine reiterated and strong qualities and merit, graphically reflected in the texts they have published for years in the newspaper.
Coding is the core process in classic grounded theory methodology. It is through coding that the conceptual abstraction of data and its reintegration as theory takes place. There are two types of coding in a classic grounded theory study: substantive coding, which includes both open and selective coding procedures, and theoretical coding. In substantive coding, the researcher works with the data directly, fracturing and analysing it, initially through open coding for the emergence of a core category and related concepts and then subsequently through theoretical sampling and selective coding of data to theoretically saturate the core and related concepts. Theoretical saturation is achieved through constant comparison of incidents (indicators) in the data to elicit the properties and dimensions of each category (code). This constant comparing of incidents continues until the process yields the interchangeability of indicators, meaning that no new properties or dimensions are emerging from continued coding and comparison. At this point, the concepts have achieved theoretical saturation and the theorist shifts attention to exploring the emergent fit of potential theoretical codes that enable the conceptual integration of the core and related concepts to produce hypotheses that account for relationships between the concepts thereby explaining the latent pattern of social behaviour that forms the basis of the emergent theory. The coding of data in grounded theory occurs in conjunction with analysis through a process of conceptual memoing, capturing the theorist’s ideation of the emerging theory. Memoing occurs initially at the substantive coding level and proceeds to higher levels of conceptual abstraction as coding proceeds to theoretical saturation and the theorist begins to explore conceptual reintegration through theoretical coding.
The present study aims to provide a concise, comprehensive, and systematic review of the quantitative literature relating to the experience of burnout in journalists of various specialties and mediums. The systematic review method adopted is that prescribed by Fink (2010), which contains three main elements: Sampling the literature, screening the literature, and extracting data. Results indicate that journalists most at risk of burnout are females who are younger, with fewer years of journalism experience, working in small circulation newspapers. Editors and reporters seem to experience higher levels of burnout than those in other roles, as do journalists in non-management positions. The thorough and structured process adopted in this review provides the ability to assert with some degree of certainty what areas within the burnout and journalism literature require further consideration. This review emphasises and problematises the large focus on male reporters in newspaper settings, settings that are becoming less significant over time. Studies have tended to focus on reporters, without providing a convincing a priori rationale. What is lacking is consideration of other role groups central to broadcast news, such as camera-operators. A range of methodological and theoretical issues and future areas of research are discussed.
This article uses the happy-productive worker thesis as starting point to assess the chances that a media system is performing well. Personality traits, work conditions and job satisfaction levels of individuals from different media occupations in Switzerland (N=259) were collected using standardized instruments from personnel psychology. Media workers more distanced from actual media production are more satisfied with their jobs than the working population, while those closer to production are less satisfied. A regression analysis identifies autonomy as most important driver of job satisfaction, suggesting that non-financial aspects of media performance could be enhanced by granting creative media workers more freedom.
A survey of newspaper layoff survivors shows that journalists with depleted trust, morale and job satisfaction are experiencing significant degrees of burnout and intend to leave newspapers. Also, journalists with low perception of job quality show signs of burnout.
This collection of original essays brings a dramatically different perspective to bear on the contemporary 'crisis of journalism'. Rather than seeing technological and economic change as the primary causes of current anxieties, The Crisis of Journalism Reconsidered draws attention to the role played by the cultural commitments of journalism itself. Linking these professional ethics to the democratic aspirations of the broader societies in which journalists ply their craft, it examines how the new technologies are being shaped to sustain value commitments rather than undermining them. Recent technological change and the economic upheaval it has produced are coded by social meanings. It is this cultural framework that actually transforms these 'objective' changes into a crisis. The book argues that cultural codes not only trigger sharp anxiety about technological and economic changes, but provide pathways to control them, so that the democratic practices of independent journalism can be sustained in new forms. The contributions are original, researched and well-written, so readers will engage with a new argument on the contemporary crisis of journalism. Ranges both historically and cross-nationally to put the 'crisis of journalism' in a longer-term perspective. By offering a conceptual and empirical evaluation of recent changes in journalism, the book offers a distinct perspective and analysis.
A survey of journalists in the United States (N = 1181) finds that job satisfaction during the era of digital disruption varies across job titles. Previous studies have examined job satisfaction of these job titles individually, but this study compares job satisfaction among four primary occupations in the newspaper newsroom. Desk workers demonstrate lower levels of job satisfaction than non-desk workers, while sports journalists report higher levels of job satisfaction than non-sports workers. Furthermore, online responsibilities appear to be negatively received by desk workers, yet positively received by sports journalists. Open-ended explanations and the quantitative survey results discuss the implications of the demands, adaptation skills, and autonomy of newspaper workers on job satisfaction.
This ethnographic research concerns the management of emotions in the editorial offices of the Finnish fashion-oriented lifestyle magazines, Elle Finland and Trendi. The material was collected through focused interviews and participant observation in editorial shoots. The analysis focuses on the informants’ ways of acting in the editorial shoots and their experiences in their work and the role of emotions in content production and co-operative work practices. The study demonstrates that emotional labour is required in production of content that is aimed to move, please or surprise the model reader and through her, the actual readers of the magazine. The members of the photography team are inclined to suppress feelings of anxiety and at the same time support and encourage other team members and the photographed subject. Emotional labour maintains stability in a tightly scheduled and goal-oriented teamwork, and enables team members to attune to the intimate and convivial atmosphere. The study also gives evidence about cruel optimism as it points out how magazine staff adjust to the uncertainty of the magazine field and the increased personal workload by invoking in themselves feelings of enjoyment and suppressing feelings of strain.
A survey of female employees at Iowa newspapers shows these journalists highly value their newspaper jobs because of the importance, variety, autonomy and flexibility of their positions. However, many complained about low pay and lack of opportunity for advancement.