Diverging Worlds of Foreign Correspondence: A Profession Between Continuity and Change

• In Event: Reporting Across Borders: Foreign Correspondents and NGOs

Abstract

Traditional foreign correspondence as embodied by professional full-time journalists is said to have been diminished and increasingly substituted by new forms of foreign correspondence. Claims like these are often advanced on the ground of research focusing on the US and the UK. This study tests whether these claims do apply to foreign correspondents in other Western countries, taking the German-speaking countries (Austria, Switzerland, Germany) as a case study. Based on responses from 211 foreign correspondents gathered through an online survey, this study reconstructs the working conditions of foreign correspondents. It finds that the traditional correspondent may be more resistant to change than expected. The study finds diverging working conditions for different kinds of journalists: while a considerable share of journalists experiences not much change, freelancers are hit hard by deteriorating working conditions.

Authors

• Michael Brueggemann, U of Zurich

• Gerit Goetzenbrucker, U of Vienna

• Thomas Hanitzsch, LMU Munich

• Guido Keel, Zurich U of Applied Sciences

• Laura Schacht, U of Amsterdam