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Journalism as Labor: Why it Happens, and Why it Matters

Sat, May 27, 9:30 to 10:45, Hilton San Diego Bayfront, Floor: 3, Aqua Salon C

Abstract

Critical junctures in the lifespan of institutions bring into sharp relief the individual, organizational, socio-economic and political factors underpinning the institutional ability to cultivate the legitimacy necessary for their survival. Facing widely documented critical junctures that have thrown into question established modes and norms of newswork, journalism today presents one such institution. While job precarity among foreign correspondents has been explored and lamented extensively in both media and scholarship, research on local labor in international reporting remains scant. This paper explores the role of labor and a normalized legacy of inequalities within the context of war reporting in digital era. Drawing on interviews with 20 editors, journalists, photojournalists, stringers and fixers reporting on and from Syria for leading Western newsgroups, it argues that invisible labor practices may uphold institutional legitimacy in circumstances where that legitimacy rests upon a history of inequality – both professional and more broadly.

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