E-lance Labor Isn’t Free: Freelance Journalists Resist the Law of Digital Rights

• In Event: Does Journalism Pay?

Abstract

Starting in 1994, print journalism companies in the US, the UK, and Canada introduced a new type of contract, asking freelance contributors to waive their moral rights and assign their copyrights to the companies. The companies could then distribute the authors’ printed works on digital platforms and potentially accumulate more capital from these works without having to pay the authors extra. Adopting a radical political economy of communication approach, this paper builds on the concept of alternative communication, examining the labor organizing efforts of freelance journalists and the digital communications tools that they use to resist these contracts. It relies on a labor union standpoint analysis of documentary sources from the companies and the freelancers’ labor organizations. Such research on freelance journalists’ rights could help scholars understand how copyright ownership and control serve as both a key corporate strategy and an opening for labor organizing and resistance in digital journalism.

Author

• Errol Salamon, U of Pennsylvania