The article seeks to review current work on the obvious but complex entanglement of journalism and emotion. The field has been under‐theorized and under‐researched; however, in recent years, the body of studies that attempt to grasp the relationship between journalism, journalists, media content, and emotion is growing. The paper roughly systematizes the literature on journalism and emotion based on the Goffmanian distinction between front region and back region; that is, I consider both research on emotionality of the public outcomes of journalists' work marked by journalists' professional ideology and less visible journalists' emotional labour that is behind media content. Based on the review of the body of research and on a sociological conceptualization of emotions, I identify several blind spots. Most importantly, what is still largely missing from the emergent work is research that complies with the social character of journalists' emotions: acknowledges emotions as a force central to the contemporary networked, dynamic and increasingly precarious journalism work, and conceptualizes emotions in journalism as a sociologically relevant phenomenon articulated by the context including newswork, technologies, and media organizations.

The article seeks to explore crisis reporters’ emotional culture. Their emotional practices are believed to lie at the core of the paradox of the traditional commitment to objectivity/detachment and witnessing other people’s suffering, and thus to be vital for understanding crisis reporting. The article, focusing on reporting the so-called ‘refugee crisis’ and the 13 November Paris terrorist attacks by Czech Television, addresses the question on how crisis reporters’ emotions are articulated by the processes of crisis reporting. The findings, based on (non-)participant observation in newsrooms and semi-structured interviews with journalists, suggest that repetitive reporting of the emotionally disturbing events and witnessing close or distant suffering may result in declared cynicism. The cynicism is understood as a prerequisite for successful performance of the job; at the same time, it is perceived as an emotional posture that threatens professional ideology.

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Most media work today takes place under atypical conditions, i.e. media professionals such as journalists, musicians, filmmakers, advertising creatives and game developers generally work without open-ended contracts. In this essay, a theory of atypical media work is outlined highlighting this way of working and being at work from the current culture of capitalism. Further, it also throws light on how dualisms, dominating the discourse on media work – such as contracted versus freelance labour, primary and secondary sector employment, good versus bad jobs, paid versus unpaid work – are not as useful as they seem to be is shown. It also delves into the different ways of making precarity, precariousness, constrained autonomy and lack of agency and highlights themas the key problematic features of atypical work – productive (beyond productivity narratives). Throughout the argument, the reasons and motivations for (doing and studying) atypical media work are articulated with a distinct sense of shared social hope.