Working for less: the aftermath for journalists made redundant in Australia between 2012 and 2014

Zion, Lawrie; Dodd, Andrew; Sherwood, Merryn; O’Donnell, Penny; Marjoribanks, Timothy; Ricketson, Matthew

doi:10.1080/22041451.2016.1185924

Cited by 31 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…Its journalistic culture is heavily influenced by other Anglo-American countries, especially the UK, but also the US (Henningham 1998), with a strong public broadcasting system but also heavily commercialized media characterized by a high degree of ownership concentration (Tiffen and Gittins 2004). The digital transformation of media industries has led to increased precarity of working conditions, resulting in mass redundancies, and significant declines in circulation and profits among established media groups (Zion et al 2016), but also the arrival of a number of digital-only media players (Hanusch 2017a). Social media use among journalists is high and comparable to penetration rates in other Western countries (Hanusch and Bruns 2017).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Journalistic Homophily on Social Media

Hanusch

Nölleke

2018

Digital Journalism

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Journalists have for considerable time been criticized for living in their own bubbles, a phenomenon industry commentators have referred to as groupthink, while in scholarship the tendency of individuals to connect with people who are like them is termed homophily. This ageold process has come under scrutiny in recent times due to the arrival of social network sites, which have been viewed as both working against but also leading to more homophily. In journalism scholarship, these processes are still little understood, however. Focusing on the social network site Twitter and drawing on a large-scale analysis of more than 600,000 tweets sent by 2908 Australian journalists during one year, this study shows that journalists continue to live in bubbles in their online interactions with each other. Most journalists were more likely to interact with journalists who have the same gender, work in the same organization, on the same beat or in the same location. However, the study also demonstrates some notable exceptions as well as the importance of differentiating between types of interaction.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Journalistic Homophily on Social Media

Hanusch

Nölleke

2018

Digital Journalism

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“…Following the Australian New Beats project, this article examines how layoffs and buyouts contribute to the spread of precarious employment in journalism. In their research, the Australian research team found journalists that left full-time secure newsroom jobs subsequently experienced a significant shift towards more precarious and casual work, for lower wages and fewer hours (Zion et al 2016). The journalists they surveyed felt as if their professional identity was "weak or fading" as they moved into more precarious work or out of journalism entirely O'Donnell 2018, 1033).…”

Section: Precarious Work and Journalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…If there is one certainty during these uncertain times for journalism, it is job loss. As media companies globally react to changes in technologies, production practices, business models, consumer habits, and broader political economic conditions, journalists face job loss in the form of layoffs and voluntary buyouts as newspapers and magazines close, broadcasters contract, and online media companies change their business strategies (Deuze 2014;Elefante and Deuze 2012;O'Donnell, Zion, and Sherwood 2016;Örnebring 2017;Zion, Dodd, Sherwood, O'Donnell, Marjoribanks and Ricketson 2016). Canadian journalists are no exception.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To date, the experiences of laid off journalists have been investigated by scholars in the United Kingdom (Nel 2010), the United States (Brownlee and Beam 2012;Reinardy 2016), and Australia (O'Donnell, Zion, and Sherwood 2016;Zion et al, 2016), but not in Canada. This despite recent reports on the state of Canadian journalism, such as The Shattered Mirror (Public Policy Forum 2017) and Disruption: Change and Churning in Canada's Media Landscape (Fry 2017), which mention layoff numbers as evidence of the "crisis" in journalism as a critical institution for Canadian democracy.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Bearing the Burden of Corporate Restructuring: Job Loss and Precarious Employment in Canadian Journalism

Cohen

Hunter

O’Donnell

2019

Journalism Practice

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This article reports on job loss among Canadian journalists between 2012 and 2016. Building on Australian research on the aftermath of job loss in journalism, this article examines the experiences of 197 journalists who were laid off or who took a buyout, voluntarily or not, due to corporate restructuring in Canadian media (both French and English). To date, no scholarly research in Canada has examined what happens to journalists after they are laid off, including the personal and professional experiences journalists undergo when they lose their job and seek a new one, or the implications of these experiences for Canadian journalism in general. Overall, in a result that mirrors laid-off Australian journalists' experiences of re-employment, we find a dramatic shift among journalists' employment status and a decline in incomes after job loss. The majority of our survey participants moved from full-time, secure, and well remunerated work to more precarious forms of employment in and out of journalism, including freelance, contract and part-time. This shift in employment status demonstrates underlying precariousness in Canadian journalism. We argue that job loss in journalism has implications for broader social life and for journalism as an institution vital for participation in democratic life.

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“…Social media platforms have usurped the media's hold over advertising and information distribution (Martin and Dwyer 2019;Wilding et al 2018) and there has been increasing competition to engage audiences' attention (Myllylahti 2019), combined with shifts in financing, business models and technologies (Flew et al 2018) and the destabilization of the profession itself (Hanusch 2013;O'Donnell et al 2016;Zion et al 2016a). Yet, while there has been at least some local academic attention to the changing forms of journalism practice (Bonfiglioli and Cullen 2017;Bowd 2014;Carson et al 2016;St Clair 2018;Stubbs 2018) and to journalism work (O'Donnell and Zion 2018;Zion et al 2016bZion et al , 2019, there has been no research on how the careers of journalism academics might have altered during this upheaval. This article explores the profile of journalism educators and researchers in Australia and how it has changed since 2011 when Michael Bromley and Regan Neal surveyed journalism academics about their productivity and publishing participation for this journal.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A new ERA? The changing face of journalism research in Australia

Wake

Martin

Backhaus

2020

Australian Journalism Review

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In 2011, Michael Bromley and Regan Neal’s survey of Australian journalism academics revealed low levels of critical research participation and productivity, and the under-realized potential of younger, female journalism academics. Nearly a decade on, our 2019 snapshot study, inspired by Bromley and Neal, explores the current state of journalism research and education in Australian universities. It examines the changing profile of journalism staff, their publishing productivity and the evaluation and funding of their research, as well as attitudes towards non-traditional research outputs (NTROs) and engagement and impact assessment. Our study indicates that early- and mid-career journalism researchers in Australia, particularly women, continue to need research training, mentoring and support in securing competitive external grants, as well as encouragement to collaborate and benchmark their research internationally. There is also a new imperative to help researchers and their institutions recognize excellence and diversity in journalism NTROs and to understand measures of engagement and impact. Finally, we flag the importance of monitoring changes to the classification of journalism research following the Australian and New Zealand Standard Research Classification review of field of research codes.

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Working for less: the aftermath for journalists made redundant in Australia between 2012 and 2014

Cited by 31 publications

References 14 publications

Journalistic Homophily on Social Media

Journalistic Homophily on Social Media

Bearing the Burden of Corporate Restructuring: Job Loss and Precarious Employment in Canadian Journalism

A new ERA? The changing face of journalism research in Australia

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