Future of Journalistic Work Project

This project is exploring how changes in the business of journalism and journalism practice are affecting journalistic work and employment.

Changes affecting journalistic employment are not isolated, but part of broader social changes altering work and labour generally. These have profound implications for the ways journalists will operate in future years as flexible and precarious forms of employment become more common, as a greater variety of organisations use content created by journalists, as skills become polarised, and as greater diversity in the risks and rewards develops.

The project involves research on issues and challenges facing journalistic work and labour, discussions with business scholars, sociologists, media scholars and journalists to better understand the issues and identify key needs for research, and a survey of journalists about their perceptions of the future of the field.

The project has produced a report, The Future of Journalistic Work: Its Changing Nature and Implications. The report explores these challenges and lays out issues involving the work and labour of journalists, professional identity, and the roles of stakeholders that need consideration in responding to the changes.

The project has produced a report on survey results of North American and European journalists, Journalists’ Perceptions of the Future of Journalistic Work.

Project directors: Robert G. Picard and Rasmus Nielsen

Funders: Green Templeton College Academic Initiatives Fund and RISJ