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Abstract

While there has been growing scholarly interest in freelance and other atypically employed journalistic workers in the past 20 years, most of it has been addressed through single-case studies. This study examines atypical journalism from a Bourdieusian perspective through Multiple Correspondence Analysis, including the resources that atypical journalists have amassed to participate in the journalistic field and how these shape their journalistic culture. Drawing on 430 survey respondents from Austria, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, and the UK, results indicate that despite being well-educated, atypical journalistic workers experience economic precarity, have little contact with the professional community, and occupy marginalized positions within the journalistic field. Most noteworthy differences occur at the country level, indicating that the historical genesis of the national field shapes atypical journalistic culture more profoundly than employment status.

Keywords

Atypical journalistic work bourdieu comparative research multiple correspondence analysis precarity

The standard career in journalism is a thing of the past for many (Deuze and Witschge, 2020). In the past 20 years, newsrooms across the sector and countries have downsized their employed journalistic staff continuously (Salamon, 2019), and new technologies have increased the number of journalistic contributors without full-time employment (Norbäck, 2022). Internet and Communication Technology facilitate remote work, and more affordable recording and editing technology allow individuals to produce high-quality content virtually and independently of spatiotemporal settings (Deuze, 2007). Thus, while freelancers and contract workers have always been part of the journalistic field (Cohen, 2016), they have increased in number in recent years, and not all are freelancing by choice (Antunovic et al., 2019; Salamon, 2019).

Furthermore, remuneration for freelance work is decreasing or non-existent (Cohen, 2019). More and more freelancers cannot live off their journalistic work alone, and many supplement their income by pursuing other work (Mathisen, 2019; Norbäck, 2022). Journalistic work is rendered a “passion project” (Deuze and Witschge, 2020: 83), reminiscent of other cultural work like music, literature, and art. While some turn to service jobs like cleaning to ‘stay on the job,’ most turn to other communication work, public relations, or copy editing (Antunovic et al., 2019).

These developments have three larger implications for journalism and the journalistic field. First, research suggests that a “precarity penalty” prevents precariously employed journalists from fulfilling the profession’s key societal functions like investigative and watchdog journalism, as they lack the resources for long-term reporting and legal protection (Cohen, 2016: 234). Second, only those with enough financial resources and help to sustain longer periods without journalistic work can continue working as journalists (Deuze and Witschge, 2017). That poses complications for the diversity of the journalistic field, namely the representation of society as a whole, including minorities and journalists with working-class and low-income backgrounds (Vera-Zambrano and Powers, 2019). And third, journalistic freelancers working in strategic communication blur the taken-for-granted separation between journalism and PR (Coddington, 2015), even more so when they work in both areas on the same topic (Fröhlich et al., 2013; Mathisen, 2019).

Moreover, economic constraints leading to the casualization of work are especially prominent in Western journalistic fields (Hanitzsch et al., 2019: 281). Previous research has compared freelancers’ working conditions and strategies to overcome precarity across different national settings (Antunovic et al., 2019; Cohen, 2016; Gollmitzer, 2014, 2023). However, more research is needed that compares national settings to better understand how atypical employment shapes journalists’ understanding of their societal role and journalism’s core norms and values. This study contributes to this research gap by examining atypically employed journalists in five European countries: Austria, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, and the UK. Through a Bourdieusian lens and multiple correspondence analysis (MCA), we map the relational spaces of freelance, contingent, and other journalists in atypical employment uncovering how the historical genesis of the national field shapes atypical journalistic culture.

Atypical employment in journalism and work beyond the newsroom

From a sociology of work perspective, atypically employed journalists (from here atypical journalists) include anyone who has no permanent or full-time employment (Selenko et al., 2018). In general, atypical work refers to a variety of employment situations, like (1) employment limited in time (fixed-term contracts, temporary agency work); (2) work that is less than part-time labor; and (3) new forms of self-employment or pseudo-self-employment, which describes working relationships in which workers work primarily for one client without receiving the benefits of employment (Frisque, 2014; Schweiger, 2009; Selenko et al., 2018). In journalism, atypical employment includes freelancers, entrepreneurial journalists, and workers on temporary or short-rolling, flat-rate, or otherwise contingent contracts (Deuze, 2007; Edstrom and Ladendorf, 2012). Due to this unpredictability and uncertainty, atypical work is often, but not necessarily, precarious. Precarity can be understood as a multi-dimensional concept that captures (1) to what extent journalists can earn enough with their work, (2) whether they are integrated into a journalistic community and (3) recognized by colleagues, (4) legally protected and able to voice dissatisfaction relating to their working conditions (for instance, through union membership, Salamon, 2020), and (5) to what extent they (over)identify with the content of their work (Brinkmann et al., 2006; Rick and Hanitzsch, 2024).

Large-scale survey studies of the profession leave out many of these atypical journalists as they apply strict sampling criteria of minimum pay and hourly workload that respondents have to reach to be considered (Hanitzsch et al., 2019; Kaltenbrunner et al., 2020; for a critique of this practice, see Bromley, 2019). Still, there has been increasing scholarly interest in freelance and other atypical journalists in the past 20 years (Gollmitzer, 2024; Norbäck, 2022). As such, atypical journalistic work—especially its precarious nature—has been studied widely. This allows us to identify key characteristics about their resources and working conditions, role perceptions and ethical beliefs.

Atypical journalists’ resources

Atypical journalists are a highly heterogeneous group ranging from successful freelancers to underpaid interns (Antunovic et al., 2019; Gollmitzer, 2014; Norbäck, 2022). From a field theoretical perspective, the heterogeneity of the journalistic profession is grounded in the uneven distribution of resources and the struggle over social recognition and interpretive power in what journalism should be (Bourdieu, 1990). Journalists’ position is shaped by their possession of certain latent and manifest resources, or forms of capital, acquired by birth or through time-labor, namely economic, cultural, and social capital, and the field-specific social recognition, symbolic capital (Bourdieu, 1977, 1986). In journalism scholarship, this field-specific symbolic capital is conceptualized as journalistic capital and operationalized as highly valued news media or beats like national newspapers or political reporting, highly valued skills, or recognition through awards (Hovden, 2008; Vos and Craft, 2017). Meyen and Riesmeyer (2012: 390) argue that only journalists belonging to a news organization can leverage their journalistic capital. This collapses atypical journalists into one category and positions them in the field’s less prestigious and powerless parts.

However, depending on atypical workers’ accumulated capital, they might also occupy symbolically valued positions (Örnebring et al., 2018). While we know that atypical journalists generally lack economic and social capital, or access to resources (Mathisen, 2017), some have high volumes of cultural and symbolic capital, that is, recognition and, to some extent, symbolic power (Cohen, 2016). Survey studies show that atypical journalists are generally well-educated, have a university degree and specialized training in journalism, and in many cases, freelancers are even better educated than their employed colleagues (Edstrom and Ladendorf, 2012; Maares and Putz, 2016; Thomas et al., 2024). Regarding their symbolic journalistic capital, research is inconclusive, as atypical journalists can be found across all media types and beats. Regarding different beats, atypical journalists tend to be specialists in at least one area, both covering more symbolically valued ‘hard’ news beats like politics as well as ‘soft’ news beats like crime or lifestyle (Edstrom and Ladendorf, 2012; Jenkins, 2017; Van Leuven et al., 2021). Therefore, we ask:

RQ1: Where are atypical journalists located in different national journalistic fields, and along which dimensions does the stratification occur?

Atypical journalists’ normative role perceptions, ethical beliefs, and entrepreneurialism

Actors participating in the journalistic field share a set of implicitly and commonly communicated rules like professional norms or ethical conduct. These rules, in Bourdieusian terms called doxa, or the “taken for granted” (Bourdieu, 1977: 164), develop through historical struggle, which might explain why there is not one journalistic culture (Benson, 2006). Hence, the concept relates to journalists’ normative assumptions and beliefs about the field, like professional norms (Schultz, 2007) and cognitive role conceptions (Hanitzsch and Vos, 2018).

For atypical journalists, doxa as professional norms can be found in the ways atypical journalists pertain to ideas of objectivity and impartiality, how strict they are in maintaining a boundary between journalistic and other communication work, and to what extent they pursue ethical decisions during the editing process (Schultz, 2007; Örnebring et al., 2018). Research indicates that atypical journalists might have nuanced epistemic views regarding objectivity as a professional norm (Hunter, 2015). At the same time, impartiality and fairness are especially relevant for those working both in journalism and other communication work. Here, scholarship indicates that freelancers, just like news organizations, negotiate to what extent it is acceptable to work both in journalism and PR, which “has an ethos dissimilar to journalism” (Gollmitzer, 2023: 1024, emphasis in original) and could potentially blur the “wall” between journalistic and other communication work (Buckow, 2011; Coddington, 2015; Mathisen, 2019). Moreover, research suggests that atypical journalists differ in their ethics from the newsrooms they work for when it comes to the editing process, as they are not embedded in the newsroom culture (Jenkins, 2017). Here, some find this process difficult, especially when newsrooms change the story angle in a way that mocks or harms their sources (Mathisen, 2019). As such, atypical journalists are confronted with ethical dilemmas that they often must solve independently without organizational support.

Furthermore, journalism scholarship has conceptualized role perceptions as doxa, as they describe the naturalized underlying mechanisms of journalism and the legitimization of certain journalistic practices (Vos and Wolfgang, 2018). According to Hanitzsch and Vos (2018), individual journalists internalize such normative ideals of what journalists should do into cognitive orientations of what they aspire to do. The acquisition of such roles through socialization differs according to various factors, such as the news organization they work in, the beat they report on, their newsroom’s audience orientation, and much more. As such, they also reflect the tendencies journalists have acquired throughout their socialization and their naturalized beliefs about the journalistic community.

Regarding their doxa as atypical journalists’ role perceptions, research indicates that they are less likely to perceive themselves as watchdogs or critical investigative reporters and are less audience-oriented but instead embrace detached observer or interpretive roles (Gollmitzer, 2014; Maares and Putz, 2016). Moreover, research suggests that precarious atypical journalists cannot afford to pursue investigative and long-form journalism as they lack resources (Cohen, 2016; Norbäck, 2022). Likewise, Mathisen (2017) finds that the tension between autonomy and economic constraints shapes freelancers’ role perception either towards an idealistic identity or an entrepreneurial one where journalists view their work as a commodity rather than serving a societal purpose.

Like doxa, the concept of habitus is internalized through the experience in a field (Bourdieu, 1990). It captures the beliefs and dispositions that individuals acquire through their socialization and accumulated capital. Habitus is shaped by journalists’ social background, family, education, and socialization, assuming that individuals with similar backgrounds share similar dispositions. It also reproduces the social order; those in more powerful positions are equipped with a different habitus from the ones that occupy dominated positions in the field. In that sense, the concept is not only useful for examining class relations but also for investigating the professional habitus, which enables or constrains position-taking in the broader societal field.

Journalistic habitus thus reflects the journalist's position in the field. For instance, considering the transformation of the labor market and an increasing shift towards self-organized work, an entrepreneurial habitus might limit perceptions of insecurity and offer a sense of empowerment (Norbäck, 2021; Rosenkranz, 2016; Salamon, 2020). Such an entrepreneurial habitus would let journalists consider news outlets as customers, evaluate their marketplace, and find supplemental sources of income (Norbäck, 2022; Singer, 2016). On the other hand, lacking the resources to empower themselves, atypical journalists could also adopt a marginalized habitus, in which they accept the precarity of atypical journalistic work, including being ‘always on’ and prepared to produce for anyone willing to buy their work (Antunovic et al., 2019; Cohen, 2015; Edstrom and Ladendorf, 2012; Gollmitzer, 2014). This also blurs work and non-work time, as atypical journalists accept to work anytime, for long stretches, always ready to react to commissioning editors’ requests (Mathisen, 2017).

As research on atypical journalism has focused primarily on one aspect, either freelancers’ precarity, entrepreneurial mindset, motivations, or personal ethic, we ask the following research question:

RQ 2: How do journalistic doxa and habitus map in fields of atypical journalism, and what are similarities and differences in this mapping?

Method

To answer these questions, this study compares the relational spaces of atypical journalism in different countries, drawing on results from a comparative survey study conducted from January to April 2020 in Austria, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, and the UK. These countries are examples of monitorial journalistic cultures and media landscapes that are generally characterized by high professionalization and self-regulation while at the same time experiencing increases in atypical journalistic work and a precarization of the profession (Hanitzsch et al., 2019). To ensure cross-national equivalence, the master questionnaire was put together in English and professionally translated and back-translated by native-speaking communication and journalism scholars, confirming that the questions were appropriate in their respective languages and that the design appeared reasonable (Hanitzsch et al., 2019: 61; Hofstede, 1998).

Measures

To measure different forms of capital, we asked journalists about their experience in years in journalism, their experience in national newsrooms either through employment or internships, the beat they work in, and whether they had won an award (field-specific symbolic capital or journalistic capital¹); their parents’ and their formal education, and whether they had studied a specific journalism degree (cultural capital); their yearly income from journalism after taxes² and whether they depended on other sources of income (economic capital); and the social networks of atypical journalists in the journalistic field, measured by the extent to which respondents attend editorial meetings and work in newsrooms (social capital).

To measure doxa as role perceptions, we draw on items used in the Worlds of Journalism study (WJS) indicating journalists’ accommodative, monitorial, collaborative, and interventionist role perceptions (Hanitzsch et al., 2019: 173). To measure doxa as journalists’ ethics, we draw on (1) one scale measuring to what extent journalists believe in objectivity as relevant norm (Hellmueller et al., 2013: (2) a scale built on two items measuring journalists’ view on the separation of journalism and PR and other communication work, and (3) a scale of five items covering journalists’ issues of autonomy in their ethical editorial decision-making (Maares, 2022).

For journalists’ habitus, nine items derived from qualitative research measured whether journalists embraced an entrepreneurial habitus following an entrepreneurial mind- and skill set or whether they had more of a marginalized habitus, accepting the precarious and exploitative conditions (Maares, 2022).

Sample

As the journalistic profession has few entry barriers in most European countries, there is no census data on how many journalists are employed atypically in the selected countries. Atypical journalists are generally difficult to sample as the overall population is unknown (Antunovic et al., 2019; Hanitzsch et al., 2019: 53). While this highlights the need for a more thorough investigation of these journalistic producers (Bromley, 2019), it makes data collection challenging. To ensure comparability across the five countries, the sampling aimed to be as systematic and functionally equivalent as possible (Hofstede, 1998). As atypical journalists are represented in unions to different degrees in the selected countries (personal communication), we chose a pragmatic approach, collecting all contact details of freelance and entrepreneurial journalists on LinkedIn and on different publicly accessible digital databases (Torial, Malt, Villamedia, Journalist Forbundet, NVJ, NUJ, Freischreiber, Profession: Pigiste, and Youpress). While this approach entails a bias towards respondents who aim to showcase their portfolio to potential customers, we were able to contact the entire sample personally (1.881 journalists contacted, 38% response rate). After data cleaning, the final sample comprises 430 journalists. The sample does not diverge broadly from previous survey results in sociodemographic parameters. Compared to data from WJS (Hanitzsch et al., 2019), respondents were more often women, slightly older, and more likely to hold a university degree (Table 1).

Table 1.

Profiles of atypically employed journalists.

	Gender (women)	Age		University degree (%)	Degree in journalism* (%)
	Gender (women)	Median	M (SD)	University degree (%)	Degree in journalism* (%)
Austria
(N = 101)	43.6%	46	45.64 (16.03)	71.2	31.7
Denmark
(N = 78)	46.2%	53	52.47 (11.89)	93.6	65.4
France
(N = 80)	57.5%	36	39.49 (12.16)	96.4	72.5
Netherlands
(N = 92)	48.9%	46	44.79 (12.98)	87.9	51
UK
(N = 79)	27.8%	43	50.88 (12.11)	89.7	26.6

Note. *Degree in journalism and communication sciences.

Multiple correspondence analysis (MCA)

To address our research questions, we employ multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) to examine respondents’ positions in relation to each other. MCA is a geometric method (Le Roux and Rouanet, 2010) used to understand and visualize how some practices, behaviors, or beliefs are stratified relationally between different groups of people (Hovden, 2008; Lindell et al., 2020). It builds on an indicator matrix in which each variable has the same status, providing an index for each individual for each modality of each question. This results in a geometric space that shows the coordinates of categories (Le Roux and Rouanet, 2010). Accordingly, response categories (or modalities) that are located in relative proximity tend to catch individuals with similar response profiles (Hjellbrekke, 2019: 35) and can illustrate the stratification of individuals according to their responses. Points located more at the center of the coordinate system have no strong positive or negative association with other categories and tend to be meaningless in the distinction of different groups in the space.

For each national relational space of atypical journalism, a set of 12 variables with 29–30 modalities were used as active variables for MCA (Table 2), indicating journalistic capital, cultural capital, economic capital, and social capital (RQ1). To construct a geometric space, active variables need to provide some variance. It is recommended to exclude particularly low frequencies of modalities as they would contribute to the variance: the rarer something is, the higher its contribution to the geometric space (Hjellbrekke, 2019: 37). Therefore, some modalities had to be adapted to the specific national settings.

Table 2.

Active variables used to construct the fields of atypical journalism.

	AT	DK	FR	NL	UK
Journalistic capital
Number of years in journalism	<15 years	<15 years	<9 years	<15 years	<15 years
	15–30 years	15–30 years	10–24 years	15–30 years	15–30 years
	>30 years	>30 years	>24 years	>30 years	>30 years
Experience in national newsroom (employm.)	----------Yes----------
Experience in national newsroom (employm.)	----------No----------
Experience in national newsroom (internship)	----------Yes----------
Experience in national newsroom (internship)	----------No----------
Won an award	----------Yes----------
Won an award	----------No----------
Beat	----------Hard----------
	----------Soft----------
	----------Mixed----------
Cultural capital
Level of education	High school or lower	Bachelor’s or lower	Bachelor’s or lower	Undertook some studies	Undertook some studies
	Undertook some studies	Master’s or higher	Master’s or higher	Bachelor’s	Bachelor’s
	Bachelor’s			Master’s and higher	Master’s and higher
	Master’s and higher
Journalistic education	----------Yes----------
Journalistic education	----------No----------
Parent’s education	----------No parent tertiary education----------
	----------One parent tertiary education----------
	----------Both parents tertiary education----------
Economic capital
Yearly income	<8000 EUR	<140,000 DKK	<13,000 EUR	<16,000 EUR	<18,000 GBP
	8,000-16,000 EUR	140,000-280,000 DKK	13,000-26,000 EUR	16,000-32,000 EUR	18,000-36,000 GBP
	>16,000 EUR	>280,000 DKK	>26,000 EUR	>32,000 EUR	>36,000 GBP
Dependency on income	----------Yes----------
Dependency on income	----------No----------
Social capital
Attend editorial meetings	Never	Never	Never	Rarely or never	Never
	Rarely	Rarely	Rarely	Rarely or never	Rarely
	At least sometimes	At least sometimes	At least sometimes	At least sometimes	At least sometimes
Work in newsroom	----------Yes----------
Work in newsroom	----------No----------

Note. Category modalities across countries differ to account for the specific national dataset.

Active variables result in a visual representation of the social field, onto which other supplementary variables can be projected (Blasius, 2010). To answer RQ2, we included compound variables of journalists’ doxa (ethics and roles³), habitus, as well as categorical variables of age and gender, their parents’ occupations, and whether respondents chose to freelance voluntarily as supplementary variables. All scales were further reduced to three categories indicating high (++), moderate (±), and low (−−) levels of the variable. This will allow us to understand where different forms of habitus or doxa are most represented in the social space and how these position-takings “correspond with various positions and hierarchies in the field” (Lindell et al., 2020: 5).

Results

As a general observation, while respondents in all countries possessed high amounts of cultural capital (Table 1), they were precarious from a financial perspective. Forty-one percent earned less than 16,000 Euros, 140,000 DKK, or 12,000 GBP after taxes per year with their journalistic work, and 72.2% had a disposable income lower than the mean of the working population in their respective countries. Moreover, they largely lack recognition within the field (symbolic capital); only 27% had won an award for their work in the past, and of these, 56% had received only one award (Örnebring et al., 2018).

The relational spaces of atypical journalism

To answer RQ1 and to gain a more nuanced understanding of atypical journalists’ stratification in different national contexts, we ran MCA of five national relational spaces of atypical journalism built by the active variables depicted in Table 2. In all cases, the first two dimensions were used for the geometric space, as they explain most of the variance in the active variables (22.9–24.1%, see Tab. A1–A2 in supplemental material). All relational spaces are characterized by a double hierarchization. In most countries, the first dimension distinguishes between those with high and low cultural and/or journalistic capital, like experience in years (AT, FR, NL, UK), experience in national newsrooms through internships (FR, NL, UK), journalistic specialization (AT, FR), beat (FR, NL, UK), education (AT, NL), or parents’ education (AT). In these countries, the second dimension mostly stratifies respondents along their economic and social capital, like their annual income (AT, FR, NL, UK) and whether it is sufficient (UK), whether they work in a newsroom (AT, FR), or attend editorial meetings (AT, FR). Only the Danish field of atypical employment follows a different pattern, although it also follows a double hierarchization between those with high and low economic capital (first dimension) and high and low symbolic capital indicated through journalistic education and beat.

As such, we can describe the relational spaces of atypical work as follows (Figures 1(a)-5(a)): In Austria, France, and the Netherlands, the upper half includes respondents who could be considered as better-situated among atypical journalists: they are well-educated, well-connected, and well-paid. In all three spaces, the upper left quadrant includes highly educated journalists with high embodied cultural capital and journalistic socialization through internships. Moreover, in France and the Netherlands, we find an association between journalistic education and mixed-beats reporting, suggesting that specialized journalistic training equips journalists to work competently as generalists. The upper right quadrant in Austria, France, and the Netherlands largely comprises experienced and well-paid freelancers with high economic capital and high journalistic capital as they have received awards, have been employed in national newsrooms, and report on hard beats. In contrast, the lower half in Austria, France, and the Netherlands includes the disregarded atypical journalists, and in all countries, the lower-left quadrant includes the most marginalized (Örnebring et al., 2018). They lack social connections to the field and possess little economic and journalistic capital. The lower right quadrant contains older atypical journalists with low amounts of institutionalized cultural capital and little connection to the newsroom but the highest experience in years and reminds of research that showcases how older journalists who were let go struggle in atypical employment if they do not have the right social networks (Antunovic et al., 2019).

Figure 1.

The field of Austrian atypical journalism. Note. MCA of dimensions 1 and 2 of 12 active variables (a) and of supplementary variables (b). Supplementary variables in the center were omitted. N = 81. Visualization of data with R package factoextra.

Figure 2.

The field of Danish atypical journalism. Note. MCA of dimensions 1 and 2 of 12 active variables (a) and of supplementary variables (b). Supplementary variables in the center were omitted. N = 74. Visualization of data with R package factoextra.

Figure 3.

The field of French atypical journalism. Note. MCA of dimensions 1 and 2 of 12 active variables (a) and of supplementary variables (b). Supplementary variables in the center were omitted. N = 74. Visualization of data with R package factoextra.

Figure 4.

The field of Dutch atypical journalism. Note. MCA of dimensions 1 and 2 of 12 active variables (a) and of supplementary variables (b). Supplementary variables in the center were omitted. N = 85. Visualization of data with R package factoextra.

Figure 5.

The field of British atypical journalism. Note. MCA of dimensions 1 and 2 of 12 active variables (a) and of supplementary variables (b). Supplementary variables in the center were omitted. N = 63. Visualization of data with R package factoextra.

In Denmark and the UK, the stratification of the field is slightly different. In the UK, the upper half includes the better-paid atypical journalists with more extended experience. In contrast to Austria, France, and the Netherlands, the division is much more characterized by their economic capital. Respondents in the upper-left quadrant have moderate and sufficient income and have worked over 30 years in journalism, report on hard-beat news, and work in newsrooms. Opposite, the upper-right quadrant includes freelancers with less experience in years but high economic capital. They have little institutionalized cultural capital but higher inherited cultural capital, suggesting that established atypical journalists in the UK come from middle- and upper-class backgrounds and learn on the job instead of journalism school (Wilson David, 2019). The lower half of the field includes the precarious and less well-paid who have to sustain their living with other sources of income—even though this is again not common in the British field of atypical journalism. The younger journalists located in the lower-right quadrant are much better educated and have completed an internship, highlighting the increasing relevance of journalistic specialization to enter the field.

Whereas access to journalism in other countries is relatively open, most Danish journalists in standard employment have been trained at journalism schools that only admit as many applicants as needed (Willig, 2016). This might explain why the relational space of atypical journalism is stratified slightly differently, first distinguishing between better-paid and precarious journalists, while the second axis stratifies them along beat. Accordingly, in Denmark, the geographic space described for Austria, France, and the Netherlands is more or less flipped by 90°, with the better-paid, more experienced, and better-connected journalists on the right side and precarious yet well-educated journalists on the left. Moreover, we can identify a distinction of experience or age between the upper and lower half, as experience in years lies almost like a horseshoe in the plane of the first and second dimensions. Accordingly, the upper left quadrant most likely comprises isolated journalists (Örnebring et al., 2018). While they are well-educated (master’s degree and higher), they have no journalistic specialization, no experience in national newsrooms through internship or employment, and lack the connection to the field, which results in little income (below 140.000 DKK). Thus, the belonging to the field of these atypical journalists could probably be debated. In contrast, the upper right quadrant includes well-connected and well-paid journalists with moderate experience in years and social connections to newsrooms. The lower right quadrant comprises journalists who have most likely been educated in the Danish journalism education system, have received recognition through awards, and are, therefore, much better connected to the general field (Willig, 2016).

The stratification of atypical journalists’ role perceptions and beliefs

To answer RQ2, we project supplementary variables capturing journalists’ doxa and habitus into the national fields (Figures 1(b)–5(b)). Across countries, we find a division between dominating (established) and dominated (newcomers or marginalized older members) journalists. Moreover, all fields are further divided along a second axis between young and old, women and men journalists. Further, younger journalists are more likely to have a middle- to upper-class background, reiterating assumptions from scholarship that entering journalism through atypical work will disadvantage aspiring journalists with working-class backgrounds (Deuze and Witschge, 2017; Vera-Zambrano and Powers, 2019).

The analysis only included information on atypical journalists, and we cannot generalize their position-taking in the broader national journalistic fields. However, the findings indicate that those occupying dominant positions are unquestionably members of their respective journalistic fields, while the dominated would most likely be found in more peripheral positions, and their membership might be disputed. This can be seen in the stratification of doxa, where the established tend to pursue their respective journalism cultures’ dominant role perceptions and adhere to dominant professional norms.

For example, established freelancers in the Netherlands and the UK tend to embrace an accommodative role, which is more strongly articulated in both countries (Hanitzsch et al., 2019: 193). In contrast, in France, newcomers resemble the general French journalistic field more with strong articulations of monitorial roles and moderate agreement to accommodative role perceptions (Hanitzsch et al., 2019). As these respondents have also most often completed a specialized journalistic education, it could be that this conformity with the field at large is a result of their socialization, which is a requirement to enter the field successfully (Pereira, 2020). In Denmark and Austria, newcomers are more radical in their doxa; the younger dominated agree to roles advocating for social change, which reiterates findings from these countries that (1) freelancers are more idealistic in this regard (Skovsgaard et al., 2012), and (2) aspiring journalists aim to shape society positively (Nölleke et al., 2022).

Journalists’ professional norms map in less distinct patterns across countries. In Denmark, they do not stratify except for the agreement to objectivity, which is highly articulated among younger established freelancers who have completed a specialized journalism education and is less pronounced among older dominated respondents, who have no institutionalized training. This emphasizes the relevance of journalism school to imprint and conserve doxa in Denmark, which Willig (2016) has summarized through a journalist’s quote as “We all think the same.” In France, we can observe a similar pattern, suggesting an effect of formal journalism education for this norm (Vera-Zambrano and Powers, 2019). In contrast, in Austria, the UK, and the Netherlands, objectivity is perceived as necessary among dominated respondents instead of the established, even though detached reporting is valued in these journalistic cultures (WJS). This suggests that the doxa of objectivity pervades even among those whose membership in the field could be debated, while it also reiterates findings by Hunter (2015) showing that established freelancers view objectivity as impossible to achieve.

Moreover, a strict separation of PR and journalistic work is only distinctively present in France and Austria. In both cases, journalists believe more strongly that a strict separation of PR and journalistic work is essential. Remarkably, established journalists supplement their journalistic income with communication work, whereas in other countries, only marginalized journalists work in strategic communication and such delineations appear not to be reflected as strongly. As such, despite belonging to the established within their field, French and Austrian freelancers must supplement their income and have turned to communication work as it is within their skills and interests. This suggests that journalists’ norms might shift, adapting to the circumstances in which they work. Nevertheless, these journalists also believe it is crucial to separate PR and journalistic work, and they are aware of the tensions between both. These findings are reminiscent of the journalistic discourse in Austria and France, which acknowledges exactly this precarity of journalistic work requiring supplemental income from other areas, even communication work. Here, journalists discuss implementing some form of ‘watertightness’ or personal ethics when negotiating with their different customers (Buckow, 2011; Frisque, 2014).

Regarding their habitus, established older journalists agree to an entrepreneurial habitus—which includes building and maintaining relationships with commissioning newsrooms and viewing the newsroom as their customer—in all relational spaces except of France, established older journalists agree to an entrepreneurial habitus. It appears that in Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands, and the UK, journalists with existing social networks approach their work as a business while newcomers struggle to establish such a habitus even though it has long been part of the countries’ journalistic discourse. This also highlights once more that being aware of the need to be entrepreneurial is not enough to act accordingly but that an entrepreneurial habitus also requires starting social and economic capital (Cohen, 2015; Gollmitzer, 2014). Notably, an entrepreneurial habitus is not even stratified between French dominant or dominated journalists, suggesting that an entrepreneurial mindset is equally present among established and precarious atypical journalists. However, the most dominated newcomers also report the highest marginalized habitus, which includes working long hours and weekends and always being available to potential customers. This reiterates findings that aspiring journalists in France are especially affected by precarity (Pereira, 2020).

Discussion and conclusion

This study set out to compare the space of atypical journalistic work in different European journalistic fields to deepen our knowledge of how atypical journalistic culture is shaped. While comparative research often focuses on unearthing differences (Hanitzsch et al., 2019), the key findings point to a pattern of similarity across countries. Generally, atypical journalists in all countries under investigation can chiefly be described as precarious due to a lack of economic capital, and little symbolic and social capital. However, through MCA, we were able to show a more nuanced understanding of atypical journalistic work in Western European countries, which are generally characterized by high professionalization and self-regulation. While MCA is inductive and the plots need to be interpreted against existing assumptions (Lindell et al., 2020), we find variation within the atypical journalistic field, and the stratification along different indicators of relevant resources follows similar patterns across countries.

Accordingly, we can distinguish between established (dominating) and marginalized (dominated) atypical journalists. The marginalized are those whose status as ‘real journalists’ might be debated in the field as they are either aspiring young students who lack social capital or older (and retired) journalists lacking formal education. This indicates that journalists require both relationships to the field and specific education to pursue atypical journalistic work successfully in Western Europe. The established also tend to pursue the dominant role perceptions of their respective journalism culture and adhere to dominant professional norms. This means that established atypical journalists share an intrinsic traditional set of values with the field (Deuze and Witschge, 2017) but lacking resources and social connection to the field might prevent marginalized atypical journalists’ from being aware of its ‘taken for granted’ rules (Cohen, 2016; Gollmitzer, 2014).

However, there are also differences apparent, most profoundly at the level of journalists’ accumulated capital and their doxa. The differences in capital composition are partially rooted in the fact that atypical journalistic work in Denmark and the UK is more often done by older, experienced journalists, whereas in Austria, France, and the Netherlands, the atypical journalistic field is much younger. As such, age shapes economic and social capital as time-labor allows journalists to amass more of both over the years (Bourdieu, 1986). Still, differences in cultural capital are also rooted in the historical contexts of the journalistic fields. Generally, while both institutionalized and embodied cultural capital tend to increase as incoming journalists are more often from middle- and upper-class families and have university degrees, in countries where journalism was historically primarily an occupation of intellectuals and other members of the elite—like France and Denmark—atypical journalists are even better educated (Hallin and Mancini, 2004; Pereira, 2020; Willig, 2016). As atypical employment is increasingly more common to enter the field, this brings further implications to the diversity of journalism regarding journalists’ social backgrounds (Deuze and Witschge, 2017; Vera-Zambrano and Powers, 2019). This is further problematized as aspiring journalists in the countries under investigation did not embrace an entrepreneurial habitus that could aid them in overcoming exploitative work situations (Norbäck, 2021; Salamon, 2020). These findings need to be taken into consideration in journalism education and how it best prepares aspiring journalists.

While this study’s findings provide valuable insight and a cross-national comparison, they are not representative, as the overall population of atypically employed journalists is generally unknown, and the sample is small compared to the estimates of freelance journalists in the respective countries (Hanitzsch et al., 2019: 85). However, reflecting on the experience of sampling atypical journalists, we believe we must reconsider to what extent representative samples of journalists are truly achievable as the general population of working journalists is increasingly difficult to assess. This being said, this study provides a sound basis for further research into atypical journalism. While the findings once more underscored the precarity of atypical journalistic work, recent developments like the COVID-19 pandemic illustrated that atypical journalistic work is not that different from what we have long considered ‘normal’ journalistic work. As more and more journalists moved to remote work in recent years, issues of access to resources and subjective dimensions of precarity, like the delineation of work and personal time and social isolation, become more pertinent for journalists in general (Maares et al., 2023). Future research should aim to sample respondents deliberately across employment status when investigating journalistic practice in general, both in quantitative and qualitative research. Moreover, this study does not consider the empowering role of unionizing and social networks among atypical journalists, which help journalists overcome precarious and exploitative working conditions (Norbäck, 2021; Salamon, 2020). The social capital of unions and other atypical journalists could further shape journalists’ doxa and habitus and should be explicitly included in studies on atypical journalists’ perceptions of journalistic roles, norms, and practices.

Regardless of these limitations, this is the first comparative study that investigates atypical journalists’ perception of professional norms and journalism’s role in society by mapping them against their accumulated resources. Atypical work and its association with precarious labor can thus be unraveled, shedding light on the nuances in the heterogeneity of atypical journalism. For instance, a senior freelancer covering politics might have much more journalistic capital but less access to resources than a local contingent journalist covering lifestyle and societal issues (Örnebring et al., 2018). As such, the study contributes to research on atypical journalists, which in recent years has primarily focused on their precarious working conditions and their reactions to them by embracing an entrepreneurial mind- and skillset. Providing more nuance, this study offers a comparative investigation of country-level influences shaping journalistic culture. This is important because such an understanding of atypical journalistic work that is grounded in diverse geographical contexts can help us assess the implications and grasp the experiences of atypical journalists across countries.

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Supplemental Material - Real freelancers, contingent workers, and journopreneurs. Mapping atypical journalistic work in Western Europe

Supplemental Material for Real freelancers, contingent workers, and journopreneurs. Mapping atypical journalistic work in Western Europe by Phoebe Maares in Journalism.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Clara Juarez Miro for her comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. Moreover, the author would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on this manuscript.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Stipend for research costs (Förderungsstipendium nach dem StudFG), of the University of Vienna.

Ethical statement

ORCID iD

Phoebe Maares

Supplemental Material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

Notes

Author biography

Phoebe Maares is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Vienna and the University of Tübingen. Her research focuses on the boundaries of journalism, especially regarding lifestyle topics, as well as the socio-material conditions of journalistic work and the power relations within the journalistic field.

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Real freelancers,contingent workers,and journopreneurs. Mapping atypical journalistic work in Western Europe

Abstract

Keywords

Atypical employment in journalism and work beyond the newsroom

Atypical journalists’ resources

Atypical journalists’ normative role perceptions, ethical beliefs, and entrepreneurialism

Method

Measures

Sample

Multiple correspondence analysis (MCA)

Results

The relational spaces of atypical journalism

The stratification of atypical journalists’ role perceptions and beliefs

Discussion and conclusion

Supplemental Material

Supplemental Material - Real freelancers, contingent workers, and journopreneurs. Mapping atypical journalistic work in Western Europe

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

Funding

Ethical statement

ORCID iD

Supplemental Material

Notes

Author biography

References

Supplementary Material