KCB201 WK8 Getting Ahead: Working In and with New Media

The nature of the new media environment brings with it a wealth of challenges for those who wish to work and thrive in this industry. As a budding journalist myself, the growing insecurity of jobs within traditional journalism is a concern that is always at the back of my mind as I prepare to enter the industry. Being that it takes both experience and three years of study to gain the skills required to deliver professional content, it concerns me that there is a “sapping of economic and cultural power away from professional journalists to what I like to call ‘The People Formerly known as the Employers’ (TPFKATE)” (Deuze 2009). Additionally, like many industries, the movement towards “freelance, casualized, informal, and otherwise contingent labor arrangements” (Deuze 2009), leads to job insecurity and eventually the loss of talented people from the field.

The issues of job security and continuity are not only restricted to journalism. New media fields are filled with people who have an “extraordinary degree of creativity, passion and enthusiasm for this work” (Gill 2006, 43). Despite this commitment to the nature of the work, insecurities exist around income, work continuity and future prospects. Gill (2006, 41), notes that workers in the field found it very difficult to project forward to where they may be in five years time, so much so that many could not envision a long term career in the field at all. This level on insecurity in new media employment needs to be addressed for the long term betterment of the industry.

References:

Deuze, M. (2009). The people formerly known as the Employers. Journalism, Vol. 10, issue 3, pp. 315-318.

Gill, R. (2007). Informality is the New Black. In Technobohemians or the new Cybertariat? New Media work in Amsterdam a decade after the web. Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures: 24-30 & 38-43.