Transformation of journalistic labor and precarization

Abstract

The crisis, known as the Dotcom bubble in the world, is recently occuring in Turkey’s new digital newsrooms. Due to uncertainty in news economy and recent developments in Turkey’s media industry, dozens of digital newsrooms have emerged in the last decade. Some of these are profit-oriented organizations, while some are non-profit or have some hybrid economic models. These new digital newsrooms live off traditional incomes, such as advertisement revenue, as well as grants and donations. Many journalists who used to work in the past for digital or traditional newsrooms as full-time or part-time news practitioners are currently producing news content as freelance journalists for the new digital newsrooms. This caused the emergence of a new community consisting of freelance reporters working for these new-born digital news organizations. This study aims to analyze the impact of digitalization on precariousness focused on working conditions of journalists producing content for these newsrooms. The study is based on in-depth interviews with freelance journalists working for digital newsrooms, participatory observation of the researcher in activities of Journalists Union of Turkey in 2016-2017 period; and a survey answered by freelance journalists working for digital newsrooms.