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This study uses the question, ‘what makes a freelancer specifically a journalist’ as a starting point for investigating the ways Australian freelance journalists experienced and managed precarious employment in COVID-19 impacted 2020. Drawing on qualitative interviews with 32 self-identified freelance journalists, we analyse the types of work they did, the influence of the precarious job situation on their work choices and the consequent ways they chose to display their identity as journalists. Our findings reveal a complex picture, which calls into question some of the binaries established around journalism. While nearly all participants had to resort to work outside journalism in 2020, at least half still displayed strong links to journalism, demonstrated by their sense of belonging to a community of journalists, and their continued interest in doing self-funded public interest journalism as ‘passion projects’. However, we also noticed a blurring between the descriptors of journalist and writer, based partly on employment opportunities but also, importantly, on interest in increasing creativity in the journalistic space. These results lead us to question work-test definitions as a signifier of a freelancer’s bond to journalism and to propose, instead, that freelancers merit a new standing in the flattening hierarchy of journalism.

Journalism and communication courses almost unfailingly report a majority of female students such as the Journalism Students Around the Globe project (Mellado and Hanusch 2017), which has led schol...

Review of: Communicating COVID-19: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Monique Lewis, Eliza Govender and Kate Holland (Eds) (2021)Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 395 pp.,ISBN 978-3-03079-734-8, h/bk, €129.99ISBN 978-3-03079-735-5, e-book, €106.99

This study presents the first global perspective on journalists’ perception of temporal acceleration in their professional life. Based on the second wave of Worlds of Journalism Study data, encompa...

This chapter investigates the media’s journalistic response to water rights and the sharing and handling of resources in two countries diametrically positioned with regard to water resources, Australia and Bangladesh. One is the driest continent on earth and the other in frequent danger of inundations and rising sea levels. The case studies chosen are the reporting of the Murray-Darling basin issue in Australia and the Ganga-Brahmaputra river system in Bangladesh. The findings highlight the inadequacy of traditional media ethics and the capture of journalists in their own procedural, organizational, and geographical confines. In depicting Australia and Bangladesh, the chapter highlights commonalities but eschews simplistic answers that may suit some regions of the world but not others and outlines ways for journalistic writing to strengthen its engagement in matters of environmental justice.

Review of: Beyond Journalism, Mark Deuze and Tamara Witschge (2020)Cambridge: Polity Press, 148 pp.,ISBN 978-0-74564-342-7, p/bk, $30.25ISBN 978-0-74564-341-0, h/bk, $57.00ISBN 978-0-74564-341-8, ebk, $26.99

Journalism has long been seen as a ‘young person’s occupation’. While the average age of journalists has increased from 35 to 39 in past 20 years, this article investigates what developments are covered, or covered up, by this average. The Worlds of Journalism Study data permit us to compare journalistic workforce ages with that of the general workforce, we juxtapose labour force median ages with journalists’ median ages in 60 countries. On realizing that age alone does not present experience, we also include years of professional experience as indicator for journalistic workforce profiling, and also analyse the journalistic and general workforce in age segments in 14 countries to arrive at a more detailed picture of age distribution. Our findings reaffirm that journalism is still an occupation for the young, and underscore the fact that in many countries journalists do not stay in the job for long. This leads us to contend that journalism lives with large numbers of young and relatively inexperienced workers, making it an easier transition into the digital age when journalism similarly is created from many diverse sources and with workers with varying levels of experience.

In answer to the question of how journalism studies can prove its continued significance, this article argues that journalism skills should be seen as bedrock for journalism studies. From a historical perspective, journalism studies has grown out of journalism education, with its emphasis on training journalists. From a global perspective, it is the skill of sourcing, verifying, and communicating news, which is common to journalists around the world, and sets them apart from other information providers. In this respect, both historically and globally, journalism skills are fundamental to journalism and, by extension, can aid journalism studies to locate its own center and draw distinctions from other fields of study.

Bhutan, a democracy since 2008 and one of the world's youngest, has transitioned from an absolute to a constitutional monarchy in an orderly fashion rarely seen. A free media, carried by skilled and responsible journalists, is part of that design but difficult to plan. This first comprehensive survey of Bhutan's journalists identifies some of the problems encountered in making journalism a profession that has taken root. Yet the survey results reveal none the less a broad understanding of the role the media are expected to play in a democracy, and a great deal of trust in the new political institutions.

Despite many obstacles, investigative journalism continues to flourish in Australia. A significant part of the explanation for this appears to lie with universities which have journalism programs. Investigative journalism has a strong presence in these programs across Australia, a presence which is increasingly being felt at postgraduate level. As a result, an increasing number of journalism graduates have the skills and understanding necessary to embark on serious investigative work, and several institutions have embarked on projects with innovative approaches to collaborative investigative work. However, the wider context in which Australia’s tertiary institutions operate is far from benign, and journalism programs*and thus the teaching of investigative journalism*are subject to many pressures. The paper finds that, although university journalism programs are increasingly taking responsibility for educating their students about investigative journalism, thereby picking up a key responsibility which would once have been borne entirely by the industry, there are also forces at work which limit their capacity to do this. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Journalism education at the college level was first offered in 1869, and developed primarily in the United States. No other country has had a similar impact on the discipline, and the United States’ pioneering role has shaped curricula around the world. While journalism education was also offered in Europe throughout the 20th century, especially from the 1980s onwards, its global spread came in the 1990s and 2000s. This is closely linked to the proliferation of media in countries where economic growth, technological progress, and rising literacy have combined to create a dramatic increase in readership and audience, especially in the most populous nations, China and India, but also in Africa and Latin America. In 2013, the census of journalism education programs kept by the World Journalism Education Council listed almost 2,400 programs globally. This spread does not only mean a shift in geographical terms, but also in conceptual terms. North American scholars imagined journalism as central to democratic life. But the notion of journalism serving first and foremost democracy puts it at odds with other parts of the world, where different forms of governance are prevalent. This necessitated the American inspired image of journalism, legitimized by its centrality to democracy, to be modified. In this global process, journalism education importantly did not relinquish its normative constituent, but moved it to the ideal of journalism and journalists serving the public. Equally remarkable, and telling, is the consistency of subjects in curricula around the globe, especially in what are deemed the vocationally relevant subjects. In 2007, and again in 2013, UNESCO released model curricula for journalism education. These are ostensibly directed toward developing countries and emerging democracies, but are used globally and in countries as diverse as Afghanistan and Rwanda. This has raised the question of whether a homogenization of journalism around the world could be observed. At this stage, however, differing political, cultural, and religious conditions exert too much influence on a country’s journalistic output for this to occur. The intentions behind the support for journalism education vary over time and between countries. Although journalism education is never openly acknowledged as an ideological battleground, it has been used to spread influence. After the disbandment of the Soviet Bloc, the United States and European nations sent journalism educators to the countries of the former Soviet Bloc, ostensibly to teach journalists the values of a free press, but also to build their commercial interests in new media markets. In Africa, after decades of Western assistance in media education,, China has attempted to challenge the dominance of the traditionally Western helpers, although with limited success. The most prevalent and persistent issue regarding the content of journalism education has been the theory-practice division. This extends to the suitability of journalism education as a tertiary study area and the composition of its curricula, which have been debated since its inception. The earliest programs in formal journalism education in the United States consisted of teaching technical skills as well as writing and editing. This inclusion of skills training pointed from the very beginning to the gulf journalism education would have to bridge in academic institutions. Many countries, notably the United Kingdom, left the training of journalists to the industry until the 1990s. Academic literature, by its very nature, argues for the place of journalism education in academia. The voices against come from the industry, where employers and editors see journalism education as theory-laden and out of touch with industry realities. Since the 1990s, media companies have largely accepted that journalism training be done in colleges and universities, mostly because it frees valuable resources in a strained industry. All the same, the criteria for measuring success in journalism education continue to differ between the industry and the academy. The debates on what and how to teach are similarly divergent, although since the early 2000s the idea of educating future journalists as “reflective practitioners” seems to have taken hold. But this comes at a time when in North America, Europe, and Australia the main challenge for journalism education is the fragility of legacy media, which traditionally absorbed the highest number of graduates. Media sustainability has therefore been named as one of the foremost concerns for journalism education. In times of digital journalism, the challenges for journalists come from many sides. Not only the precariousness of employment, but also the diminishing of authority is affecting the profession. Professionalism is again emerging as a vital concept, although it remains as contentious as ever. At a time when journalistic authority is under attack, professionalism is seen as a tool in the boundary-work taking place between journalists, a public participating in news creation and distribution, tweeters, and bloggers. Journalism schools are using various ways to train journalists for a new, shared world. This includes teaching “entrepreneurial journalism” in order to prepare their students for an anticipated de-institutionalized future. While much has been written about how and what journalism education should be, little research has been done on the effects of journalism education. A major problem is the difficulty of empirically quantifying this influence. One area where the impact of journalism education can be researched is on students during their years of study, although this goes only a small way toward establishing the influence that journalism education has on the practicing journalist. Since 1869, much has changed yet some things remain. Journalism education will continue to be characterized by its dichotomous nature. It will remain caught between theory and practice, normative and empirical, academy and industry, market and public service, dependence and autonomy.

In posing the question ‘How much democracy does journalism need?’, much depends on the definition of journalism. This article suggests that journalism should be viewed not in terms of media systems but instead using journalism practice as the main frame of reference, as this allows for an appreciation of journalism beyond the confines of western democratic countries. The analysis of historical and current examples shows that journalism offering accurate and verified information resting on independent news judgement also happens in places that are deemed semi- or non-democratic. This article argues that it is not the political form of democracy that is essential to journalism but the freedom of expression and relative journalistic autonomy afforded to media workers. Democracies, as compellingly shown in recent years, may offer the legal framework for freedom of speech but they do not offer protection for journalistic services which have to be largely financed privately. The dependency on media owners is no less in many democratic nations than it is in non-democratic countries. Most importantly, journalism needs supporters who see value in independent information provision and credible news judgement.

This review article looks at books on journalism and the media coming from within the dominant discourse and concerning themselves with journalism globally or the media in several countries. It finds that in an era of growing global awareness research is only reluctantly acknowledging models other than the Anglo-American one. This has implications for the professional model of journalism and serves to perpetuate the gap between the principles of journalism and professional practice. It has further implications for journalism research in that the normative expectations skew results and veil actual practice.

The Broadcasting Services Act 1992 ushered in a new hands-off approach by government which, in the case of radio, permitted commercial broadcasters to double their investments in individual markets through the two-station policy while removing any onerous commitments to local content. Since then, there has been concern about the flow-on effect this may have had, with Peter Collingwood's 1997 study of commercial radio confirming that levels of local content were reducing as levels of networked content were increasing. He bemoaned the fact that a by-product of the self-regulatory regime was a reduction in the amount of publicly available information against which performance could be gauged. Since 1992, only one detailed study of local radio news has been done, Graeme Turner's 1996 examination of radio and television news in the Brisbane market. Now a parallel study has been conducted in Perth, giving an insight into localism and networking six years later.

This contribution focuses on research conducted at the German national daily, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, which is part of an ongoing exploration of the induction process of young journalists and/ or cadets into the newsroom. Touching on three theoretical areas; the question of comparative journalism research, the question of professional education and research into the importance of the organizational sphere shaping media content, this comparative study underpins the assumption that newsroom practices have an effect on how young journalists carry out their craft. By examining the rite of passage into the newsroom by presenting the same set of questions to young journalists and staff at papers in different geographical locations and operating under different political circumstances, it will be shown that newspapers, in turn, are strongly embedded in their country's media culture.

Irmtraud Petersson, German Images in Australian Literature from the 1940s to the 1980s. Peter Lang, Frankfurt/M. 1990