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PP 448 From a Family-Based Company to a Large Press Group: How the Introduction of a Modern Managerial Policy Transforms the Working
Conditions of Journalists of a French-Speaking Belgian Daily Newspaper ?
M. Libert1
1 Université libre de Bruxelles, Information and Communication, Bruxelles, Belgium
The economic difficulties faced by media companies affect the working conditions of journalists for the French-speaking Belgian Press. According to the re‑
port of Les États généraux des médias d’information, conducted between 2010 and 2014 by the Parliament of the Federation Wallonia-Brussels, Belgian
journalists are facing a generalized reduction in payroll, an unstable employment status and a increasing demand of versatility.These findings are confirmed
in other national contexts (Frisque, 2013; Reinardy, 2011). In Belgium, few studies have been conducted on this topic: they are relatively new and few
of them come from academic sources.They do not allow to investigate the evolution of working conditions for the journalists of the French-speaking Belgian
daily newspapers. This communication focuses on the change of managerial policy for the French-speaking Belgian daily newspaper Le Soir and examines
how this change has contributed to the evolution of working conditions of the editorial board between 2001 and 2014. In 2001, at the death of the man‑
aging director of Rossel group, a new leader arrived at the head of the newspaper. He organized a new management in a way that is more appropriate for
the new economic rules, the technological challenges and the increasing media competition. The Rossel group has gradually grown from a family-based
company, described as "patriarchal" by its journalists, to a large media group with a managerial policy that is much more professional and hierarchical.
The transformation of Rossel's managerial policy reflects the evolution of the media industries, developed in numerous researches in Media Economics:
the contemporary practice of news production now follows the same economic logic as all other production types (Augey, 2003). How this change help to
transform the working conditions of the journalists ? This presentation is a part of a research project on changing careers and working conditions of jour‑
nalists in Belgium. It is based on two research approaches: on the one hand, an analysis of articles, produced between 1994 and 2014 by french-speaking
Belgian newspapers, focusing on economic and social events that concern journalists working for Le Soir ; on the other hand, interviews conducted with
20 former and current journalists of Le Soir. A first analysis showed that the change of managerial policy has led to increases in the workload of journalists,
encouraging them to do more while reducing the number of journalists in the newsroom. It also changed the newspaper production process: nowadays,
the production of the newspaper is more centralized under the control of the editor-in-chief, who provides a much more directive organizational policy.
- Augey D., « Les journalistes : petits maillons au bout de la chaîne industrielle », in : Hermès, La Revue, vol 1, n° 35, p. 73–79, 2003 - Frisque C., « Multipli‑
cation des statuts précaires et (dé)structuration de l’espace professionnel ». in : Sur le journalisme, vol 2, n°2, p. 78–93, 2013. URL:
com/rev - Reinardy, S., « Newspaper journalism in crisis: Burnout on the rise, eroding young journalists' career commitment », in : Journalism, vol 12, n°1,
p. 33–50, 2011.
PP 449 Transference Across Boundaries: A Model of Journalism that Incorporates Its Peripheral Actors
S. Eldridge1
1 The University of Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands
Journalism appears to be a less consolidated field than it might once have been. While the texture of the journalistic field has always been varied, changes
to modes of reporting, communicating, and identifying performing journalistic work seemmore disruptive than previous iterations of change. Digital actors
pushing us towards what Yochai Benkler labelled ‘The Networked Fourth Estate’ (2011) challenge existing boundaries of the field, and even as Benkler’s
prediction at times seems unrealised, new actors and new types of digital journalism challenge us to conceptualise journalism in new ways. This paper
offers one such conceptualisation through a multi-sphere model of journalism. Prominently with WikiLeaks and Julian Assange and the NSA leaks and
Edward Snowden, more curiously with the input of hackers formally or informally in news, and increasingly in the work of digital-native news sites that
blur lines between online culture and digital journalism, digital actors operating online have demonstrated new ways for news stories to develop, fuelled
by less-than-traditional means. Through new forms of newswork, they challenge consolidated notions of journalism around normative ideals, particularly
when they emerge on the periphery of legality, seriousness, and traditional news storytelling. Yet within their work, we can often locate public interest and
informative functions, as well as watchdog activity, an emphasis on facticity, and other familiar journalistic criteria. Exploring contributions to journalism
made by these emerging actors, this paper will situate their claims and treatment within a broader discussion of journalistic identity and ideal-typical defin‑
ers of the journalistic field.Working with Bourdieu’s (2005) theoretical work on the journalistic field, it will also locate challenges to new conceptualisations,
including the societal heft of traditional understandings. Exploring how peripheral actors, through computer savvy and online prowess, expose previously
quiet information in ways that reflect the core dimensions of journalism, this paper focuses both on work that is incorporated into news coverage as well
as newswork that stands alone online. Against journalistic performances by peripheral actors, this paper expands on previous work looking at boundaries
of journalistic identity and interloping claims of journalistic belonging (Eldridge 2013, 2014) to account for peripheral digital journalists. While traditional
definitions of journalism exclude such activities and actors, this paper presents a model of journalism that defines journalism through measures of journal‑
istic identity, intention, and performance and, crucially, one that does not pre-empt positive evaluations of digital journalistic actors by applying traditional
boundaries. References Benkler, Y. (2011). “A free irresponsible press: WikiLeaks and the battle over the soul of the networked fourth estate.” Harvard Civil
Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review 46: 311–397. Bourdieu, P. (2005).“The Political Field,The Social Science Field, and the Journalistic Field.”In: R. Benson and
E. Neveu (Eds) Bourdieu and the Journalistic Field. Cambridge, Polity. Eldridge, S. (2013) ‘Perceiving professional threats: Journalism’s discursive reaction to
the rise of new media entities.’Journal of Applied Journalism & Media Studies 2(2) pp. 281–299. Eldridge, S. (2014) ‘Boundary Maintenance and Interloper
Media Reaction: Differentiating between journalism’s discursive enforcement processes.’Journalism Studies 15(1) pp. 1–16.