Journalism and Digital Labor

This book investigates journalists' work practices, professional ideologies, and the power relations that impact their work, arguing that reporters' lives and livelihoods are shaped by digital technologies and new modes of capital accumulation. Tai Neilson weaves together ethnographic approaches and critical theories of digital labor. Journalists' experiences are at the heart of the book, which is based on interviews with news workers from Aotearoa New Zealand and the United States. The book also adopts a critical approach to the political economy of news across global and local contexts, digital start-ups, legacy media, nonprofits, and public service organizations. Each chapter features key debates illustrated by journalists' personal narratives. This book will be of great interest to researchers and students of journalism, media and communication, cultural studies, and the sociology of work.

Tai Neilson is a lecturer in media at Macquarie University, Sydney. His areas of expertise include the political economy of digital media and critical cultural theory. Tai has published work on journalism and digital media in Journalism, Triple-C, Fast Capitalism, and the Global Media Journal. He is a co-editor of the book Research Methods for the Digital Humanities. Tai earned his PhD in Cultural Studies from George Mason University in Virginia. He also has an MA in Sociology from the New School for Social Research in New York and a BA (Hons) from Victoria University of Wellington.

Introduction: The Digital Reporter 1. Global Changes and National News 2. The Digitization of Journalism: Typewriter, Camera, and Electronic Tape 3. The Entrepreneurial Journalist and Subjectivities of Digital Labor 4. Social Media Metrics and the Reified Journalist 5. The News Machine 6. Unionizing Digital Newsrooms Conclusion: Writing for Algorithms Afterword: The Ideology Problem