Making Precarity Productive

This chapter argues that the precarious circumstances of media work in general and journalism in particular can be made productive by considering different ways of conceptualizing what it means to do ‘good work’ in the media. The authors aim to understand precarity as productive, in the sense that it can produce specific ways of thinking and doing for media professionals that both exemplify their struggle to circumvent or even take advantage of their precarious work conditions. They interviewed Dutch freelance journalists to see how they organize their work so that they can cover stories that matter most to them. The interviews showed that unlike “traditional” freelancers, contemporary freelancers position themselves and their professional goals at the core of their business, not the demands of legacy media or journalism’s occupational ideology. These freelancers approach work in terms of the information they gather, especially the topics they specialize in. This opens the potential to rise above the precarity prevalent in journalism.