A majority of American newspaper journalists who were forced to leave their job said they were devastated, faced emotional difficulties and experienced household income loss.
Among the respondents to a recent study, 39% of those terminated from their newspaper jobs reported feeling devastated while 18% said the loss of household income put made their families in trouble.
The study also stated that among the former journalists of print media 36% still identify themselves as journalists despite the fact that they are no longer working in the industry.
Scott Reinardy, professor of journalism at Kansas University and Lawrie Zion of LaTrobe University in Melbourne, Australia, jointly conducted the study, which is modeled on a previous study titled “New Beats: A study of Australian Journalism Redundancies”.
The New Beats study was conducted with 350 Australian journalists who were forced to leave their jobs and investigated how those journalists accommodated their professional identities after leaving jobs. Despite the hardships faced by many of them, 24% of the respondents were relieved by leaving the media industry.
The former journalists expressed their dissatisfaction over the current condition of journalism arena, with 29% citing the industry as dead or diminished and 22% saying they are depressed by the recent state of journalism. About one in 10 said journalism is still valuable but dying.
After leaving journalism, 62% joined in media-related work, including public relations. About 22% reported working outside of media and 10% said they moved to education. Only 7% had retired from work.
To read more: https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2019.1691935
Reinardy, S., & Zion, L. (2019). Cutting Deeper: US Newspapers Wipe out Jobs and Alter Career Identities. Journalism Practice, 1-14.
