Freelancers in Newspapers Local Editorial Offices - Characteristics, Professional Self-Understanding and Organisational Structures

• Applicant: Professorin Dr. Wiebke Möhring
• Subject Area: Communication Sciences
• Term: from 2018 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 404066328

Local news is an important source for user’s orientation in their own environments and the user’s interest in local news is high. The need to be informed about local events and to get oriented in their nearby environments is a high motivation for the use of it. Nevertheless, editorial offices are challenged by recent economic developments of local and regional newspapers. The loss of previous earning models results in cost-cutting measures, which concern predominantly the personnel resources of local editorial offices: Due to these facts number and importance of journalists working as local free-lancers is risen over the last years. The question is under which circumstances these freelancers work in local editorial offices? Who works with whom in which process structures? And who – with which qualification – works as a freelancer in local editorial offices?Results to answer these questions have not yet been provided. It is one goal of the planned research project to provide – for the first time – a comprehensive and detailed overview of the professional characteristics of freelancers in regional and local newspaper journalism (print and online). The second goal is to analyze the organizational integration of freelancers in local editorial offices. To reach those goals, characteristics will be analyzed like educational background, journalistic knowledge and experiences as well as their professional self-understanding and the evaluation of their integration into editorial structures. Furthermore, it will be analyzed which strategies of human resource management and editorial quality management the editorial offices use, which relevance is attributed to it, what impact digital processes and structures have and which practical conceptions of editorial management can be identified.For the theoretical modeling of the project, studies that have dealt with freelancers in local editorial offices as well as freelancers in print journalism, their work conditions and routines as well as self-understanding, and studies researching local citizen journalism will be consulted. In addition, studies of editorial research, editorial management, and results from the wider context of the digitalization of journalistic workflow will be included. A multi-method design will be applied. Heads of the local editorial department will be interviewed with the help of qualitative semi-structured interviews; the freelancers will be questioned with a standardized online questionnaire. Subsequently, the results and interpretations will be discussed with the heads of the local editorial offices for a communicative validation. Besides the expansion of scientific knowledge, the project also generates results that are of socio-political and professional interest: It will produce statements about expectable performances of local journalism and develop recommendations for action.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants