Fixers as Entrepreneurs

Murrell, Colleen

doi:10.1080/1461670x.2019.1636705

Cited by 11 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…Whether heading off to cover the Spanish-American War (Moeller, 1989) or the wars of the 20th and 21st centuries (Hilsum, 2019; Tumber and Webster, 2006), the idea of journalism in general, and conflict journalism in particular, having emotional dimensions is generally taken for granted by journalists and researchers of journalism alike. As a specific topic of enquiry, though, the role that emotion serves in the practical work of such journalists has remained a peripheral concern to other interests, such as the economics of foreign reporting (Hamilton et al, 2004; Hoffman, 2003; Scott et al, 2019), risk and safety culture in journalism (Palmer, 2015; Rentschler, 2007) and the role of fixers in the production of news (Murrell, 2010, 2019; Palmer, 2018, 2019).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Feeling responsible: Emotion and practical ethics in conflict journalism

Stupart

2021

Media, War & Conflict

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This article examines the role of emotion in the practices of journalists reporting on conflict and its effects in South Sudan, based on a thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews and ethnographic observations of the working routines of journalists from Nairobi, Kampala and Juba. Contrary to perceptions of emotion as an akratic failure to reason in a rational, detached manner, obligations felt to people and situations can be understood as rational, information-bearing guides to action, directing journalists to consider personal ethical norms that may sit in tension with the norms of their professional roles as they understand them. The presence of such feelings in the case of journalists committed to a norm of emotional detachment in their work points to the moral incoherence of norms of detachment in (at least) journalism of this type.

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mentioning

confidence: 99%

Feeling responsible: Emotion and practical ethics in conflict journalism

Stupart

2021

Media, War & Conflict

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“…The self starts to see itself as a business enterprise, trying to succeed in a world of precarious opportunities (Scharff, 2016). Murrell (2019) voices an important insight when she describes fixers as entrepreneurs.…”

Section: The Fixer As Entrepreneurmentioning

confidence: 99%

Journalism ‘fixers’, hyper-precarity and the violence of the entrepreneurial self

Ashraf

Phelan

2022

Journalism

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The figure of the so-called journalism ‘fixer’ has received overdue academic attention in recent years. Scholars have highlighted the role played by fixers in international news reporting, a role historically obscured in the mythos of the Western foreign correspondent. Recent research has produced useful insights about the work done by fixers in ‘the shadows’ of the international news economy. However, it has also tended towards a domestication of the role, where the local ‘fixer’ finds their place in a collaborative relationship with those officially consecrated as ‘journalists’ from elsewhere. This article presents a critical theoretical analysis of this functional role, building on the image of the fixer as a kind of ‘entrepreneur’. Rather than interpreting the latter designation as a source of empowerment or agency, we approach it as a euphemism for the hyper-precarious and exploitative underpinnings of fixer-labour. Our argument draws on different theoretical sources, including Foucault-inspired work on the entrepreneurial rationality of the neoliberal self, Bourdieu’s notion of symbolic violence, and Rancière’s concept of politics. The theoretical argument is supported by the first author’s reflections of working as a Pakistani-based ‘fixer’ during the U.S-led war on terror.

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“…Selfbranding on social media is an entrepreneurial strategy found both among traditional journalists (Usher, 2014) and among freelancers who inspire editors in news companies to use these strategies more widely as tools to augment audience engagement (Holton, 2016). Moreover, news fixers -local workers offering translation and other services to foreign correspondents in crisis regions -are becoming more entrepreneurial by increasingly negotiating hiring processes via dedicated websites and platforms (Murrell, 2019).…”

Section: The Public Service Ethos In Journalism Corporate Work and En...mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Self-branding on social media is an entrepreneurial strategy found both among traditional journalists (Usher, 2014) and among freelancers who inspire editors in news companies to use these strategies more widely as tools to augment audience engagement (Holton, 2016). Moreover, news fixers – local workers offering translation and other services to foreign correspondents in crisis regions – are becoming more entrepreneurial by increasingly negotiating hiring processes via dedicated websites and platforms (Murrell, 2019). On the organizational level, researchers explore news companies’ experiments with agile production modelled on software companies (Deuze and Witschge, 2018), or news start-ups in journalism that receive funding from venture capitalists (Usher, 2017).…”

Section: The Public Service Ethos In Journalism Corporate Work and En...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Journalism ethics with Foucault: Casually employed journalists’ constructions of professional integrity

Gollmitzer

2021

Journalism

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This article examines how journalists in non-permanent employment respond to their growing precarity. It is based on in-depth interviews with freelance journalists and interns who find that their working lives increasingly require entrepreneurial efforts. To work towards continuous access to journalistic work, these casually employed journalists engage in self-management and self-branding. To be able to make a living, they subsidize their income with work for clients outside of journalism that frequently offer better working conditions than news organizations but pursue narrow, strategic goals. The article develops a typology of non-journalistic work that illustrates that some non-journalistic jobs, but not others, cause these precarious news workers to defend their journalistic professional integrity. Furthermore, the study introduces Michel Foucault’s notions of the ‘entrepreneurial self’ and the ‘ethical self’ to interpret the different registers of professionalism between which journalists move today, identified as counter-, conforming and coping subjectivity. Thereby, the article uses a novel conceptual lens to make sense of resilience and change in journalistic professional identities under conditions of precarity.

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Fixers as Entrepreneurs

Cited by 11 publications

References 8 publications

Feeling responsible: Emotion and practical ethics in conflict journalism

Feeling responsible: Emotion and practical ethics in conflict journalism

Journalism ‘fixers’, hyper-precarity and the violence of the entrepreneurial self

Journalism ethics with Foucault: Casually employed journalists’ constructions of professional integrity

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