Professional digital journalists and entry in the Portuguese labour market

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article analyzes the conditions in which Portuguese digital journalists enter the workplace by looking at certain choices they made while studying, during internships, and entering the ever-growing labour market. Thirteen biographical interviews were conducted with professionals who started working in journalism after 2005. The results show an opposition to the regressing conditions surrounding entry into journalism, as well as a set of strategies for insertion and permanence in the profession. The results also show that a journalist’s entry into journalism is a result of a combination of having a career project, of the individual choices that journalist makes, and how he or she has had to adapt their identity based on labour market limitations and the opportunities that have opened up ever since the onset of digital media.