Towards a Labour-Process History of Newsworkers

Abstract

This essay explores writing a history of newsworkers from a labour-process theory perspective and attempts to demonstrate how journalism history may be rewritten as a history of the class experience of newsworkers. Towards this end, the essay examines theories of the labour process by Harry Braverman (1974) and Michael Burawoy (1979; 1985) with the goal of suggesting their implications for labour historians in the field of journalism. Although subjects of newswork and labour have remained objects of descriptive studies in journalism history, they are typically part of a chronicle of celebrated events or famous individuals. Instead, a history of newswork needs to pay more attention to inconspicuous changes in the structural environment and the everyday experiences of anonymous newsworkers. Such a task is possible only through a theoretically informed inquiry into labour history; in fact, theories of the labour process may potentially become major contributors to an understanding of newsworkers and their histories. The theoretical perspective of this essay has been informed by critical Marxist theories and incorporates the notion of class into key elements of a labour history of newswork. It rejects an economist notion of class, however, and chooses to address the subjective and culturalideological dimensions of class experiences among newsworkers. Although the notion of class experience is not a clearly defined concept, it emphasises a culturalist approach and suggests the significance of a linkage, without a necessary correspondence, between the structural location and the subjective, cultural aspect of newswork. YUNG-HO IM