Newsworkers and their gendered careers. Findings of a longitudinal analysis of 1,171 LinkedIn profiles of French journalists

Abstract

The social status of journalists has changed very little since the beginning of the twentieth century. Due to a rising market for freelance work, low wage scales and lay-offs affecting early and mid-career professionals, today’s journalists find themselves in precarious situations quite similar to those described in the International Labour Organisation’s famous report on the life and working conditions of journalists working in 20 countries in the 1920s (Bureau International du Travail, 1928). My aim in this paper is to propose a new source of data that will undoubtedly prove useful to scholars working in the field of journalism studies: curriculum data listed on the profiles of individuals registered with LinkedIn, a professional social network. The findings presented here are drawn from research conducted on the labour market for French journalists. And indicate that men and women do not forge the same kind of careers in journalism, nor do they leave the profession the same way and with the same regularity.