The Margins of Journalism

Abstract

This book explores the margins of journalism, the peripheral journalists and media organisations which I perceive as the unmapped agents of the journalistic field. The analysis of the habitus, capitals and practices of these agents, and the way in which I represent this part of the field, is based on Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of action. More particularly, the book provides a case study of a semi-autonomous group of journalists and organisations, local newspapers in the post-socialist and post-transitional media system of the Czech Republic. The mixed-method research consists of surveys, in-depth interviews and participant observations focusing on the local journalists’ and the local newspaper organisations’ characteristics and practices. Using the inductive method, the book focuses on journalists as individuals and discusses them as the peripheral actors and unique agents of Bourdieu’s journalistic field. Following from the ethnographic interviews and participant observations, a typology is designed with distinctive characteristics to accommodate the habitus of my communicative partners, particularly the journalists and entrepreneurs. Considering media organisations as agents in the journalistic field, the book emphasises the individualistic tendencies of organisations within the peripheral sub-field of local newspapers. At the last and most general level, the specifics of local newspapers as an autonomous peripheral sub-field of the wider journalistic field are analysed and presented in a thematic map and model of the journalistic sub-field.