[ecrea] Writers' Rights: Freelance Journalism in a Digital Age

*Writers' Rights***

*Freelance Journalism in a Digital Age***

/Nicole S. Cohen/

//“/Writers’ Rights/ will establish Cohen as the leading authority on 
freelance journalism for many years to come.” - Ursula Huws, University 
of Hertfordshire

       “Cohen has crafted a surprisingly hopeful, decidedly thorough 
treatise on shifting power structures and business ethics in a field 
that’s constantly reinventing itself.” - Publishers Weekly

As media industries undergo rapid change, the conditions of media work 
are shifting just as quickly, with an explosion in the number of 
journalists working as freelancers. Although commentary frequently lauds 
freelancers as ideal workers for the information age – adaptable, 
multi-skilled, and entrepreneurial – Nicole Cohen argues that freelance 
media work is increasingly precarious, marked by declining incomes, loss 
of control over one’s work, intense workloads, long hours, and limited 
access to labour and social protections./Writers’ Rights/ provides 
context for freelancers’ struggles and identifies the points of 
contention between journalists and big business. Through interviews and 
a survey of freelancers, Cohen highlights the paradoxes of freelancing, 
which can be simultaneously precarious and satisfying, risky and 
rewarding. She documents the transformation of freelancing from a way 
for journalists to resist salaried labour in pursuit of autonomy into a 
strategy for media firms to intensify exploitation of freelance writers’ 
labour power, and presents case studies of freelancers’ efforts to 
collectively transform their conditions. A groundbreaking and timely 
intervention into debates about the future of journalism, organising 
precariously employed workers, and the transformation of media work in a 
digital age, Writers’ Rights makes clear what is at stake for 
journalism’s democratic role when the costs and risks of its production 
are offloaded onto individuals.

*Nicole S. Cohen* is assistant professor in the Institute of 
Communication, Culture, Information and Technology at the University of 
Toronto Mississauga.

McGill-Queen's University Press

June 2016 336pp  9780773547964 HB £28.99 now only £23.19* when you quote 
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