PROFESSIONAL IDENTITY OF JOURNALISTS THEN AND NOW: A PERSPECTIVE OF JOURNALISTS FROM SOUTHEAST SERBIA

Abstract

The journalistic profession has faced many challenges in recent decades. Market pressure, the emergence of non-media actors producing content, and a shrinking audience interested in the news are just some of the challenges that media professionals are facing on a daily basis in the age of convergence culture (Deuze, 2008; Donsbach, 2009; Jenkins, 2008). If we observe these issues in the context of countries that do not have a long democratic tradition, the challenges become even more pronounced, which may result in a decline in this profession’s reputation, and even in the loss or crisis of professional identity (Donsbach, 2009). Starting from the structural elements of the professional identity of journalists (Deuze, 2008), an in-depth semi-structured interview was conducted with ten journalists employed in different types of media in Niš. In order to be in a position to compare the period before and after the socio-political and technological transition, for which we take the year 2000, all interviewed journalists were born before 1980, and have at least 15 years of experience in journalism. Thematic analysis of the interviews shows that, in the opinion of journalists, the status of journalism as a profession is constantly declining; that the crisis of journalists’ identity is caused by commercialization, convergence and market pressure, but that it is the socio-political circumstances that have the greatest impact on the (self) perception of journalism as a profession.