The Informal Media Economy
Ramon Lobato & Julian Thomas

The reading this week for me was really thoroughly interesting, enlightening and a firm reminder of all the concerns, hesitations and anxieties I have due to the idea of finding work in the Media industry — especially as it for the most part is the sole source of income. In this article, journalists are mainly discussed, but I find that the points made can be applied to almost all creative industries. Focusing on informal and flexible work (freelancing), they found that, ‘for many people involved in the actual labour of media production and distribution, much of which is repetitive and lowly paid, informal media work has a real downside: it can mean insecurity, overwork and low pay.” In my extremely small amount of experience of working in the industry, I have noticed that this is the case — I mean, I spent 4+ months interning for 0 days, and going above those hours to complete work for the industry. Even from talking to other friends who have already graduated with a media degree, they’ve found that they have had to let people exploit them and their time in order to bulk up their resume to gain future employment.

Furthermore, the article goes on to discuss outsourcing creative work, which with the rise of the internet has become a very common practice. Due to no unions or minimum pay wages, any type of media outlet can pay content producers extremely little for their creations. They cash in on the young, talented and unexperienced — and now because of all of this outsourcing, all this media content has become “deprofessionalised”, which is resulting in audiences not trusting the media they’re consuming.

With all my reservations of freelancing though, I do think I would suit that lifestyle really well. I tend to be someone who creates their best work under pressure with a strict deadline looming — it gets my ass into gear and helps me focus. Therefore, being able to choose my own hours would really appeal to me, as well as being able to work in my own space that stimulates me best to not get distracted. Who knows what the future will hold for my generation of media producers though? How exciting.