Venture Labor| Freelancing as the Good Life?

Authors

  • Nicole S. Cohen Institute of Communication, Culture, Information, and Technology University of Toronto Mississauga

Keywords:

freelancing, journalism, precarity, exploitation

Abstract

This article asks how venture labor manifests in the work of producing journalism on a freelance basis in a time of labor precarity. While freelancing offers journalists much-desired flexibility and autonomy, it is also a way for corporations to offload the risk of producing media onto individuals, infusing freelance work with instability. Freelancers earn low wages and face increasing pressure to work for no pay, have limited social protections, and are presented with exploitative contracts for their work. In the face of competing risks and rewards, collective action holds potential for improving freelancers’ conditions.

Author Biography

Nicole S. Cohen, Institute of Communication, Culture, Information, and Technology University of Toronto Mississauga

Nicole S. Cohen is an assistant professor at the University of Toronto (Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology and the Faculty of Information). Her book, Writers’ Rights: Freelance Journalism in a Digital Age, will be published in Fall 2016 by McGill-Queen’s University Press. Nicole collaborates with Greig de Peuter and Enda Brophy on Cultural Workers Organize, which examines cultural workers’ varied responses to precarity (culturalworkersorganize.org).

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Published

2017-05-09

Issue

Vol. 11 (2017)

Section

Forum

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