doing knowledge work in an information economy
DESCRIPTION
DOING KNOWLEDGE WORK IN AN INFORMATION ECONOMY. The Case of Freelance Journalists. Nicole S. Cohen University of Toronto November 29, 2012. FREELANCERS’ EARNINGS. Average $24,000 in 2005 - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
DOING K
NOWLE
DGE
WORK IN
AN
INFO
RMATIO
N ECONOMY
The
Case
of Fr
eela
nce Jo
urnal
ists
Nicole S. CohenUniversity of TorontoNovember 29, 2012
FREELANCERS’ EARNINGS
Average $24,000 in 2005 Professional Writers Association of Canada. Canadian Professional Writers Survey: A Profile of
the Freelance Writing Sector in Canada, 2006
Survey: 45% earned under $20,000 in 2009
75% say freelance writing is their main job
PRECARITY
“Intermittent employment and radical uncertainty about the future” Andrew Ross Nice Work If You can Get It: Life and Labor in Precarious Times, 2009
“Financial and existential insecurity arising from the flexibilization of labour” Enda Brophy and Greig de Peuter, “Immaterial Labour, Precarity, and Recomposition,” 2007
“The insecurity, discontinuity and randomness that now hangs over all work” Andre Gorz, The Immaterial, 2012
“the terror of not having reliable work or reliable income”
“The pay often does not reflect the work you put into a piece.
You are expected to come up with ideas, research and pitch without pay, yet are not
adequately compensated when your story ideas are accepted.”
“...If travel opportunities come up, I don’t have to skip them
the way I would if I had a desk job, but… I will most likely be spending those ‘vacation’ days
glued to my laptop.”
SAMPLE CONTRACT
Transcontinental contract, badwritingcontracts.wordpress.com
“No one cares where I am, just as long as I get the work done.”
“I can’t spend a month searching through archives,
filing Freedom of Information requests, reading research
and trying to get to know the people in a story when I’m only being paid for one or two days of
work.”
“In order to pump out stories for twenty to forty cents
a word, I can’t do any real background investigative
work—just dribble if I’m going to make a living.”
