Mid Sweden University

In recent years many Swedish photojournalists have been laid off or forced to become so called “multi-skilled” journalists to keep their jobs (Bock 2011a, 2011b, Nygren 2014) These changes in Swedish newspaper media has impacted journalism practice and its ideals in many ways. However, media scholars have mostly focused on how this has had effects on journalism ideals and norms (Compton 2010) and less attention on specialists’ ideals and norms, such as photojournalists (Busst 2012, Greenwood & Reinardy 2011, Hadland, Lambert, & Campbell 2016). The aim of this study has been to contribute to the small but increasing understanding of photojournalism practice, ideals and norms of in a changing newspaper media landscape, through the theoretical framework of Bourdieu (Benson 2006, Bourdieu 1990, 1992, 1993, 1998).

The results from in-depth interviews with 40 informants, shows that while photojournalist agents emphasized ideals of objectivity, autonomy and ethics, reporters, multi-skilled journalists, reporters and especially media managers and editors were more inclined to state their more market-oriented ideals and norms.

Notwithstanding the economic situation for media in general, these findings are interpreted as a underlying social structure in the field and could be part of an explanation to the many layoffs by photojournalist as well as the increased multi-skilling professionalization amongst agents in the Swedish newspaper media field.