Managing Media Work

Mark Deuze

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9781412971249
• eBook ISBN: 9781483389479
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Careers

Managing Media Work provides a comprehensive, cross-national overview of the theory and practice of working in the media in the digital age. Focusing on three key areas—new media work, media professions, and media management—this text prepares students to effectively manage their own media careers and to manage human capital in creative companies. Written by leading international scholars, the book addresses the increasingly global, networked, and unpredictable nature of the media industry as well as the growing complexities of media work.

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1	Managing Media Work

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Mark Deuze and Brian Steward

People spend more time with media today than at any previous point in history. The number of media channels, forms, genres, devices, applications, and formats is proliferating—more media get produced every year. Yet at the same time, the news about the media as an industry is less than optimistic. Reports about massive layoffs in all the creative industries—most notably film and television entertainment, journalism, digital game development, and advertising—are paramount. This suggests a fascinating paradox: As people engage with media in an increasingly immersive, always-on, almost instantaneous and interconnected way, the very people whose livelihood and sense of professional identity depend on delivering content and experiences across such media seem to be at a loss on how to come up with survival strategies—in terms of business models, effective regulatory practices (for example regarding copyrights and universal access provisions), and perhaps most specifically the organization of entrepreneurial working conditions that would support and sustain the creative process needed to meet the demands of a global market saturated with media. In this book, different fields of study regarding the media as a creative industry are brought together to articulate a new theorization and practical implementation of strategic management in recognition of the changing ways in which people use media in their lives—living a life not with but rather in media.

This book and research project combines work and insights from specifically three strands of research and teaching on the media: management and organization, cultural policy and economics, and labor and work. The project can therefore be seen as an attempt to integrate theories of how media industries function in society, theories of how media professionals manage their individual careers and professional identity in this context, and case-based work on how media industries manage creativity and innovation. The assumption is that the combination of these perspectives will help articulate the gap (better yet: the bridge) between theory and practice in media management and work. Our approach to managing media work stems from a few key considerations about the field of media management:

• Media management tends to be underexplored and undertheorized (see especially the contribution of Bozena I. Mierzejewska for a critical articulation of this observation).
• Most media management research does not look across boundaries between media professions or academic disciplines (see, for example, chapters by Annet Aris, Geert Lovink and Ned Rossiter, and Tim Marjoribanks).
• The traditional tendency in much of the field has been to artificially maintain distinctions between management and creativity, which (with Chris Bilton) we find unhelpful.
• Media management should take an integrative, holistic approach— something advocated by many yet practiced by few.

Of crucial importance here is our conceptualization of media management as the management of companies as well as careers in the media. Particularly the latter part of this equation is largely absent from the literature in the field, as it tends to focus on either specific industries (journalism or Hollywood, for example), specific aspects of businesses within these industries (copyright enforcement, revenue models, product differentiation, concentration of ownership), or specific cases of company and firm projects (change management, work floor culture). We postulate that the addition of (individual or group) careers is of added value here for two key reasons: first, the ongoing casualization and individualization of labor and working conditions of professionals throughout the creative industries and, second, a motivation based on pedagogy. In a media-saturated world where cultural production and consumption dominate everyday life, it is not surprising schools, departments, programs, and courses in information science, (tele-) communication, journalism, and (digital) media studies attract more students every year. In fact, such departments are among the most popular units in contemporary higher education—whether it is in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia, or Western Europe. The vast majority of undergraduate and graduate students majoring in these disciplines want to either work in media industries, manage media companies, or study and understand how the industry and its creative process work.

However, it proves to be difficult to adequately convey the complexity and dynamics of what it is like to work (anywhere) in the creative industries by a traditional pedagogical focus on the industry as the domain of corporations and companies. Such an institutional approach gets particularly enforced by relying on the literature (which, as we have argued, has generally omitted the individual from its consideration of media management) and by delegating “real world” experience to the realm of industry through the encouragement of internships and apprenticeships within such institutions. We do not claim that this approach is wrong or that it should be reversed. We argue, however, that theoretically the work that companies and firms do has increasingly less to do with the lived experience of working in the media, and that the models for media management and managing careers in the media need reconsideration. In this essay, we seek to integrate the work of the various authors in this book and the fields they reference into a coherent framework for studying (and, hopefully, practicing) media management and media work.

The Context of Managing Media Work

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As a first step, we consider that what drives contemporary media management and media work in all the creative industries is a general shift in power away from professional content creators to users and owners (Annet Aris, Chris Bilton, Mark Deuze and Leopoldina Fortunati, Lucy Küng, Marina Vujnovic and Dean Kruckeberg). Control over storytelling (including the authority over what kind of stories are told and how they are told) and resources (needed to creatively and effectively convey these stories) gets whisked away from professionals and flows toward audiences and corporations, further emphasizing the hourglass structure of the industry (where a handful of corporations interact with hundreds of thousands of small firms and individuals on a global scale).

As more focus is placed on user-generated content and consumer engagement, and as corporate media owners gain control over their workforce (either by increasingly focusing on outsourcing production to loosely affiliated networks of professionals and firms or by abandoning production altogether in a bid to control the marketing and distribution of content produced elsewhere), those who professionally create content are left more or less powerless. In this way, work is being outsourced to both ends of the labor spectrum, leaving many media professionals alienated as exemplified by a constant and ongoing struggle for work and the loss of a direct sense of creative autonomy. A first key factor influencing our understanding of what goes on across the industry is therefore an overall precarity in media work.

Second, managing media work must be seen within the larger social architecture of which it is part. This means taking into consideration every factor contributing to the organization of media companies and careers: content, processes, people, technology, and all other variables—not in the least including the implicit and unconscious aspects of organizational life such as beliefs, values, and emotions that can have a tremendous influence on planning and behavior. Managing media work is necessarily made up of both material and immaterial factors, which must be considered in conjunction. In other words, a key approach to media management is focusing on the many resources (both human and nonhuman) that combine to form the source of all media action. By thinking in terms of such factors that make up the broad context within which media work takes place, we (following Liz McFall) emphasize both the distributed and the hybrid nature of media work. Media work does not simply involve the transfer of information (of books into treatments into screenplays into movies into franchises into . . .) but is instead involved in complex networks of information and understanding, including those of competition, markets, organization and structure, industry standards, technologies, and the evolving media environment (Susan Christopherson, Terry Flew, Tim Marjoribanks).

Arguably the most powerful of these influences or factors that are to be considered in media managerial strategy is the role of technology (Lucy Küng, Philip Napoli, Marina Vujnovic and Dean Kruckeberg). The plethora of technological innovations being developed and incorporated into society on a daily basis serve to supplement and undermine previous technologies. This shift presents media companies and individual professionals with the challenge of constant adaptation to the emergence of new technologies and the progressive abandonment of the old. In turn, the media as an industry (including its professionals) are at the forefront of supercharging the development of and demand for technological innovation. This is a fundamental stress point in any consideration of managing media work.

Similar to the process of adaptation to technological development is the challenge of adapting to the evolution of media content models. Business models are, like media technologies in general, always already remediated: When new models emerge, old models are supplemented and only rarely displaced. The broad shift in formulating business models that the media industries are experiencing is one from an emphasis on mass content to niche content and to participatory and user-generated content. Media products are becoming increasingly hybridized and are thus difficult to place into categories that can be isolated and therefore effectively managed. Overall, however, communication (between phases of the creative process, between elements of the global production network, and between technologies and practices, as well as between producers and consumers) is just as important of a function as content itself.

In relation to this increasing emphasis on niche-oriented and participatory media, the third influence on media strategy is the consumers’ relationship with content. With technological advances facilitating the offering of niche products and an increased level of user participation, the industry-driven construction of audiences is progressing from a mass of static objects that simply accept and take in the media to active cocreators and people variously labeled by industry observers and scholars as “proams,” “amafessionals,” “produsers,” and “prosumers.” Although this trend is supported by data showing a growing group of people (especially teenagers) actively sharing, cocreating, and up- and downloading content online, the audience seen as more or less passive consumers is just as much a product of industry rhetoric as the audience perceived as proactively cocreating media. Either way, this forces media managers and workers to rethink their processes and practices when making content and designing user experiences.

The contextual challenges that contribute to managing media work as discussed above are contributing to a different and much more unstable environment than in the past. Additionally, rising costs, declining revenue (especially from advertising), and increasing competition require companies and individuals to adapt to working with scarce resources. We suggest that this leads to an increased focus on idiosyncratic creativity as a necessity to rise above the many challenges and win the ongoing competition for market demand. In short, more creativity and innovation on both the firm and the individual level means more success and a greater competitive advantage (Pablo J. Boczkowski, Mark Deuze and Leopoldina Fortunati, Bozena I. Mierzejewska).

Understanding Media Management: The Macro Level

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In order to accomplish an understanding of the management practices of media organizations and professionals, one necessary step is to consider media relationships at the macro, meso, and micro levels (Tim Marjoribanks). Managing media work can be viewed on these three levels as both separated and integrated.

At the macro level of media production industry regulations, technology, and competition are taken into consideration. The current major issue on the macro level of production is the shaping of new industries based on a New International Division of Cultural Labor (Toby Miller). In today’s creative industries, all production is global, and all labor is local. The global movement of companies into emerging markets, deploying dynamic outsourcing and offshoring techniques, and stimulating runaway production (in all corners of the globe) benefits new locations by providing periods of increased local labor and jobs (Alisa Perren, Keith Randle). However, this is only sustained as long as the incentive to work in the given locale lasts. After a brief period of increased employment and productivity, the jobs and opportunities move on to the next place. This trend of increasingly “weightless” production affects job markets not only in Hollywood or the film industry (which indeed is suffering from the ongoing loss of employment in traditional key markets) but also in communities and media disciplines all over the globe that are hit by this cycle of accelerating global production networks.

At the macro level, we are seeing two seemingly contradictory trends. First, new small media firms are forming at unusually high rates (Charles H. Davis, Eric Harvey). This would suggest a cycle of self-renewal while also implying a strong entrepreneurial spirit in the industry, ensuring innovation and the generation of new media firms. Second, we are witnessing high levels of ownership concentration. At the same time, creative industries have come to rely on the “Hollywood model” as a way to organize their work flow and creative processes (Susan Christopherson). This vertical disintegration also involves outsourcing and downsizing and has led to large pools of media workers leading precarious lifestyles. These workers, hired on short-term or no-term contracts, can never quite be sure where their next paychecks are coming from. While some workers enjoy the freedom and sense of self-reliance this affords, others find the insecurity stifling, which leads to a high rate of burnout (Rosalind Gill, Aphra Kerr).

At the same time, in an effort to become known as creative cities, both local- and state-level governments will pass tax incentives to attract media companies. In a sort of policy hopscotch, local, regional, and national governments compete with one another to put together the most attractive package. What the cities and regions involved tend to have in common is a crumbling industrial base they are scrambling to replace with the youthful energy and dynamic spending patterns that are expected of the creative industries, yet when the next-best deal comes along, media companies will follow. What they often leave in their wake is a new generation of media workers seduced into a precarious lifestyle by the lure of media life.¹

Understanding Media Management: The Meso Level

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The meso level of managing media work considers the methods, culture, strategies, and policies that shape media production. Of particular concern on this level is the organizational management technique incorporated by (professionals working in or for) media companies. In a time of increasing precariousness across the creative industries, Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation has managed to rise above most effects, making for an interesting target of observation. In looking at the style that has enabled this corporation to prevail in a time of failure, one will find a hands-off approach to management in which there is little communication between separate factions (Tim Marjoribanks). This is indicative of the flexible and individualized trend that has become popular on the meso level of production, where large corporations are considered not as a whole but as the wide variety of small cells of which they are composed. An analogy to the loose organization of terrorist cells (that can suddenly spring into action but lay dormant for large swaths of time) is somewhat appropriate for considering the meandering networks of small companies competing around the world for projectized work, generally financed through large corporate parents or holding firms (Aphra Kerr, Sean...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Chapter 1: Managing Media Work
• SECTION I: MANAGEMENT AND THE CREATIVE INDUSTRIES
• SECTION II: MEDIA WORK, POLICY, AND ECONOMICS
• SECTION III: MEDIA PROFESSIONS
• SECTION IV: FUTURE PERSPECTIVES
• Index
• About the Editor
• About the Contributors