The Professional Mobility Of Chinese Journalists And Its Influence In The New Media Era

According to the statistics provided by some inspection institution,there have been a tota l of about 200,000 newsmen going through the career transitions in recent years.In the era of new media,the issue of journalists’ occupational mobility has become a hot topic in journalis m.This paper takes some of the news people who have already changed their careers as resear ch subjects,aiming to track the selection of career paths for newsmen.From the perspective o f occupational boundary and occupational jurisdiction,this paper also discusses the causes of j ournalist’s occupational mobility and its impact on journalism with the theoretical support of s ocial capital theory and sociologist Andrew Abbott’s theory of the System of Professions.Since 2012,the number of newsmen who choose to quit has been rising yearly,and it rea ches the zenith in 2015.In this paper,only 17% of the news people surveyed choose to have c areer mobility still in the news industry to continue their journalistic career,and 83% of others flow into different areas,causing the acute brain drain in the journalism.Those who choose t o step outside the journalism mainly have the following career choices: starting a business,act ing as corporate executives,teaching or studying in the colleges or institutions,doing some pu blic welfare activities and managing some We Media.Among all of these choices,starting a b usiness,especially the business by providing high-quality contents,becomes an important cho ice for journalists’ re-employments.The current job flow has its unique structural factors.With the fact that new media techn ology has changed the mode of news production and circulation,the operation and control spa ce in journalism narrows,the number of government institutional media grows big,capital for ce is involved in journalism and so on,we have the result that the external forces have serious ly disturbed the occupational system.Meanwhile,for one thing,there is the phenomenon of occupational retreat in the field of journalism——lots of print media cease to circulate,depart ments of in-depth reporting mostly get abolished and news industry is taking the initiative to a bandon some of its businesses.For another,with the development of new media technology,n ew media such as Weibo and WeChat are entering into people’s life,and new businesses like mobile video broadcast and intelligent dissemination emerge.All of these structural factors un derlie the career mobility of newsmen.For newsmen themselves,the core reason giving rise to occupational mobility is the com posite including occupational burnout of prolonged high-pressure work with low salary,the v alue conflict of journalism ideality as symbolic resource,the change of occupational cognition and the desire to change triggered by technology.In the event of occupational mobility,newsmen will take long-accumulated social capital into account,such as social network,social trust,occupational status and influence on journal ism,and this kind of social capital will affect the choice of career mobility paths.When it co mes to re-employments,news people with big and powerful social capital resources own the b etter initiative choices.The community is inclined to invite these people to join and offer the m a good job.However,those with little social capital resources have to mainly seek a new jo b on their own.After occupational mobility,journalists’ social capital resources will move to new areas and continue to play a role.News people with great social capital resources still have the right to speak and the professional influence in the new career;news people with inadequate social capital resources possess relatively low occupation status and occupation influence.For traditional journalism,the fact that a great mass of journalists are having career mobi lity results in a serious talent drain.This directly leads to the decline of the ability of making i n-depth news.To author’s mind,however,we shouldn’t have to bear a pessimistic attitude to wards journalism.Those newsmen with professional experience will take away their social ca pital resources,but they will also bring the institutionalized knowledge like Journalistic Profe ssionalism to the new areas.The knowledge will trigger innovation of communication channe ls and information expression,which in turn will forge new professional rules for the chaotic i nformation production order in the new media age.The career boundaries of journalism are w idening,and a new news ecosystem is being formed.Journalists’ career mobility is a result of China’s professionalization of Journalism.On o ne hand,although China’s journalism has experienced nearly a hundred years of professional development,it has not yet completed professionalism compared with the Western Journalism.In the new media age,however,the audience who don’t have professional knowledge begin t o participate in the news production,so China’s journalism is facing the danger of “de-profess ionalization”.On the other hand,the new media technology has broken the original journalis m ecology.China’s journalism should reconstruct the eco-system and order of journalism.Fro m this angle,we can hold the idea that journalists’ career mobility is just a reflection of career change of Chinese Journalism in the new media age.