Journalistic Cultures: New Times, New Gaps?

Professional journalistic cultures have been an important area in journalism studies, but the major comparative studies of journalistic cultures have focused on the national level of analysis, without addressing the heterogeneity of journalists’ value orientations and treatment of professional standards and risks. Fragmentation of today’s Russian media system and the modern political culture of Russia, as well as previous studies of journalism practices in the country, pose the question whether one can even speak of an overarching Russian journalistic culture in the first place or, rather, whether one needs to outline the gaps between several clusters of professionals bearing divergent value sets and working cultures. To describe the potential cleavages in professional culture of journalists in Russia, we use the survey data of 194 journalists of text (print and online) media in 56 Russian regions, as well as in-depth interviews with senior editorial staff and media managers. We find that the main division is values-based rather than monetarist, regional, online/offline, or purely generational. In terms of value divergence, age, professional experience, and political stance of editorial offices play a crucial role, while journalistic education, the differences between the “capitals” and “regions”, and competition with younger tech-savvies do not. “The post-Soviet” as an interpretative concept gradually loses its direct relevance, but the major gaps in the community still form along the “state-supporting/conservative vs. liberal” orientations. Of all the technological innovations, social media and user-generated content provoke divisive treatment, but where technology forms gaps is between the editors and media managers, the latter being extremely profit-oriented and often neglecting the public roles of media organisations.