In 2020, the world got turned upside down. The coronavirus pandemic changed the way we were used to live. Even the jobs relationships were impacted. Most of the population started to work from home. The home office jobs became a reality and even journalists were working from their homes.
Being a journalist involves going out and talking with the public, interviewing and investigating new information. In this perspective, all the professionals that work directly with public interaction were in a difficult situation. A street reporter could not work. A sports journalist didn’t have what to talk about, since championships weren’t happening. For a while, the whole world needed to learn again how to keep all the things working.
From this point of view, there are a couple of functions in a journalist career that can’t be done at home office. When you are a reporter who works daily on the streets, covering all the activities that happen in a city, working from home can’t be an option. Journalism is about telling histories and we need to be where these histories are happening. They need to be on the street, where all the events are. Some situations need a professional there, understanding all the situations that are happening around. In a concert, a soccer match, a political congress or even a manifestation, a reporter is ready to go live whenever it is necessary.
However, a writer can work from home, for example. All the journalists who have a job inside an editorial department, with internet help, can do it from all around the world. Nowadays, it is possible to do interviews, searches and check information only using a computer. But, when it is necessary being outside to complete a report, letting it be more accurate to the public, it will be done.
A new method of working
A home office job can be a great experience. For those who live far from their workplaces, the time that is usually spent in traffic can be used for a self-care routine, for example, to improve the quality of life. According to Mental Health First Aid (USA), in a national survey done in 2022, creating a self-care routine can reduce or eliminate anxiety and depression, reduce stress, increase happiness, and more.
For a family, working from home is an opportunity to spend more time together. In this type of situation, parents can be more integrated in their children’s development. In this scenario, working from home makes sense and fits into a lot of journalist’s lives and their jobs are done with the same excellence as if they were in an office.
It is important for journalism to get adapted to their workplace. This can be a profession that brings a lot of responsibilities and needs a lot of emotional control. Studies have found that journalists’ work can impact their mental health. Research suggests that between 80 to 100% of journalists have been exposed to a traumatic event on the job, according to the Dart Center for Journalism & Trauma. In this scenario, it is important that journalists feel safe and comfortable in their jobs. However, a home office can bring all this tension and work problems to the professionals’ places, turning their house into an environment full of stress.
Working from home combines personal and professional life. This mix can be a problem for thousands of workers. When it’s not possible to separate these two sides, all the things start getting messed up. Learning how to differentiate this both envirovent is essential to be able to work in your own house. In a social media world, everything needs to be done as fast as possible, with news and informacion it wouldn’t be different. The public wants to know everything as quickly as it happens. For that reason, it is important to know exactly your hours, not letting the job’s responsibilities invade your personal life.
This pressure puts them to work more and more, trying to publish about every subject on every social media. From 2020 to 2021 journalists who work more than 12 hours a day increase from 26 to 138 a 430% growth, according to a report of “How communicators work in a Covid-19 pandemic scenario”. When your house is also your office, the feeling of being always ready to produce, record and write invades your personal lives creating a snowball of work with no time to rest. For that reason, those who choose home office need to remember that it is necessary to have a “time to go to work and a time to get back”.
Is gender a part of the home office way of thinking?
For women, this scenario can be even worse. When taking care of home, educating a child and working from their places need to be done at the same time, the home office becomes a stressful environment. According to the report previously mentioned, women in home office get, besides their jobs, house chores and domestic management instead of just focusing on their career. That is another barrier that girls need to go through to get acknowledgement and build a journalistic career.
Another way of work that many companies are using which can help all journalists who would like to spend more time at home but don’t want to leave the office is a hybrid model. In this new scenario, the editorial department defines alongside with employees days that it’s needed to be at the office and another ones where they can work from home. The expectations are, by the end of this year, 36% of workers in the whole world will be working in a hybrid model, according to Gartner Group.
No matter the way or the place that a journalist is working, their commitment will be with the public, being able to inform everybody on the hottest news. From home or inside an office, checking the truth, interviewing and writing a good and complete history will always be the journalist’s goal and getting adapted to a better place to work can help improve their productions.
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The article above was edited by Camila Lutfi.
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