The implementation of news design studios has sparked questions among news professionals. Little research has been done about the removal of the designers from the newsroom, and this could be some of the first academic work. This study used 10 semi-structured interviews with print designers to investigate what facets of job satisfaction designers in newsrooms and news design studios derive. Two sets of attitudes were found, but the difference was driven by whether the designer self-identified as a journalist, not necessarily from the organizational structure the designer worked in. Seven of the ten designers self-identified as journalists, and they valued the quality of the whole newspaper, content creation and how their work impacted readers. They also felt collaboration produced the highest quality. Three of the ten designers did not self-identify as journalists. They focused on creative freedom and using artistic elements to tell the story. These findings provided further evidence that designers who self-identified as journalists shared similar facets of satisfaction as other journalists. By identifying what the designers value, the designers and newspaper editors can determine if they share expectations on job responsibilities and quality.

This book examines how journalism can overcome harmful institutional issues such as work-related trauma and precarity, focusing specifically on questions of what happiness in journalism means, and how one can be successful and happy on the job. Acknowledging profound variations across people, genres of journalism, countries, types of news organizations, and methodologies, this book brings together an array of international perspectives from academia and practice. It suggests that there is much that can be done to improve journalists’ subjective well-being, despite there being no one-size-fits-all solution. It advocates for a shift in mindset as much in theoretical as in methodological approaches, moving away from a focus on platforms and adaptation to pay real attention to the human beings at the center of the industry. That shift in mindset and approach involves exploring what happiness is, how happiness manifests in journalism and media industries, and what future we can imagine that would be better for the profession. Happiness is conceptualized from both psychological and philosophical perspectives. Issues such as trauma, harassment, inequality, digital security, and mental health are considered alongside those such as precarity, recruitment, emotional literacy, intelligence, resilience, and self-efficacy. Authors point to norms, values and ethics in their regions and suggest best practices based on their experience. Constituting a first-of-its-kind study and guide, Happiness in Journalism is recommended reading for journalists, educators, and advanced students interested in topics relating to journalists’ mental health and emotion, media management, and workplace well-being. This book is accompanied by an online platform which supports videos, exercises, reports and links to useful further reading.

Journalism jobs have experienced significant changes in recent years. From adding multimedia skills in expectations during the era of convergence, to the current demand for audience engagement skills, practitioners have seen the demands on their work grow exponentially as resources are being dramatically reduced. While this has been shown to be a recipe for burnout, this study seeks to understand the motivational properties of new skillsets and tasks. Through the job characteristics model, used in previous eras to study "job enlargement," where workers are assigned multiple tasks as a way to improve productivity and satisfaction, the value of audience engagement as a tool to provide enhanced feedback and perceived significance is explored. Social capital theory helps explain how a news worker who employs more audience engagement in their work may experience better job outcomes compared to one who does not. A relationship is indeed found through a survey of news workers (N=110) across the industry, demonstrating that audience engagement contributes positively to the job characteristics model for some journalists. These findings have implications for newsroom managers, who may be able to apply the job characteristics model to further enhance work outcomes and job satisfaction through intelligent job enlargement.

Political journalism is often under fire. Conventional wisdom and much scholarly research suggest that journalists are cynics and political pundits. Political news is void of substance and overly focused on strategy and persons. Citizens do not learn from the news, are politically cynical, and are dissatisfied with the media. This book challenges these assumptions, which are often based on single-country studies with limited empirical observations about the relation between news production, content, and journalism's effects. Based on interviews with journalists, a systematic content analysis of political news, and panel survey data in different countries, this book tests how different systems and media-politics relations condition the contents of political news. It shows how different content creates different effects, and demonstrates that under the right circumstances citizens learn from political news, do not become cynical, and are satisfied with political journalism.