Working knowledge encounters : academics, journalists and the conditions of cultural labour

This article is concerned with how the contemporary media process and disseminate specialist knowledge through an analysis of the increasing interaction between universities and the media. The burgeoning |promotional culture| of the former and the |content hunger| of the latter are encouraging closer, regular interactions between two largely distinct categories of |knowledge worker| - journalists and academics. A qualitative study of their encounters is reported here in seeking to understand the ways in which these macro-structural trends are played out at the |coalface| of cultural labour. It is observed that these micro-encounters exhibit a clear inequality of discursive power in favour of journalists, who are well positioned to select, reject or otherwise discipline academic language and discourse. In conclusion, it is proposed that, from the evidence of this case study, discursive |equity| in the media is elusive, even where there is relative parity of cultural labour power.