FLEXIBLE WORKING SCHEMES AND THE IDENTITY OF CULTURAL JOURNALISTS IN LATVIA FLEXIBLE WORKING SCHEMES AND THE IDENTITY OF CULTURAL JOURNALISTS IN LATVIA

Cultural journalism is a sub-field of journalism characterized by specific knowledge and education required from the journalists working as both reporters and reviewers and often close interaction with arts and cultural industries. The importance of cultural journalism lies in its role of providing for society a self-reflective discourse describing values and modeling patterns of behaviour and thought through journalistic practices such as reporting and reviewing on everyday culture and arts. However, the role of cultural journalism in the context of contemporary media environment is deminishing. This pushes for finding of new models of work in this field that at the same time puts under question professional identity of those working in cultural journalism. Until now cultural journalism is an underresearched domain in journalism studies, especially, from the media management and economics as well as work organisations/conditions point of view. This paper contributes to the reseatch on the roles and identity of cultural journalism focusing on exactly these aspects of journalistic practice.The purpose of this paper is to explore flexible working models in the field of cultural media in Latvia in connection with reflection of professional role and corporate identity.To achieve this, 12 in depth interviews were conducted with editors and journalists of Latvian media companies. The findings show that professionals interviewed see the goal of their professional activity broader, often combining their role in journalism with other roles in the field of culture. They can more or less be aware of their professional identity as journalists, tend to experiment deliberately with working schemes, but mostly recognize their corporate identity.