Is It Still Journalism? Hybridity and Genre Innovation in Recorder’s Alternative Video Reporting on Ukrainian Women Migrants in Romania

Alternative media has long been known for its tendency to rethink traditional journalism methods, promoting grassroots investigations of peripheral social groups through media genre innovation, hybridity, and counter-narratives to mainstream media. However, can we still label journalism a story that predominantly uses ethnographic methods of research that include the author’s immersion in the described topic, abandoning official sources, editing out the reporter, and offering a space for the voice of marginalized groups while deliberately avoiding objectivity, as well as borrowing filming and editing techniques from cinema? The current paper brings into question the extent to which alternative reporting still adheres to the core values of the journalistic profession by applying a multimodal analysis framework in the case of two video reportages focused on Ukrainian women migrants, published by Recorder, one of Romania’s most prominent examples of best practices in alternative journalism. Results show important shifts in current journalistic practice, pointing to the changes and challenges affecting the media ecosystem, as well as alternative journalism’s role in constructing the gendered migration narrative, thus providing relevant data for media researchers and practitioners, educators, students, and activists.