Relating doxa to habitus rather than defining ‘alternative’ media: An insider’s perspective of journalistic practice in regional Australia

To supplement previous survey- and interview-based studies, this article adds an insider’s perspective to advertising pressures faced by news outlets. I do so by contemplating power relations between the news production field and the economic field concerning news stories I wrote in regional Western Australia about the outwardly unremarkable, but locally taboo, topic of protectionist retail trading hours. My stories were small when considered from a state, national or global level, but they were important in the region in which I worked. My first story received state-level commendation and validation from Australia’s longest-established national daily newspaper but was rebuked by local advertisers. Thus, journalism considered to be laudably orthodox by cultural agents in the state capital was deemed aberrantly heterodox by economic agents in my home region. To contextualize such variable subjective assessment through reference to objective societal structures, I employ Bourdieu’s relational concepts of doxa and habitus , joint consideration of which I conclude can transcend ongoing attempts to define ‘alternative’ and ‘mainstream’ media.