REVIEW: Tears flow as redundancy stories spell end to journalism’s heyday

Review of Upheaval: Disrupted Lives in Journalism, edited by Andrew Dodd and Matthew Ricketson

Abstract

Upheaval: Disrupted Lives in Journalism, edited by Andrew Dodd and Matthew Ricketson. Sydney: UNSW Press. 2021. 368 pages, ISBN 9781742237275

I DOUBT there is anyone who has worked—or currently works—in journalism that would not have tears rolling down their cheeks as they read the stories of redundancy within Australia’s faltering news industry in this carefully edited collection. That’s not to say that Upheaval: Disrupted Lives in Journalism doesn’t also provoke laugh-out-loud moments at memories of newsroom antics or angry agreement about bullying, misogyny and blatant gender discrimination, but there is no getting around the fact that the central point of this book is tell the stories of the human impact of the brutal gutting of Australia’s media.