Job Satisfaction among Newsworkers: The Influence of Professionalism, Perceptions of Organizational Structure, and Social Attributes

Organizations stress routinized activities that contribute to profitability. Professionalism stresses ethical performance that contributes to social responsibility. When the organization prevails, autonomy, authority, and control, the hallmarks of professionalism, weaken. This leads to a decrease in the intrinsic meaning of work and, ultimately, less job satisfaction. Using a stratified random national sample, these assumptions were explored among Canadian newsworkers. More professionalism, a less formal and smaller organization, media sector, and several social attributes lead to more job satisfaction. Newspaper workers were most satisfied due to a combination of intrinsic factors, such as autonomy, authority, and control of work, and extrinsic factors, such as job security and income.