Categories of knowledge and information flows: reasons for the decline of the British Labour and Industrial Correspondents' Group

This article explores the rise and decline of daily labour and industrial journalism in Britain from the 1930s to the present day. This represents the loss of an important arena within the public sphere for the discussion of work-related issues. Conventional explanations for the decline in this specialism point to the diminishing newsworthiness of trade unions. However, this is an oversimplification. While changes in the political and economic environment are clearly important, attention also has to be paid to the relationships or power-webs, involving journalists and members of the political and labour movement elites, which sustain or block crucial information flows and support or undermine particular categories of knowledge. The hierarchical ordering and instability of categories of knowledge for journalists is intimately connected to particular forms of governmentality.