"Jag hoppade av i precis rätt tid" : En kvalitativ intervjustudie med ex-journalister om anledningarna till att de lämnade yrket.

Sammanfattning: The newspaper industry, among other forms of journalism and media, has changed rapidly and fundamentally in the last 15-20 years due to technological and economical transformations as well as a shift in media consumption among the general public. The aim of this study is therefore to examine to what degree and how these changes and developments have affected journalists, to the extent that they exit the profession, as well as whether or not the ex-journalists still identify with the profession's ideals and democratic role in a society. The analysis is based on qualitative, semi structured interviews with eight Swedish ex-journalists, all who at some point in their journalistic careers have worked for a daily newspaper. To analyze the results, a theoretical framework consisting of parts of the role exit theory, push-pull-factors, theories of the professionalization of the journalism profession and theories of the democratic role of journalism, has been applied.    One main finding in this thesis is that the main driving force in leaving journalism, for the majority of the interviewees, was based on the economy of the newspapers they were working for and that some of the newspapers were forced to shut down or slim their production. This led to job insecurity for the journalists, less employees having to do more work and, for some, even being laid off. One other finding is that all of the interviewed ex-journalists state that they still identify with the way of working and the democratic ideals in the journalism profession to a high degree, despite working in other professions outside of journalism. This result indicates that the journalism profession, at least for the interviewed ex-newspaper-journalists, consists of shared ideals, behavior and ways of conducting the work.