Abstract
This article analyses how Estonian journalists negotiated professional boundaries over a decade of technological and organisational change. Based on five interview waves (2012–2023) in national and local newsrooms, it traces shifts in symbolic, epistemic, organisational and temporal boundaries. Results show migration rather than erosion: from the marginalisation of online journalism in 2012, through debates about originality and quality, to institutionalised convergence and questions surrounding metrics in 2022/2023. Journalists accepted digital integration as routine but defended verification and public value. The study provides a diachronic account of identity formation in a small Central and Eastern European market, extending boundary work research by highlighting shifting lines of legitimacy and demonstrating how commercial and organisational pressures, rather than political capture, dominate struggles over identity.
Since regaining independence in 1991, Estonia has been described as a post-Communist reform success story, marked by rapid democratisation, economic liberalisation and high press freedom (Lauk, 1996, 2009). Estonia is a ‘Northern’ Central and Eastern European outlier in comparative research, combining Nordic professionalism with high digitalisation (Boshnakova and Dănkovã, 2023; Herrero et al., 2017). Its liberal reforms, concentrated market and early digitalisation make it a valuable case for examining journalism under accelerated structural change.
Much of the foundational mapping of Estonian journalism's transformation has been carried out by Lauk (with colleagues), who has examined the reorientation of the profession in the post-communist context, shifting ownership patterns and the gradual alignment with European and Nordic norms (see, e.g., Balčytienė and Lauk, 2005; Lauk, 1996, 2009, 2017; Lauk and Hoyer, 2008). Her work demonstrates how Estonian journalists negotiated legitimacy in a rapidly liberalising environment, often without strong institutional standards. Despite these important contributions, research on Estonian journalists from the 2000s and onwards usually focuses on discrete moments or single issues, offering fragmented insights into the profession's development (Harro-Loit et al., 2022).
Two recent studies (Ivask and Pruulman-Vengerfeldt, 2024; Himma and Ivask, 2025) have offered a more in-depth look into Estonian journalism of the period 2012–2023, but their focus is specifically on journalists’ reflections on the use of metrics and the broader digital transformation of newsrooms. In contrast, the present study focuses on how journalists negotiate the professional boundaries during the changes. The absence of systematic, over-time, analysis makes it difficult to trace broader trends in how the profession has adapted to digital disruption, commercialisation and shifting audience expectations. This article responds to these debates and to current calls to reassess the status and performance of journalism in Eastern Europe by demonstrating how, in Estonia, market and technological pressures, rather than political capture, have shaped boundary work and professional identity.
The article addresses this gap by drawing on five waves of interviews conducted between 2012 and 2023. The study investigates how Estonian journalists have perceived and redefined their professional roles during a decisive decade of technological and organisational change. The concept of boundary work (Carlson, 2016; Gieryn, 1983) provides the analytical lens for understanding how journalists construct distinctions between legitimate and illegitimate practices, insiders and outsiders, and quality and compromise, and how those boundaries shift as digital logics become embedded in newsroom routines.
The primary research question for this study is: How do Estonian journalists perceive and navigate the evolving tasks and boundaries of their professional roles amid technological transformation?
The Estonian media market
Estonia's media landscape reflects both the opportunities and constraints of a small, highly concentrated market. With a population of 1.3 million, the country today sustains two national print dailies (Postimees and Õhtuleht), a handful of smaller print outlets and a network of local newspapers, many of which are affiliated with larger corporate groups. Three dominant actors shape the field: Ekspress Grupp (including Delfi and Eesti Päevaleht), Postimees Grupp (Postimees and its affiliated regional titles, alongside Duo Media Networks’ television and radio portfolio) and Estonian Public Broadcasting (ERR), which provides television, radio and online news. Together, these three employ around 70% of the country's journalists (Ivask and Pruulman-Vengerfeldt, 2024; Himma and Ivask, 2025).
Estonia was an early adopter of free online news in 1995, which complicated the later transition to subscription models (Saks, 2011; Sammler et al., 2025). At the beginning of 2016, however, major publishers introduced paywalls and bundled digital offers, gradually cultivating a paying audience. By 2020, digital subscriptions exceeded 100,000, and by late 2024, estimates placed the total closer to 250,000, marking a decisive pivot toward a subscription-supported ecosystem (Sammler et al., 2025).
These dynamics provide the structural backdrop for the present study: a media system where print is no longer the default delivery layer, online has become the professional core and journalists are continually asked to reconcile commercial imperatives with professional ideals in a highly compressed environment.
Boundary work in journalism
Boundary work in the context of this study refers to the ongoing effort to define what constitutes journalism, who qualifies as a journalist and which practices fall within or outside the realm of the profession. Gieryn (1983) originally conceptualised such struggles in science as ‘credibility contests’, and journalism scholars have since extended the idea to the media field. Carlson (2016) argues that disputes over professional definition are enacted through meta-journalistic discourse: public talk by reporters, editors, politicians, platforms and audiences that delineates boundaries, enforces legitimacy and redistributes authority.
The boundaries that journalists negotiate are multiple and overlapping. Epistemic boundaries are grounded in norms such as verification, independence and objectivity, which distinguish journalism's ways of knowing from those of advocacy, public relations or entertainment (Carlson and Lewis, 2015). Organisational boundaries mark jurisdiction through employment, accreditation or credentialing. Commercial boundaries separate ‘news’ from ‘business’, historically via the ‘wall’ between editorial and advertising, now reframed as a semipermeable ‘curtain’ as analytics and platform incentives permeate editorial routines (Coddington, 2015). Genre boundaries, such as the traditional hard/soft news hierarchy, reinforce status differences between beats (Banjac and Hanusch, 2023). Finally, internal stratification creates further lines of distinction within the occupation, defining rank and role (Wiik, 2015). Together, these overlapping boundaries produce a professional identity that must be continually redrawn.
Genre hierarchies have served as sites of status defence and challenge. Banjac and Hanusch (2023) show how lifestyle and political journalists invoked specialisation, autonomy, public service and economic value to either reinforce or contest the hard/soft divide. Hybrid tactics such as ‘politicising’ lifestyle coverage or ‘popularising’ political news demonstrate how rigid boundaries can erode under professional negotiation.
Boundary work extends to labour conditions as well. Lukan and Čehovin Zajc (2023) demonstrate that early-career journalists often adopt an ‘always-on’ ethic of availability, subsequently attempting to re-establish work–life boundaries through temporal, spatial, communicative and psychological strategies. Any exit from journalism for public relations occurs when such strategies fail. Here, boundary vulnerability is not only ideological but embodied in time and labour.
Defensiveness, however, represents only one mode of boundary work. As Revers (2014) argues, boundary practices also involve strategic accommodations, pragmatic adaptations and ongoing renegotiations of professional identity in response to shifting communication ecologies. These dynamics are especially pronounced in the contemporary media environment, where social media platforms blur the boundary between public and private, compelling journalists to continually reaffirm their professional identities.
Technological disruption, commercial pressures and shifting audience expectations have intensified its visibility. However, the profession's ongoing challenge remains constant: to defend epistemic integrity while recalibrating organisational hierarchies and reconstructing humane labour boundaries (Carlson and Lewis, 2015). In sum, boundary work is not an aberration of the digital age but a constitutive feature of journalism itself.
The study
A qualitative design, utilising semi-structured interviews, examined how journalists in Estonia perceive and negotiate the evolving tasks and boundaries. This approach enables reconstruction of professional meanings over time and captures boundary work as it is articulated in practice.
Interviews were conducted in five waves (2012, 2015, 2017, 2019 and 2022/2023) across national and local newsrooms (Table 1). National outlets included Delfi/Eesti Päevaleht (Ekspress Grupp), Postimees (Postimees Grupp) and Estonian Public Broadcasting (ERR). Local outlets comprised independent titles (Hiiu Leht, Meie Maa, Lääne Elu) and regionals within Postimees Grupp (Pärnu Postimees, Tartu Postimees, Sakala, Raplamaa Sõnumid, Lõuna-Eesti Postimees, Virumaa Teataja).
Overview of the conducted interviews and respondents.
Note: aThe number of reporters according to the media organisation's contact page, the end of the year.
Estonia has approximately 1300 journalists (Statistics Estonia, 2025), around 70% of whom are employed by the three dominant organisations (Ivask and Pruulman-Vengerfeldt, 2024). The sample strategy targeted these institutional centres while also including independent and local newsrooms to surface variation by ownership structure and scale.
Six students and one supervisor collected the data as part of an evolving series of interviews on journalistic work practices at the University of Tartu (Estonia). For the present study, I reanalysed the full dataset. Respondents included reporters, desk/section editors and managing editors; for readability, I refer to them as ‘reporters’ or ‘editors’, distinguishing managerial/editorial roles where relevant.
To ensure confidentiality, the names of individuals and their organisations were anonymised. Respondents are identified through alphanumeric codes that indicate the year of the interview and reporter or editor (e.g., 2017_reporter_1). Where necessary, an additional number was added to distinguish between individuals with the same role in the same year.
In total, 72 interviews were conducted (approximately 85 hours; mean duration approximately 70 minutes each). Most interviews took place face-to-face in newsrooms or meeting rooms; in 2022/2023, some were conducted via Skype or Zoom due to logistical and pandemic-related constraints. All interviews were audio-recorded with informed consent and transcribed verbatim in Estonian.
The semi-structured guides covered: roles, routines and tasks; decision-making, verification and relation to audience (later metrics); relationships between print/other media and online, including convergence, workload and skill expansion; organisational culture and managerial expectations; professional identity, boundaries and perceived public value; well-being, stressors, coping and autonomy.
Interview guides evolved between waves to incorporate emerging themes (e.g., live blogs, analytics dashboards, paywalls). Although this was not a strict panel study with repeated interviews of the same individuals, comparability over time was enhanced through organisational-level sampling: in each wave, priority was given to (i) affiliation with a major group to maintain broadly similar working conditions, (ii) circulation or reach tier and (iii) the presence of both print and online operations.
The transcripts were imported into MAXQDA and analysed using thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2012). Both inductive and deductive coding were employed. Initial codes were generated from the literature and from the data itself. Coding progressed through the six phases outlined by Braun and Clarke: familiarisation, initial coding, theme construction, review, definition and naming.
The study adhered to the ethical standards of the University of Tartu and Estonian national data protection regulations. Participants received information sheets and gave informed consent.
Findings
2012–2015: from marginality to negotiation
In 2012, online respondents in Estonia consistently described their work as peripheral to ‘real’ journalism. They drew sharp boundaries between themselves and their print colleagues, often through the words they used. For example, they preferred the title ‘editor’ to ‘journalist’. They explained that in Estonian, ‘editor’ carries a broader meaning, referring to someone who works with texts, not necessarily a professional in a newsroom. By adopting this label, online respondents lowered the symbolic stakes of their work. Their linguistic choices reinforced the idea that their role was lighter, less demanding and ultimately less journalistic in nature.
The sense of marginality extended to the way they described their output. Instead of articles or stories, respondents spoke of items (in Estonian ühik) or pieces of information. The vocabulary in use suggested fragmentation and measurability, rather than narrative or depth. Respondents indicated that professional achievement was primarily measured by output volume rather than originality or quality. Online journalism was legitimised not through verification or depth, but through speed and productivity: It depends on the day… I can publish items ranging from five to fifty. Fifty-five is exceptional but producing 30–40 items over a weekend is not a big problem. The weekend editor works 15–16 h, with a reporter assisting for eight of those hours, but half the time the editor is alone. (2012_editor_1) If you are not producing original stories but just filling some kind of feed, then, well, around twenty items inevitably have to be done. And after that, it depends on how much you push yourself, whether it ends up being twenty or thirty. (2012_editor_2)
Such accounts revealed the contradictions of the time. Respondents acknowledged that quality and originality were central to journalism but admitted they rarely had the opportunity to meet those standards. Their daily practice was largely reactive, recycling press releases, extending stories already initiated by print colleagues, or following editors’ requests.
The practice of publishing ‘to be updated’ texts further reinforced this temporal divide. Online pieces often went live with incomplete information and were corrected later, distinguishing them from the ‘finished’ authority of print. Respondents described online news as provisional, transient and less intellectually demanding.
By 2015, however, the boundaries between online and legacy media had begun to blur. Online work was no longer openly dismissed as ‘not journalism’. Instead, respondents described it as a training ground, a place to gain experience and build skills before advancing to more prestigious positions. The tone was no longer defensive but cautiously confident: online had become a valid entry point into the profession.
Print still carried symbolic weight, but the relationship between the two platforms was framed less in terms of opposition and more in terms of recognition. When a story first published online was later republished in print, this was taken as validation rather than competition. Respondents also noted that online platforms typically served as the venue for initial and provisional versions of news, with print editions publishing material that had already circulated online: If my story makes it into the newspaper, that means it has been noticed, that it has value. I do not see the print as competing with us [the online newsroom]. It is more like a compact version of what we already did online. (2015_reporter_1) Online news is original for only five minutes before someone has copied it. To be read, you need to add something extra, a new angle, something deeper. (2015_reporter_2) 95% of stories are not time-critical, so 95% of mistakes cannot be excused by speed either. (2015_reporter_3)
These statements signal a subtle but important change. By 2015, online respondents were no longer situating themselves outside the profession but inside it, negotiating the terms of what counted as journalism. They defended their role as formative and began to critique their own reliance on speed and feed-filling. Boundaries had not disappeared, but they were being redrawn. The struggle was no longer about whether online journalism was legitimate, but about what kind of online practices deserved to be recognised as journalism.
2017–2019: integration, overload and convergence
By 2017, the sharp distinction between print and online that had shaped earlier accounts had largely disappeared. Respondents no longer questioned whether online work was ‘real’ journalism. Instead, they described online and print as inseparable, two parts of the same professional whole. Journalism is elementary; it cannot be only one output, only paper or only online, that makes no sense. (2017_editor_1)
The real strain emerged from trying to serve both media simultaneously. Many described carefully rationing their day between urgent online tasks and slower print work, often abandoning projects mid-way. It was a new kind of boundary, not between online and print identities, but between what could realistically be done and what inevitably had to be left undone. You might start five stories but finish only one, with the rest just disappearing. That is the thing – the online is bottomless, you can put endless material there, but you cannot keep up with it all. Stories that have been started might never be finished, because in the meantime, something new comes along that takes all the attention. (2017_editor_3)
Language itself became a way of reclaiming dignity. Contracts might still list ‘reporter’ or ‘web editor’, but respondents insisted on the broader title journalist. ‘Reporter’ feels like a Soviet-era title, too narrow. ‘Journalist’ sounds better, literally a writer of time [in Estonian ajakirjanik, aja meaning time, and kirjanik meaning writer]. (2017_editor_2)
Despite this stronger sense of identity, frustrations about recognition persisted. Long hours, unpaid overtime and low pay were described as routine. Integration was accepted as a reality, but respondents felt that the structural support (staff numbers, fair pay and reasonable hours) had not been adequately followed.
By 2019, convergence was no longer just a practice, it was a policy. Managers embedded it into contracts and newsroom routines, making it impossible to cover only print or only online. For editors, this was framed as success. At one of the national newsrooms, a manager_1 spoke of ‘bigger and more professional newsrooms’ operating seamlessly across platforms. At another point, management pointed to online readership surpassing that of competitors as proof that convergence was working. Yet these celebratory narratives were accompanied by a revealing caveat: Resources did not increase, you just had to figure out how to do things smarter. (2019_manager_2)
The dual tempo of work, immediate online updates alongside reflective print writing, was a constant source of tension. Often, the same respondent had to work on both media simultaneously, fracturing their attention and reducing the time available for longer projects. As one editor put it: You end up with everyone doing a little of everything, but neither side fully winning. (2019_editor_1) It is not about whether we are journalists anymore. It is about whether we still have time to be good journalists. (2019_editor_2)
2022–2023: convergence as routine
By 2022 and 2023, respondents no longer debated whether online work was ‘real journalism’. However, the interviews reveal that integration did not lead to harmony. Instead, the tensions had migrated. The strongest boundary tensions now centred on values: defining what counts as quality journalism and determining the extent to which journalists should follow managerial pressures rooted in clicks and metrics.
For older respondents, print still symbolised permanence. They described the newspaper as the anchor of their professional identity, the place where journalism ‘stays’: In the paper, it is there. People can cut it out, keep it. Online, it has gone the next day, buried under new things. (2022_editor_1)
For younger respondents, the contrast lay not between permanence and ephemerality but between journalism and ‘noise’. They spoke of the web as saturated with trivial updates, press releases and content churned out to feed the constant demand. The web is full of press releases and little things, there is constant pressure to do more. Sometimes I feel like half of what we publish is not journalism, it is just filling space. (2022_reporter_1)
The most profound ambivalence surrounded clicks. By 2022, traffic numbers were a visible part of newsroom life. Some editors admitted to checking metrics constantly, even feeling disappointed if a story attracted only a few hundred readers and elated if it reached tens of thousands. Numbers were no longer abstract but part of daily emotions about one's job. Managers reinforced this logic, sometimes awarding bonuses for high-traffic stories. However, respondents did not view metrics as a validation of quality, but rather, in some cases, as a means of tricking the public into clicking on the story, with managers enforcing this practice. Respondents admitted being disappointed in this type of behaviour. In short, respondents described clicks as the new battleground of professional boundaries, with some questioning whether click baiting is a journalistic practice: You see the headline wars: everyone trying to scare the reader into clicking. That is not journalism, that is marketing. (2022_reporter_3)
Some respondents reported that when they were on guard duty for an entire week, they eventually found a rhythm, which provided them with a clear overview of the news cycle. Others said that if they only did one single day of that shift, they did not have enough time to settle in. It felt chaotic, rushed and disorganised, they were scrambling to keep up without really gaining control or overview. Either way, the system symbolised how constant vigilance, once an informal expectation, had been built directly into newsroom routines.
Despite these pressures, some respondents described online as a space of creative freedom. Compared to print, the web allowed experimentation, photo galleries, interactive elements and even humour. Several admitted enjoying this flexibility, though often with a hint of guilt, as if lightness itself confirmed that online was ‘less serious’.
What stands out most in these accounts is that respondents no longer feared being excluded from the profession, but they feared its values being eroded from within. Older respondents worried about losing permanence, while younger ones worried about being overwhelmed by noise. Both resisted the idea that clicks defined value. The guarding system embodied how immediacy had been institutionalised, but also how exhausting it had become: Online is necessary, because readers are leaving print … but when I see my name in the paper, it feels like journalism. Online, it feels like work. (2022_editor_2)
Conclusive discussion
This study examined how Estonian journalists have drawn, defended and redefined professional boundaries over a decade of technological and organisational change. Since independence, Estonia has been characterised as a post-Communist reform success with strong professional norms (Lauk, 2009, 2017; Herrero et al., 2017). The five interview waves from 2012 to 2023, together with prior work (Ivask and Pruulman-Vengerfeldt, 2024; Himma and Ivask, 2025), show that adaptation to digitalisation was neither linear nor frictionless. Professional identity was continually renegotiated through boundary work in Gieryn's (1983) sense, involving ongoing struggles over what journalism is, who counts as a journalist and which practices belong within or outside the craft. As Carlson (2016) argues, such credibility contests are constitutive rather than episodic, shifting with context while remaining central to professional self-understanding. Two broad dimensions structured these shifts: (1) symbolic and epistemic boundaries that define the meaning of journalism and (2) organisational and temporal boundaries that define the conditions under which journalism can be practised.
Symbolic and epistemic boundaries initially dominated. In 2012, online respondents positioned themselves at the margins by avoiding the title ‘journalist’, referring to their work as ‘items’ and framing it as fast and reactive. These linguistic and professional choices reinforced the very marginality they acknowledged, demonstrating how boundary work can reproduce exclusion. Over time, however, symbolic marginality softened. By 2015, debates shifted inward, focusing on originality and internal differentiation rather than external legitimacy. By 2017, journalism was described as inherently multi-platform, even as epistemic hierarchies persisted. By 2019, the key line concerned quality rather than format: respondents no longer questioned whether their work counted as journalism, but whether they still had time to produce good journalism. In 2022/2023, metrics became the central fault line, with respondents resisting managerial attempts to equate popularity with value. Taken together, symbolic and epistemic boundaries migrated substantially over the decade, as journalists defended the meaning of their craft not by rejecting change, but by redefining what counts as journalism within a digital context.
Organisational and temporal boundaries followed a similar trajectory. In 2012, hierarchies and pay differentials marked online work as lower status and temporal pressures collapsed the possibility of finished work. By 2017, respondents were expected to meet the immediacy of online while delivering the depth associated with print, producing exhaustion and triage. Convergence became contractually embedded by 2019, with online-first routines standard but resources static. By 2022/2023, temporal discipline was institutionalised through rota systems that embedded technological imperatives in bodily rhythms of labour. Over the decade, boundaries shifted from exclusion (2012) to overload (2017–2019) to institutionalisation (2022/2023), confirming Carlson's (2016) view of boundary work as constitutive of professions under pressure.
Crucially, however, these shifts have not produced a coherent new professional model. The routines of news work remain largely unchanged, yet the temporal and commercial conditions under which they are performed no longer allow journalists to meet normative ideals such as multiple sourcing, verification and depth. Respondents continue to uphold these values rhetorically, but struggle to realise them in practice, creating a persistent misalignment between professional identity and working conditions. At the same time, the model itself remains unsettled: journalists continue to negotiate how much online work they are expected to do, some seek refuge in final-paper outlets, and the continued presence of print as a prestigious, ‘ideal’ format muddies the boundary between old and new practices. The legacy of print continues to function as a normative benchmark, preventing the consolidation of a truly digital professional model. The result is a profession that is symbolically unified but practically unsettled: journalists know what ‘good journalism’ should look like, yet have not found sustainable ways to enact it within current constraints.
Boundary work in Estonia therefore illustrates how digitalisation has transformed the conditions of journalistic labour more profoundly than its core routines. Rather than signalling the emergence of a new coherent model, the decade reveals an ongoing effort to reconcile digital imperatives with enduring epistemic norms. In this sense, boundary work remains a constitutive feature of journalism, shaping not only professional definitions but also the lived experience of practising the craft under accelerating pressure.
Limitations of the study
This study has several limitations. First, although it spanned more than a decade, it was not a strict panel: the same individuals were not re-interviewed. Comparability was ensured by sampling similar newsrooms, which allowed for the analysis of structural shifts but not individual careers, perceptions or opinions. Second, interviews were in Estonian and translated into English, therefore, some nuance may have been lost. Finally, qualitative interviews capture self-perceptions only, future work could combine ethnography, content analysis or surveys to triangulate findings.
Footnotes
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.