"Our reporters have seen new deadline pressures build as the material is used throughout the day, not just at the end of the day. There is also a huge safety problem in the newsrooms themselves due to repetitive strain injuries. Some people are losing their careers at the age of 34 and 40 due to repetitive strain injuries, a problem that was unheard of in the age of the typewriter. But as people work 8- to 10-hour shifts without ever leaving their terminals, this has become an increasing problem."
Carlos Alberto de Almeida, president of the Federación Nacional de Periodistas (FENAJ) (National Federation of Professional Journalists), also denounced the exploitation of journalists:
"Technology offers the opportunity to rationalize work, to reduce working time and to encourage intellectual pursuits and even entertainment. But so far none of this has happened. On the contrary, media professionals - whether executives, journalists or others - are working longer and longer hours. If one were to rigorously observe the labour legislation and the rights of professionals, then the extraordinary positive aspects of these new technologies would emerge. This has not been the case in Brazil. Journalists can be easily phoned on weekends to do extra work without extra pay."
While it speeds up the production process, the automation of working methods, beginning with digitization, leads to a decrease in human intervention and consequently an increase in unemployment. Whereas previously, the production staff had to retype the texts of the editorial staff, computerized typesetting led to the combination of the two tasks of editing and composing. In advertising services too, graphic design and commercial tasks are now integrated.
As Etienne Reichel, Acting Director of VISCOM (Visual Communication),
Switzerland, said:
"The work of 20 typesetters is now carried out by six qualified workers. There has also been a concentration of centres of production, thus placing enormous pressure on the small and medium-sized enterprises which are traditional sources of employment. […] Computer science makes it possible for experts to become independent producers. Approximately 30 per cent of employees have set up independently and have been able to carve out part of the market."
Although on-line services create some new jobs, as directors of organizations of newspaper publishers often claim, the unions have also stated that the number of job creations is much lower than the number of dismissals.
Even if the Internet is a huge information tank, the press will always need journalists, as explained by Jean-Pierre Cloutier, editor of the Chroniques de Cybérie, in an article of WebdoMag of July 1998:
"Some people predicted the short-term disappearance of the traditional media and their creators. 'We won't need journalists any more when a good browser for News groups is available', Michael Hauben of Columbia University warned two years ago. 'The more people there are on-line, the more marginalized the professional information media will be.' This is rubbish.
The spirit of discovery and the taste for exploration and technical experimentation of those who were early in adopting the Internet (the ones that the sociologists of the Net call the early doers) are not shared by the second wave of users who now make up the largest part of this 'critical mass'.