Failure and understanding-with in entrepreneurial journalism

Abstract

This article develops an understanding of failure in entrepreneurial journalism which academics may use to investigate how failure functions in everyday practices. Analysis of auto-ethnographic data concerning a journalistic start-up shows that feelings of failure function as evaluation tools for activities, and possibly serve as references evaluating future activities. This makes failure an important guiding concept for practices, requiring a proper understanding. This article unpacks failure through the lens of a journalistic start-up examined by means of (auto-)ethnographic data from its founders. It concludes that, rather than understanding failure as a cohesive concept with one function, we may better understand it as (1) a term with fluid meanings, (2) consisting of a plurality of experiences, and (3) constructed in becoming-with (Haraway, 2016) others.