New Academic Review of Well-Being and Creative Careers Published

Genuinely thrilled with new reviews coming out of my book Well-Being and Creative Careers (out since late 2025 with Intellect Books) following early reviews in Cultural Trends and the International Journal of Media Management. Each review brings new perspectives, and I deeply appreciate the time and energy these wonderful colleagues spent to delve into my work, helping peers and students to determine whether this book may be helpful for them, and highlighting tensions throughout.

Writing in the academic journal Journalism, Glenda Cooper (of City St George's, University of London and director of the European Journalism Observatory UK) considers the overall question my research and book addresses as:

So why do so many media workers find themselves burned out, suffering from stress, and indulging in destructive behaviours?

She outlines each chapter in terms of its contribution to answering this question, overall concluding that everything from the economic organisation of the media as a system, the way media tend to get managed, to the various ways media professionals talk about their work all have elements that can make people very sick.

Professor Cooper concludes that the solution my book offers “is for media workers to collectively acknowledge the need for fair treatment and accountability in these businesses. With journalists and other media workers embodying their labour identifying themselves closely with their work can result in such issues being seen as individual problems rather than systematic, […] media organizations should no longer be allowed to take little or no responsibility for their employees’ health.”

Obviously, I could not agree more!