Categories of knowledge and information flows: reasons for the decline of the British Labour and Industrial Correspondents' Group

This article explores the rise and decline of daily labour and industrial j ournalism in Britain from the 1930s to the present day. This represents the loss of an important arena within the public sphere for the discussion of work-related issues. Conventional explanations for the decline in this spec ialism point to the diminishing newsworthiness of trade unions. However, th is is an oversimplification. While changes in the political and economic en vironment are clearly important, attention also haste be paid to the relati onships or power-webs, involving journalists and members of the political a nd labour movement elites, which sustain or block crucial information flows and support or undermine particular categories of knowledge. The hierarchi cal ordering and instability of categories of knowledge for journalists is intimately connected to particular forms of governmentality.