The struggle for authority and legitimacy: Lifestyle and political journalists’ discursive boundary work

Scholarship has pointed to an artificial hierarchy between political and lifestyle journalism that is rooted in norms and values stemming from Western-liberal thought. Within this distinction, lifestyle journalism has been subordinated as occupying a marginal or peripheral position in the field. Yet, how journalists perceive this distinction has rarely been studied empirically. This study draws on concepts of ‘boundary work’ and ‘othering’ to examine how political and lifestyle journalists discursively reinforce and contest boundaries and hierarchies. Through semi-structured interviews with 22 lifestyle and 26 political journalists and editors in South Africa, we show that political and lifestyle journalists engaged in both intra-field (self-)expansion, and (self-)expulsion and (self-)othering, by evoking several boundary markers. Boundaries were reinforced through gendered discourses, autonomy ideals, claims to specialization and accessibility in news beats and presentation, beliefs about political journalism’s preservation of humanity, and greater risks to safety of political journalists. Boundaries were challenged by politicizing lifestyle journalism and popularizing political journalism, providing a counter-narrative to political journalism’s negativity, and treating lifestyle journalism as economically beneficial.

Introduction timely, factual and text-oriented, with societal consequences, that people should know. Soft news is slower, entertaining, personalized and visually-oriented, with individual significance, but little agreement on the topics it covers.
Such distinction "signifies mainly an acceptance of a hierarchy of journalism rather than a useful division between truly different kinds of journalism" (Van Zoonen, 1998: 37) visible in examples of implicit boundary blurring. Lifestyle journalism has 'political utility' (Hanusch, 2020) and performs functions and roles traditionally associated with political journalism (Banjac and Hanusch, 2022;Duffy and Yang, 2012;McGaurr, 2012), while political journalism reports on issues that shape everyday life and is reliant on commercially-driven strategies such as native advertising and sponsored content often associated with lifestyle journalism (Hardy, 2021). In response, scholars have been questioning the centrality of politics as key to understanding journalism's societal purpose (Zelizer, 2013), and increasingly exploring the boundaries between journalistic actors internal and external to the field (Väliverronen, 2022). Contributing to this scholarship, this study investigates the boundary markers that lifestyle and political journalists discursively mobilize to (self-)accept and (self-)reject one another from the journalistic field.

The boundaries of political and lifestyle journalism
Boundary discussions are a key dimension of journalism studies, particularly to understand how technological changes have enabled new journalistic actors to 'disrupt' the traditional journalistic field (Carlson and Lewis, 2015;Eldridge, 2018). The concept of 'boundary work' originates in Gieryn's (1983) study of how scientists use institutional characteristics to discursively distinguish themselves from 'non-scientists'. Within journalism studies, boundary work has been conceptualized as a discursive process occurring in three forms: expulsion or rejection of those who challenge established journalistic practices and values, thus delegitimizing them; expansion or acceptance of journalistic actors into the legitimate field; and protection of autonomy from external influences (Carlson, 2015). Within social systems theory, the notion of (blurring) boundaries can also be understood as a process of 'de-bounding,' which considers the point of departure from a differentiated/boundaried journalism, the duration of boundaryunravelling, and the degree to which de-bounding has occurred (Loosen, 2015). Maintaining boundaries also requires accentuating and championing the norms and values held by an incumbent group, while subordinating the 'other' group.
From the perspective of social identity theory, individuals become group members when they identify as belonging to a distinct social category, and learn desirable norms and behaviours associated with group belonging (Turner, 1982). In-group members seek to preserve exclusive access to group resources, which heightens their shared identity and group attachment, and motivates them to protect their boundaries from the out-group that they perceive as a disruptive threat to the values they espouse (Tajfel, 1974). The more salient a category of belonging is to an in-group's members, the more likely they are to exaggerate categorical differences between themselves and the out-group (Turner, 1982). For example, the more political journalists' sense of belonging stems from believing their journalism is serious and autonomous, the more likely they are to emphasise lifestyle journalism's frivolity and dependence. Intergroup attitudes are further marked by two belief systems: 'social mobility' refers to the possibility of group members to shift to a more privileged group, and 'social change' indicates group members' struggle to change status due to the "marked stratification" of inter-group relations in society (Tajfel and Turner, 2004: 278).
To discursively reinforce hierarchical boundaries between members and non-members (of the journalistic field), therefore, requires engaging in the process of 'othering.' A concept coined within post-colonial theory, othering constitutes us-them degradation, in which those with power (political journalists) symbolically construct and subordinate 'the other' (lifestyle journalists) based on interlocking systems of oppression (Spivak, 1985) or, boundary markers. Othering occurs in three ways: the powerful master reminds the subordinate other of who is in power; they construct the other as inferior and lacking intellectual refinement; they claim sole possession of knowledge (Jensen, 2011: 64-65). In a study of ethnic minority men in Denmark, Jensen (2011) argues that the concept of othering does not afford the 'othered' adequate agency to resist othering, and identifies two dimensions: capitalizationothering discourses are appropriated and infused with value; refusalthe othered distances themselves from othering discourses thus "refusing to occupy the position of the other" (Jensen, 2011: 66).
Taking this discussion into account, the argument follows that political journalists as the superior in-group evoke boundary markers to discursively other lifestyle journalists, and that lifestyle journalists as the othered out-group potentially engage in processes of capitalization and refusal.

Discursive boundary markers
Boundary markers become visible when journalists reinforce their societal legitimacy through the discursive definition and reproduction of desirable norms, values, practices, and narratives, that stabilize journalistic identity and define the boundaries of who belongs to the institution of journalism (Hanitzsch and Vos, 2018). This underpins the expulsion of disruptive entrants to the field, including when journalists evoke "a familiar lexicon of idealised roles and functions" to discursively assert in-group and out-group boundaries, most commonly between themselves and interloper media (Eldridge, 2014: 3). However, boundary struggles occur even within the in-group of traditional journalism, for example, where digital journalists differentiate themselves from print journalists (Ferrucci and Vos, 2017), and political journalists distinguish themselves from economy reporters, online desk journalists, and younger reporters (Väliverronen, 2022). We see similar dynamics and boundary markers deployed in response to lifestyle journalism as well.
A key boundary marker is the exertion of autonomy visible in journalism's claims of resistance to market pressures and commercial influences (Coddington, 2015). Gaming journalism as a form of lifestyle journalism is discursively (de)legitimized based on whether it reports on issues of political, economic, cultural and social relevance, the quality of its coverage, degree of market orientation and (in)dependence, and analytical ability (Perreault and Vos, 2020). Lifestyle journalism is denigrated as too uncritical and beholden to pressures stemming from public relations and advertising, often in the form of freebies (Hanusch, 2019). Such a dismissive attitude towards commercial dependence neglects the reality that much of digital journalism has become responsive to market influences seen in its reliance on native advertising and sponsored editorial content (Hardy, 2021). In that sense, autonomy as a boundary marker is an increasingly outdated discursive strategy that ignores current trends in journalism. Lifestyle journalists and editors negotiate these pressures by both resisting (refusing advertising or omitting overt criticism), and resigning themselves to economic dependence by accepting it as part of the game (Hanusch et al., 2016). However, they also experience role conflict between their own professional norm-expectations and those stemming from marketing and PR (Viererbl, 2022). From a Bourdieusian perspective, mainstream, traditional journalists belong to the 'field of large-scale production', producing for the broadest audience market possible, and are therefore subjected to strong external demands and low autonomy (Hovden, 2008). However, when boundary markers such as autonomy, analytical depth, and social relevance are mobilized (Perreault and Vos, 2020), political journalists and their work appear to be relocated to the 'field of small-scale production' where it is considered superior and seen as offering distinctive value to an intellectual elite (Hovden, 2008).
Boundary work is also evident in journalists' articulation of roles. Lifestyle journalists seek to entertain, inspire, offer life orientation, be a service provider, friend and mood manager, as well as marketer (Fürsich, 2012;Hanitzsch and Vos, 2018;Hanusch and Hanitzsch, 2013). Lifestyle journalists also want to provide audiences with an escape from negative news (Banjac and Hanusch, 2022), a role that may be increasingly important in light of scholarship showing that audiences avoid political news because they experience it as a source of hopelessness and cynicism (Skovsgaard and Andersen, 2020). A closer look at lifestyle journalists' role conceptions also reveals those traditionally found among political journalistsbeing critical agents of change, educators, interpreters, and mobilizers (Banjac and Hanusch, 2022;Duffy and Yang, 2012;McGaurr, 2012) indicating lifestyle journalism's political utility (Hanusch, 2020). For lifestyle editors, reconciling the provision of entertainment with their desire to be more critical in their reporting can also be a struggle (Viererbl, 2022). Mobile journalists who share norms with lifestyle journalists have been found to discursively attach themselves to traditionally political journalistic roles and standards such as reporting on 'hard' news, even though in practice their work reflected norms attributed to 'soft' forms of journalism, such as entertaining and fostering a connection with their audiences (Perrault and Stanfield, 2019).

The public-private grand dichotomy
Embedded in this hard-soft news binary is a gendered hierarchy between a (masculine) political-rational and (feminine) everyday-emotional journalism (Costera Meijer, 2001), rooted in the public-private 'grand dichotomy' that structures social reality and how journalism is understood. The dichotomy is an ideal that stems from Western-liberal thought and permeates political, economic, anthropologic, and feminist debates around what constitutes public and private life (Weintraub, 1997). Oppositional terminology associated with this binary includes reason, power and culture (indicative of masculine/ public spheres), and emotion, intuition and nature (indicative of feminine/private spheres) (Pateman, 1983).
Gendered dichotomies of hard versus soft news, fact versus opinion, fast daily news versus human interest, public versus private, perpetuate a "gender-differentiated news agenda" and the marginalization of characteristics perceived to belong to the female domain (Ross andCarter, 2011: 1149). While detached, rational reporting on politics, crime and finance exemplify the masculine, public sphere domain of quality journalism, an emotional, involved approach to reporting on the private sphere and everyday life, and a concern with audience needs exemplify the 'popularization' or 'feminization' of journalism (Costera Meijer, 2001;Van Zoonen, 1998). Underpinning the binary between quality (political) and popular (lifestyle, tabloid) journalism are gendered assumptions about what constitutes 'real' journalism, further visible in several dimensions. The public sphere is associated with democracy and citizenship, while the private sphere deals with female matters of reproduction, nurturing and family life; and, expressions of emotion are considered inappropriate for democratic discourse which requires rationality (Costera Meijer, 2001). Such assumptions reflect normative functions of journalism, which include informing the public and exposing abuses of power. Here, quality journalism is characterized by detached, fact-based, autonomous, and rational engagement in the production of news, and the mobilization of citizen deliberation on political concerns in the public sphere (Nerone, 2013). While the 'public sphere' is constructed as a space of rational political debate (Habermas, 1991), the domestic sphere is a space of female subjugation and exclusion from public or civil spheres (Pateman, 1983). Lastly, journalism's orientation towards autonomy and detachment is rooted in "the Western-liberal model of the White independent male" which neglects the idea that individuality is relational and embedded in collective identity forged through relationships, that celebrates dependency (Costera Meijer, 2001: 199).
Based on the above discussion of literature, this study aims to empirically examine the boundaries and hierarchies between political and lifestyle journalism. To do so, we developed the following research questions: RQ1: What boundary markers do lifestyle and political journalists evoke to discursively reinforce or challenge boundaries?
RQ2: To what extent do political and lifestyle journalists reinforce in-group/out-group dynamics and engage in othering?
RQ3: Do journalists engage in gendered boundary work that reflects public-private sphere dichotomies, and what discourses surround it?

Methodology
To explore boundary-making dynamics between lifestyle and political journalists, we conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 22 lifestyle and 26 political journalists and editors working for magazines, and mainstream and tabloid newspapers, including one blogger, and two freelancers, in South Africa between July and October 2018.
South Africa as a transitional society offers a vibrant and diverse news media landscape to study these boundaries, where journalism is confronted by often binary expectations to support what is in both the national and public interest. Negotiating multiple functions, political journalists embrace both traditional-liberal values such as critical watchdog reporting on politics and economics, alongside values found within development journalism such as acting as a social change agent (de Beer et al., 2016;Wasserman and de Beer, 2005). News media also tend to target audiences across the social class spectrum. Tabloids in particular play a crucial function informing an economically and racially marginalized audience largely neglected by mainstream media who primarily speak to and reinforce a middle-class worldview (Friedman, 2011;Steenveld and Strelitz, 2010;Wasserman, 2008Wasserman, , 2010. Accessibly priced tabloids such as Daily Sun are uniquely placed to provide both critical coverage of issues affecting marginalized audiences, what Wasserman (2010: 30) calls "the politics of the everyday", while also addressing an upwardly mobile, Black, working-and aspirational middle-class consumer audience who look to tabloids' lifestyle supplements for guidance in navigating their social progress (Wasserman, 2008). Glossy magazines and lifestyle sections of mainstream newspapers, however, tend to target the aspirations of the established middle class and elite (Wasserman, 2010).
In this context, and within this study, lifestyle journalists were broadly classified as those working for or contributing to magazines or lifestyle sections of mainstream and tabloid newspapers, and covering beats commonly associated with lifestyle journalism (as defined in past scholarship, e.g. Hanusch, 2019). Political journalists were classified as those working for mainstream and tabloid newspapers, covering politics, business, foreign affairs, and daily events (Reinemann et al., 2011). Furthermore, we also considered how journalists primarily identified or referred to themselves during the interview (as e.g. technology reporter, business reporter). To ensure as diverse a sample as possible, journalists were selected based on purposeful and maximum variation sampling strategies to capture specific criteria of being journalists, and varied qualities and attributes across publication, genre, beat, gender (Lindlof and Taylor, 2002). The 48 journalists interviewed in this study worked across a range of tabloid and mainstream outlets targeting diverse audiences, within genres including political, business, and lifestyle (food, health, technology, fashion and beauty). Among the 22 lifestyle journalists, 12 are female, 12 hold senior editorial positions and 10 are reporters, ages ranging from 23 to 64 years. Among the 26 political journalists, 11 are female, 6 hold senior editorial positions and 20 are reporters, ages ranging from 23 to 56 years.
Interviews were conducted in person either at the journalist's work place or a café. To circumvent one journalist's unavailability to meet in person, the interview was conducted via WhatsApp. While WhatsApp offers the respondent greater anonymity and control over the interview, it may also limit the depth and richness of data (Gibson, 2020). On average, interviews lasted 45 minutes. Semi-structured interviews allow some comparability and flexibility to discover unanticipated knowledge (Kvale, 1996). We explored journalists' motivations to become a journalist, their role conceptions, and perceptions of their audiences. While these central themes remained stable, questions were slightly adapted as the research process unravelled to account for new themes that required further attention (Flick, 2007). This approach is well-suited to engaging with 'informed grounded theory' (Thornberg, 2012) as employed within this study, where the research is guided by prior concepts but remains open to inductive discovery (Bryman, 2012). To answer this study's research questions, lifestyle journalists were asked how they perceived their function and work vis-à-vis that of political journalists, and how they believed political journalists perceived them and their work, and vice versa. This could be seen as a limitation, as it structurally guided the findings to reflect this specific dichotomy. At the same time, this study's purpose was to explore the political-lifestyle binary as highlighted in past scholarship (Costera Meijer, 2001;Hanitzsch and Vos, 2018), which therefore needed to be examined explicitly in the interviews. In the findings, journalists have been identified by pseudonyms and their gender.

Findings
Political and lifestyle journalists in this study discursively both constructed and challenged boundaries, engaging in intra-field (self-)expansion, as well as (self-)expulsion and (self-)othering (Carlson and Lewis, 2015;Eldridge, 2018) by evoking several boundary markers. These are illustrated and discussed in the following sections.

Intra-field (self-)expulsion and (self-)othering
When asked how lifestyle and political journalists perceived the contributions of their own work and that of one another, they (self-)expelled and (self-)othered by evoking several boundary markers. Both lifestyle and political journalists relied on (1) gendered discourses reflecting the private-public, emotionality-rationality, soft-hard news dichotomies, (2) ideals of journalistic autonomy vis-à-vis market dependence, and (3) claims to specialization and accessibility in news beats and presentation, to reinforce boundaries and in-group/out-group dynamics. However, lifestyle journalists self-othered and self-expelled even further. They elevated political journalism's societal worth by (4) crediting it with preserving human life, and by (5) claiming that political journalists faced greater safety risks.
Gendered discourses. Lifestyle and political journalists reinforced boundaries through gendered discourses that reflect public-private, rationality-emotionality, frivolityseriousness, and hard-soft news dichotomies. When asked how they believe political journalists imagine them, most lifestyle journalists easily conjured up descriptions. They felt that political journalists "look down on us" (Heidi-F ), perceived them as "frivolous" (Khanyisile-F; Heidi-F ), "fluffy" (Kassy-F ), "shallow, without conviction, spineless" (Andrea-F ), "not as serious" (Kassy-F; Patrick-M ), "unimportant" (Khanyisile-F ), and "just a party" (Thembile-F ). They also believed that political journalists saw them as "the people that make everybody happy" (Rekopile-F ), "always out at lunches" (Maria-F ), "doing and going to fancy things" (Thembile-F ), "not actually serving so much of a purpose" (Patrick-M ), "not making a difference" (Julia-F ), and "not doing real work" (Thembile-F ). Drawing comparisons, they felt political journalists believed "that what we do is a complete joke, and that they are doing something so much more serious and meaningful" (Patrick-M ), and that "we should really be working for a cause" (Andrea-F ). The above descriptors reflect gendered assumptions traditionally associated with the feminine and private aspects of everyday life, visible in journalism's emotion-rationality and soft-hard news binaries (Costera Meijer, 2001;Reinemann et al., 2011;Ross and Carter, 2011). More insidiously, they suggest that lifestyle journalism is superficial and fleeting, pliable and manipulable, inconsequential and marginal, mindless and laughable, merely gleeful foolery. Similar gendered valuations referring to fluffiness, frivolity, and fun have been found among lifestyle journalists elsewhere (Hanusch and Hanitzsch, 2013), demonstrating just how entrenched gendered stereotypes are in perceptions of lifestyle journalism's societal value across journalism cultures.
The political journalists in this study indeed relied on similar gendered discourses to reject lifestyle journalists, believing their work is lightweight and that they "are having it nice" (Shaun-M), "having a good time" (Richard-M), and "have it easy" (Wandile-F). Conversely, political journalists perceived themselves as driven by a societal cause, and reporting on "serious stuff" (Shaun-M)perceptions that again reflect gendered terminology associated with the masculine and public sphere, such as reason, democracy and citizenship (Costera Meijer, 2001;Pateman, 1983). Political journalists praised their 'change agent' role; instead of "stalking Beyoncé on Instagram" as one political journalist said, "shouldn't journalism be striving towards changing people's lives?" (Richard-M). As such, journalism was only journalism when it had impact, and when such impact narrowly addressed societal issues, not those pertaining to the private sphere. That is, popular (lifestyle) journalism was meaningful to citizens when it resembled characteristics of quality (political) journalism (Costera Meijer, 2001).
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the lifestyle journalists in this study internalized both their own beliefs about how political journalists perceive them as well as political journalists' actual beliefs. Lifestyle journalists evoked gendered references to democratic seriousness versus everyday fluff to (self-)expel and (self-)other, claiming that lifestyle journalism was indeed "just doing fluff, restaurant reviews and so on, it's pleasant, it's easy reading, but it's not of any real value" (Jake-M). Another lifestyle editor said: "If I was a news journalist today, I just wouldn't be able to take magazine journalists seriously at all" (Gary-M). 'Real' (political) journalists were seen as "important contributors to society, democracy and change" (Jake-M), and as "fulfilling the mandate of the Fourth Estate which is to distribute useful information to uplift people's lives" (Gary-M).
The gendered boundary-making between lifestyle and political journalists, evident in the above discourses, is merely reflective of a grander, gendered organisation of society, captured in the public-private grand dichotomy (Weintraub, 1997). In some sense, this raises the question whether such boundaries between political and lifestyle journalism could ever fully blur, given that journalism itself is embedded within larger societal hierarchies and inequalities. Before political-lifestyle journalism boundaries can begin to be challenged, journalism might need to find itself within a society where such dichotomies have ceased to define social life.
Claims to autonomy and market dependence. Lifestyle and political journalists also (self-) expelled by making claims to autonomy versus dependence from commercial influences. While lifestyle journalists critiqued their own relationship to the lifestyle industry and dependence on advertising and freebies, political journalists emphasised that lifestyle journalists were captive to commercial influences, and thus lacked autonomy, impartiality, and credibility. Lifestyle journalists believed their work was full of pictures, useless information, and "mostly selling adverts" (Gary-M). Reflecting prevailing political journalism norms, lifestyle editors believed their work became valuable when it was independent and when it invited a strong reaction in its audiences: Journalism is only journalism when you are upsetting somebody, and in lifestyle journalism you are desperately trying not to upset anybody. So, it's not journalism, it's advertorial.
[…] They [political journalists] are aggressively rejecting the lunches, and we are aggressively embracing the lunches (Jake-M).
Such self-critique reflects a form of role-conflict experienced by lifestyle editors in trying to balance their own professional norm-expectations and those of marketing and PR professionals (Viererbl, 2022). Political journalists, likewise, perceived lifestyle journalism as "an extension of PR and advertising" (Samuel-M) and "just bidding for which freebie they are gonna go on" (Shaun-M). As a boundary marker, these autonomy claims reflect the reality that lifestyle journalists do indeed both resist and resign to commercial pressures, including the provision of freebies (Hanusch et al., 2016). Political journalists' critiques, however, neglect the reality that journalism in general has become more beholden to market influences (Hardy, 2021). Drawing on autonomy claims to distinguish themselves from lifestyle journalists despite their shared experiences of economic pressures is best seen as a discursive strategy allowing political journalists to maintain their authority and legitimacy, despite this boundary marker no longer reflecting reality.
Inaccessible specialists or accessible generalists. Among reasons why lifestyle journalists and editors denigrated lifestyle journalism's societal value was its name; specifically, the term 'lifestyle' was associated with a lack of specialisation on precise areas of 'life'. Lifestyle journalists said that political journalism, like music journalism, is a specialization, focusing in depth on one area of life, namely politics or music. However, lifestyle was perceived as a generalized term encompassing multiple genres; a watered-down journalism. One editor believed this was the reason journalists who are genre experts command respect and look down on lifestyle journalists whom they perceive to be "generalists" or "very surface" (Kabelo-M).
Perceptions of lifestyle journalism as generalist also related to beliefs about accessibility. Lifestyle journalism was seen as accessible, while specialist-genre journalism, such as political, cultural, music journalism, was seen to be "super inaccessible to anyone, and no one really gets it, because everyone is sort of not academic enough or informed enough," as this lifestyle journalist said (Patrick-M). Political journalists, however, somewhat contradicted the 'inaccessibility' perception, recognizing the growing need to provide accessible journalism. To write accessibly was to simplify and convey complex ideas to audiences with various levels of literacy and knowledge of politics and economics. As this political journalist said, "I always try to write in a way that an ordinary person can understand" (Bongani-M). Another stressed that political journalists tend to operate with the elite assumption that bigger, complex words convey intellect, running away from "pedestrian" language, and forgetting that they are speaking not to themselves but the public. As she said: "you are socialized to believe that sophisticated writing in big English words is sexier, they are more impressive, they illustrate your intelligence as a writer" (Thabisa-F).
Whether journalists are perceived as 'inaccessible specialists or 'accessible generalists' reflects an understanding of the field of cultural production as an opposition between two sub-fields: the 'sub-field of small-scale production' where producers produce for a small population that appreciates their exclusive, specialist knowledge; and the 'sub-field of large-scale production' where producers produce for and try to reach the unknowledgeable, mass public with easily accessible and digestible products (Hovden, 2008: 41, citing Bourdieu, [1971. In Bourdieusian terms, mainstream (political and lifestyle) journalism belongs to the sub-field of large-scale production. However, within this study, lifestyle journalists as accessible generalists saw themselves as the only ones belonging to the sub-field of large-scale production, while political journalists as inaccessible specialists were promoted to the sub-field of small-scale production creating "'pure', 'abstract' and 'esoteric' works which are more or less unintelligible outside the subfield" (Hovden, 2008: 41, citing Bourdieu, [1983] 1993. As such, lifestyle journalists position political journalists as holding greater power within the journalistic field, even though, in this regard, political journalists challenged this view. Preservation of human life and safety of political journalists. Finally, lifestyle journalists selfothered and reinforced boundaries by evoking the pleasure versus preservation of human life dichotomy, and the safety of journalists claim. They went so far as saying that political journalism's contribution was critical to the survival of the human race, and that through their work they were confronted with greater risks to their safety. Asked to choose between political and lifestyle journalism, one lifestyle journalist said: "Out of the need for the human race to continue, I would say political journalists are probably more important because they do deal with harder-hitting issues than whether to put spirulina in your smoothie bowl" (Kassy-F). Another editor said about lifestyle journalism: "It's good for relaxation but I don't think it's ever going to save someone's life" (Maria-F). What these comments imply is that lifestyle journalism's concern with the everydayhealth and foodwas trivial to the preservation of human life, while political journalism's contribution was a matter of life and death. While the dichotomies of fluff-seriousness and autonomy-dependence have been noted in past scholarship (Costera Meijer, 2001;Hanusch and Hanitzsch, 2013;Perreault and Vos, 2020), the lifestyle journalists in this study elevated the hierarchy of worth between political and lifestyle journalism to existential questions of human survival. In reporting critically, political journalists were also seen as facing greater psychological and physical risks than lifestyle journalists, thus deserving greater respect. As one lifestyle journalist said: "no one is gonna kill a technology journalist" (Clive-M).

Intra-field (self-)expansion and rejection of othering discourses
Beyond reinforcing boundaries to (self-)expel and (self-)other, lifestyle and political journalists also engaged in intra-field (self-)expansion and boundary blurring, by: (1) politicizing lifestyle journalism vis-a-vis popularizing political journalism, (2) acting as a counter-narrative to political journalism's negativity, and (3) treating lifestyle journalism as economically beneficial.
Politicization of lifestyle journalism, popularization of political journalism. Both lifestyle and political journalists politicized the work of lifestyle journalists, while political journalists 'feminized' or 'popularized' political journalism (Costera Meijer, 2007;van Zoonen, 1998). Lifestyle journalists politicized their work by taking a 'hard' news approach to covering 'soft' issues. It was due to one journalist's earlier work as a political journalist that she believed she could go beyond being "just a lifestyle person where people see you as just doing fun things" to doing "hard news stories about fashion and travel" (Rekopile-F). In doing so, lifestyle journalists appear to be reclaiming agency and engaging in the process of 'capitalization' by infusing their work with value (Jensen, 2011). We see similar boundary-blurring in political journalists' politicization of lifestyle journalism. Political journalists claimed, lifestyle journalism may "have a role in reflecting society back on itself and allowing society to express itself through their channels and they could also possibly have a developmental role" (Tania-F). As demonstrated elsewhere, the lifestyle journalists in this study indeed held role conceptions traditionally associated with political journalism, such as being an advocate, change agent, educator, and mediator (Banjac and Hanusch, 2022). In that sense, political journalists recognised lifestyle journalism's value by politicizing its function as being a mirror to society, having a developmental role, and mobilizing audiences to engage (Hanitzsch and Vos, 2018;Perreault and Stanfield, 2019).
Being able to engage news-avoiding audiences with political issues in an entertaining way, also allowed lifestyle journalists to politicize their work and thus imbue it with value. As this journalist said: "the very non-political side of [lifestyle] media is important and is able to reach a reader who is not picking up the Mail & Guardian, is not picking up a hard news source" (Chloe-F). Another lifestyle journalist said it is about making sure that "the style of writing is entertaining but the content is informative" (Andrea-F). Especially younger audiences perceive fewer boundaries in their consumption of quality-popular news, and expect journalists to transcend these binaries by providing quality news in captivating ways (Costera Meijer, 2007). At the same time, political journalists popularized or feminized political journalism by acknowledging the increasingly important function of entertainment in their work and the need to provide audiences with attentionarresting journalism. A foreign policy journalist remarked that he wanted to "surprise the reader along the way" adding that his work was "sort of an extension of travel, takes people to different places, and that's just about entertaining" (Sam-M). This shift towards entertainment resembles characteristics of 'popular journalism' (Costera Meijer, 2001) or a 'feminization of journalism,' which Van Zoonen (1998) has argued is journalism's response to greater economic pressures and competition to retain audiences. Within this study, these examples illustrate a blurring of binary boundaries of popular-quality and soft-hard news.
Counter to political journalism's negativity. Lifestyle journalists also 'refused' political journalists' othering discourses (Jensen 2011) by arguing their 'lightness' offers a counter-narrative to the negativity of political news, and political journalists somewhat acknowledged this function of lifestyle journalism as important. Lifestyle journalists claimed their 'lightness' serves to offset some of the negativity of political news in that it "offers something different than the perpetual 'this person got killed'" (Khanyisile-F). Even though "it [lifestyle journalism] seems a little silly" as one lifestyle journalist said, "it definitely has its place" (Julia-F). Another noted: "we need both for people to be happy" (Kassy-F). Such a counter-function to political journalism may indeed be vital for audiences who avoid news for being too negative (Skovsgaard and Andersen, 2020). Here, political journalists somewhat contradicted their earlier claims about lifestyle journalism being 'lightweight' and also acknowledged that lifestyle journalists "perform an important role, just in a different space" (Tania-F) by providing "light relief" (Shaun-M). In that sense, political journalists recognised lifestyle journalism's value as a provider of relief or escapism, while reinforcing its distance within the field.
Lifestyle journalism as economically beneficial to (political) journalism. Finally, political journalists tentatively and instrumentally expanded the boundaries of the field by claiming that lifestyle journalism may even be "crucial to the success of journalism" (Samuel-M) serving as a potential source of revenue for an economically struggling journalism. Supporting this view, a lifestyle journalist stressed they "work hand in hand (…) more than they might think" and explained that one paywalled news network enticed subscriptions by offering free access to lifestyle content: "The reason they are doing that is that people won't really subscribe to news, so they are using lifestyle to get subscriptions to monetize news" (Sara-F). These claims reflect past findings to the extent that lifestyle journalists elsewhere believed that their political journalism peers perceived them as able to "generate reasonable amounts of advertising" and were therefore "respected and even admired by their colleagues" (Hanusch and Hanitzsch, 2013). Some political journalists in this study even critiqued their fellow colleagues' arrogance towards lifestyle journalists. This political journalist argued that lifestyle journalism was "underappreciated" and that such dismissive beliefs are "quite horrible snobbery," especially when lifestyle journalists "are the first to go" during cost-cutting measures (Kailash-M).
The findings outlined here highlight several boundary markers that lifestyle and political journalists evoked to both reinforce and contest boundaries and hierarchies, the implications of which are discussed below.

Discussion
The concept of boundary discourses and markers has commonly been used to study patterns of expulsion and expansion (Carlson, 2015) of the traditional field of journalism vis-à-vis new journalistic actors or interloper media (Eldridge, 2018). However, discursive boundary markers are also a useful conceptual tool for exploring how traditional (political and lifestyle) journalists within the journalistic field dispute or reaffirm boundaries by evaluating each other's contributions to society and everyday life. While past scholarship has indicated that this authority has largely been controlled by traditional, institution-bound journalists (Eldridge, 2018), this study shows that this power and journalistic capital rests more precisely in the hands of political traditional journalists.
In summary, this study found both political and lifestyle journalists engaging in instances of intra-field (self-)expansion and (self-)expulsion (Carlson, 2015) and (self-) othering (Spivak, 1985), by evoking several boundary markers. Boundaries were reinforced through (1) gendered discourses reflecting the private-public, emotionalityrationality, soft-hard news dichotomies, (2) ideals of journalistic autonomy vis-à-vis market dependence, and (3) claims to specialization and accessibility in news beats and presentation. However, lifestyle journalists self-othered and self-expelled even further. They elevated political journalism's societal worth by (4) crediting it with preserving human life, and by (5) claiming political journalists face greater safety risks. Boundaries were also challenged by (6) politicizing lifestyle journalism vis-a-vis popularizing political journalism, (7) lifestyle journalists claiming to offer a counter-narrative to political journalism's negativity, and (8) political journalists treating lifestyle journalism as economically beneficial to (political) journalism.
Political journalists as the in-group, othered lifestyle journalists as the out-group by evoking gendered references of seriousness versus lightness and frivolity (Costera Meijer, 2001;Pateman, 1983;Van Zoonen, 1998), and by claiming ideals of journalistic autonomy versus lifestyle journalism's dependence on economic imperatives (Coddington, 2015). By asserting these boundary markers of oppression, the political journalists in this study positioned themselves as the powerful master and possessor of knowledge and intellectual refinement (Jensen, 2011;Spivak, 1985), thereby subordinating and delegitimizing lifestyle journalists. By highlighting ways in which lifestyle journalists do not meet the desirable behaviours associated with belonging to the social category and shared identity of political journalists (Turner, 1982), they underscored value hierarchies between themselves and lifestyle journalists (Hanitzsch and Vos, 2018). Lifestyle journalists, having internalized this hierarchy, self-expelled and self-othered. They did so by evoking identical boundary markers to those asserted by political journalists, namely gendered references to softness ('fluff'), a lack of commercial autonomy (bidding for 'freebies'), but also by claiming political journalists face greater risk to safety, and by attributing the preservation of human life to political journalism's societal contributions. So deeply embedded are discourses of political journalism's worth that it has taken on a larger-than-life authority. In viewing themselves as accessible generalists as opposed to inaccessible specialists, lifestyle journalists reinforced another grand dichotomy within the field of large-and small-scale cultural production (Hovden, 2008: 41, citing Bourdieu, [1971. Lifestyle journalists perceived themselves as appealing to the mass, unrefined, unknowledgeable public by providing intelligible content, while political journalists were seen to appeal to the small, refined, exclusive-knowledge-seeking public by providing intellectually abstract content. Conversely, political journalists questioned the 'inaccessibility' perception by acknowledging the growing need for their work to provide accessible, entertaining journalism, thus challenging this boundary as perceived by lifestyle journalists. Political and lifestyle journalists also engaged in instances of intra-field expansion and boundary blurring, by popularizing or feminizing political journalism, and by politicizing lifestyle journalists' work and function (Perreault and Stanfield, 2019;Costera Meijer, 2001;van Zoonen, 1998). While political journalists emphasized it was increasingly important for political journalism to be accessible and entertaining in their reporting, lifestyle journalists claimed they were providing 'hard' news on 'soft issues, and engaging news-avoiding audiences with political issues through entertaining storytelling. In other words, they reported on lifestyle issues in a political way, or on political issues in entertaining ways. By politicizing their work as such, lifestyle journalists engaged in the process of 'capitalization,' infusing othering discourses with value (Jensen, 2011). In doing so, lifestyle journalists might also be serving an important function of engaging audiences that avoid political news (Skovsgaard and Andersen, 2020). In many ways, these reactions by lifestyle journalists are similar to those of interloper media who have claimed to fulfil functions that political journalists have become complacent about fulfilling (Eldridge, 2018). Despite this study's intentions to go beyond politicizing lifestyle journalism, its findings highlight how, more often than not, lifestyle journalists measure their societal worth against functions and norms traditionally associated with political journalists. This likely reflects an enduring dominance of Western-liberal ideology (Nerone, 2013) which, although resisted, is embedded in the socialized space occupied by political and lifestyle journalists. Lifestyle journalists also 'refused' political journalists' othering discourses (Jensen, 2011) by arguing their provision of light relief offers a counter-narrative to the negativity of political news, and political journalists somewhat acknowledged this function of lifestyle journalism as important. Finally, political journalists expanded the field, or rather expressed 'instrumental toleration' of lifestyle journalism for potentially offering enticing economic advantages. As such, political journalists tentatively accepted lifestyle journalists as a harmless and potentially economically beneficial boundary actor, rather than a disruptive force with adequate social mobility to pose a threat to political journalists' established values (Tajfel and Turner, 2004;Tajfel, 1974).

Conclusion
When asked explicitly to discuss their societal function and contributions, the political and lifestyle journalists in this study both reinforced and challenged boundaries and hierarchies between one another. However, if we step back and observe boundary work as it may or may not occur implicitly, we see a different picture emerge; one where politicallifestyle boundaries have been blurring for some time and where political and lifestyle journalists have been engaging in 'acts of lifestyle' and 'acts of politics' respectively. For example, in journalistic role conception scholarship, we have seen political utility in lifestyle journalists' roles traditionally associated with political journalism (see for example Banjac and Hanusch, 2022;Duffy and Yang, 2012;McGaurr, 2012). Likewise, political journalism has itself become more beholden to economic pressures, relying on native advertising, sponsored journalistic content, and clickbait, among other things (Hardy, 2021) to ensure its economic survivalstrategies more often attributed to tabloid and lifestyle media. We also see boundary osmosis in the beats and topics addressed by lifestyle and political journalism: fashion news on latest trends versus fashion news on the exploitation of labour in the clothing industry, or food journalism suggesting recipes versus food journalism highlighting how war and conflict lead to food scarcity. The Covid-19 pandemic over the past two years offers an exceptional example of beat-blurring and the 'politicization' of the everyday, where almost overnight 'health' migrated from being a traditionally lifestyle beat (personal fitness), to something that dominated political news (how the virus affected public health). In the words of Wasserman (2010: 30), health became "the politics of the everyday." In light of this discussion, this study elucidates political and lifestyle journalists' explicit discursive boundary work, even when the boundaries between them have been implicitly blurring for some time. At the same time, we realise that our deliberately broad sample of political and lifestyle journalists may have had an impact on the findings. Given continued diversification and ongoing establishment of sub-fields even within these broad areas, it is possible that more boundary blurring may already be occurring at the micro level, such as in the case of obsessive-activist journalists (Ginosar and Reich, 2022), who blur traditional boundaries within political journalism. It is important to continue to study these aspects of boundary work going forward.

Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/ or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by Foerderungsstipendien, Department of Communication Research Award, University of Vienna and Kurzfristige wissenschaftliche Auslandstipendien.