The journalist-flaneur

“Benjamin’s account of the journalist-flâneur also focuses on his commodity-status in the marketplace of the literary industry: a writer-cum-commodity. In the age of high capitalism, the journalist, who observes the city and reads it as a text, cannot be free from the market and must produce and sell his information as a commodity. Then, finally, he becomes a commodity himself. The journalist is the prototype of the salaried flâneur, standing between the writer and the advertiser. The difference between the literary man and the journalist lies only in their different perception. The journalist already recognizes his commodified status as a writer, while the literary man is still reluctant to sell himself (even though he is doomed to sell eventually). The journalist as an analogical figure of the commodified flâneur is congruent with the figure of ‘the sandwich-man’, who walks the streets with advertisements hanging on his body as ‘the last incarnation of the flâneur’. When the flâneur himself becomes commodified, the end point of flânerie is reached; the journalist is completely transformed into a commodity and, as such, becomes part of the endless series of spectacle of the city.” From “Walter Benjamin and the Media” by Jaeho Kang