Shifting boundaries between self-employment and paid work are part of the general transformation of work society and challenge sociological thinking. In the dominant German pattern of interpretation new forms of employment are usually seen as parr of an eroding,standard work relationship (Normalarbeitsvitrhaltnis). This understanding needs to be broadened, as changes in the field of self-employment itself also need to be taken into account. The case of freelance journalism shows, that semi-dependent forms of employment that fit neither the standard, traditional notion of "employee" nor that of the "free professions" already evolved during the seventies and eighties. As in the 1990s global competition as well as the supply of academic workforce in the field of multimedia increased the older type of 'semi-dependent', socially secure, and firm-bound form of freelancing was displaced by more contingent forms of freelance work. This process challenges the career perspectives of some groups of journalists, it is discussed whether the results of this study also hold for other fields of professional service work and whether the new sociological concept of "Arbeitskraftunternehmer" (i.e. entrepreneur of one's own labor power) square with these structural changes.
