How Communication, Culture, and Critique Intersect in the Study of Journalism

The world of journalism has always been privileged—for good and bad—by the prisms through which we have recognized its parameters. In acting as more than just the provision of some kind of shared repertoire of public events, journalism can be fruitfully understood by bringing to the forefront of its appropriation the notions of communication, culture, and critique that go into its shaping. Each offers different but complementary parameters through which to think about journalism’s practice and, by extension, its study. Addressing the integral role that each prism plays in thinking about journalism is worth articulating because discussions of the practice and study of journalism have lost sight of the varied forms through which journalism makes its name. In particular, the communicative role played by journalism has pushed aside both its cultural and critical functions. This has prevented the establishment of a broader understanding of all that journalism does beyond the...