Constructing the Crisis of Journalism

Abstract

By examining journalistic discourses on the drastic changes in the New Orleans daily The Times-Picayune and the Spanish newspaper El País, this article examines the so-called “crisis of journalism” from a cultural-sociological and civil sphere perspective. The literature review in the first section briefly brings the cultural dimension to the forefront of current anxieties in the journalistic profession—anxieties that have been discussed mainly from a techno-economic view. The empirical section of the article demonstrates how the social meanings of what is considered as independent journalism have been present and operative in the understanding of economic changes caused by the digital shift.

KEYWORDS:

• civil sphere
• crisis of journalism
• cultural sociology
• digital shift
• economic predicament
• newspapers

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research is part of a major book project on the crisis of journalism, in which I am participating with Jeffrey Alexander and Elizabeth Breeze from the Yale Center for Cultural Sociology and others. I would specially like to thank Jeffrey Alexander for comments on early drafts of this paper.