Abstract
In the early 1960s, NBC’s Huntley Brinkley Report producer Reuven Frank became frustrated with constant criticism from newspaper journalists and critics, claiming they compared his television news program not to a specific publication but to the ideal newspaper: ‘they match us against the rosy image they formed as cub reporters or students’ (Frank and Hewitt, 1962: 8).
More than a half-century later, when a conservative casino mogul bought a Las Vegas newspaper, The New York Times published a lengthy article about worries the new owner would use the paper ‘to promote his political allies and protect his extensive gambling interests’, and included a quote from a journalism professor warning that the purchase was not made ‘to benefit the Las Vegas community’ (Meier and Ember, 2015).
Both of these situations, separated by more than 50 years, reveal attempts to answer the long-standing queries that in recent years have often included exclamation points along with the question marks: Who is a journalist? What is journalism?
Matt Carlson and Seth C. Lewis, two scholars immersed in the dramatic changes brought on by the leveling effect of digital media and advanced technology, believe one way to get at the answers involves studying how journalists talk about their work. They have brought together a dozen essays exploring various attributes of the field in the edited collection, Boundaries of journalism: Professionalism, practices and participation.
Boundaries of Journalism builds on the work of sociologist Thomas Gieryn (1983), who used the concept of ‘boundary-work’ (p. 781) more than 30 years ago to help explain how scientists carved out their professional status away from religious leaders in the 19th century. Boundary work has proven to be a popular construct in academic research, moving from sociology into other disciplines over the past decades and finding its way into journalism studies in the past few years.
Scholars have used a variety of approaches over the decades in their studies of journalism, especially in the United States, where the industry pushed hard in the 20th century to gain respect among the public, aiming for professional status on the level of law or medicine. The First Amendment and the economic structure of most of American journalism make professionalism a tough argument since there is no test or license needed to practice journalism, and the autonomy necessary to protect the canons of a profession is rarely a reality in today’s for-profit media. Instead, Carlson considers the edited volume as a ‘view of journalism as a varied cultural practice embedded within a complicated social landscape’ (p. 2).
Gieryn’s ‘boundary-work’ is an attractive construct for journalism because it does not assume professional status. Instead, the margins of a vocation or area of expertise are studied to see how the practitioners protect their boundaries by both extolling the strengths of what they do and demonizing those who might encroach on their territory.
Given the myriad of platforms and approaches, journalism content can range from investigative reporting, consumer news, horoscopes, comics, lottery numbers to listicles. But boundary work research puts the focus not on what journalists do but on what they say they do: the rhetoric of journalism. As Reuven Frank noticed decades ago, journalists talk about ideal journalism. As Gieryn noted, the most passionate arguments happen on the margins, as practitioners attempt to define what they do and attempt to marginalize others who do similar work. In the 21st century, few of the boundaries of journalism are fixed.
Boundaries of Journalism is split into two parts: ‘Professionalism, norms, and boundaries’, and ‘Encountering non-journalistic actors in newsmaking’. In the first essay, Jane Singer provides both historical context with the fight over boundaries in the 20th century pitting print against radio and television, as well as industry responses to today’s major upheaval in both technology and funding. For Singer, journalists are being forced to see their work as a process and the audience as equal and ‘those commonalities are arguably the key to the survival of a profession that can no longer thrive in splendid isolation’ (p. 32).
Alfred Hermida focuses on the changing role of verification in journalism in the social media age and Mark Coddington studies the reality and myth behind the journalistic foundation of ‘the wall’ (p. 67), separating the business interests from journalists, allowing for the autonomy necessary for professional status.
The editors do bring in voices from non-Western countries, which help to show markedly different roles for journalism. In Argentina, authors Adriana Amado and Silvio Waisbord find ‘the forces of unprofessionalism’ (p. 54), since historically the government and media owners have not been interested in journalistic autonomy and the public does not expect it.
Other scholars delve into online comments as part of published journalism, user-generated content, Google Glass, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as a source of information, and even the historic divide between journalism and sociology, all employing the rhetoric surrounding journalism and these other areas as boundaries that are contested and redrawn.
Boundary work may be a useful construct along with other approaches to studying journalism, including organizational structure, professionalism, Bourdieu’s field theory, interpretive communities, paradigm repair, and even as a fourth branch of the US government. In the epilogue, Lewis does bring up concerns that boundary work could be in danger of becoming a catch-all for studying changes in journalism, citing framing as a concept that has become watered down because of misuse and overuse by scholars.
Overall, Boundaries of Journalism is a strong collection of essays providing a window into how journalists define their vocation even as they are forced to confront challenges from many sides, especially from the group formerly known as the reader, listener, or viewer. Even with all the challenges facing journalism in the 21st century, Lewis still sees the industry as ‘surprisingly durable’ (p. 220) in light of all the disruptions.