Journalism 102

• Not all scholars share such an optimistic view of the persistence and prospects of
journalism
• in its professional and institutionalized mode. With the advent of interactive
communication
• technologies, journalism as we know it has been proclaimed “dead” and called a
“zombie institution”
• (Deuze, 2006, p. 2), and researchers continue to speculate about the “end of
journalism”
• (e.g., Bromley, 1997; Waisbord, 2001). It is especially the potential decline of
traditional political
• journalism that raises normative concerns for many theorists, as “[i]ts loss would
rob us of the
• centerpiece of deliberative politics” (Habermas, 2006, p. 423). However, to
appropriate Mark
• Twain’s adage, rumors of the death of journalism may be greatly exaggerated. We
might be witnessing
• not the end of journalism but rather its re-invention (Weber, 2007).