Journalism and the Academy

• Journalism’s place in the academy is a project rife with various and sundry
complications. As the
• recognizable forms of journalism take on new dimensions to accommodate the
changing circumstances
• in which journalism exists, the question of journalism’s study has developed along
an uneven
• route fi lled with isolated pockets of disciplinary knowledge. The result is that we
have little
• consensus about the two key terms at the focus of our attention, agreeing only
marginally about
• what journalism is and generating even less agreement about what the academy’s
relationship
• with it should be. This chapter discusses the various sources of existential
uncertainty underlying
• journalism’s coexistence with the academy and offers a number of suggestions to
make their
• uneven and often symbiotic relationship more mutually aware and fruitful.