Cultural Journalism and Cultural Critique in a changing Media Landscape

Abstract

This special issue addresses a topic of journalism studies that has previously been somewhat neglected but which has gained increasing scholarly attention since the mid-2000s: the coverage and evaluation of art and culture, or what we term "cultural journalism and cultural critique." In this introduction, we highlight three issues that serve to frame the study of cultural journalism and cultural critique more generally and the eight articles of this special issue more specifically: (1) the constant challenge of demarcating cultural journalism and cultural critique, including the interrelations of "journalism" and "critique"; (2) the dialectic of globalisation's cultural homo-genisation, on the one hand, and the specificity of local/national cultures, on the other; and (3) the digital media landscape seen in terms of the need to rethink, perhaps even redefine cultural journalism and cultural critique. KEYWORDS cultural critics; cultural critique; cultural journalism; digital journalism; digital media; news production Introduction: Cultural Journalism and Cultural Critique as Emerging Research Areas Politics, art, and culture have since the introduction of newspapers in Western societies been covered sideby-side by various and more or less critical writers, of which journalists were just one variety. However, journalism research has a long tradition of prioritising political journalism and news media, primarily as a political public sphere. Likewise, political journalism increasingly came to set the agenda in the newsrooms and in journalism education during the twentieth century. This political leaning in both research and practice is closely linked to the professional and normative ideal or ideology of Western journalism, an ideal that stipulates an autonomous, objective, and versatile press, performing the role of society's watchdog and addressing urgent events and issues of societal importance as a constituent element of democracy (e.g., Curran 2011; Deuze 2005). Thus in many ways the political bias is fully justified. One consequence, however, has been the neglect by scholars of the news media's coverage of "softer" issues such as art, culture, lifestyle, "life politics" (Giddens 1992), and the cultural public spherewhat we, in this special issue, term "cultural journalism." In much the same way, journalists covering these issues have consistently had to defend their work to their peers and the public (see Harries and Wahl-Jorgensen 2007; Hovden and Knapskog 2015). This scholarly inattention as well as the professional need for justification are striking in light of the fact that these topics have become increasingly important parts of news production during the twentieth century and are today covered intensively (e.g., Janssen, Kuipers, and Verboord 2008; Kristensen and From 2011). When occasionally addressed by scholars, these topics have typically been analysed in relation to political journalism. Political journalism has been viewed as the proper kind of journalism, "the real journalism" (Deuze 2005, 444), ...

Cultural journalism—Journalism about culture

“…The fact that "cultural journalism" has become a more commonly used international scholarly term since the mid-2010s (e.g., da Silva & Silva, 2014;Heikkilä et al, 2017;Hovden & Knapskog, 2015;Jaakkola, 2015;Kersten & Janssen, 2017;Kristensen & From, 2015a;Kristensen & Riegert, 2017) denotes a middle-ground perspective between the very inclusive and more narrowly delineated terms and the emerging institutionalisation of cultural journalism as a distinct sub-discipline in journalism studies. This is confirmed by the fact that even though cultural journalism may not (yet) have its own journals or conference divisions, it is offered as an academic subject at many universities.…”

“…This could also be phrased as a change from hard news to soft news (e.g., Reinemann, Stanyer, Scherr, & Legnante, ). As a result, media and journalism studies today examine not only political news but also human interest stories (Hughes, ), celebrity journalism (Dubied & Hanitzsch, ), gossip journalism (Van den Bulck, Paulussen, & Bels, ), lifestyle journalism (Hanusch, , ), arts journalism (Harries & Wahl‐Jorgensen, ; Janssen, ), and cultural journalism (Heikkilä, Purhonen, & Lauronen, ; Jaakkola, ; Kristensen & From, ; Kristensen & Riegert, ). These specialised types of journalism may be distinct in theory but often overlap in practice in terms of focus areas and the professionals who produce them.…”

Cultural journalists on social media

“…Th is is important because the professional logics of this beat, especially the priority given to opinionated approaches and personal style, seem to fi t well with the logics of social media. Th e article combines research on journalists' use of social media (e.g., Brems et al, 2016;Canter, 2013Canter, , 2015Hanusch & Bruns, 2017;Hedman & Djerf-Pierre, 2013Hermida, 2010Hermida, , 2013Hermida, , 2017Vis 2013) with theoretical and empirical research on cultural journalists as a professional group (e.g., Forde, 2003;Jaakkola, 2015;Kristensen & From, 2015a;Kristensen & Riegert, 2017). Methodologically, the study applies a mixed-methods approach: Qualitative interviews with Danish cultural editors establish the strategic use of social media in Danish cultural newsrooms, while a quantitative mapping of selected Danish cultural journalists' Twitter and Facebook communication outlines the broader contours of this communication, illustrated by qualitative examples.…”

Churnalism, Cultural (Inter)Mediation and Sourcing in Cultural Journalism

“…Therefore, this article focuses on churnalism in cultural journalism, which is the term used in a lot of European and especially Nordic research (for overviews, see Kristensen and From 2015a;Jaakkola 2015); the term comprises news stories, reviews and commentaries on art and culture. 2 The article focuses especially on churnalism in professionally produced cultural journalism in institutionalised newspapers.…”

“…Turner and Orange 2013). Consequently, studies have emerged that look more closely at specialised but also hybrid types of journalism, such as arts journalism (Harries and Wahl-Jorgensen 2007;Janssen, Kuipers, and Verboord 2008;Sarrimo 2016;Verboord and Janssen 2015), cultural journalism (Golin and Cardoso 2009;Jaakkola 2015;Kristensen and From 2015a), lifestyle journalism (Hanusch 2012;Kristensen and From 2012) and celebrity journalism (Dubied and Hanitzsch 2014;Van den Bulck, Paulussen, and Bels 2016). This newer research agenda that studies these topics as specialised types of journalism with their own norms and routines can be seen as a counter-trend to the inclination towards studying "the most sacred part of journalism": political journalism (Neveu 2002, 23).…”