This collection of original essays brings a dramatically different perspective to bear on the contemporary "crisis of journalism." Rather than seeing technological and economic change as the primary causes of current anxieties, The Crisis of Journalism Reconsidered draws attention to the role played by the cultural commitments of journalism itself. Linking these professional ethics to the democratic aspirations of the broader societies in which journalists ply their craft, it examines how the new technologies are being shaped to sustain value commitments (...) rather than undermining them. Recent technological change and the economic upheaval it has produced are coded by social meanings. It is this cultural framework that actually transforms these "objective" changes into a crisis. The book argues that cultural codes not only trigger sharp anxiety about technological and economic changes, but provide pathways to control them, so that the democratic practices of independent journalism can be sustained in new forms. (shrink)

El ámbito de la cultura popular ha privilegiado una visión técnica de sus objetos en el sentido que Aristóteles dio al término téchne. Este enfoque ha prevalecido hasta hoy en la forma de un determinismo económico y tecnológico que enfatiza la estructura social frente a la acción cultural. Se trata de un presupuesto racionalista que comparten las teorías sociológicas y culturales dominantes en el área: la teoría crítica, los análisis de economía política y, en menor medida, los estudios culturales. Este (...) trabajo profundiza en los presupuestos filosóficos de estas corrientes con el objetivo de advertir la misma explicación racionalista, extrínseca, que definió la crítica de Adorno y Horkheimer a la cultura de masas mediado el siglo XX. Este concepto de cultura de masas suscitó una reflexión diferente en Hannah Arendt, coincidiendo con el periodo en el que los teóricos de Frankfurt asentaron el juicio dominante acerca de la cultura de masas. Esta otra visión de Arendt ofrece, a nuestro juicio, un presupuesto no-racionalista e intrínseco, que permite una teorización adecuada al carácter cultural de los objetos que conforman el campo de la popular culture. The field of popular culture has privileged a technical view of its objects in the sense that Aristotle gave to the term téchne. This approach has prevailed until today in the form of an economic and technological determinism that emphasizes the social structure in front of cultural activity. It is a rationalist presupposition which it is shared by the cultural and sociological theories dominant in the area: critical theory, political economy analysis and, to some extent, cultural studies. This study examines the philosophical assumptions of these current theories in order to understand how they incorporate the same rational and extrinsic explanation which defined the criticism of Adorno and Horkheimer to mass culture at mid-twentieth century. This phenomenon of mass culture gave rise to Hannah Arendt’s alternative reflection, coinciding with the period in which the Frankfurt’s theorists settled the dominant view of contemporary culture. In our view, Arendt offers a non-rationalist and intrinsic perspective that allows an adequate understanding of the cultural and symbolical character of the objects that shape the field of popular culture. (shrink)