In-Between News

Talking about Journalism focuses on the relationship between journalism and the public and engages with this as a specific boundary-pushing relationship, where the ways we think about journalism are constantly being defined and re-defined through the ways we publicly discuss what journalism is, and what it does.


It focuses, conceptually, on journalistic metadiscourse. These discourses of ‘journalists talking about journalism’ within news content serve as a way of publicly constructing meaning about journalism in our societies, what it should do, and how it corrects itself when it goes astray. The statement of purpose for this book will outline how thinking about metadiscourses allows us to see journalism being defined ‘in the open’, through the ways journalists and members of the public talk about journalism, and how this has developed over time. However, it does so in a way that reconsiders the parameters of this conversation. Where previously this was a discourse found in newspaper media columns, trade magazines, and similar spaces, it is now pervasive online, within digital alternative media, and in (hyper)active audience forums and comment sections. These expand our opportunities for understanding how journalism is being defined in the spaces where it is talked about, and for seeing the relationship between journalism, the public, and various counter-publics play out.


This title explores new frontiers in terms of where and how journalism is being defined and redefined, not only by journalists but by the public as well. It does so while bringing forward theories of publics and counterpublics for our digital age.