Cultural Journalism and Cultural Critique in the Media

The book engages with news media reporting of and debating on culture, including the arts, value politics, popular culture, the culture industries and entertainment, in a globalized and digital media landscape. Several contributions apply a broad approach to ‘the cultural’ in theorizing and analyzing the production and content of cultural journalism, and the professional ideology, self-perception, and legitimacy struggles of cultural journalists and editors. Others define their field of study more narrowly, engaging with very specific sub-areas such as ‘film criticism’ or ‘television series.’ This book was originally published as a special issue of Journalism Practice.

This book addresses a topic in journalism studies that has gained increasing scholarly attention since the mid-2000s: the coverage and evaluation of arts and culture, or what we term ‘cultural journalism and cultural critique’. The book highlights three approaches to this emerging research field: (1) the constant challenge of demarcating what constitutes the ‘cultural’ in cultural journalism and cultural critique, and the interlinks of cultural journalism and cultural critique; (2) the dialectic of globalization’s cultural homogenization and the specificity of local/national cultures; and (3) the need to rethink, perhaps even redefine, cultural journalism and cultural critique in view of the digital media landscape.

‘Cultural journalism’ is used as an umbrella term for media reporting and debating on culture, including the arts, value politics, popular culture, the culture industries, and entertainment. Therefore some of the contributions this book apply a broad approach to ‘the cultural’ when theorizing and analyzing the production and content of cultural journalism, and the professional ideology, self-perception, and legitimacy struggles of cultural journalists and editors. Other contributions demarcate their field of study more narrowly, both topically and generically, by engaging with very specific sub-areas such as ‘film criticism’ or ‘television series.’ This book was originally published as a special issue of Journalism Practice.