The TimesPicayune and the News Discourses on the Collapse of American Journalism

Abstract

This article analyses the ways in which the crisis of American journalism is constructed in the journalistic discourses on the digital revolution and the economic collapse of newspaper through the particular case of The TimesPicayune. Journalists assume a set of cultural codes which locates the facts within symbolical boundaries of what is professionally understood as good journalism or, on the contrary, outside these boundaries. These cultural assumptions might account for the professional conflict between the traditional journalism and the new challenges posed by the Internet; a crisis greatly motivated by the kind of values towards which the professionalization of American journalism has tended.