Blackwell Reference Online

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Despite a common interest in communicative activity, mass communication professionals and communication scholars have long been at odds with each other. Scholars argue that media performance can only be enhanced by professionalization of the workforce and the self-knowledge generated from systematic, criteria-based analysis and assessment. They have also systematically criticized a great deal of mass media content since its origins. Conversely, communication professionals tend to disagree not by engaging in debate with scholars but rather by simply ignoring their work: the vast majority of academic literature from communication studies and cognate disciplines goes unread by media practitioners ( Walker 2000 ). This is not to say that journalists and other media professionals are anti-intellectual. Rather, as sociologist Max Weber argued in 1918, problems arise in understanding a key media occupation like political journalism because the special talent, or what he called the “genius,” of journalists is rarely acknowledged, much less understood ( Weber 2001 ). Consequently, wide discrepancies arise between practitioner and academic accounts of media practice, performance, and change. There has been little research in the past on this relationship per se; rather, the topic typically arises in studies of specific media occupations or in discussion of developments in communication theory. ... log in or subscribe to read full text