An Enduring Ethos

Abstract

In the twentieth century, in the United States, ideas of professional practice in journalism and journalism education grew up together. Occupational norms and professional practices were inscribed in reporting textbooks, which reflected the values of their era. They show a continuity of praxis, and an “enduring ethos” of journalistic values that survived into the 1960s and 1970s, in time to be picked up by the studies of Johnstone and then later Weaver and Wilhoit. This ethos including notions of public service, often tied to notions of objectivity, accuracy and fairness. This study includes a close reading of 34 textbooks published over a period of nearly 70 years, from the 1890s through the 1960s, drawing from a larger corpus of material that includes 69 textbooks from the same period. As sites of professional discourse making and continuity, textbooks show how journalism's values are passed down through time.

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