Scowling at their Notebooks

Abstract

This article examines the understanding of newswriting within British print news journalism and, in particular, the practice’s management of the role of language in the news. Its material comprises journalists’ reflections on their practice in metatexts such as memoirs and textbooks. The article draws on phenomenological sociology and Bourdieu’s theorization of the censorship of ways of speaking within the journalistic community to show how writing tends to appear in journalists’ discussions of the job in ways that reduce the force of its challenge to journalism’s self-understanding. It concludes by suggesting that the habits of thinking about writing in British journalism stand in the way of any substantive reflexivity within British news practice or any reorientation of the practice in response to critiques of the active role of journalism in constructing understanding of society.

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