The Legitimate Peripheral Position of a Central Medium

Abstract

News reporting is both a business and a professional environment within which journalists continuously reproduce their identities. Of late the business model of the news industry has become uncertain. The growing competitive quest for commercial revenues by news companies is often said to be a threat to the professional norms that have secured the legitimacy of journalists in society. Is economic capital the main driving force that defines the journalistic profession and its most powerful actors? Based on the analysis of the most commercial segment of the press, the free daily newspaper, the article shows that the identity of journalists and their hierarchical position within their professional community depends on a series of other factors. Field theory and interactionism are considered as two complementary sociological approaches to grasping both the roots of journalistic professionalism and the processes of dominance within this social group.

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