Australian Journalism Studies after ‘Journalism’: Breaking down the Disciplinary Boundaries (For Good)

Abstract

This article argues that if journalism is to remain a relevant and dynamic academic discipline, it must urgently reconsider the constrained, heavily policed boundaries traditionally placed around it – particularly in Australia. A simple way of achieving this is to redefine its primary object of study: away from specific, rigid, professional inputs towards an ever-growing range of media outputs. Such a shift may allow the discipline to freely reassess its pedagogical and epistemological relationships to contemporary news-making practices – or the ‘new’ news.